BOOK III. THE BEGINNING

65

CHAPTER ONE PRO DEO ET ECCLESIA

It is not a matter to wonder at that the Mission of Yingching was founded during the latter part of the sixteenth century,—an age known elsewhere for its deception and cajolery,—but it is remarkable that M. Ricci should remain the greatest of its bishops though more than three centuries have gone by.

From the beginning of that eventful day when the Viceroy granted him permission to build a little house where he might forget his hours in prayer and study, until he had laid secure the foundations of this Mission, which even Time and innumerable vicissitudes have not destroyed, the life of Ricci was passed more brilliantly than any of his successors. While most of them have faithfully continued his policy, they have done so only with that crudity that is to be expected from the efforts of mediocre men when they seek to emulate the schemes of master minds.

The successes of the bishop had been many; the fruition of his schemes was continuous and like the orange tree there mingled promiscuously together 66the sprouting bud, the bloom, and the golden fruit. Yet numerous as had been his victories they were all overshadowed by one failure—the securing of a foothold within the walls of Yingching. Many had been the schemes carefully planned toward this end, only, through some fatality, to fail. But the bishop smiled and was hopeful, for no one knew better than he that in the march of ill-fortune there are to be found points of attack called opportunities, which assailed at the right moment end in victory; one must watch and wait; when there is seen a gap or point of weakness, fall upon it—perhaps to be repulsed, perhaps to succeed. So the bishop waited and watched as ill-fortune in a lazy, long column filed by. Often he had made the attack and failed but he was not disheartened nor did his failures ever alter the serenity that men noted on his brow, a serenity that was conspicuous.

One day—which might be called the beginning day of this history—the bishop was seated in his study with a peasant woman kneeling before him, and on his lips played or twitched that peculiar, unfathomable smile which someone once said was the shadowy echo of a scheme’s contented laughter.

“Yes,” the bishop repeated musingly, “you will secrete yourself, listening to all that is said, seeing all that is done, and report to me each day. You must undertake to gain her confidence as much as 67possible and do nothing that may cause her displeasure.”

The bishop, tapping the tips of his fingers together, settled back in his chair and smiled, one might almost say, rapturously.

“Since this matter is arranged, you may go,” he said, leaning forward and looking down at the woman that knelt at his feet. “But remember,” he continued with gentle firmness, firmness that left no doubt, “that you are first the servant of God and afterwards the maid of Tai Lin’s wife. Never, as you value your soul, neglect to report to me all that is said and done each day between the priest and this wife. Go and obey!”

A hesitant knock aroused the bishop from his musings. The Breton priest, entering softly, knelt down and received his blessing then rising, stood dreamily waiting.

For some time the bishop sat rubbing with both forefingers his high, narrow nose. And as he contemplated the handsome, sad Breton a satisfied smile passed across his covered lips.

“I have new duties for you,” he said presently in soft, thoughtful tones. “Tai Lin, the former Viceroy of Chekiang, has asked for a tutor to instruct his young wife, and I have selected you.”

The Breton made no sign that he heard.

“Do you understand what that means?” demanded the bishop with purring severity as he 68leaned forward, pressing his bony knuckles against the sides of his knees. “God has intrusted you with its accomplishment, and there must be no failure in tasks imposed by Him.

“Tai Lin is one of the richest men in this province,” he continued meditatively, as he leaned back in his chair and struck stiffly together the tips of his bloodless fingers. “Some say his wealth is limitless; this to a degree is true, for I know that he alone owns the great Erh-tung mines of white copper in Yunnan; the camphor groves of Si Kiang belong to him; the jade mines of Yu-Shan, and those boundless forests of teak that lie between the Me Kong and Song Ho rivers; besides—there is his great park in the heart of Yingching.”

For some moments the bishop sat silent, his eyes half closed, his fingers motionless.

“Yes, that magnificent park, that wonderful park—— But this young wife, have you heard of her?” he demanded, suddenly sitting up.

Again the Breton looked at him questioningly.

“She was a tea-farmer’s daughter, beautiful, it is said, as a wild animal, and though permitted to run wild among the hills and woodlands she acquired some learning the reputation of which, no doubt, spread among the neighbouring villages and finally reached the ears of Tai Lin, then Viceroy of Chekiang. The beauty of this woman must 69be of some subtle, tireless kind if we are to believe in rumour and the influence she has over Tai Lin seems to prove it. He is less than a child in her hands. He does not seem to have any desire that is not hers nor any pleasure or thought in life that does not, in some manner, revolve about her.

“Strange, strange, that a woman with no other power than fleeting beauty or the skim of learning should rule so absolutely a man accustomed to be despot over tens of millions. It is said that within a month after she entered the palace at Hangchau her influence was felt in all directions. Tai Ling was a Confucian when he married this tea-farmer’s daughter, a ridiculer of all religions, yet she caused him to rebuild the Buddhist Temples of Yoh Miao and Ting Tzy; found hospitals and schools; send caravans loaded with food to the starving in Kwangsi and Shensi. She does whatever she pleases with him. This man to whom the Emperor has given the title of Great, is a nonentity; he amounts to nothing; the wife is everything. What could be more fortunate?”

Again the bishop relapsed into silence, while the eyes of the Breton looked meditatively along the book shelves behind him.

“Such are the ways of God, and nothing is more beautiful than His compassion in so deeply instilling in the heart of woman—even against her own acts—religion’s spirit, causing her to yield to the 70agency of His ministers and become an instrument in their hands for the salvation of mankind! Thus this very creature that caused man’s fall and the desolation of God’s garden, becomes an aid in his redemption. That villainous curiosity that caused her to spy around among the leaves of the Forbidden Tree still forces her into the thick foliage of her husband’s thoughts; while that insatiable appetite that made her devour the apple that led to earth, still insatiable, causes her to hunger for that fruit that shall again unlock the Gates of Heaven. And just as she tempted man forth from Paradise by the deliciousness of desire, so shall she lead him back.

“If she alone can persuade him to build temples, found hospitals and give aid to the starving, how beneficent will prove her labours under proper tutelage! If she can cause Buddhist monasteries to be built she can erect Roman cathedrals; if she can scatter money broadcast among these hungry heathen, she can fill the coffers of our Mission. But beyond all of this there is something else.”

The bishop suddenly ceased speaking and his black, cavitous eyes closed as he tilted back his head.

“You know,” he resumed thoughtfully, “how our predecessors have laboured without success to gain a foothold within the walls of the city and 71how we have followed in their footsteps. Now, at last, the Eye of God looks down upon us: this opportunity allowed by Him must not be neglected. You must spare no effort nor fail to use any means to save her soul; to accomplish this end whatever means are employed, God will sanction. Exaltibimus te, Domine.”

For a long time the bishop gazed steadily at the Breton, and the deep silence was only broken by the cracking of his knuckles as he pulled one finger after another.

Presently he lay back in his high ebony chair, and a dim ray of light shafted in from the high-barred casement rested upon his pallid face: his thin, tight lips parted in a smile, while his hands, whitish and long, clasped to his breast an ivory cross imaged with the Christ.

The Breton waited, with eyes lowered dreamily before him.

72

CHAPTER TWO THE SCHOLAR

A few days after the Breton had received his instructions from the bishop he was summoned to the palace of Tai Lin, thence peremptorily to an apartment belonging to his Excellency’s wife, the tea-farmer’s daughter. This room, with its alternate slabs of rose and white marble, its walls hung with curtains of crimson silk embroidered down the centre in characters of gold; its beams and pillars lacquered a dark red and overcast by a tracery of golden filigree, was filled with an amber light that a sun ray shooting through a shell-latticed window diffused among its shadows.

The Breton had stood for some time beside one of the pillars, waiting without restlessness or impatience the coming of his scholar, when unconsciously he raised his head and looked expectantly toward the carved screen-work—a mass of gold and sang-de-bœuf lacquer—that reached to both sides of the room and from the ceiling to the marble floor.

Suddenly a chime of music, which was laughter, filled the room, bringing a flush to his face. The 73first chime no sooner died away than came another and another; never in his life before had there fallen about him such sounds—like music laughing, or laughter from a bird’s throat. Had that been heard in his native land, it would have been honoured with a shrine. The melancholy peasants rising from their knees before its sanctuary would have said, “Is it not true that Bretagne is under the Eye of God? Over yonder the Devil is buried beneath Mont St. Michel and now the Virgin is heard to laugh.”

So the eyes of the Breton, propped open wide with wonder, stared at the screen. But not another sound was heard until the wife said softly:

“Priest, come—sit here.”

For an instant he hesitated, then went over to the screen and sat down in a chair of teak and mother-of-pearl, which had been placed beside it. He heard a trembling silken rustle, then the room was again filled with the music of the wife’s laughter.

“Why, priest,” she exclaimed in the midst of her merriment, “your eyes are really blue! Who would ever have thought such a thing! Blue! Isn’t that strange!” she added wonderingly.

The Breton bowed his head, but made no answer.

“Look up!” she commanded.

He raised his eyes to the crevices near his head.

74“Priest,” said the wife presently, her voice still gentle with wonder, “if your eyes were not so soft, I would say they were sapphires; were they not so strangely bright, I would say they were as the sky when the moon loiters behind the mountains. So these are the eyes of devils——”

The Breton took no notice of her comments.

“And you are the priest,” she drawled presently.

“Yes,” he answered softly, “a priest of God.”

“And what have you come to teach me, priest?” she inquired, mockery and laughter trembling in her demure tones.

“As the bishop has ordered.”

“Indeed!” she commented disdainfully. “And what did he order?”

“To save your soul,” replied the Breton reverently, “for the glory——”

The laughter of the wife interrupted him.

“And he sent you to do it?”

“Yes,” he apologised, “the bishop has sent me.”

“How thoughtful of him! No doubt you will succeed!”

“Yes, God will be here,” he answered simply.

“Why did not the bishop send someone else?”

“I do not know.”

“You did not ask to come?”

75“No.”

“Indeed! If he asked you to go elsewhere to-morrow, would you go?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, very well. I may not want you any more. I am not at all firm in my desire, and you are so young. My last teacher, who had had the learning of seventy winters, said the ignorance of youth was really pitiable, especially in men. No; I don’t think you will do,” she commented with candour, “not at all.”

The Breton gazed dreamily through the half-opened shell-latticed window, and only the restless hopping and chirp of the thrushes in the golden bamboo cages broke the silence, or sometimes a dulled sound, which was the noise of the surrounding city in its labour.

“Priest,” her voice came from just above him, and as he turned his head, a ring set with a large pear-shaped pearl dropped from the crevices into his lap. He looked up and tried to speak. His lips moved, but that was all, for just overhead a little pink finger tip clung to the edge of the crevices.

“Oh, you need not thank me,” she exclaimed coldly, “that ring is not for you. It is for your bishop, who wishes to save my soul.”

“Yes, he wishes it,” the Breton answered thoughtfully, as he fingered the ring in his lap.

“And you?”

76“I shall pray for you.”

“Indeed!”

“Yes, I will teach you,” he added gently, oblivious of her mockery.

“What?”

“To love God and——”

“How monotonous you are, priest,” she interrupted impatiently.

“No,” he answered, looking gravely up to the crevices, “to love God is not monotonous; to pray to Him is happiness.”

“I suppose you pray all the time?” she asked with mock compassion.

“Yes; ad Jesum crucifixion.”

“I never heard of Him,” she commented lightly.

“Our Lord, who was crucified.”

“Indeed! And what had He been doing?”

“He died to save men.”

“How useless!” she sighed.

“From the crucifix came the cross; from torture, salvation.”

“Dreadful! And you pray to Him?”

“Yes; to Jesus crucified,” he answered softly.

“Let me hear you,” she commanded unconcernedly as though thinking of other things.

The Breton, bowing his head, began in a low monotonous tone. “Eu, amantissime Jesu, qui sponsae sanguinum mihi esse voluisti ad pedes tuos 77prosternor, ut meum in te amorem debitamque gratitudinem contester. Sed quid rependam tibi mi Jesu——”

After the first few words of the Breton’s prayer the wife began to laugh, at first softly to herself, but as the Breton continued, her merriment increased until the music peals of her laughter stopped him completely.

“What a noise you are making!” she exclaimed. “I never heard such sounds!” And she fell again to laughing. “You must not mind my laughter,” she said, breathless, “I cannot help it. You never laugh?” she inquired when her merriment had subsided.

“No.”

“I did not think so. I laugh all the time. But then you are a priest,” she added consolingly. “Are you going to finish your prayer?”

The Breton looked hesitantly at the screen, then resumed his prayer. “Mi Jesu, qui usque in finem dilexisti me? Manibus ac pedibus imo et cordi tuo inscripsisti me, magno sane et conspicuo charactere. Quis mihi hoc tribuat ut sicut tu me, ita et ego te cordi meo inscriptum circumferam. O Jesu——”

“No,” interrupted the wife meditatively, “I would not say that your hands were disagreeable to look at. My honourable husband told me that the hands of foreigners were speckled and covered 78with red hairs like the wood spider—just think of it! But I should say that your hands are—you can put on that ring, if you wish.”

The Breton did not touch the pearl in his lap.

“I said you could put on that ring,” she enjoined imperiously. “No, on the other hand; yes—— Now, go on with your prayer.”

And once more the Breton began his prayer to the crucified Christ.

“O Jesus quam profuso mi charitatis effectu complexus es qui non tantum manus et pedes, verum et opulentissimum pectus mihi operiri voluisti, ut inexhausto bonorum coelestium affluentia desiderium meum expleas——”

“And priest,” his Excellency’s wife again interrupted with the same meditative interest, “I would not say that it is annoying, either, to look at your face. Do you know,” she added naïvely, “that I was almost afraid to see you? I did not know what you would look like. My honourable husband has been telling me of the English, who have a wad of red hair on each cheek; isn’t that frightful?” And she laughed softly to herself, merrily as a child.

“You never even smile, do you?”

He made no answer.

“I do not think so; your face is too sad. And I suppose,” she sighed deprecatingly, “that it comes from all this dull praying.”

The Breton was looking sorrowfully across the 79room to the sunlit shells, opalescent in the latticed windows.

“Are you going to finish your prayer?” she asked with mock wonder.

He turned his head and looked steadily up to the crevices.

“You do not wish it,” he said sadly.

“I do!” she exclaimed, petulantly slapping the screen.

“Salve, O benedictum vulnus lateris tui mi Jesu! Salve, O fons amoris, O thesaure inaestimabilis, O requies animae meae ausimne benignissime Jesu.”

As the Breton uttered these lines, he turned his eyes once more toward the crevices whence she spoke.

“Ad sacram hanc aram ad hoc sanctum sanctorum, accidere ardens que amore cor turum.”

“Do you know,” she interrupted, a subdued tremor in her voice, “I don’t believe that devils have such eyes. They are like the ocean. I was on the sea once when I came here from Hangchau and I watched the waters. I noticed the sea, though always blue, the blue changed. Sometimes shadows swift or faltering crept into it, and oh, how sad it was! Suddenly these dark waters would become light. I never saw such brightness. The sea smiled and—don’t, please don’t look at me.”

80

CHAPTER THREE HOMO! MUTATO!

While the weeks and then months that followed the Breton’s advent into the palace of Tai Lin were as widely different to the past years of his life as is sunlight to sorrow, yet in themselves these weeks varied but little.

Unseen and impregnable behind her great screen the tea-farmer’s daughter usurped all the liberties of her childhood. She mocked his learning, derided his God, then whispered—which was another way of caressing; and when the Breton looked up, injured yet forgiving, to the crevices above his head, she filled the room with the music peals of her laughter, sometimes coldly derisive, again like a rapturous song dropped from a heaven unconjectured by the Breton priest.

In the beginning only two men in the Mission noticed that a lingering uncertainty had come into his actions; a greater dreaminess into his preoccupation and a brightness into his melancholy eyes. As weeks went on he became more hurried and restless, so that even a vagueness came at times into his prayers. This was apparent to many, but 81they attributed it to Breton eccentricity, and they would have been confirmed in this belief had they watched him leave the Mission in haste, then after passing through the Great Southern Gate, go forward reluctantly. When he reached the park entrance he often passed it, wandered about, or sought refuge in the Tower of the Water Clock, where dripped, dripped, dripped those relentless drops meditatively from their age-worn jars of granite.

In the late afternoons when the lessons were over and the wife had dismissed him in silence, or scornfully or with laughter, he left the park only to move unconcernedly through the streets, apparently seeing nothing; not even hearing the multitudinous cries and noises that resounded about him. He was drifted along like flotsam in their currents and carried around through their endless windings until, as flotsam, he was tossed up on the threshold of the Mission gates.

At first these street currents brought him back to the Mission more or less quickly. But as time hastened on they began to take him further and wider in their drift or leave him stranded momentarily or longer in some temple grounds, or on the river’s bank, until at last sundown did not find him at the Mission and after a while dusk crept in before him.

One night he sat on the edge of the cloister outside 82of his door. His eyes were half closed, a faint upward curl fluttered in the corners of his mouth, a fulness pouted his lower lip. He had been sitting thus for a long time when the Unknown priest came and stood looking down at him steadfastly, weighted with intuition—a gaze to be avoided.

Presently he began to talk aloud to himself.

“It has come.”

“Spontaneous?”

“Yes.”

“Fungoid?”

“No; it takes a night to produce a mushroom and only a minute to shrivel it. An instant produces this or a mountain. Ages can not alter it. I know of no name unless it be called volcanic; an upheaval, a something from the depths; made up of scoria that destroys but is itself indestructible.”

“What are you doing?” he growled.

The Breton looked up.

“Are you asleep?”

“No.”

“Are you praying?”

“No.”

“What are you doing?”

“Thinking,” the Breton answered softly.

“A bad trick,” he grumbled as he went on, leaving the Breton alone in the night.

It was in this manner that these two priests, who had for so long a time been inseparable, drew unconsciously 83away from each other. One dreamed and the other remembered: two extremes, which look alike and which effectually hid from the other priests the parting of their ways. For instead of a single silence—which had been mutual—came one both double and divergent. Two such silences cannot drift together. Nothing is more selfish than self communion.

But as the Breton drew off more and more to himself he did so so unconsciously that his affection for the Unknown was in no way diminished but was simply put away in one of those inner chambers of the heart until—as was destined—it was brought forth again unaltered or changed.

The Unknown priest now went on his journeys alone, and soon drifted back to that solitary, stern seclusiveness in which he had lived before the Breton came. Again he left the Mission for weeks at a time, and the Breton no more noticed his comings and goings than did the others that dwelt in the Mission. Both priests were busy; one dreamed; the other succoured; two things hard to wear out or become threadbare.

The lessons of the wife began about an hour after midday and continued until she left the Breton alone, waiting by the screen. This she did peremptorily, moodily, in laughter, in silence, in mockery. She cajoled him when it was her humour, reprimanded and laughed at him. She questioned, 84then derided his answers. She wondered and scorned—like a child pouting with hauteur. Yet in the midst of all this the Breton could not or did not care to distinguish one mood from another, for as music is music, regardless of what it expresses, so were the mood tones that came from behind the screen, and in time no amount of scorn or laughter or derision could alter this music.

“What a people you are, priest,” she chided, “to practise benevolence for Heaven’s payment! Don’t you know that men are fools that try to make themselves the creditors of Heaven?”

She lowered her voice to a pleading whisper: “How can you do such a thing?”

The Breton looked up; contrition flashed across his face and instantly the rooms were filled with triumphant laughter.

But while her mockery, her commands, and derision affected him in no way, there were words, however, which were spoken in such inexplainable, whispering tones that they remained with him always. And after he came to enter the park before the hour of midday the memory of these words were so vividly recurrent in the song and solitude of the park that every sunbeam sent them scintillating through his revery. The memory of one word—and he was hid in the cloud of its thought.

85As when a rapid rushes down over a cliff and a white cloud rises from the gorge without any will or substance of its own, so did the sudden tumbled memory of her half-whispered words cause to rise and permeate his whole consciousness, a mist-cloud through which passed an iridescence more beautiful, more brilliant than the rainbow in the gorge.

And when the pealing rose from the meadow—a song shot toward heaven—the Breton stopped, held his breath, so near was its song like her laughter or her chiding. Thus each day he drifted rather than wandered about the park as he waited for that hour when once more he should be seated beside the screen. This sombre Breton, moving half-restlessly, half-contentedly among the groves of flowery tamarix and wutung, among orchards of bloomed almonds and lichee; along hillsides terraced in orange and pomegranate; beside iris-circled ponds and down outstretching streams, moved in a sort of a radiance, not incomparable to a bubble adrift. For as a bubble reflects whatever surrounds it, whether upon the banks, upon the stream, or clouds immeasurable overhead, illuminating with inward mysterious brightness their lights, shades, colours, and perspectives, so his nature as of other men took on the forms and colouring of his surroundings and like a bubble 86tinctured them with a radiance that came from within himself.

Heretofore the Breton’s impressionable, melancholy nature had, as a bubble in the gloom of a cañon, whirled round and round in sombre eddies. There had been no sunlight since the dim glimmer of his childhood—and all that had been reflected in him whirling along through the cloistered dusk had been a shadow—devoid of change as well as of brightness. But now, as a bubble in the sunlight iridescent with a myriad hues, he drifted along, his happiness modified and yet illumined by the melancholy of a race that has known so little of sunshine and so much of Breton gloom. In this park there was not a flower but whose brightness was reflected within him; every nodding blade of grass, the water-fowls’ gay plumage, the heavens, the mist clouds adrift like himself in the tranquil air; the double brightness of sun in sky and stream. And from within himself, from the very depths of his sombrous nature, shone forth that something, which man has yet to name, and subtly tinctured each image with rainbow tints.

In this manner—not uncommon in life—had the Breton been precipitated from the cloisters; not into the world’s wild meadow, but into Tai Lin’s park. This had all happened so suddenly, so completely, that it was as impossible for him to remember the time when this sunlight had 87not surrounded him as it was to conjecture that inevitable hour when setting, he would again be in darkness; not the shadow of the past, but the darkness of one that had known the sun.

The languorous flash of the Breton’s eye spoke frankly, even insistently of this change—for the tongue cannot wag one’s thoughts more carelessly than are the eyes loquacious of the heart’s secrets—and one day the Unknown, as if exasperated by his indifference, took roughly hold of his shoulder and demanded:

“What is the matter with you?”

The Breton looked at him wonderingly.

“Do you know that for two months you have not said a word? I doubt if you have prayed. You no longer go with me. What are you dreaming about?”

“I do not know,” answered the Breton absently.

As weeks vanished, or rather seemingly blended into an hour, which had just past, the wife of Tai Lin laughed somewhat less at him, an hesitancy sometimes came into her mockery; impatience fluttered at times in her manner, and silences began to creep in more frequently. In these moments of stillness, when only the sensuous crinkle of silk was heard, the caressing tremor of the fan or the soft pulse tap, tap, of her foot, the Breton leaned forward on the table.

88

CHAPTER FOUR A DRAGON AND THE GROTTO

Along the waterfront of the southern suburbs, which were penned in between the walls of the city and the river, ran a wide wooden bund that extended for some distance over the water.

The street of the Sombre Heavens leaving the city through the Great Southern Gate debouches almost into the middle of it, at which place it has the appearance of a narrow field, so wide is it, and so dense and multitudinous are the suburbs that crouch beneath the old south walls of Yingching, with its towers and frown of a thousand years.

Just across the river, with its myriads of quarrelling boats, is the Monastery of Wa-lam-tze, where five hundred monks with their fowls doze and blink in alcoved groves or in halls that are of marble. Opposite the western end whirls the black pool of Pakngotam, fathomless at this place, but connected subterraneously with distant points. A pig thrown into it will be found at Ko-Chao, two hundred and fifty miles away, where it boils up in the hollow of three hills. It is also connected with Chukow, two hundred and eighty miles distant, 89and comes up for the last time at Shukwan among the marshes on the borders of the southern sea. Beyond Pakngotam is the monastery Tai Tung, where the earth holds a mysterious abyss that is a source of terror and confidence, for the noxious fumes and vapours that rise out of it—as from the cleft in the Temple of Phytia—presage tempests on land and sea. When a storm approaches, even at a great distance, a thick lurid mist rolls out of this Dragon’s mouth and covers the groves of the Monastery. It is believed that these vapours are forced out by the violent beatings of the earth’s pulse, that are no other than the subterranean streams of Pakngotam. These pulsations are caused in distant places by the storms’ weight forcing the vapours through the veins of the earth to the Dragon’s mouth, where they are spit forth as warning of the tempest’s approach. Thus this gigantic barometer portrays not only the commiseration and sublimity of the gods, but their watchfulness over the old city of Yingching.

During low water the bund at the foot of the Street of the Sombre Heavens is used for the execution of criminals, although there is a Court of Execution not far from the southeast corner of the city walls. But this portion of the bund, so wide and prominent, is almost always used, especially when it is desired to make a greater display 90of official grandeur and the Law’s vermilion majesty.

The Breton in leaving the park of Tai Lin usually passed out of the city by the Great Southern Gate, and following the Street of the Sombre Heavens came nearly every evening to this part of the bund, where he loitered instead of continuing on his way to the Mission. Eventually the bund loafers became accustomed to his tall form standing at evening motionless on the bund’s very edge, his garments blown by the river’s wind, and his eyes dreamily lowered on the floods rolling at his feet.

Men passing him commented:

“Scholar.”

“He is wasting his time.”

“He thinks,” said one.

“A fool,” replied another.

“He is a wise man,” growled a misanthrope.

“Why?”

“He is thinking of jumping into bed.”

“He dreams,” said a boat-woman.

“About what?” demanded a slipper boat-girl with bated breath.

“Who knows, Alinn, when the dreamer does not!”

One late afternoon as the sun hung red in the purple mist, which rises from the rice fields beyond Honam, the Breton was dreaming as usual on the 91bund’s edge when a sampan gondoliered by a boat-girl glided to a landing stair not far from him. Under the bamboo awning sat a foreigner talking eagerly to her as she moved easily and gracefully her ponderous oar. The boat passed under the bund. Presently the foreigner mounted the landing stage, but at the top of the stairs stopped perplexed and uncertain, then pattered hastily over to the edge.

“Hi! Cumsha! Hi!” he cried, frantically shaking his umbrella at the slipper boat as it started on its way across the river.

The boat trembled momentarily in the dark mighty currents, then turned slowly around and approached that part of the bund where the stranger stood beside the Breton.

“I know you,” he commented, as he glanced quickly up at the Breton, “but look at that,” and he pointed to the girl as she moved with so much grace her slender craft. “A water nymph, sir, in blue pantlets! I am the Reverend Tobias Hook, and I tell you, my young friend, there is not another like her from Wampoa to Wu-Chau; she is a vision of triple dimples, and when you see them you will ooze with envy. What an ideal for a convert! How admirable she will be around the house! I have cumsha for you, my little lost lamb,” he chirped as the girl steadied her boat in the currents below them.

92“Throw it down,” she answered in a matter-of-fact way.

“My poor lamb, will you not answer?”

“What?”

“What I spiritually beseeched of you in the boat.”

“I forget.”

“Will you not receive what I offered?”

“I am afraid.”

“Think of what you will have.”

“I would rather have that cumsha.”

“Think! think what you will have,” he repeated ecstatically.

“This is my sampan; I live on the river because I was born here and will die here.”

“Come with me,” he held out his hands.

“Throw that cumsha or I will go.”

As she started to swing her great oar the stranger threw a few coppers into the boat and, leaning on his umbrella, watched her cross the river, his eyes dancing as they followed her lithe body swaying in rhythmic motion to the movement of the great oar. Finally, when she was lost to sight among the other craft, he turned to the Breton, shaking his head solemnly.

“Ah me,” he sighed. “I was just in time; another day—who knows—it might have been too late.... It is going to be contentious. I see it, I hear it, I know it; but let it come, I will 93out-Solomon Solomon with the keen edge of my diplomacy, and mark you, the infant of my desire will not be severed.”

For some moments the Reverend Tobias Hook balanced himself, now on his heels, now on his toes.

“My young friend,” he resumed with impressive solemnity, “reverence diplomacy primarily and late, for it is the right healing hand of our Maker. It alone diagnoses the depths and shallows of diseased contentions. With subtle pills it ruddies up a pale hope, or judiciously phialing out poppied words it bats the eye of envy. And when the distemper of ambition rolls up the pulse of those around you lay on the gentle fingers of diplomacy, pucker up the wise silent lips, and blinking, fashion out a cure. If, in due time, you should fall, as men have fallen from Adam down, into the fever and ague of marriage, you will need for your own health’s sake this physician’s calming dosage.

“Marriage, marriage,” he soliloquised bitterly, jamming the point of his umbrella viciously into the planks, “that, my young friend, is the act that strips us and leaves us naked of hope. Why did I marry? A question. Was I lonely? No. I was wallowing in youth. Was it greed? No, for it has further impoverished my poverty. Was it ambition? No, I tempt not what caused the fall of angels. Was it love? There is no need to ask that 94question. Nor is there any use to take the whole inventory of my mind. I did it—that is all.

“This thing and theory of the one woman, my young friend, is like a nettle found in the White Cloud Hills; it tickles sensationally at first, then leaves a rash burning the rest of life. In this nettle simile lies the substance of my whole contention. At the moment of discovery our vision is distorted so that we discern in this very nettle a rose, a lily, or what not so that it is pleasing to our fancy. We pluck, we pop the other eye, and before we know we begin to scratch.

“Moreover, in this rose and lily metaphor lies argument for another drift to the point we are getting at. We grant the one woman to be the perfect rose or lily; man ambling through the garden of womankind spies this choicest flower and plucks it—which is marriage—then for his temerity wanders the rest of life through this endless blooming garden with an herb whose hues are soon no hues, whose perfume has become an odour, and its sweets so galled that the very bees forsake it and hornets extract substance from it for their stings. Furthermore, my young friend, in your feeble youth, unstrengthened by the vicissitudes of matrimony, nor toiled, nor calloused by it, I warn you that the sweetness of one rose is soon blown. No cook can concoct a meal out of one dish, nor prayers nor Aladdins make one meal fill out the 95course of life. It is variety and abundance that peppers and adorns the monotony of this rutted earth. Ah, if our discretion would only come in youth and our follies in old age! What happiness! We would die from a surfeit of it.”

The Reverend Hook stepped closer to the Breton and laid his hand consolingly on his shoulder.

“My young friend, I have watched you for many weeks standing at dusk on this bund and holding dialogue with empty space, and I conceived the thoughts I have given birth to—that there is a woman in it, for nothing but female imaginings can make a man a companion to shadows and vapours, squeezing music out of noise and plastering the air thick with visions.

“Now mark me, I do not complain of lathering in this fragrant soap that so cleanses our minds of sorrow, but let lather be lather; temporarily it laves us in joy but in the One love—no! no! with it comes only moody agitations of the heart. You try to crib on nature and deceive yourself into believing that the lily cannot lose its whiteness, nor the rose its perfume. Ah, my young dreamer, if you had Mrs. Hook for one week—that is all!

“But let us be cheerful, retrospect your thoughts back to that little dimpled darling in blue pantlets! Could anything be finer? She is curried to 96my taste, sir, and when chutneyed with a little strife—what a morsel! What a dish!... If I can clasp her once, just once, mark you, she will wail for the love of me.”

The Reverend Tobias Hook became meditative at this pleasing thought. He folded his hands on the head of his umbrella and gazed abstractedly down into the sombre flowing waters that the Chinese call the Pearl River; not, however, because pearls are found in its silty bed, but pearls are euphemistic of tears. This is the River of Tears, dark in sunlight, melancholy and sullen at dusk, and at midnight a dark flood that mourns. There is an immense terribleness about it and its sorrow; robbing, feeding, contemplating, nursing, and in due time devouring the innumerable millions it has reared. The giving of man to this River of his tears and his dead has been without end, as long as they have dwelt on its banks it has been so, yet they conceal this fact from themselves by calling its dark flood the River of Pearls, by giving gods to its depths; to its banks, temples and pagodas.

Suddenly the Reverend Tobias Hook was aroused from his sweet musings by the falling of dusk.

“I must hasten!” he exclaimed abruptly; “to-morrow I will come back. I want to talk to you about the Treasure hidden in the Grotto of the Sleepless Dragon, and that, sir, is worth dreaming 97about. But I cannot stay.” He shook his head dolefully and looked furtively over his shoulder.

“Mrs. Hook is at the Willow Gate this very moment watching for me, and when she sees my rolling, sensuous gait, my pouted under lip and high-distempered cheek she will cluck, sir, she will cluck with rage.”

98

CHAPTER FIVE THE MONSOON

“Do you know what is the matter with you?” demanded the Unknown gruffly as he stopped the Breton hastening out of the Mission Gate.

The priest looked up.

“You are happy,” the Unknown grumbled.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I do not know.”

“What do you think?”

“I think it is from God.”

While the Breton did not perceive it, the wife had in a way become less wilful, though her moods were yet as the river’s wind; her words as changeful as the mocking-bird’s song; her impetuosity as uncertain as those strange storms that come down through the gorges of Kai Fong. One moment sweetly naïve as a child, the next abrupt and full of cold scorn; she still chided, still coaxed and scolded, though sometimes her words caressed. She questioned and derided as in the past, and still brought doubt into his sensitive eyes only to laugh it away.

99The fact is, however, that in the rapid rush of time, the wife laughed less, and in no such manner as she did during the first weeks of his tutorship; then it was part of her always, and he heard it even in her most impatient moments. She welcomed him with it; mocked and scorned with its music, and when he departed its petulant echoes ceased at no time in his heart.

So as months passed and the eyes of the Breton lost their melancholy shadows, there crept imperceptibly into the wife’s laughter a softened, doubtful tingle. It was as though the sadness, which went out from his eyes, was finding its way into her laugh.

“Will you never finish that book?” she complained.

“You do not like it?” He looked up hastily, a shadow in his eyes.

“No!” she answered sharply.

“I have two other books,” he suggested, not turning his eyes away from the crevices.

“No!” she cried impatiently, “not another book!”

“What shall I teach you?” he asked softly.

“I do not know,” she mused vaguely; “but it’s something! something!”

“And you do not know?” His eyes became suddenly bright.

“No.”

100“Then it is from God.”

“Please don’t pray,” she pleaded.

“You do not——”

“I know—but it is so tiresome,” she interrupted plaintively. “Priest,” she whispered.

He looked up.

“I know, I know,” her whisper was constrained. “Do you?”

He shook his head.

“Do you wish to?”

He could scarcely hear and did not at all understand, so he made no answer and the questioning in his eyes did not change.

“Rest your ear here,” she whispered, putting her little finger through the crevice.

He hesitated for a moment, then in the manner of a boy pressed his ear tightly to the crevice. For a moment there was perfect stillness, then a hurried, alarmed fluttering of silk.

Presently far from the screen he heard the wife strike her hands softly, nervously together.

“You must go,” she cried, her voice trembling. “Please don’t stand there.”

But before the Breton left that afternoon the dusk of a monsoon storm had darkened the rooms and as he passed through the park masses of clouds as black as the night-sea rushed along across the sky like enormous billows frothed with a grey foam. The narrow streets were filled with hurrying 101men; shopkeepers were putting up shutters, and barring doors; hucksters ceased their cries; itinerant barbers, money-changers, and fortune-tellers were hastily, silently departing. Sentries left their posts; mothers screamed after wayward brats; beggars sought the shelter of temples, and the chant of the blind was still.

The Breton, instead of returning to the Mission, went as swiftly as possible through the tortuous streets to the East Gate, thence made his way toward their outer edge, where a small Catholic community lived, almost buried under the tumbled side of this vast, old brick-heap—a plastered chip from the Rock of St. Peter.

The streets were now deserted. Here and there people stood in their doorways and watched him pass. Fowls hovered by threshold and children, still devilish, scurried hither and thither—storm-tempters and scorners.

When the Breton reached the edge of the suburbs he turned southward and hastened along the embankment of an old canal; to the right was the city; on his left the fields, and beyond darkness.

There came the rumble-boom of distant thunder.

It was twilight.

No one could be seen; no sounds were heard. Upon the earth rested that vasty stillness which belongs to dusk when dusk is the forepart of a 102storm. Night birds, day beasts, men, insects, all were sheltered. It was night.

The Breton hastened on.

As he drew near to the Catholic community, a flame of lightning burst out of the blackness; a terrific thunder-crash followed; then again impenetrable gloom was around him. But that flash, as though it were the torch of God thrust out of heaven, illumed for one brief second a dismal scene.

Before him on the bank of the old canal stood a man with head bowed upon his bosom, his hands hanging loosely to his side while the wild night-wind whipped thin garments about his body. At the man’s feet cowered a woman holding a baby to her breast, and, crouching over it, sought to ward off the storm. Two small children clung to his legs. This group did not speak, nor move, nor sob.

The Breton approached them.

“Why are you out in this storm?” he asked gently.

“It welcomes us,” the man growled carelessly.

“Where is your house?”

“It is here.”

“Your beds?”

“We do not sleep.”

“Your food?”

“We do not eat.”

103“Who sent you here?”

“Fate.”

“It cannot protect you.”

“Who can protect whom Fate deserts?”

“But the storm——”

“Bah! the storm will come and go with its good and ruin. Fate remains unaltered.”

“Let me shelter you.”

“Where?”

“I am a Christian and near are my friends.”

“You are my enemy,” the man replied with the same nonchalance.

“Your enemy?”

“Leave us.”

“I cannot.”

“You wish the eyes of my children?”

“I wish to help you.”

“You do?”

“Yes.”

“Kill us.”

“Will you not go?”

“Owls consort with owls; finches with finches.”

“My wish is to help you.”

“To-day you took away my house and gave it to Chun Ping, who is a Christian, a river-pirate, a buyer and seller of stolen goods. You know this, the mandarins know this, but you work together, you do these villainies together—weak governments and powerful gods sleep in the same bed.

104“How many years have I sweated that I might have that little house? What man can say I am not honest? That I did not give alms to the blind and cash to the gods in the Temple? Did I not intend to save money that my sons could study and take the Examinations? Now—it is all gone.

“Chun Ping wanted my house; he went with your priests and said it was his. The priests said it was his house. I went to the Yamen and showed them my red deed and white deed. They said, ‘It is your house; give us money and we will protect you.’ I gave them all my money. They gave my house to Chun Ping. They said, ‘We dare not offend these Christians; they have gunboats in the river. Go away.’ To-night your priests came and put me out.”

The Breton made no answer.

When the lightning flashed again it showed two men standing silently over the woman and children.

The black breakers of the storm-sea overhead began to fall amid the crash and boom of thunder.

The children were terror-stricken; the mother sobbed and cooed. The priest stared out into the night toward the Catholic community.

The storm grew worse and the still group bowed under it. The teeth of the little children chattered, but they did not cry nor speak. The 105mother had ceased her sobs and no longer cooed to her baby.

“We must go!” said the Breton, and he took up one of the children; the man picked up the other and a cage in which fluttered a bedraggled bird. They started off and the mother with her baby hugged tightly to her breast, followed.

The Breton, leading the way, went up to the door of a house and knocked.

No answer.

He went to another.

“Who knocks?” demanded a man from within.

“We are caught in the storm.”

“Who are you?”

The priest turned to the man behind him.

“Tsang.”

“It is the family of Tsang.”

There came no response. He knocked on the door again, but it was useless. So they went on, in the reek of rain and wind-blasts, from house to house.

Suddenly the man Tsang stopped. He beat violently on a door.

“What do you want?” growled a rough voice from within.

“My house!”

“Who are you?”

“I am Tsang.”

“You are a rat.”

106“I am an honest man. Give me my house.”

“Give me your wife. I am cold.”

“Christian!”

“The eyes of your brats are worth two taels. Their spleen is useless.”

“I will raise a mob and destroy you.”

“The Christian gunboats in the river will tear you into rags.”

“You have destroyed your ancestral tablets.”

“I cooked to-night’s rice with yours.”

“You may deceive men, but you cannot close the eye of Fate. You will yet be cut into a thousand pieces.”

“Bah! The Law is a rusty knife, my Church is a new cannon. They dare not question me.”

“By the Temple of the One God, you have a shop to receive stolen goods.”

“I am a Christian.”

“You stole the jade-tablets from the Ancestral Hall of Ho.”

“I am a Christian.”

“You were aboard the pirate junk that killed thirty people near the Lob pagoda on the fifth day of the last moon.”

“I am a Christian.”

“You stole the daughter of the Widow Chin and sold her to a whoremonger.”

“You had none old enough.”

107“You cannot escape. Fate will overtake you though the Yamen runners fail.”

The priest took the man’s arm and dragged him away.

They trudged on, whither? This thought did not occur to any of them. They now forgot the wind and the waters that flowed underfoot. To the man Tsang this raging of the elements seemed a natural portion of his ruin. He became part of this environment of wrath and was contented in it. The storm was companionable. This tempest and the man held converse, which was friendly.

The Breton led the way while the mother trudged on behind. This woman hardly knew that she was turned out of doors and was wandering about in the night through a wreck of waters. What did she care for these rending winds; this night vomit of heaven; these red forks of fire or blare of thunder?

Her babe suckled.

So they went on in single file until suddenly the little boy on the Breton’s shoulder began to cry, which was next best to the stopping of the storm.

The Breton turned to the man.

“Where can we find shelter for your wife and babies?”

“In to-morrow.”

“But to-night?”

“Let us go to the river.”

108“Why?”

“We can drown.”

“When men fear death less than poverty, should they not be held in contempt?”

“It is true.”

“We must find protection.”

“Let us go to your Mission.”

“You hate Christians.”

“I despise them!”

“We cannot.”

“Then let us go to the Temple of the Five Gods. It stands to reason that five gods have more compassion than one.”

The man now led the way. The woman still followed, falling behind like a tired dog, and like a dog she made no complaint. Often they stopped and, halting, waited for her; when she caught up, this mother would give a long whistling sigh and sink down in the mud.

“Come,” said the man, “we must hasten or the Temple will be overcrowded.”

“With whom?” asked the Breton.

“With rags and lice.”

“What?”

“Yes, the temples in the Middle Kingdom are now only the refuge of beggars—as in your country they are filled with plotters.”

“Are there no robbers?” asked the mother feebly.

109“No,” he replied consolingly. “Fate is impartial—our temples have only vermin; the beasts were reserved for this priest’s Church.”

Presently they reached the outer gates of the Temple of the Five Gods; it was ajar. They crossed the court, where the water reached high above their ankles, and ascending the granite steps hesitated on the threshold. They lingered, uncertain before the huge doorway, which looked like the entrance to some abyss, then the Breton stepped in, closely followed by the man and the woman.

The lightning’s glare lit up dimly, momentarily, the temple’s vast hall, where dark heaps of shadowy forms were huddled along the sides. At times these heaps shuddered, and from out of the depths of them came groans.

At the farther end of the temple’s hall, on a huge ebon altar, were the images of the Five Gods. And when the red flare of lightning inflamed their terrible eyes, these gods looked down upon the sprawling wreck of man and grinned.

Toward these monsters the Breton made his way, followed by the man Tsang and the mother. Close by the altar they found a vacant spot where they crouched, while the wind that came through the great entrance blew full upon them. The child in the Breton’s arms shook with cold, and 110taking off his robe, he wrapped it about the little thing.

The mother cooed and talked to her baby.

Presently they all nodded and slept—except the Breton and the Five Gods above him. The child’s chubby face rested softly, securely against his neck, and that indefinable murmur of its sleep gave him a strange thrill of comfort. In the slumber breathing of a child, as in the breath of solitudes, are awakened memories and thoughts, which altogether might be called the symphony of revery. And the Breton heard in the child’s sleeping sighs a voice, which vanquished the blackness of the night.

Without this refuge of the forsaken pounded the deafening chum of wind and rain and thunder. But the priest, crouching in front of the altar, listening to the echo of another voice, heard nothing. The gods looked down upon him and—smiled.

111

CHAPTER SIX A GIFT

The monsoon, with its wrack and pain, passed away much in the manner as the man Tsang said it would; for the monsoon repletes more than it destroys, and the prayer that goes up for it is a great prayer.

“I was alone to suffer,” commented the outcast complacently, “but in the vomit of the monsoon Fate relented and the priest came.”

Just outside of the Bamboo Gate in the easterly part of the southern suburbs, close to where the alley of the Old Dog opens kennel-like into the Street of Ivory-workers, the Breton provided a home for Tsang’s family, and thither the street currents drifted him more often than he knew. The little Tsangs toddled out to meet him, climbed upon him, smeared his robe with rice and kale, kissed him, prodded his blue eyes, and cried when he went away. The man Tsang revered him and cautioned his neighbours that Fate had peculiarly redeemed this one priest out of the whole utterly damned tribe of them all.

“Why is it?” demanded one of his neighbours.

112“How do I know!” answered Tsang indignantly. “Such things belong to Fate, and, neighbours, don’t woman Fate, don’t spy, don’t peep!”

While the Breton went every few days to Tsang’s hole in the Kennel of the Old Dog, yet he came always by evening to the bund where a certain murmur rising from the river softened the grind and crunch of the city’s toil. Some days, as on this day, which was the fourth of the fifth moon—other noises in addition to its murmurs came from it and the rasped, bruised milling of man was completely drowned in them. On this day the river revelled in the gaiety of those whom it fed, and all the careless joy, the wine, the froth, and ribbons of Yingching laughed there. Wherever the eye could reach were seen the tatters and tinsels of ten myriads silks swishing and fluttering in the river wind. The buildings along the bund pulled over their time-pocked and shrivelled forms robes of satin. Sea-going junks hovered above the river like gigantic butterflies, their great ribbed sails turned into gorgeous, trembling wings of silk. The flower-boats along the southern bank were voluptuous in silken wraps; their eaves ear-ringed with lanterns, while on their flower-clustered balconies crowded dainty pouting creatures, their music and laughter mingling with the joy of the day. Among these winged junks and flower-boats darted slender slipper craft like gay-breasted 113swallows, twittering, perking, and quivering in mid-currents.

Nothing can exceed the gaiety of this sombre river during the Festival of the Dragon boats; and when the Breton came to the bund on this day—which in Western chronology comes in June—he found it in a gay swelter of excitement. On this day were the races of the Dragon boats; and the cleared course, which extended from the west side of Pakngotam’s black pool to the Island of the Sea-Pearl, was lined with boat-loads of gesticulating spectators, howling and chattering as the Dragon craft rushed up and down stream, propelled by naked, sweating demons and urged on with cries, gongs, and flags.

But these unaccustomed pleasure sounds, emanating from a river that of itself mourned and was sombre, were lost upon the Breton as he stood over the bund’s edge dreaming, listening alone to the murmur underfoot. The rattle of hucksters, the scoldings and screechings of old boatwomen, the men’s voices nonchalantly cursing or chanting in falsetto tones the theatricals of the river, the splash of oars, burst of crackers, cries of children in their sports, the shrill songs of slipper boat-girls, the howl and clangour of the Dragon boats and the dull pandemonium that rose from the goals did not cause him to raise his head nor turn away from the yellow waters. It mattered 114in no way to him that the loom of life, always dully clangorous about this bund, wove upon this day a few bright strands through its warp of gloom. He did not look up nor make note of it, for he was no longer of its woof nor its warp nor the ravelled ends that fell by the loom.

Within the quiet places of the Breton’s love the world nor its noises could not penetrate. Only gentle thoughts made their way thither, invoking feelings deeper than themselves; thoughts veiled from the world and such that even he must fall into deep communing to lift apart their shadowy screen. He revelled in that fair region where there are no paths nor guideposts—the wilderness of meditation. With unuplifted eyes he paced on through groves where none had gone before him nor shall follow. Love danced ahead of him, thought ambled after. Now he stopped to listen to music; now to laughter that was more than music, now to chidings that were a little of both. Sometimes he lingered over a slumbering, sensuous rustle that drew down from heaven the inspiration of a dream.

So the Breton cared in no manner what the world might do around him, whether it toiled along—as it did ordinarily—on all fours, or rushed wildly exuberant into the morrow. Whatever it might be he had a region separate from it—a region where the running brooks of thought had no end of babbling, 115where the wind scattered its stars without number, and in its horizonless heaven the fairy tumbled clouds were imaged and tinctured with the iridescence of meditative love.

Thus the Breton lingered on the bund until dusk passed into night to scatter the noises around; then he came forth from the region of his dreams with the slight semblance of a smile on his lips and hastened to the Mission.

Often, however, he was awakened from midst of these dreams and ruthlessly snatched out of his heaven by no less a personage than his new acquaintance the Reverend Tobias Hook. Fortunately or otherwise, as it may prove to be—the Reverend Hook came often to the bund when the Breton was there. It was too evident that he did not come solely for recreation, or to breathe in that open spot the river’s wind, since he spent his time, either in extolling the charms of some new nymph he had discovered in the river or in the wilderness of Yingching and whose conversion he was about to undertake in spite of Mrs. Hook; or he expatiated without end concerning the Grotto of the Sleepless Dragon, where Yu Ngao, the last of the Ming Emperors, sought refuge with his retinue and imperial treasure—to be seen not again by mankind.

At first the Reverend Hook was chilled by the dreamy indifference of the Breton, and it was only 116after he had found that silence was a part of the priest’s nature that he unloosed his endless chain of information and argument concerning these caverns from whose mysterious depths no man has even been known to return. The gaining of this knowledge had been one of his chief pursuits, a task he had found delightful with expectation, and he believed in due time would not be without its rewards.

From every source, from legends and histories, he had collected information concerning these caves, all of which he unfolded as he coaxed and argued, tilting himself on his heels and toes in his pleadings with the Breton to go with him to these Grottoes, where the Great Earth Dragon guards so zealously the melancholy secret of the Emperor.

The Breton listened but did not go, nor did he even make reply.

“And why not, sir, why not?” the Reverend Tobias Hook would demand shrilly, cocking himself on his toes.

The Breton did not answer.

Fate was yet to drive him thither.

This day the Reverend Hook came later than usual, and had not talked with the Breton long before he pulled a roll of papers from his coat pocket and began on his favourite subject—the treasure in the Dragon’s Grotto.

“Young sir,” he continued reprovingly, “you 117must undress your mind of any thought that I burrow for personal gain. Disillusionate yourself! I scorn, sir, that puffed Huckster, that old dealer, who bundles up men’s honour and upon the open market of the world traffics in their virtue. I am an antiquarian, sir, a subterraneous hunter.

“Of course,” he added in a modified tone, “it would be but right for me to adorn my sideboard with a few platters and pitchers of gold, a few jade vases and urns for my parlour; a reserve of pearls and emeralds to cool the hot distemper of my wife,—which, my young friend, cannot be too few,—for she falls into the most parboiled ecstatics not less than once a day. Sometimes in the very middle of the night a sudden thought pierces her in a tender spot and out she bounces; before I can disengage my eyelids from heavy sleep she has me stalled on the floor, rides me with her knees, and plays horse with my beard.

“Now, sir, you see the nakedness of my plans; if I can get hold of the jewels of Yu Ngao, I will be able to ransom myself from these frolics. Ah! if I can but coax her into skirts again I will flounce them with emeralds, and every time she weeps I will match each dewy tear with ten big pearls.

“No, no, my young friend, do not berate wealth, for though in youth it is a mill that grinds out follies, when youth is done it mills the rarest comforts.

118“These papers,” and the Reverend Hook unrolled the papers he had been holding, “are maps and other information concerning the Grottos. This is the triple labour of years. I have screwed it out of legends and pulled it out of the deepest records.

“This map,” and he handed one of the sheets to the Breton, “is the route to the Grottos from Yingching. A scrutiny of this one, on the other hand, shows it to be a map of the path leading from the river to the true cavern under the falls. These other manuscripts are historical proofs; they defy refutation, and no man’s eyes but yours have or ever will discover them.

“I tell you, sir, the treasure of the whole Ming dynasty is there, hoarded in the earth’s dark cellars and misered there these hundreds of years by unchristian superstitions. Do you know that if all the Chinese in this country were hunting you in maddest frenzy you would be safe from them in the Grotto of the Sleepless Dragon? They won’t go near it. But we, unburdened by such superstitions, can filch these jewels from the Old Dragon with impunity, with gaiety.

“Ah! what a treasure! Cry havoc, my young friend, to reservation, and let your mind’s eye romp through these dim-eyed caverns, where in great heaps lie the garniture of Empires. Plates of gold enough to feed two thousand three 119hundred and eight of royal blood, cups and bowls to match; pitchers and little saucers as numerous as the golden plaques that lay on the sky at night. Shields, swords, cuirasses studded with jewels. Priceless urns of jade, slop over, sir, with brimming measures of pearls; there are rubies that by comparison would jaundice the reddest blood, while emeralds are so thickly strewn about that they lay in wrinkled folds like moss-green carpets.

“Disport yourself among these hillocks of wealth that would make Croesus’ spirit mundane with envy. Dine from golden platters, splash in basins of silver, play hockey with emeralds, shower the gloom with handfuls of pearls, and with the big round rubies shoot a game of marbles——”

The Reverend Tobias Hook stopped suddenly and peered through the gloom, now ebbing imperceptibly into the quietude of night. The Dragon boats no longer scurried over the water, and the dwellers on the river had ceased their clamour. The yellow flood was becoming darkly sullen, impatient for that hour when man’s noisy hum would be silent.

For some time the Reverend Tobias Hook contemplated seriously the darkening of these waters, then with sudden resolution shoved the papers containing the maps and secrets of the Grotto of the Sleepless Dragon into the hands of the Breton, who took them unconcernedly, not even 120raising his eyes from the waters—now an abyss that muttered.

Soon afterwards the Reverend Hook went softly away, and in uncertain mind disappeared up the Street of the Sombre Heavens.

The Breton continued gazing down into the depths that whispered until night had settled about him, then he put into his bosom the little man’s terrible gift.

121

CHAPTER SEVEN DAWN

The laugh of the wife, like her song, had departed. No longer it pealed through the rooms—nor its echo. Her laugh was gone; slowly, imperceptibly had it vanished as music stolen away and smothered by the wind. But neither she nor the Breton knew that it was no more.

The wife of Tai Lin had become silent, musing, seclusive. She no longer contradicted her husband, nor laughed at him, nor mocked nor caressed him.

“She is outgrowing her childhood,” sighed Tai Lin to himself.

This wife of his, instead of sitting on a stool at his feet as she used to do, would remain for hours by the screen when she thought that none were about her but the thrushes in their bamboo cages overhead. By noon or by night, moved by sudden impulse, she would creep through the screen’s wicket into the outer apartment and, nestling in the chair that stood beside it, bury her face in her arms and cry softly to herself with that grief that is very old.

122But she was not alone with her tears, nor with the thrushes complaining overhead—she was never alone. At all hours a maidservant hovered about her, and only when the Breton came did this servant retire behind an oval doorway that led from her mistress’ room to an open court. There she concealed herself and listened to the words between them; to their silences; to the going away of the wife’s laughter and the coming of her tears. After a time she began to shake her head, perplexedly, fatefully.

One day, as the wife sat in the outer apartment sobbing to herself, this maidservant stole up to her, and kneeling down by the table, asked gently:

“Why are you crying?”

The wife sobbed but made no reply.

“Why are you crying?” asked the maid again.

“Go away, Kim! Go away!” she cried brokenly. “You cannot understand—I do not know! Go away—please go away!”

The servant left her. But that night when she came to the bishop’s door she hesitated, picked the hem of her garment; turned away; came back, then knocked ruefully on the portal.

When the Breton came to the wife’s apartments he no longer stood on the threshold waiting for her salutation or expectant of her laughter. Crossing the room, naïvely eager, he sat down in his 123chair and, looking up to certain crevices in the screen, remained silent with a smile in his eyes.

Day by day these silences grew longer. Without laughter, without converse, almost without movement, each sat close to the screen—so close that her red pouting finger tips were hardly over his head, and sometimes through the crevices just above them flashed a light, dark and lustrous.

In this manner it came about that Silence held them more and more beneath its velvet hand, although this stillness of theirs was not mute nor somnolent. At intervals it was broken by a question, a reprimand, a whisper; a word that caressed or a burst of scorn; only laughter came not again. Their conversations were no more than flashes; an ignition, an illumination.

Sometimes the Breton would look up as if about to say something and the wife, breathless, would demand:

“What?”

He never spoke. Yet one day in the midst of their silence he lifted his eyes to the crevice, his lips moved, but only his eyes uttered.

Hastily the wife withdrew her fingers; there was a flutter of silk; constrained stillness.

“Oh, well,” she commented, turning back to the screen, “it doesn’t matter; if a man can’t get ivory from a rat’s mouth, how can a woman expect truth from a man’s?”

124He turned away toward the windows.

In a few moments her fingers were again thrust redly through the crevices.

“Are you?” she whispered.

The Breton looked up.

Again there was silence.

“Do you know what it is?” she still whispered.

Once more he raised his eyes to the crevices above the finger-tips.

“It is a rain-drop, priest, iridescent—but trembling on the eaves’ edge.”

While these silences grew longer, they at the same time were drawing to an end. No stillness can last for long in this world so full of noises, and in time a second but greater restlessness lay hold of the wife. No longer petulant, she became irritable, and often impatiently moving her chair aside, she wandered about the room. And as time passed, this unrest of the wife increased until it came about that she could not sit for long beside the screen without getting up and moving uneasily, even wearily, about the room; now by a table, then back to the screen; her hands at one moment plucking flowers from their vases, in the next tossing the folds of the silken tapestries.

One day she suddenly drew her fingers from the crevices, started to cross the room, came back, and peremptorily ordered the Breton to go away and stay away.

125“Go!” she commanded, stamping her foot.

The Breton looked up wonderingly and his eyes smiled.

Presently he heard her open the shell-latticed window, then all was still. The larks and thrushes from their swaying bamboo cages fluttered and chirped questioningly. For there are silences that make birds as well as women inquisitive. They cocked their heads, chirped, and looked down unapprovingly upon the priest.

“What! I thought you had gone!”

The Breton turned his eyes expectantly to the crevices just above his head.

“Are you not going?” she demanded coldly.

The Breton rose from his chair, uncertain, but the light in his eyes untroubled.

“Sit down!”

The stillness that followed was not broken until after the feathery shadows of the bamboo had crept across the translucent shells of the latticed windows. Then the wife, very close to him, whispered:

“Priest.”

The Breton did not move.

“Is not this screen a nuisance!” she cried irritably, and her voice would have been savage had it not been for the music of its tones.

The Breton neither answered nor turned his eyes away.

“Priest, shall I come out?”

126He still looked up into the crevices.

“Shall I?”

A questioning light came into his eyes.

“Would it make you happy?” she whispered.

The light deepened.

“Well, I don’t!” she exclaimed scornfully. “At its best it is nothing; in its truth it is false. Such hopes men lay to gold and rubies in their mountain caskets: to the cloudy pearl in the jade depths of the sea. Sought; found; lost; forgotten; its gold, cloud—gold and its pearl moon-mist! How ridiculous!”

“Would you truly be happy?” Again her voice was without its impatience; again it trembled with tenderness.

A light in the eyes of the Breton answered.

The birds fluttered and beat their wings against the bars of their cages.

Evening was approaching. The cawing of the white-headed crows could now be heard contending for their roosts in the banians.

The light in the room mellowed, became a rose-saffron, while the wind of sundown blew in through an open window.

Suddenly the wicket in the screen was opened and the wife, leaning against the lintel, looked down at him.

With difficulty the Breton priest rose from his chair. A flush swept across his face, then pallor. 127He lifted his hand to the neck of his robe; a film came over his eyes.

For a moment the wife fluttered on the screen’s threshold, then came down and sat on a stool close by but with her back to him.

128

CHAPTER EIGHT THE DELUGE FAMILY

In the phenomena of national life there are certain conditions that force men into such a labyrinthine existence that they resemble, in their bore and burrow, the teredo. These terebrants—human and otherwise—exist to destroy; hence their dignity. Sometimes, like the hymenoptera, they destroy to soar.

The Terebration of mankind—always more or less terrible—has left its wrecks sticking desolately above the floods of Time in all parts of the world, and shall through all ages leave its wreckage. These human teredines, which have existed to a greater or less degree among all nations during every period of their duration, are known by many names. In the Latin countries they are called the Carbonari; in Russia, the Nihilists; Germany, the Socialists—a teredo degenerated into a tapeworm; Ireland, the Clan-na-gael; Greece, the Haeteria. In France there has always been a mess of wrigglers, known and unnamed; in the Balkans is another spew, which are allied to the necrophan, and China, the old and huge nation, has its swarm 129of teredo in labyrinths also old and huge like itself, and filled with unknown terror.

The Tien Tu Hin, unlike the teredines of Europe, is not nihilistic, anarchistic, or a tapeworm; but is regarded by some as next to the end of the world; by others as the millennium; yet, in truth, what will come out of its two hundred and forty years of boring is not known. Such things are not even conjectured in the depths of its endless labyrinths.

During all ages secret political organisations have had prolific progeny in China, and when a dynasty becomes rotten they attack it like an old pile in the sea. They gnaw into it; devour; eat upward or downward according to the tide. The result is a cyst full of worms. When a storm rises it vanishes or protrudes a stump at low tide.

Secret political societies in China like religions in the Occident, have their immaculate conceptions, stars, signs and noises; the product of which is a founder having the divinity of a god and the respect; who ascends high places to preach; who governs and plays at dumb-bells with the moon. An instance of this was Chang Kioh, immaculated some years subsequent to Christ and a disciple of Lao-Tze, who, also, was not only immaculately engendered, but was eighty years in gestation, born with a white beard, and during his senile infancy 130wrote in five thousand characters the religion of Taoism. This disciple formed the Yellow Turban Rebels and with them destroyed the Great Han dynasties.

Matrêya, the Buddhist Messiah, has been immaculately foaled, rebelled, and beheaded a good many times in this old land, while the Taiping Rebellion, which started an half century ago and destroyed more than twenty millions, all came about because Hung Hsiu Chüan was the younger brother of Jesus and received visitations from God.

But stranger things than teredines swarming out of divinity have destroyed dynasties in China. That of the Mongols, founded by Genghis Khan, was annihilated by a ditty of the children of Honan and Hupeh, who sang in childish treble:

“Down will Mongol kings be thrown,

When moves the One-eyed Man of Stone”

During the year 1344, the One-Eyed Man of Stone was found at a place called Huanglingkuang by some labourers, who were repairing the banks of the Yellow River. The rebellions resulting ended in the expulsion of the Mongols and the establishment of the Ming dynasty by the Buddhist acolyte, Chu Yuan Chang.

Thus through all the ages of China—and they have been many—this terebration of man has 131ceased at no time. Yet the Tien Tu Hin, with more than a ten million swarm of human teredo, with more than all the wreckers that have gone before, is still silent. What will come out of it man not only does not know, but its immensity forbids conjecture. Among members it is called the Hung Kia, the Deluge Family; a family so vast and wide that it is beyond our comprehension; it exceeds anything ever conceived by man, and its labyrinths extend from Siberia to Siam—half of Europe could be lost in them. They crawl under oceans to the Straits Settlements; throughout the Malay Archipelago; the Philippines, India, Burma, Australia, the Pacific Islands, North, Central, and South America. This brotherhood of the Deluge Family, bound by the same oaths, actuated by the same principles and obedient to the same commands, has in its hidden recesses untold millions. While there have been directed against it the most terrible penal laws, they avail not nor reach down into the depths where it lives, travels, thrives, and year after year, in its endless labyrinths, becomes more dreaded, its murmur more terrible.

The terror about this society is its serenity and long quietude. Up to the present time it has hardly more than growled, but silently these two hundred and forty years it has been burrowing, burrowing.

A statesman in the reign of Kiuking said:

132“The Empire rests on something like a volcano.”

Occasionally there have been sporadic outbreaks, and while some of them have been extensive enough to annihilate many European kingdoms, they are only thought of in the light of incidents, a source for anecdotes.

The hour of the Rebellion is not yet; but will come with a manifestation from Heaven. This may be a red star in the East, or when the Five Flags rise of their own accord from the earth, but more probably when the phœnix sing from the wutung, for at that hour the Man has been born, and on that day from all the fields of the Empire shall rise up those sown of the dragon’s teeth: then will the silence of Ages be broken, labyrinths uncoil, and a murmur come from depths so deep and unknown that even the world itself shall shrink with dread.

The Tien Tu Hin was founded about 1674, in the Province of Fokien, in the Putien District of the Fuchin Prefecture. Here, among the Chui Lien Hills, in a vale charming on account of its solitude, was situated the Buddhist monastery of Shaolintze, built by the priest Tahtsunye during the Tang dynasty of the seventh century. But a thousand years later the monks—whether forgetful or in accordance with the wishes of the Immortal Tah—spent their time in the study of the arts of 133war, eventually becoming so famous for their knowledge and ability that men came from all parts of the Empire to receive instruction.

In the reign of Kanghi, the tributary state of Silu threw off its allegiance and sent an army into China, defeating successively all Imperial forces brought against it. Edicts were posted throughout the Empire calling upon someone to free the country from the enemy. Chu Kiuntah, a student at the monastery, took the edict and hastened to the Vale of Shaolintze. After consultation the one hundred and twenty-eight monks offered their services.

The Emperor raised them all to the rank of general, conferred plenary powers upon them, and gave into their keeping a triangular iron seal engraved with four characters.

In three months the Prince of Silu sued for peace, and the monks returned to the capital in the midst of the triumphant songs of the populace, while the grateful monarch offered them any offices they might choose. They asked nothing other than permission to live in peaceful seclusion amongst their hills of Chui Lien.

Years passed, and there rose high in court—as in the courts of other nations—two ministers, Chenwangyao and Changchensui, who plotted for the seizure of the Empire, believing that it was well 134within their grasp if they could get rid of the monks of Shaolintze.

Accordingly they memoralised the Emperor, accusing the monks of treason; showing that since they destroyed the victorious army of Silu with ease, it would not be difficult for them to conquer China. They thus persuaded the Emperor that his domains might at any time be taken from him and begged to be allowed to destroy them secretly.

Receiving the Emperor’s sanction, the two ministers placed themselves at the head of the Imperial Guards and set out for Fokien. But after arriving in the Prefecture of Fuchui, they were unable to find the monastery hidden away among the Chui Lien Hills, and were about to turn back when they came upon the monk, Ma Eifuh.

Ma Eifuh ranked seventh in military skill among the monks, but to all accounts first in lechery, and owing to his hot passion for the wife and the daughter of Chu Kuintah, had been bambooed and expelled from the monastery. It was while wandering about, raging under this punishment and disgrace, that he came upon the Imperial Guards.

That night he led them to the monastery in the Vale of Shaolintze. Gunpowder was placed about its walls and exploded. One hundred and nine of the monks were instantly killed, but the surviving eighteen, still retaining possession of 135the triangular seal, escaped into a court and then crawling through a dog hole got clear of the burning buildings. Aided by a thick fog, which came suddenly down into the Vale, they passed the Guards and proceeded to the village of Huangchuen, where thirteen died. Hence comes one of the terrible sayings of the Deluge Family:

“On Huangchuen road they died,

And through a myriad years we abide,

They shall be avenged.”

The five survivors, Tsai Tehchung, Tang Tahung, Ma Chaohing, Hu Tehti, and Li Shepkai, are now known as the Five Patriarchs. These five monks, having burned the bodies of their brothers, were proceeding to Chung Shawanken, in the Prefecture of Huenchuenfu, when suddenly—as the Jews in their flight from the army of Egypt—they found water in front of them and the Imperial Guards in their rear.

The immortal founder of the monastery, Tahtsuntze, seeing their danger, sent down two clouds, which changed into planks of copper and iron, forming a bridge over which the monks passed and safely reached the Temple of Kaochi.

After several days they continued on their way eastward, but before long learned that soldiers were again in pursuit, and thereupon they crossed over into Hukwang where they stayed for 136two weeks. Again narrowly escaping the Guards, the monks fled to the monastery of Pao Chu, where they remained a number of days overwhelmed with distress and despair.

But it was here that they met Chen Chinan, destined, as it seemed, by Heaven to become the founder of the Tien Tu Hin.

Chen Chinan, a member of the Hanlin Academy, had been President of the Board of Censors at the time when Chenwangyao and Changchensui memoralised the throne to destroy the monks, and had vigorously remonstrated with the Emperor. This remonstrance brought upon him the hatred of the two ministers that accused him as being a supporter of the monks. He was thereupon deprived of his office and expelled from court.

Having returned to his home in Hukwang, he was devoting himself to study when he met the monks as they were fleeing from the monastery of Pao Chu. Filled with compassion, he led them to his home, called the Grotto of the White Stork.

So now, when one member meets another and asks him whence he comes, the answer is: “From the White-Stork Grotto.”

After taking care of the monks in his home for several weeks, Chen Chinan took them to an extensive establishment called the Hunghauting,—the Red Flower Pavilion,—where they dwelt until 137one day, as they were sauntering along the banks of the beautiful Kungwei River, they spied a strange object floating in its current; this object brought about their departure.

Bringing the flotsam ashore, the monks found it to be a large stone tripod having two ears, such as are used in burning incense. On the bottom were engraved four large characters: Fan Tsing, Fuh Ming, Destroy Tsing, Restore Ming. Around these was a circle of smaller characters denoting its weight to be fifty-two catties and thirteen taels.

The monks carried this granite vessel to the top of a neighbouring hill, where they erected an altar of stones. They used guava twigs for candles and grass for incense, water instead of wine. As they prayed to Heaven that a Ming Emperor would avenge the crime of Shaolintze, the twigs and grass burst into flame. Seeing this the monks returned in great haste to the Red Flower Pavilion and told Chen Chinan what had happened.

For a long time this man, destined to some yet unknown end, remained in deep meditation.

“It is the will of Heaven,” he said presently, “that the dynasty of Tsing shall be destroyed.”

When the time came for the five monks to depart, Chen Chinan stood before them, and lifting his hands, spoke:

“Go forth, ye Five Patriarchs, to all quarters 138of the earth; over mountains and moorlands, across the great lakes and five seas. Transmit from man to man our secret words and signs. Be patient, and Heaven shall in its wisdom manifest the time for the assembling of the Deluge Family.”

Chen Chinan then returned to his Grotto of the White Stork, while the Five Patriarchs went their separate ways to organise the Deluge in Five Grand Sections, and to prepare for their assembly.

More than two hundred and forty years have passed, yet their successors cease in no way this preparation.

The Deluge Family founded, this dreaded assembly of men above whose labyrinths a third of mankind waits to be redeemed by it or be drowned in it—a Deluge of blood: to hurl the world into war and bring out of it Universal Peace.

The Deluge Family—like other families—has acquired in the course of time peculiarities besides that of vastness.

In writing the members use superfluous or half characters in such a manner as to make what is written unreadable to the uninitiated. In speaking they have a vocabulary of their own.

In the language of the Hung Kia, fowls are known by numbers; a goose is six, a duck eight. Beef is called great vegetables, and a fish a tail-shaker or wave-borer. A dog is a mosquito and 139that insect a needle, while a mosquito curtain is a lantern. Wine is known as red or green water; oil as family harmony and water as three rivers. To ask a person to smoke tobacco is to request him to bite ginger. To smoke opium is biting clouds and the name of opium is clouds travelling. To ask persons to dine is inviting them to farm sand and waves. A teacup is called a lotus bud; a wine cup a lotus seed, and a plate, a lotus leaf. Chop-sticks are golden selectors and roast pork becomes golden brindle. In speaking of the Deluge Family, a Lodge is called the Red Flower Pavilion or the Pine and Cedar Grove. To join the Society is to enter the Circle or be Born. To hold a meeting is known as letting loose the horses. A member is called heung—fragrance or a hero. A non-member is a partridge or wind of a leper. A road is a thread, and to travel is walking the thread. Sometimes the meaning of their vocabulary is unaccountable. An Ancestral Hall is called a privy and a market Universal Peace. In this strange language a bed is a drying stage and to sleep is to dry. A sword is called silken crepe, and a dagger young lion. A cannon is a black dog, its report a dog’s bark, its powder a dog’s dung. A handkerchief is a white cloud, a fan the crescent moon. The ears are known as fair wind, and to cut them off is to lower the fair wind. Cutting off the head is called washing the face. The sea 140is the great sky, and to murder by drowning is to bathe; while to be drowned in the sea is to be lowered into the great sky.

The members have numerous ways of testing one another by arranging and handing tea-cups, tobacco pipes, and other articles.

One member may ask another why his nose bleeds, and he answers: “It is the Waters of the Deluge flowing out of their channels.” This terrible enigma is derived from a saying by Mencius, “And a Deluge shall overflow the country.”

A member may ask: “Why is your face yellow?” and is answered: “It is troubled for my country.” Or, “Why is your face red?” and answered: “I have been drinking wine in the Temple of War.”

“What do you hope for?”

“The Market of Universal Peace.”

The entire ritual is carried on in verse—a rhythm of terrors—while conversation between members is in poetic form. If a member is asked to rescue a brother it is done by placing a pot of tea with a single cup before him. Should he be unable to do anything with the commands he throws the tea away, but if able, he drinks, saying:

“A horseman comes with might and speed

To save his prince, alone, in need,

And with him comes the Age’s horde

To give the throne to our Ming Lord.”

141If a pot of tea and three cups are put before a member he is being asked to take part in a fight. If he consents he drinks the middle cup, repeating:

“Lu, Kwang, and Chang in the garden swore,

To heed Duke Tsai’s commands no more,

And through all Ages let their fame,

Be upheld in Virtue’s name.”

There are thirty-six arrangements of tea-cups, each signifying something different and each answerable with a verse. In the like manner the presence of an unknown brother is made manifest first by some secret sign, which he should answer, then by the repetition of a verse. Should a junk be attacked by pirates and the crew as well as pirates be members of the Deluge Family, the crew repeats:

“Our mast is eyed with Deluge light,

And softly shines by day or night;

Men rob not one another

When in the Circle born a brother.”

Members sometimes teach their wives verses for emergencies, as in rebellions, and should an attempt be made to ravish her, she repeats:

“The sun shines redly in the East,

I wilt, a flower with fragrance ceased,

Fresher flowers beyond are found,

My husband to the Flood is bound.”

142Whenever a member needs assistance in a fight, he holds up the right hand with thumb, first, and second fingers expanded an equal distance apart, while the third and fourth fingers are closed; at the same time, the thumb and the first two fingers of the left hand are placed open on the right elbow. To call to battle is to hold the right hand over the head with the thumb pointing upwards. We know of nothing more terrifying than this pointing up of thumbs to Heaven.

When a fight is about to take place, the queue is looped over the right shoulder after having been brought around the neck and fastened in what is called the sign of Shou. A cry rises from those that have laid upon themselves this sign. It is not thunder, not a moan. It is the growl of Eternity, “Hung Shun Tien”—The Deluge obeys Heaven.

This vast Brotherhood is subject to twenty-one rules: Ten Prohibitions; Ten Punishable Offences. In addition there are thirty-six oaths bequeathed by the Five Patriarchs. Death is the inevitable punishment for those that break them.

Oath Seven reads: “If any brother is unable to escape you swear to assist him, no matter what are the consequences. If there are any that do not adhere to these feelings of kinship, let thunder annihilate them.”

Number Twenty reads: “If officials arrest a brother, his escape is most important. You swear 143to see to this. Those that refuse to give such aid shall die beneath ten thousand knives.”

The last of the Great Oaths is the Apocalypse of this Empire in its gloom. “All ye that enter the Deluge Family, scholars, husbandmen, merchants, industrious labourers, mechanics, Confucianists, Buddhists, Taoists, physicians, astrologers, geomancers, lictors, thieves, pirates, officials, executioners, and all others, swear loyalty above all things. Ye are the hands and feet of one body, obedient to the Head. Ye must bow down to the Five Seal-bearers and obey them. If any show duplicity or fail to exert themselves, let them die beneath ten thousand knives.”

Such is the Tien Tu Hin, the Association of Heaven and Earth: enormous, unseen; filled with terror and serenity; vast, invisible; its labyrinths endless as are the veins of the earth, and like the earth’s depths, asurge with molten lava; calm, portentous, peaceful, terrible; born to avenge a crime; fostered to destroy a dynasty; matured to establish Universal Peace.