Marching Sands. Harold Lamb
But Delabar insisted on remaining aboard the steamer until they left for China. The nearing gateway of Asia had a powerful effect on him. Gray noticed—as it was unusual in a man of mildly studious habits—that the scientist smoked quantities of strong Russian cigarettes. Indeed, the air of their cabin was heavy with the fumes.
“We must not make ourselves conspicuous,” Delabar urged repeatedly.
At Shanghai they passed quickly through the hands of the customs officials. Their preparations progressed smoothly; the baggage was put on board a waiting Hankow steamer, and Delabar added to their stores a sufficient quantity of provisions to round out their outfit. In spite of this, Delabar fidgeted until they were safely in their stateroom on the river steamer, and passing up the broad, brown current of the Yang-tze-kiang—which, by the way, is not called the Yang-tze-kiang by the Chinese.
Gray made no comment on his companion’s misgivings. He saw no cause for alarm. There were a dozen other travelers on the river boat, sales agents of three nations, a railroad engineer or two, a family of missionaries, several tourists who stared blandly at the great tidal stretch of the river, and commented loudly on the comforts of the palatial vessel. Evidently they had expected to go up to Hankow in a junk. They pointed out the chocolate colored sails of the passing junks with their half-naked coolies and dirty decks.
For days the single screw of the Hankow boat churned the muddy waste, and the smoke spread, fanwise, over its wake.
The Yang-tze was not new to Gray. He was glad he was going into the interior. The fecund cities of the coast, with their monotonous, crowded streets, narrow and overhung with painted signs held no attraction for him. The panorama of Mongolian faces, pallid and seamed, furtive and merry was not what he had come to China to see. In the interior, beyond the forest crowned mountains, and the vast plains, was the expanse of the desert. Until they reached this, the trip was no more than a necessary evil.
Not so—as Gray noted—did it affect Delabar. The first meeting with the blue-clad throngs in Shanghai, the first glimpse of the pagoda-temples with their shaven priests had both exhilarated and depressed the scientist.
“Each stage of the journey,” he confided to Gray, “drops us back a century in civilization.”
“No harm done,” grunted the officer, who had determined to put a check on Delabar’s active imagination. “As long as we get ahead. That’s the deuce of this country. We have to go zig-zag. There’s no such thing as a straight line being the shortest distance between two points in the land of the Dragon.”
Delabar frowned, surprised by these unexpected displays of latent knowledge. Then smiled, waving a thin hand at the yellow current of the river.
“There is a reason for that—as always, in China. Evil spirits, they believe, can not move out of a straight line. So we find screens put just inside the gates of temples—to ward off the evil influences.”
“Look at that,” Gray touched the other’s arm. A steward stood near them at the stern. No one else was in that part of the deck, and after glancing around cautiously the man dropped over the side some white objects—what they were, Gray could not see. “I heard that some fishermen had been drowned near here a few days ago. That Chink—for all his European dress—is dropping overside portions of bread as food and peace offering to the spirits of the drowned.”
“Yes,” nodded Delabar, “the lower orders of Chinamen believe the drowned have power to pull the living after them to death. Centuries of missionary endeavor have not altered their superstitions. And, look—that does not prevent those starved beggars in the junk there from retrieving the bread in the water. Ugh!”
He thrust his hands into his pockets and tramped off up the deck, while Gray gazed after him curiously, and then turned to watch the junk. The coolies were waving at the steward who was watching them impassively. Seeing Gray, the man hurried about his duties. For a moment the officer hesitated, seeing that the junkmen were staring, not at the bread in their hands, but at the ship. Then he smiled and walked on.
In spite of Delabar’s misgivings, the journey went smoothly. The banks of the river closed in on them, scattered mud villages appeared in the shore rushes. Half naked boys waved at the “fire junk” from the backs of water buffaloes, and the smoke of Hankow loomed on the horizon. From Hankow, the Peking-Hankow railway took them comfortably to Honanfu, after a two-day stage by cart.
Here they waited for their luggage to catch up with them, in a fairly clean and modern hotel. They avoided the other Europeans in the city. Gray knew that they were beyond the usual circuit of American tourists, and wished to travel as quietly as possible.
“We’re in luck,” he observed to Delabar, who had just come in. “In a month, if all goes well, we’ll be in Liangchowfu, the ‘Western Gate’ to the steppe country. What’s the matter?”
Delabar held out a long sheet of rice paper with a curious expression.
“An invitation to dine with one of the officials of Honan, Captain Gray—with the vice-governor. He asks us to bring our passports.”
“Hm,” the officer replaced the maps he had been overhauling in their case, and thrust the missive on top of them. He tossed the case into an open valise. “A sort of polite invitation to show our cards—to explain who we are, eh? Well, let’s accept with pleasure. We’ve got to play the game according to the rules. Nothing queer about this invite. Chinese officials are hospitable enough. All they want is a present or two.”
He produced from the valise a clock with chimes and a silver-plated pocket flashlight and scrutinized them mildly.
“This ought to do the trick. We’ll put on our best clothes. And remember, I’m a big-game enthusiast.”
Delabar was moody that afternoon, and watched Gray’s cheerful preparations for the dinner without interest. The army man stowed away their more valuable possessions, carefully hanging the rifle which he had been carrying in its case over his shoulder under the frame of the bed.
“A trick I learned in Mindanao,” he explained. “These towns are chuck full of thieves, and this rifle is valuable to me. The oriental second-story man has yet to discover that American army men hang their rifles under the frame of their cots. Now for the vice-governor, what’s his name? Wu Fang Chien?”
Wu Fang Chien was most affable. He sent two sedan chairs for the Americans and received them at his door with marked politeness, shaking his hands in his wide sleeves agreeably when Delabar introduced Gray. He spoke English better than the professor spoke Chinese, and inquired solicitously after their health and their purpose in visiting his country.
He was a tall mandarin, wearing the usual iron rimmed spectacles, and dressed in his robe of ceremony.
During the long dinner of the usual thirty courses, Delabar talked with the mandarin, while Gray contented himself with a few customary compliments. But Wu Fang Chien watched Gray steadily, from bland, faded eyes.
“I have not known an American hunter to come so far into China,” he observed to the officer. “My humble and insufficient home is honored by the presence of an enthusiast. What game you expect to find?”
“Stags, antelope, and some of the splendid mountain sheep of Shensi,” replied Gray calmly. Wu Fang Chien’s fan paused, at the precision of the answer.
“Then you are going far. Do your passports permit?”
“They give us a free hand. We will follow the game trails.”
“As far as Liangchowfu?”
“Perhaps.”
“Beyond that is another province.” The mandarin tapped his well-kept fingers thoughtfully on the table. “I would not advise you, Captain Gray, to go beyond Liangchowfu. As you know, my unhappy country has transpired a double change of government and the outlaw tribes of the interior have become unruly during the last rebellion.” He fumbled only slightly for words.
Gray nodded.
“We