Part 5

Here we saw Chinamen for the first time on native heath. They came out to us in sampans, always with one or two children in the bow, to get scraps to eat at the port-holes aft, or empty bottles, which they much prized; or drifted past us on the swift tide, watching like birds of prey for anything that might be thrown overboard. And we saw the attitude of Japanese toward Chinamen for the first time, as well, and all the time one memory, incongruous and unjust though it was, hung in my mind--the memory of a town-bred mulatto in a high hat with his thumbs in the arm-holes of a white waistcoat, and loftily talking to a country brother of deeper shade in the market-place of a certain Southern town. One day a sampan, with a very old man and a young one aboard, made fast to the gangway. They had fish to sell, and during the haggling that followed, a Japanese sprang aboard, dropped a coin or two, picked up the fish, and tried to cast the sampan away--the Chinamen sputtering voluble but feeble protests meanwhile. In the confusion, the stern of the sampan struck a ship's boat that was swinging on a long hawser from the same gangway, the bow of it struck the ship's side, and the racing tide did the rest. The boat was overturned, old man and young one disappeared and all under water shot away. We thought they were gone, but there were two lean, yellow arms fastened by yellow talons to the keel, and in a moment the young man was dragging the old man to safety on the bottom of the boat. The ship's boat was cast away, the Japanese who had caused the trouble sprang aboard with the crew, gave chase to the bobbing wreck, caught it several hundred yards away, righted it, and later we saw the young Chinaman working it, half submerged, toward the distant shore, and the shivering, bedraggled old one being brought back to the ship. We were all indignant, for the officers of the ship, far from interfering, laughed during the whole affair, and, laughing, watched the old man and the young one sweep away. But no sooner was the old man aboard than the servants and interpreters gave him rice, saki, empty bottles, and clothes, and took up a subscription for him; and when the young one got to the ship an hour later the old man climbed into the sampan, mellow and happy. It seemed a heartless piece of cruelty at first, but it was perhaps, after all, only the cruelty of children, for which they were at once sorry and at once tried to make amends. To me, its significance was in the loftily superior, contemptuously patronizing attitude of the Japanese toward the yellow brother from whom he got civilization, art, classical models, and a written speech. Later, I found the same bearing raised to the ninth degree in Manchuria. Knowing the grotesque results in the efforts of one imitative race to adopt another civilization in my own country, the parallelism has struck me forcibly over here in dress, Occidental manners, the love of interpreters for ponderous phraseology and quotations, rigid insistence on form and red tape and the letter thereof. Give a Japanese a rule and he knows no exception on his part, understands no variation therefrom on yours. For instance, every afternoon we went into the sea from that gangway, and Guy Scull diving from the railing of the upper deck and Richard Harding Davis diving for coins thrown from the same deck into the water (and getting them, too) created no little diversion for everybody on board. On the third afternoon, Davis, in his kimono and nothing else, was halted by the first officer at the gangway. The captain had found a transport rule to the effect that nobody should be allowed to go in bathing--the good reason being, of course, that some of several hundred soldiers in bathing might drown. Therefore, we eighteen men, though we were in a way the guests of the captain's Government--in spite of the fact that we were paying for our own meals--and though for this reason a distinction might have been made, the rule was there, and, like Japanese soldiers, we had to obey. It looked a trifle ominous.

We were only ten hours' sail now from Port Arthur, and one morning we did get away just before sunrise. The start was mysterious, almost majestic at that hour. For three days those transports had lain around us--filled, I was told, with soldiers, and yet not one soldier had I seen. Blacker and more mysterious than ever they looked in that dark hour before dawn--only the first flush in the east showing sign of something human in the column of black smoke that was drifting from the funnel of each. It showed, too, a gray mass lying low on the water, and near a big black rock that jutted from the sea. That gray mass gave forth one unearthly shriek and that was all. Instantly thereafterward it floated slowly around that jutting rock; one by one the silent black ships moved ghostlike after it, and when the red sunburst came, that gave birth, I suppose, to the flag of Japan, all in single file were moving in a great circle out to sea--the prow of each ship turning toward one red star that looked down with impartial eyes where the brown children of the sun were in a death-struggle with the cubs of the Great White Bear. By noon there was great cheer. The Japanese word was good at last--we were bound for Port Arthur. The rocky shore of Manchuria was close at hand. A Japanese torpedo-boat slipped by, its nose plunging through every wave and playful as a dolphin, tossing green water and white foam back over its whole black length. A signal-station became visible on one gray peak, and then there was a thrill that took the soreness of five months from the hearts of eighteen men. The sullen thunder of a big gun moaned its way to us from Port Arthur. There was not a man who had not long dreamed of that grim easternmost symbol of Russian aggression, and each man knew that no matter what might happen on land, Port Arthur held place and would hold place for dramatic interest in the eyes of the world. Port Arthur we should see--stubborn siege and fierce assaults--and gather stories by the handful when it fell. Dalny was to our left, and it was rather curious that we did not turn toward Dalny. But no matter--we were going into Talienwan Bay, which was only a few miles farther away, and we could hear big guns: so we were happy. Talienwan--a thin curve of low gray stone buildings, hugging the sweep of the bay, spread the welcome that the officer of that port came to speak in English--and we landed among carts, Chinese coolies, Japanese soldiers, Chinese wagons, mules, donkeys, horses, ponies, squealing stallions, ammunition, a medley of human cries. The bustle was terrific. A man must look out for himself in that apparent confusion. As it was an ever-faithful day for Takeuchi that day, I was serene and trustful. Davis was not, and beckoned to a coolie with a cart. The man came and Davis's baggage was piled on the cart. Along came a Japanese officer who, without a word, threw the baggage to the ground--including a camera and other things as fragile and hardly less precious. Davis turned to the Post Officer:

"Can I have one of these carts?"

"Certainly," he said.

Davis got another, but while his interpreter was loading his things again, the same officer came by and tossed them again to the ground. The interpreter protested and tried to explain that he had permission to use the carts, but he hadn't time. That officer turned on him. Now I had been told that there are no oaths and vile epithets in the Japanese tongue, but I know no English vile enough to report what the man said, and if I did I couldn't use it without blistering my tongue and blackening my soul more black than the hair of the blackguard who used it. But let me do the Colonel in command justice to say that when the outraged interpreter, taken to him by us afterward, repeated the insult, the courteous old gentleman looked shocked and deeply hurt, and said he would deal harshly with the man. I hope he did.

This was ominous, but we were still cheerful. Yokoyama appeared and Yokoyama was ominous. He was to handle our canteen and charge us twice the prices that we had known at the Imperial Hotel, on the ground that he would transport our baggage for us. That meant that he was to charge us for the transport service that the Government was to give us--not to him--and furnish us chiefly with canned stuff that each man could have bought for himself for a dollar per day. We did not know this just then, but wily Yokoyama had gathered in 500 yen from each of us in Tokio, and he was ominous before we left Japan. I am putting this in because Yokoyama, too, is woven into the network that fate was casting about us that day. Still we were cheerful. Cannon were making the music we had waited five months to hear. Port Arthur would fall, doubtless, within ten days, and then--Home! The dream was shattered before we went to sleep. No officer came to tell us where we were bound--to explain the shattered word of a Major-General of his own army. It was Yokoyama who dealt the blow--Yokoyama who, in another land, would have been branded as a traitor by his own people and could have been put behind the bars in ours. The truth was that we were not to go to Port Arthur at all. Next day we travelled--whither God only knew--with every boom of a big gun at the Russian fortress behind us sounding the knell of a hope in the heart of each and every man. But we were on the trail of Oku's army into the heart of Manchuria, though nobody knew it for sure, and there was yet before us another tragedy--Liao-Yang.

V

ON THE WAR-DRAGON'S TRAIL

There was the dean of the corps, one Melton Prior, who, in spite of his years--may they be many more--is still the first war artist in the world. He was mounted on a white horse, seventeen hands high and with a weak back that has a history. Prior sold him in the end to a canny Englishman, who sold him to the Japanese--giving Prior the price asked. "Why, didn't you know that he wasn't sound?" said a man of another race, who wondered, perhaps, that in a horse-trade blood should so speak to blood even in a strange land.

"Yes," said the Englishman, "but the Japanese won't know it." They didn't. There was Richard Harding Davis, who, for two reasons--the power to pick from any given incident the most details that will interest the most people, and the good luck or good judgment to be always just where the most interesting thing is taking place (with one natural exception, that shall be told)--is also supreme. Mounted on another big horse was he--one Devery by name--with a mule in the rear, of a name that must equally appeal. Quite early, after purchase, Davis had laid whispering lip to flapping ear.

"I'll call you Williams or I'll call you Walker, just as you choose," he said.

There was no response.

"Then I'll call you both," said Davis, and that wayward animal was Williams and Walker through the campaign. A double name was never more appropriate, for a flagrant double life was his. There was Bill the Brill of the gentle heart, on a nice chestnut; Burleigh, the veteran, on a wretched beast that was equally dangerous at either end; Lionel James with cart and coolies of his own, and the Italian on a handsome iron-gray. There were the two Frenchmen--Reggie, the young, the gigantic, the self-controlled and never complaining--so beloved, that his very appearance always brought the Marseillaise from us all--and Laguerié, the courteous, ever-vivacious, irascible--so typical that he might have stepped into Manchuria from the stage. There was Whiting, artist, on the littlest beast with the biggest ambition that I ever saw vaulting on legs; lanky Wallace, whose legs, like Lincoln's, were long enough to reach the ground--even when he was mounted--and there were the two Smiths--English and American--and Lewis, gifted with many tongues and a beautiful barytone, who, his much-boasted milky steed being lame, struck Oku's trail on foot. On Pit-a-Pat, a pony that used to win and lose money for us at the Yokohama races, was little Clarkin the stubborn, the argumentative, who, at a glance, was plainly sponsor for the highest ideals of the paper that, in somebody's words, made virtue a thing to be shunned; and, finally and leastly, there were Fuji and his unhappy attachment, who chronicles this.

These were the men who thought they were going to Port Arthur and who, with the sound of the big guns at that fortress growing fainter behind them, struck Oku's trail, up through a rolling valley that was bordered by two blue volcanic mountain chains. The sky was cloudless and the sun was hot. The roads were as bad as roads would likely be after 4,000 years of travel and 4,000 years of neglect, but the wonder was that, after the Russian army had tramped them twice and the Japanese army had tramped them once, they were not worse.

The tail of the War-Dragon, whose jaws were snapping at flying Russian heels far on ahead, had been drawn on at dawn, and through dust and mire and sand we followed its squirming wake. On the top of every little hill we could see it painfully crawling ahead--length interminable, its vertebræ carts, coolies, Chinese wagons, its body columns of soldiers, its scales the flashes of sword-scabbard and wagon-tire--and whipping the dust heavenward in clouds. The button on that tail was Lynch the Irishman on a bicycle, and that button was rolling itself headward--leading us all. Behind, Lewis was eating the road up with a swinging English stride, and, drinking the dust of the world, we followed. Fuji had side-stepped from barrack-yard into that road, sawing on his bit, pawing the earth, and squealing challenges or boisterous love-calls to anything and everything that walked. Sex, species, biped, or quadruped--never knew I such indiscriminate buoyancy--all were one to Fuji. With malediction on tongue and murder in heart, I sawed his gutta-percha mouth until my fingers were blistered and my very jaws ached, but I could hold him back only a while. We overtook the Italian, a handsome boy with a wild intensity of eye--one puttee unwound and flying after him. The iron-gray was giving trouble and he, too, was unhappy. We passed Reggie--his great body stretched on a lumpy heap of baggage--with a pipe in his mouth, that was halved with his perennial smile of unshakable good-humor, and the other Frenchman squatting between two humps of baggage on a jolting cart.

"Ah!" he cried with extended hands, "you see--you see--" his head was tossed to one side just then, he clutched wildly first one way and then the other and with palms upward again--"you see how com_fort_able I am. It ees gr-reat--gr-reat!" From laughter I let Fuji go then and he went--through coil after coil of that war-dragon's length, past the creaking, straining vertebræ, taking a whack with teeth or heels at something now and then and something now and then taking a similar whack at him. The etiquette of the road Fuji either knew not, or cared nothing for--nor cared he for distinctions of rank in his own world or mine. By rights the led cavalry horses should have had precedence. But nay, Fuji passed two regiments without so much as "by your leave"; but I was doing that for him vigorously and, whenever he broke through the line, I said two things, and I kept saying them that I might not be cut off with a sword:

"Warui desu!" I said, which means "He's bad!" and "Gomen nasai," which is Japanese for "Beg pardon." These two phrases never failed to bring a smile instead of the curse that I might have got in any other army in the world. We passed even an officer who seemed and was, no doubt, in a great and just hurry, but even his eyes had to take the dust thrown from Fuji's heels. I pulled the beast in at last on top of a little hill whence I could see the battle-hills of Nanshan. But I cared no more for that field than did Fuji, both of us being too much interested in life to care much for post-mortem battle-fields, and when the rest came up, we rode by Nanshan without turning up its green slopes and on to where the first walled Chinese city I had ever seen lifted its gate-towers and high notched walls in glaring sunlight and a mist of strangling dust. We passed in through the city gates and stopped where I know not. It was some bad-smelling spot under a hot sun, and being off Fuji and in that sun, I cared not. I have vague memories of white men coming by and telling me to come out of the sun and of not coming out of the sun; of horses kicking and stamping near by and an occasional neigh from Fuji hitched in the shade of the city wall and guarded by a Chinaman; of a yellow man asleep on a cart, his unguarded face stark to that sun and a hundred flies crawling about his open mouth; and of an altercation going on between two white men. One said:

"Your horse has kicked mine--remove him!"

"Move your own," said another, and his tone was that of some Lord Cyril in a melodrama. "Mine was there first."

The other took off his coat:

"I'm sorry, but I've got to fight you."

"Very well, then," said Lord Cyril, stripping, too, and then the voice of a peace-maker that I knew well broke in and in a moment all was still. Takeuchi rode in on a mule. No hitting the dust for the proud feet of Takeuchi then, as I learned, nor afterward, when there were any other four feet that could be made to travel for hire.

"I want a 'betto,'" he said--which is Japanese for hostler--"for Fuji."

"Whatever need there be for Fuji, the accursed," said I, lapsing into such Oriental phraseology as I had read in books, "buy, and buy quickly--my money is in thy belt." He bought then and kept on buying afterward.

Straightway I fell again into sun-dreams with the yellow man near by whose mouth was wide, for it was my first experience with the God of Fire in his hell-hot Eastern home, and I strayed in them until I was shaken into consciousness by a white man with a beer-bottle in his hand. I remember a garden and trees next, a Chinese room with mats, a Chinese woman--the first I had seen--with a sad, pretty face, who rose, when I came to the door, and stalked into a house as though she were walking on deer-hoofs (every step she took on her tiny, misshapen feet made me shudder), and then the sound of Davis's guitar and Lewis's voice on the soft night air and under a Manchurian moon soaring starward above the Eastern city-wall.

... It is noon of the second day now and we sit in the shade of willow-trees. We left that first Chinese town of Kinchau and its dirty natives this morning at eight. The dragon's tail again had been drawn ahead through a narrow valley, rich in fields of millet and corn, from which on either side a bleak, hilly, treeless desert ran desolately to a blue mountain chain. Now, still on its trail, we sit in a green oasis, on real grass and under sheltering willows. A lot of little Chinese boys are around us, all naked except for a little embroidered varicolored stomacher which hangs by a cord from the neck of each--for what purpose I know not--and their elders are bringing water for us and sheaves of millet-blades for the menagerie of beasts we ride. They seem a good-natured race--these Manchurian farmers--genuine, submissive, kindly, but genuine and human in contrast, if I must say it, with the Japanese. Who was it that said the Chinese were the Saxons of the East and the Japanese the Gauls? I know now what he meant.

Lewis, in a big white helmet, has just ridden in on a diminutive white jackass. I envy the peace and content of both of them, for Fuji was particularly bad this morning. Again he passed everything on the road, and as we swept the length of a cavalry column, I saw a soldier leading a puny stallion a hundred yards ahead. When he heard us, he shouted a warning:

"Warui desu!"

At the same time the beast he was leading turned, with ears laid back and teeth showing, and made for us, dragging the soldier along. I was greatly pleased.

"Here, Fuji," I said, "is where my revenge comes in. You are going to get it now and, if I mistake not, literally in the neck."

But the brute attacked me instead--_me_. He got my right forearm between his teeth and held on until I shifted a stick from right hand to left and beat him off--the soldier spouting Japanese with French vivacity meanwhile and tugging ineffectively. I got away only after the vicious brute had pasted Fuji with both heels first on one side of my right leg and then similarly on the other, missing me about three inches each time. Fuji now shows blood but I am little hurt. Somehow in the scrimmage O-kin-san's charm--the little block of wood--was broken in its wicker case and whether the heels reached it that high I don't know. But it was a good omen--that it should be broken and its owner still come out unhurt--and it means that I am to be safe in this campaign. The puny brute had not strength enough to break an Anglo-Saxon arm--and it is his kind that make impossible for the Japanese certain big guns that the Russians use.

... It is 6 P.M. of the third day now and we are at Wa-fang-tien. We left Pa-lien-tan this morning and made thirty-two miles. We took lunch in a stinking Chinese village, and the chicken--well, it was a question which was the more disturbing conjecture--how long it had lived or how long it had been dead. Oh, Yokoyama! Fuji has not improved. He kicked the Italian on the leg today and I've just helped to bandage it. Again to-day I had to let him go. I tried to tire him out by riding him through mud-holes and see-sawing him across deep wagon-ruts. But it was no use. If a horse, bullock, man, woman, child, cat, or dog is visible 500 yards away, Fuji with a squeal makes for it. When the object is overtaken, Fuji pays no attention to it, but looks for something else toward which he can start his squealing way. For brutal, insensate curiosity give me Fuji, or rather give him to anybody but me. 'Tis an Eveless land for Fuji, but hope springs eternal for him. Dinner is just over--tinned soup, half-cooked tinned sausages, prunes and rice from Yokoyama's larder--which we are stocking at 12 yen per day. Hundreds of coolies are squatting along the railroad track. In front of us a group of Japanese soldiers has stood for five minutes staring at us with the frank curiosity of children. They began to move away when I pulled this note-book. Leaning against the tallest telegraph-pole, with hands bound behind him, his pigtail tied to a thick wire twice twisted, stands a miserable Chinese coolie. An hour ago I saw him on his knees across the track, held down by four men, while the littlest Japanese soldier in the group beat him heavily with a stick much thicker than the thumb. Then they led him praying, howling, and limping to the telegraph-pole, where he stands as an awful example to his fellows. He had stolen some coal and it was his second offence. It was all right, of course, but it was strange to see the apparent joy with which the Japanese did it and stranger still to see the other coolies grinning, chatting, and making fun of the culprit. I wonder whether they were crooking the pregnant hinges of the knee or what on earth it did mean. We were hung up here at 3 P.M., and allowed to go no farther. There is no order for us to remain--only a "strong desire" that we should--which is the Japanese way. Davis and I had a great bath to-day in a pool which somebody had dammed up--for what purpose I know not. What I do know is that it was not meant for us.