CHAPTER XVIII

A SUPPER OF SACRED EELS

The great plain of northern China is composed of alluvial matter extending to an unknown depth, reddish-yellow in color, and possessed of wonderful fertility. When wet it packs closely; and later, under the influence of a hot sun, it bakes like clay. During seasons of drought it pulverizes to an almost impalpable dust that is blown by fierce winds into ridges and heaps like snow-drifts. These are piled high against obstructing walls, so that sometimes buildings standing in exposed situations are completely buried beneath them. Such a drift of fine sand had formed in an angle of the city wall, along which our lads fled; and Chinese Jo, knowing of it, had selected this as a point for escape.

Thus, when Rob, with many misgivings, leaped into unknown blackness, he had not dropped more than twenty feet when he struck a steep slope of soft material down which he slid with great velocity amid a smother of choking dust. The next thing he knew, Jo was pulling him to his feet, and bidding him make haste to get away before their mode of escape should be discovered by the torch-bearers, who now swarmed on the wall above them. So the lads ran, with Jo acting as guide, across cropless fields, climbing over useless dikes, and stumbling through dry ditches, until a black mass, dimly outlined against the sky, rose before them. As they drew near, this resolved itself into a clump of trees, which, from experience already gained in China, Rob knew must be a sacred grove. It was, in fact, the very grove from which the frantic rain-dancers had streamed in pursuit of him a few hours earlier. Now it was silent and deserted, even the ancient temple of the rain-god, standing in its centre, being empty of priests or worshippers.

Finding the door of this temple open, and hearing no sound within, the fugitives made a cautious entry into the sacred precincts. Here their attention was attracted by a faint glow coming from a heap of embers on an altar that stood before a gigantic image of the rain-god himself.

While endeavoring to get a closer view of the idol, Rob stumbled and pitched forward, thrusting his outstretched hands into an invisible but shallow tank of water. He uttered a yell of affright as he withdrew them and sprang back. "It's a nest of snakes!" he cried--"slimy, wriggling snakes!"

"Hush!" admonished Jo, listening intently; but there was no sound, save of a slight splashing in the as yet unseen water.

"If there were any priests here your racket certainly would have roused them," he said. "But, as nobody seems to be stirring, I expect we've got the place to ourselves. Close the door while I make a light, so that we can see where we are."

From the floor the speaker gathered a few bits of unburned joss-paper that he laid on the faintly glowing altar embers and blew into a blaze. Though this lasted but a moment, it served to show some half-burned candles standing behind the altar, one of which Jo lighted from the expiring flame.

By this faint light the lads discovered a number of crude figures of men and beasts ranged on either side of the rain-god, while a pool of water glittered at their feet. In it squirmed a score or more of eels, emblems of the god, among which Rob had thrust his arms.

"There are your snakes," laughed the young Chinese, "and with them plenty of water to drink, if you are thirsty."

"Goodness knows! I'm thirsty enough, and stuffed full of dust besides, but I wouldn't drink that water, with those things in it, not if I was dying of thirst."

"I would, then," replied Jo, who was too thoroughly Chinese to be fastidious; and, to prove his words, he scooped a handful of the water to his lips.

"It isn't very good water," he acknowledged; "but perhaps we can find some that is better where this came from."

A short search revealed a well just back of the temple, and from it, by means of a section of hollow bamboo attached to a long cord, they drew a plentiful supply of water that was much purer than that in the tank, and was not visibly contaminated by eels, snakes, or any other unpleasant creatures.

"My! what a blessed thing water is!" exclaimed Rob, after a long pull at the bamboo bucket. "I don't wonder that the people of a burned-up country like this pray to a rain-god. Now, if only we had something to eat we'd be well fixed to move on."

"That's easy," replied Jo, reaching into the tank and drawing forth a large, squirming eel as he spoke.

"Eat a snake!" cried Rob, in a disgusted tone. "Not much! I won't!"

Jo smiled as he cut off the eel's head and proceeded to skin its still wriggling body, which he divided into short sections. Wrapping each of these in green bamboo leaves that he procured from a clump of the giant grass growing beside the well, he buried them in the hot sand of the altar, and raked over them a lot of glowing coals.

While he did this, Rob, with the aid of a lighted candle was examining the strange figures that occupied the interior of the temple. All at once, from somewhere behind the great idol, he called out, "Look here, Jo! He's hollow!"

Going to see what was meant, the young Chinese found his friend holding the candle above his head and pointing to a small door, standing slightly ajar, in the back of the image. It was so perfectly fitted that, had it been closed, no trace of an opening could have been discovered.

Climbing to the place, they easily opened the door, and through the aperture thus disclosed crawled into the very body of the rain-god. They found themselves in a space large enough for them to stand up or to lie in at full length, but filled with a confused litter of garments, masks, banners, and other paraphernalia of the priestly trade.

"It's the biggest kind of a find," said Jo, evidently much excited over this discovery, "and it gives me an idea; but I must eat before explaining, so let us go to tiffin."

The cooked eel, which Rob still insisted was nothing more nor less than a snake, looked and smelled so good that the latter's desperate hunger finally persuaded him to taste a morsel. Then he took another, and a few minutes later, gazing thoughtfully at a small heap of well-cleaned bones, he asked Jo if he didn't think they might cook a few more eels while they were about it. An hour later he declared that he had eaten one of the best meals of his life, and was altogether too well content with their present situation to think of travelling any farther that night.

Jo readily agreed that they should spend a few hours where they were, as he wanted time to think out a plan of escape, and believed that for the present this temple was as safe a place as they were likely to find. So, while they removed all traces of their presence, Rob arranged the priestly vestments they had found inside the rain-god into a sort of a bed, and a little later, lying on this, each of the lads gave the other an account of his adventures since they had parted in far-away America. Rob's story we know, as we do that of Jo up to the time of his commitment to prison in New York, charged with being a Chinese laundry-worker who had illegally entered the United States.

"I was kept there two weeks," he now said, "and treated worse than a dog all the time. They would not allow me to write or telegraph to you or any of my friends, and finally carried me off at night in a prison-van, together with a dozen coolies gathered from different parts of the country, who hated me because I had cut off my queue. After that we travelled handcuffed together, two and two, in a crowded immigrant-car, to San Francisco, where we were locked up in a filthy shed until a steamer was ready to sail. On our journey to that point we got very little to eat, but what we had was fairly good. The food given us in the shed was bad, but what we got on the steamer, where we were put in the hold, without being allowed to go on deck during the whole voyage, was simply rotten.

"The ship was under contract to deliver us at Shanghai; but when she anchored off Woo-Sung and they began to transfer us into a launch that would take us to the city, fourteen miles farther up the river, we were in such a horrible condition that the other passengers objected to having us on board. So we were set ashore at Woo-Sung and told we might walk the rest of the way.

"I was so sick and weak that, after we had walked a few miles, I gave out and laid down by the road-side. There, I suppose, I should have frozen to death, for it was bitter cold, winter weather, if a farmer had not found me and taken me to his house. My father afterwards made him a rich man for it. He fed, clothed, and kept me until I could get word to some friends in Shanghai, after which, of course, I was all right.

"Finding that my father had been transferred to Pao-Ting-Fu--between here and Pekin, you know--I went there; and when he heard how I had been treated, he was so angry that he swore he'd do everything in his power to drive foreigners out of China. He did drive a good many from his own district, especially railroad people; but when the Great Swords began killing them, he drew the line and said that that was going too far. One day a Boxer army came along with a lot of missionaries, whom they proposed to burn to death in the city temple. My father told them they must give up their prisoners to him, and when they refused he ordered out his own soldiers, killed a lot of the Boxers, rescued the missionaries, and sent them under guard to the coast. For that he was recalled to Pekin, and Mandarin Ting Yuan was put in his place. Last week that man turned over fifteen missionary people, some of them women and little children, to be tortured and put to death by the Boxers of Pao-Ting-Fu."

"But what were you doing all this time?" asked Rob, his face paling at thought of these horrors.

"I had obtained a commission as captain of imperial troops, and was sent down here, where I have been ever since."

"You haven't seen any missionaries killed, have you?" demanded Rob, anxiously.

"No, and I don't think I should have, without trying to save them, in spite of the way I was treated in America. But I received orders from Pekin only yesterday not to oppose the Boxers in anyway, no matter what they did. I was up in that watch-tower wondering what I ought to do if any missionaries should come this way, when I saw the rain-dancers chasing you. Of course, I didn't recognize you; but the moment I discovered you were a foreigner I knew that I couldn't stand by and see you killed without making an effort to prevent it."

"Didn't you know who I was until we stood together on the watch-tower?" asked Rob, curiously.

"No. I had not time for a good look at you until that moment. Even then I couldn't at first believe it really was you; it seemed so utterly impossible that you could be in China."

"What do you propose to do now?"

"Stay with you until I get you to a place of safety."

"But you will lose your position in the army if you leave your post."

"Yes."

"And perhaps be shot as a deserter."

"Quite so."

"Aren't you almost certain to be killed if you are found in company with a foreigner whom you are aiding to escape?"

"Yes."

"And you are willing to risk your life, besides throwing away your career, for the sake of one of the very people who treated you so shamefully when you were in America?"

"It is a saying of the ancients," replied Jo, "that friendship shines among the brightest jewels in the ring of life; also, that life without friendship is as a barren fruit tree, and that for a true friendship life itself is not too high a price to pay. Therefore, may I not risk, and gladly, a life of little value, to save that of one who, though he is of a people who ill-treated me, is also the best friend I have in all the world? Did he not, even when we were strangers, fight to save me from abuse? and can I do less for him now that we are friends? So it is foolish for you to ask questions, since it is assured that until I can leave you in a place of safety your enemies are my enemies, your friends are my friends, and wherever you go there go I also."

"Then," said Rob, who was greatly affected by these words, "let us stay right where we are until morning, for I want to think over all you have told me."

After this the lads did not talk any more, but a few minutes later were sound asleep inside the very rain-god to which one of them would have been sacrificed had he been caught in that vicinity a few hours earlier.