CHAPTER FIVE

THE PROPITIATION OF THE GODS OF THE WATERS

Among the festivals of Southern China none is more popular than the Propitiation of the Gods of the Waters, which takes place during the spring and autumn in villages and cities bordering on the Chu Kiang estuary and the wild ocean banks of the Southern Sea; for these cities and towns have their boats with fathers, husbands and sons scattered over many waters and depend for their sustenance as well as life upon the mercy of the Gods of the Deep.

Contrary to most festivals, this is a festivity of the night. Besides calls, feasting, and the usual merriment of such occasions, it is marked by the procession of the Dragon and an illumination of lanterns.

The Dragon, which is taken through the streets on this night, symbolises the Monarch of the Deep, and is from fifty to a hundred and fifty feet long. This monster, made of silk and covered with glittering scales of gilt is carried by men concealed within it. During the procession it goes through all of the evolutions of its kind; coiling, wriggling, creeping, gliding; every so often darting out its monstrous glaring head after a huge sea-pearl frisked teasingly in front of it. It draws up in rolls, moves in long silken undulations, squirms, twists, lolls, sometimes springing at the spectators. Preceding and following the Dragon are carried enormous models of fish: sharks, perch, whales, pompano, sea-eels, an endless number; gorgeous, gleaming, shaking in the sea of the night their fins and tails of fire.

But what is best in this Feast of the Night are its lanterns; nowhere are people so skilful in making these dainty ornaments of darkness as are the men of this land. Their variety of form, colouring, elegant carving and gilding exceed description; while the strange but delightful taste, the infinite pains and ingenuity that are exercised in their construction are beyond comparison. They are made from paper, silk, horn, glass, cloth, bamboo, and raffia. Their variety of shapes and decorations are without end; round, square, melon-shaped, gourd-shaped, melons squared, gourds squared, pentagoned, hexagoned, octagoned and all the other goneds; birds, beasts, official fans and umbrellas, flowers, fish, miniature pagodas, phœnixes, unicorns, and turtles; all the creatures of heaven and earth, of mythology and man’s creation, coloured, blazoned, gilded, tasselled, charactered, swaying and quivering. Such are the lights that swing in the night winds of the spring and autumn.

Some lanterns are no larger than goose eggs; some are like magnificent chandeliers, twenty feet in diameter, while others, as the Tsao-ma Kong, are even more elaborate.

The ingenuity exercised in the construction of this latter kind is almost incomprehensible. The inanimate lives. Currents of hot air generated by lights set innumerable figures in motion; vessels spread their sails and move slowly or rapidly over undulating seas; fields are ploughed by water-oxen and rice-planted; great concourses of people move by and horses race along with chariots; armies manœuvre and retreat; kings and princes with their retinues come and go; there are dances and theatrical performances, comedies and tragedies, while innumerable other scenes of life pass before the bewildered sight as transient and fleeting as life itself—vanishing when the candle sputters and goes out.

The day of the Propitiation of the Gods of the Waters came at last, though youths, jugglers, thieves, gamins, a priest, a wife, and in fact a whole city had waited impatiently, almost angrily, for its coming. The morning of this autumn day dragged tediously along; noon came and the hours succeeding grew more expectant and breathless. Other than the occasional firing of a cracker and the whoop of urchins, the afternoon had remained silent. But as evening progressed merry sounds increased; jugglers, mountebanks and actors amused the crowds in every available space; gongs were beaten, music played and as darkness settled over the city lanterns began to glimmer from every projection, from ridge-poles, balconies and carved fantastic eaves. Windows oval, square, and oblong glowed with brilliancy, while fronts of houses, whimsically carved and emblazoned with signs of lacquer and gold, were ablaze with profusion of lanterns. In the throngs moving hither and thither each possessed some kind of a light; a silken, tasselled, emblazoned lantern, a shimmer of horn or flare of torch.

During the first hours of darkness the uproar of music, gongs, brat-whoops and crackers was incessant, but eventually, as the lanterns began to flicker and go out, the roar grew less and less.

The park of Tai Lin rested in this sea of light and storm-din an island of solitude; dark, peaceful, lit only by the stars and the glimmer of surrounding lights, noised only by the roar without, and by the music of waters gurgling in their pools and rivulets, tumbling over rocks and tiny precipices; murmuring, soothing, slumbering.

Out into this solitude the wife crept during the second hour after darkness. She left the palace from a western court, known as the Court of Sunset. Turning to her right she skirted along the west granite terrace that overhung the lotus pond. Along this she hastened until she came to the steps leading down upon the lawn. Then she stopped, turned back and with her little hands clasped upon her bosom, gazed intently at the home she intended leaving forever. Trembling she went down from the terrace and crossed the lawn overspread with great banians and wutung trees. As she moved cautiously, hesitatingly along under their shadows every voice of night conspired to startle her; deer coming from out of their covert, a bird-sigh, the night-wind’s swish or a leaf falling at her feet caused her to shrink back or brought a smothered cry from her lips. It was a stealth full of fear to her, but she went bravely on though trembling, shuddering, sometimes ceasing to breathe. She came to the miniature hills on the west and hastened through them, past pagodas scattered on all sides; pagodas that clung to the edge of precipices and overhung her path like impending traps; others loomed up suddenly before her in the darkness of little gorges, while some as gigantic beasts watched her from clumps of trees. When she passed through the bamboo groves beyond the fluttering of startled birds caused her to fly with fear over their gravelled paths. From the bamboo groves she followed a little rivulet agurgle under an avenue of swishing willows and whenever a fish splashed in the waters she clung to the willows, trembling and uncertain. At the source of the stream in the miniature mountains of rock she turned to her left across a grassy starlit meadow, where the noise of revelry sounded plainly upon the night air. West of this meadow rose blackly before her the forest hiding the western wall. Peering into the forbidding shadows of its pines she hesitated, looked over the meadow so bright under the starlight and glimmer of surrounding sea of lanterns, then breathless, with an heavy hand upon her shoulder, she entered its gloomy precincts.

The wall surrounding the park on all sides was some twelve feet high, the top strewn with splintered glass imbedded in cement. The bottom being about three feet in thickness, caused the small iron-postern recessed close to the ground to be hardly noticeable even in daytime. So when the wife reached the wall and not coming directly upon the postern she did not know which way to turn. Groping along toward the southern end she went away from it, and when she crept back to where she left the wood, her breath came in little gasps. When she stopped she trembled so that she could scarcely stand.

Suddenly her hand went into a recess—it was the postern—not far from the wall’s north end. Taking a key from a purse hanging to her girdle she inserted it and then—sank down upon the ground and cried. She sobbed, shuddered and laughed; she smiled and cried at the same time. One listening could not have told whether it was laughter crying, or sobs laughing. There was no bitterness in her tears, no joy in her mirth. If asked, she could not have told whether she were gay or sad; whether she thought of the man waiting, waiting, restlessly just beyond the wall or an old man slumbering happily in the palace behind her. Finally she got up, turned the key, shoved open the postern, then sat down upon the threshold and should have cried again had not the Breton, waiting since the beginning of darkness nearby the gate, came and touched her shyly upon the shoulder. She looked up and in an instant her face was illumined with radiant smiles; the world around her with all of its terrors and dangers was now unseen, unheard. Reaching up her hand she rested it timidly upon his arm; looking up into his face she laughed, gently, doubtfully, yet reassuringly.

A short way down the street a sedan waited, and thither the Breton led her. The bearers, lifting the chair lightly on their shoulders, started off, the Breton on one side, the man Tsang on the other. They moved uncertainly through the narrow tortuous streets, some black and empty and along these they hastened. Others ablaze with lights were filled with slow-moving crowds and deafened by all the noises of this night and along these they moved with difficulty. Not far from the Magistracy of Kwanghoi they came to a street half-dim with flickering lanterns and in which were but few pedestrians. Being half-lighted and yet deserted gave the bearers an opportunity to increase their speed to the utmost, and even in passing right-angled streets they did not alter their gait.

Suddenly an official green-sedan followed by a retinue turned the corner. The men that should have preceded and announced its approach had, owing to the density of the crowds in an adjoining street, been forced back to its side. And in the collision, which was unavoidable, owing to the speed of the wife’s bearers, the green-sedan was overthrown, the head of its occupant striking the pavement through the side window.

Hardly a moment elapsed before the two sedans, their bearers and retinues were surrounded by a crowd of men and of boys. This crowd, deciphering the official name on the tablets borne by members of his retinue, at once began their abuse.

It was a wild scene. Around the sedan and official, who sat dazed on the pavement—a bundle of red satin and gold—huddled his frightened retinue with torches and trembling lanterns, while about them laughed and yelped and glowered this crowd of the night.

“Is it a man or a woman?” chirped an imp.

“It is a general!”

“What! He looks like a midwife.”

Everybody now began, heeding no one, listening to no one, but pouring forth that abuse that is heaped by all people upon masters cowed before the terror of numbers.

A Chinese mob is peculiar, though they are innocent of the fact. Just what it is going to do is uncertain; like sea-waves, it depends upon the way some little gust blows. Truculent, docile, smiling, sombre, gay, and destructive—such are they in almost as many minutes. At once childishly curious, peering, chattering, laughing; then taciturn, gloomy, defiant and over whom broods a scowl that is terrible. They never know just what is coming, whether it will be laughter or annihilation. They delight in this uncertainty and their victims cringe before it.

“I don’t believe it is a he.”

“What! don’t you see the Golden Lion on his breast?”

“Beasts often mount the breasts of women.”

“Do you know,” howled a voice authoritatively, “that more generals are killed by falling from sedans than in battle?”

“They are so fat.”

“And so soft.”

“Whoever noticed what things follow them?”

“Leeches!”

“Lice!”

“Sores!”

“Vermin!”

“Toads!”

“Offal!”

“Somebody help the woman-general up.”

“Dust his skirts.”

“Wipe off the spit.”

The officer rose with difficulty, purple, speechless. His retinue fell back terror-stricken, and the bearers of the wife’s sedan skipped nimbly away. His rage, however, only gave new impetus to the crowd’s joy. They yelped, groaned, sighed and begged piteously for someone to help the officer get mad.

“It is a known fact,” rose a howl above the rest, “that a general can never get in a rage.”

“Poke him!”

“Punch him!”

The crowd was getting dangerous. A silence fell upon it.

“Get the general his fan; he is going now.”

The danger passed and once more the crowd was full of amused wonder as the official glaring around, suddenly pounces upon the wife’s sedan. Encouraged and jeered on by the crowd’s boisterous hoots, he reached in and grabbed the wife by the arm, but as she rose out of her sedan his hand fell.

The crowd became as still as solitude itself—a silence of swaying lanterns and glare of torch. For a long time in this perfect stillness the mob looked breathlessly upon her, then there went over them a soft whispering sound that might have been a sigh. At this sound the officer, who had fallen back astonished, muttered so that those around him heard:

“Tai Lin’s wife.”

As he spoke she tossed her head disdainfully, reaching out her hand to the Breton, who stood bewildered beside her, taking hold of his arm and with calm, scornful hauteur shining in her eyes, she walked slowly past the officer. The mob fell back as she approached, leaving a lane through their centre, and at the end of this terrible passage of lights and faces Tsang joined them. Seizing the arm of the Breton he whispered:

“Hurry!”

A short distance down the street he led them into a doorway, passed up some steps along a black corridor; down other steps, into a court, across this through another passage, thence out into a street. As they gained this thoroughfare they heard a dull cry:

“A priest has stolen Tai Lin’s wife!”

“Kill him!”

“Close the gates!”

“We must run,” cried Tsang.

The Breton looked down at the wife and said, softly:

“I will carry you.”

Smilingly as a child she lifted her hands to him and he picked her up in his arms.

The two men ran with all their speed along this black alley of a street until Tsang suddenly disappeared through a doorway. The flight now lay through corridors like tunnels and courts like abysses. In the neighbouring streets they could hear dully the wild cries of their pursuers, mingled with crash of gongs, cymbals, blare of music and explosion of crackers. In leaving one labyrinth of corridors, tunnels, stairs, and pits they crossed narrow streets or continued along them for a short distance only again to disappear into depths, which would have been appalling had they not been welcome.

These by-streets that they crossed were mostly dark; even in those where lanterns swayed most of the lights had flickered or gone out. So that their flight was as through some strange and terrible cavern; strange because it consisted of doorways, passages, courts, cellars, stairs, and streets; brick, stone, mud, and sky; terrible because all of this had been dug out and piled up by man, the same wild ferocious beast who now hunted and bayed in the distance.

Fortunately the man Tsang had also spent his gamin days in this same monstrous labyrinth and he knew all of its intricacies, its short cuts and secrets, its pits, stinks, and tunnels.

“We may reach the Gate of Virtue before it closes—if Fate wills it,” he mumbled nonchalantly. “If not——” He did not finish. As they started to emerge from a doorway he stopped them.

“The Gate is near here. I will see if it is closed.”

The Breton did not reply nor move out of the doorway. The wife snuggled happily on his shoulder. Neither seemed to know that they were out in the night, pursued with hardly a chance to escape; to-night darkness and joy; to-morrow light and death.

The wild echoes of the chase drew nearer.

Sometimes the wife lifted her head slightly, only to nestle more tightly upon his shoulder, more closely against his neck. Had someone said, “Where are you?” the Breton could not have answered. And had Tsang not returned they would have remained under the doorway until awakened by the elbowing mobs of day.

“The Gate is closed. Such is Fate,” said a voice coming unconcernedly out of the darkness. “They are all closed,” the voice continues serenely. “Thus Fate lights. Who can escape? Who can escape? In a little while it will all be over. Hiyah!” and Tsang sat down on the threshold.

The smile did not go away from the Breton’s lips: the wife did not cease to nestle contentedly upon his shoulder.

Suddenly Tsang sprang to his feet, gave a few dramatic cavorts, and then shaking the Breton vigorously by the arm, cries:

“They will never think of the Water-gate. Such is Fate—come!”

Unhesitatingly the Breton followed, carrying his precious burden. Again their flight skirted a maze of lanterns still glowing in the principal streets, then stumbled along through bewildering labyrinths of blackness; beholding for an instant a starry thread of sky, then plunging underground.

They emerged upon a canal, which at their feet looked like an abyss, while in other parts it reflected charmingly the gay lanterns swaying from slipper boats; swinging, dangling rhythmically to the sinuous movements of the gondoliers.

“Sampan!” called Tsang in a matter-of-fact voice.

“Hi! Hi!” shouted several simultaneously.

“Three people to the Gardens.”

“That is a long way,” they commented.

“I could walk there in twenty minutes if it were land.”

“But it isn’t land,” they joyfully responded.

“How much?” he continued unconcernedly.

“I am busy and ought not to stop and waste my time talking,” answered one.

“I have an all night engagement,” added another.

“I was just going to moor my boat,” interjected a third, “but since you are in difficulty, I will stop and give you some advice.”

“How much?” repeated Tsang.

“This is our Great Feast night,” remarked one.

“That is so,” chimed in the other two.

From the distance came the inarticulate baying of men.

“How much?” reiterated Tsang wearily.

“Do you hear him ask how much?” cried one turning surprisedly to the others.

“How strange!” they commented.

“It was eight mace, but having a knowledge of benevolence, we have reduced it to seven mace three candareens,” added the first speaker.

“Do you think I am a fool or a hill-man?” demanded Tsang with scorn.

“How will you go to the Gardens?” they chorused derisively.

“We will not go,” he answered, moving back from the bank.

“I will be benevolent,” cried one, suddenly moving his boat past the others, “and take you for six mace, four——”

“Six mace, three candareens.”

“Six mace, two——” bellowed the third, trying to get his boat nearer.

Tsang paid no attention to them and the price was howled lower and lower.

“Five mace,” yelped the first, and without a word Tsang jumped into his boat. The Breton and the wife sat down in the middle of the sampan and drew over them the curved bamboo roof. As the boat shot out into the canal it was followed by a vituperative volley from the others.

Tsang stood by the boatman urging him on.

“There is a riot,” he whispered, “and all the gates have been closed except the Water-gate. But don’t think we are going to pay just to go there. Only when we——”

From distant streets came cries:

“Down with the Water-gate! Down with the Water-gate!”

The Breton and the wife sat in the darkness under the bamboo canopy. Neither had spoken nor ceased to smile. Never in their lives had they thought of anything so happy as this night journey.

The Water-gate loomed up before Tsang and the boatman; they could see the lanterns swaying on the eaves of its guardhouse. Plainly now came the cries:

“Down with the Water-gate!”

The pursuers were gaining.

Strenuously the boatman bent to his long oar; his breath came in hoarse gasps and the perspiration running from his face shone in the lantern’s light. The sinews in his arms and bared back swelled, knotted, quivered, strained. Tsang stood by reiterating that if he did not get through the gate he would not get to the Gardens, and how then would it be possible to get the five mace? So the boatman swayed back and forth the great oar with all his strength, and the sampan, trembling, shot sinuously forward.

The baying of men drew nearer, and as they darted under the bridge which spanned the canal in front of the Water-gate, they saw the guards running out of neighbouring towers and mount the ramparts.

The cavernous exit loomed before them. And as the quivering boat darted under the tower, they heard above them commands, cries, and the creaking of chains.

From a boat by night this exit of the Water-gate looks like a monstrous maw, and the portcullis outlined by the lights of the suburbs appear as its jagged, gigantic teeth. And these teeth Tsang and the boatman saw move above them and heard their grind. But under the bamboo canopy there were still smiles, smiles by no means lost in the blackness. These two were blissful under the very crunch of Fate’s teeth. As the boat glided forward under the impulse of its own momentum they were unconscious of a great splash just behind them and cries that the gate was down.

The boatman, panting, rested momentarily on his oar, then without a word continued along the dark, winding course until the river was reached. Here was a mass of boats, which seemed limitless, an interminable tangle and barrier. But as the sampan approached the gondolier shouted out his strange cries and a narrow lane parted to let his boat creep through, while unconcernedly he accepted the railing and scolding of the old boatwomen.

The sampan pushed out into the current of the great river and the gondolier turned its bow upstream.

“Cross over to the south bank,” commanded Tsang.

“The Gardens are on the north bank.”

“I have changed my mind. I wish to go to a friend’s boat.”

So they crossed the river, and the boatman, following Tsang’s directions, brought up beside a fair-sized river craft anchored in the outer ring of boats that lined the bank.

No sooner has the Breton and the wife seated themselves under the bamboo in their new boat, still smiling and silent, than Tsang raised the mat-sail and under the impetus of the river wind, their vessel moved along the westward against the Chu Kiang’s rolling, gloomy flood.

The river upon this night presented an appearance fantastic yet beautiful. Its population seemed greater than that of the city, for its whole surface was covered by a myriad of boats; some built as birds, some as fishes; others as houses richly ornamented and resplendent with carved and gilded work. On all of these strange craft moving restlessly about were hung unnumbered lanterns. As they passed in and out amongst each other these brilliant lights of every colour, fancy and shape, swaying, quivering, dancing, turned night’s gloom—which broods so cumbrously upon this river—into a fluttering, iridescent day, while from flower-boats, bazaars, and gondolas came incessant strains of music, the song and laughter of women.

Suddenly over the laughter of this night there fell upon the ears of Tsang, as he sat on the high poop with the tiller in his hand, a dull roar, a baying of multitudes that came from the city.

“Fate alone knows,” he muttered.

A turn southward and the lights vanished: in a short time the sounds of revelry and that growl from the city were heard no more. About, all was darkness other than here and there a light on the banks and stars shining kindly overhead. No voice was heard but the monologue of the river and occasionally the nasal song of a river-man whose wild and melancholy tones echoed from bank to bank.

Thus they journeyed on to the Grotto of the Sleepless Dragon.