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 star-ward 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 vari-colored 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—a 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 in 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, right 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'm 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, for it meant that I am to be safe in this campaign. The puny brute had not strength enough to break an Anglo-Saxon arm—I’m no giant—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 Palien-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 to-day 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 towards 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 have 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 pig-tail tied to a thick wire twice twisted, stands a miserable Chinese cooly. An hour ago I saw him on his knees across the track, held down by four men, while the