Chapter III: Book I: Afield (3)

THE night of the third of September, and John Morning is off for the big adventure. Between the hills, the roads are a-stream.... All day he had watched different phases of the retreat. Fighting back in the city; fighting here and there along the staggering, burdened, cruelly-punished line; a sudden breaking-out of fighting in a dozen places like hidden fires; rain and wounded and seas of mud; the gray intolerable misery of it all; the sick and the dead--Morning was glutted with the colossal derangement. And they called it an orderly retreat.

He was riding the sorrel Eve out of the zone of war. The battle was behind him now, and he breathed the world again. He had something to tell. Liaoyang was in his brain. He was off for the ships that sail. A month--America--the great story.... He felt the manuscript against him. It was in a Chinese belt, with money for the passage home, tight against his body, a hundred thousand words done on Chinese parchment and wrapped in oil-skin. The book of Liaoyang--he had earned it. He had written it against the warping cynicism of Duke Fallows. On the ship he could reshape and renew it all into a master-picture.

It had been easier than he thought to break away from Fallows, his friend. The latter was whelmed in the soul of the Ploughman. A big story, of course, as Fallows saw it--but there were scores of big stories. It would ruin it to let an anarchist tell it. Suppose officers in general did stop to listen to troops sneaking off the field?

Duke had given him a letter, and a story for the _Western States_. The first was not to be read until he was at sea out from Japan. When Morning spoke of the money he owed, the other had put the thought away. Sometime he would call for it if he needed it; it was a trifle anyway.... It hadn’t been a trifle. It had meant everything.

Morning was glad to breathe himself again. Yet there was an ache in his heart for Duke Fallows, now off for Europe the western way. He, Morning, had not done his part. He hadn’t given as he had taken; had not kept close to Duke Fallows at the last. There was a big score that money could never settle. Soundly glad to be alone, but in the very gladness the picture of Duke Fallows returned--lying on his back, in bunks and berths and beds, staring up at the ceiling, accentuating his own failures to bring out the hopeful and valorous parts of his friend. It was always such a picture to Morning, when Fallows came to mind--staring, dreaming, looking up from his back. It had seemed sometimes as if he were trying to make of his friend all that he had failed to be.... Yet the Duke Fallows of the last twenty-four hours, wild, dithyrambic--had been too much.... Again and again, irked and heavy with his own limitations, Morning’s brain had seized upon the weakness of the other, to condone his own slowness of understanding.... It may have been Eve, and her relation to the Fallows revelation, or it may have been putting hideous militarism behind, that made John Morning think of Women now as he rode, and a little differently from ever before.... Certain laughing sentences of Duke Fallows came back to him presently, with a point he seemed to have missed when they were uttered:

“We have our devils, John. You have ambition; Lowenkampf has drink; Mergenthaler has slaughter.... You will love a woman; you already drink too readily, but Ambition will stand in your house and fight from room to room at the last--and over the premises to the last ditch. He’s a grand devil--is Ambition.... My devil, John? Well, it isn’t the big-jawed male who loves a woman as she dreams to be loved. It’s the man with a touch of women in him--just enough to begin upon her mystery.... When I hear a certain woman’s voice, or see a certain passing figure--something old, very old and wise, stirs within, seems to stir and thrill with eternal life. And, John, it isn’t low--the thought. I’d tell you if it were. It isn’t low. It’s as regal as Mother Nature in a valley, on a long afternoon. It isn’t that I want to hurt her; it isn’t that I want something she has. Rather, I want all she has! I want her mind; I want her soul; I want her full animations. I want to make her yield and give; I want to feel her battle with herself, not to yield and give.... Oh, the flesh is nothing. It is the cheapest thing in the world--but her giving, her yielding--it’s like an ocean tide. It breaks every bond; it laughs at every law. Power seems to rush into a woman when she yields! That’s the conquest of my heart--to feel that power.... All devils are young compared to that in a man’s heart--all but one, and that is the passion to hold spiritual dominion over other men.”

Morning’s mind had fallen into the habit of allowing much for the other’s sayings--of accepting much as mere facility.... Thus he thought as he traveled in the rain, Eve’s swift, springy trot a stimulus to deep thinking; and always there was a bigger and finer John Morning shadowing him, fathoming his smallnesses, wondering at his puny rebellions and vain desires. It was in this fairer John Morning, so tragically unexpressed during the past few months, that the pang lived--the pang of parting from his friend.

Morning was terrific physically. The thing he was now doing was as spectacular a bit of newspaper service as ever correspondent undertook in Asia; and yet, to John Morning the high light of achievement fell upon the manuscript, not upon the action. It had not occurred to him to be afraid. If he could get across the ninety miles to Koupangtse--through the _Hun huises_, through the Japanese scouting cavalry, across two large and many smaller yellow rivers--and reach the railroad, he would quickly get a ship for Japan from Tientsin or Tongu--and from Japan--_home_.... He was doing it for himself--passionately and with no sense of splendor.

Fallows had been so sure of his friend’s physical courage, that he made no point of it, in the expression of attachment.... He had called it vision at first, this thing that had drawn him to John Morning--a touch of the poet, a touch of the feminine--others might have called it. No matter the name, he had seen it, as all artists of the expression of the inner life recognize it in one another; and Fallows knew well that where the courage of the soldier ends, the courage of the visionary begins.

Morning was a trifle peculiar, however. Unless it sank utterly, he stuck to a ship, until the horizon revealed another sail.

He had come up through the dark. The world had grounded him deeply in illusion. Most brilliant of promises--even Fallows had not seen him that first day in too bright a dawn--but he learned hard. And his had been close fighting--such desperate fighting that one does not hear voices, and one is too deep in the ruck to see the open distance.... Much as he had been alone--the world had invariably shattered his silences. Always he had worked--worked, worked furiously, angrily, for himself.... He was taught so. The world had caught him as a child in his brief, pitiful tenderness. The world was his Eli. As from sleep, he had heard Reality calling. He had risen to answer, but the false Eli had spoken--an Eli that did not teach him truly to listen, nor to say, when he heard the Voice another time--“Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.”

14

THE Taitse, of large and ancient establishment, runs westward from Liaoyang for twenty-five miles, and in a well-earned bed, portions of which are worn in the rock. Morning rode along the north bank, thus avoiding altogether a crossing of the Taitse, since his journey continued westward from the point where the river took its southward bend. From thence it paralleled the Hun in a race to join the Liao. The main stem of the latter was beyond the Hun, and these two arteries of Asia broke Morning’s trail. Fording streams of such magnitude was out of the question, and there was a strong chance of an encounter with the _Hun huises_ at the ferries....

Rain, and the sorrel’s round hoofs sucked sharply in the clay. She had no shoes to lose in these drawing vacuums. The scent of her came up warm and good to the horse-lover. Alone on a road, she had always been manageable, hating crowds and noise--soldiers, Chinese, and accoutrements. Perhaps, this was merely a biding of time. Eve had a fine sense of keeping a strange road. This was not usual, although a horse travels a familiar road in the darkness better than a man. These two worked well together.

By map the distance from Liaoyang to Koupangtse was seventy miles. Morning counted upon ninety, at least. The Manchurian roads are old and odd as the Oriental mind.... He passed the southward bend of the big river, and at daybreak reached Chiensen, ten miles beyond, on the Hun.

Chiensen, unavoidable on account of the ferry, was a danger-point. Japanese cavalry, it was reported, frequently lit there, and the _Hun huises_ (Chinese river-pirates and thieves in general, whom Alexieff designated well as “the scourge of Manchuria”) were at base in this village.... In the gray he found junks, a flat tow and landing.

You never know what Chinese John is going to do. If you have but little ground of language between you, he will take his own way, on the pretext of misunderstanding. Morning’s idea was to get across quickly, without arousing the river-front. He awoke the ferryman, placing three silver taels in his hand. (He carried silver, enough native currency to get him to Japan, his passport, and the two large envelopes Duke Fallows had given him, in the hip-pockets of his riding breeches.) The ferryman had no thought of making the first crossing without tea. Morning labored with him, and with seeming effect for a moment, but the other fell suddenly from grace and aroused his family. He was not delicate about it. Morning resigned himself to the delay, and was firmly persuading Eve to be moderate, as she drank from the river’s edge, when Chinese John suddenly aroused the river population. Standing well out on the tow-flat, he trumpeted at some comrade of the night before, apparently no less than a hundred yards up the river. There were sleepy answers from many junks within range of the voice. It was the one hateful thing to John Morning--yet to rough it with the ferryman for his point of view would be the only thing worse.

The landing was rickety; its jointure with the tow-boat imperfect. The American took off his coat, tossed it over the sorrel’s head, tying the sleeves under her throat. She stiffened in rebellion, but as the darkness was as yet little broken by the day, she decided to accept the situation. Morning felt her growing reluctance, however, as she traversed the creaking, springy boards. The crevasse between the landing and the craft was bridged; and the latter, grounded on the shore-side, did not give. The mare stood in the center of the tow, sweating and tense.

Numerous Chinese were now abroad--eager, even insistent, to help. Their voices stirred the mare to her old red-eyed insanity. Morning could hold himself no longer. Once or twice before in his life this hard, bright light had come to his brain. Though the exterior light was imperfect, the ferryman saw the fingers close upon the butt of the gun, and something of the American’s look. He dropped his tea, sprang to the junk and pulled up the bamboo-sail. This was used to hold the tow against the current.

Two natives in the flat-boat stood ready with poles. And now the ferryman spoke in a surprised and disappointed way as he toiled in front. He seemed ready to burst into tears; and the two nearer Morning grunted in majors and minors, according to temperament. The American considered that it might all be innocent, although the voices were many from the town-front. Poling began; the tow drew off from the landing. Clear from the grounding of the shore, the craft sank windily to its balance in the stream.

This was too much for Eve. Her devil was in the empty saddle. She leaped up pawing. The two Chinese at the poles dived over side abruptly. Water splashed Eve’s flanks, and she veered about on her hind feet--blinded and striking the air in front. The wobble of the tow now finished her frenzy--and back she went into the stream. The saddle saved her spine from a gash on the edge of the tow. Morning had this thought when Eve arose; that he need fear no treachery from the Chinese; and this as she fell--a queer, cool, laughing thought--that after such a fall she would never walk like a man again.

He had been forced to drop the bridle, but caught it luckily with one of the poles as she came up struggling. He beckoned the ferryman forward, and Eve, swimming and fighting, was towed across. To Morning it was like one of his adventures back in the days of the race-horse shipping.

Eve struck the opposite bank--half-strangled from her struggle and the blind. The day had come. The nameless little town on this side of the Hun was out to meet him. Had he brought a Korean tiger by a string, however, he could not have enjoyed more space--as the mare climbed from the stream. He talked to her and unbound her eyes. Red and deeply baleful they were. She shook her head and parted her jaws. The circle of natives widened. Morning straightened the saddle and patted Eve’s neck softly, talking modestly of her exploit.... Natives were now hailing from mid-stream, so he leaped into the sticky saddle and guided the mare out to the main road leading to Tawan on the Liao.... Queerly enough, just at this instant, he remembered the hands and the lips of the ferryman--a leper.

Ten miles on the map--he could count thirteen by the road--and then the Liao crossing.... The mare pounded on until they came to a wild hollow, rock-strewn, among deserted hills. Morning drew up, cooled his mount and fed the soaked grain strapped to the saddle since the night before. Eve was not too cross to eat--nor too tired. She lifted her head often and drew in the air with the sound of a bubble-pipe.... Just now Morning noted a wrinkle in his saddle blanket. Hot with dread, he loosed the girth.

He looked around in terror lest anyone see his own shame and fear. He had put the saddle on in the dark, but passed his hand between her back and the cloth. Long ago a trainer had whipped him for a bad bit of saddling; even at the time he had felt the whipping deserved. He lifted the saddle. A pink scalded mouth the size of a twenty-five-cent piece was there.... God, if he could only be whipped now. She was sensitive as satin; it was only a little wrinkle of the rain-soaked blanket.... His voice whimpered as he spoke to her.

Only a horseman could have suffered so. He washed the rub, packed soft lint from a Russian first-aid bandage about to ease the pressure; and then, since the rain had stopped again, he rubbed her dry and walked at her head for hours, despairing at last of the town named Tawan. The Liao was visible before the village itself. Morning shook with fatigue. He had to gain the saddle for the possible need of swift action, but the wound beneath never left his mind. It uncentered his self-confidence--a force badly needed now.

And this was the Liao--the last big river, roughly half-way. The end of the war-zone, it was, too, but the bright point of peril from _Hun huises_.... Morning saw the thin masts of the river junks over the bowl of the hill, their tribute flags flying.... To pass was the day’s work, to make the ferry with Eve. There was too much misery and contrition in his heart for him to handle her roughly. The blind could not be used again. She would connect that with the back-fall into the Hun. The town was full of voices.

15

CHINESE were gathering. Morning went about his business as if all were well, but nothing was good to him about the increase of these hard, quick-handed men. They were almost like Japanese. With the tail of his eye, he saw shirt signals across the river. The main junk fleet was opposite. Trouble--he knew it. The hard, bright light was in his brain.

In the gathering of the natives, Eve was roused afresh. His only way was to try her without the blind. If she showed fight, he meant to mount quickly and ride back through the crowd for one of the lower-town crossings.

Without looking back, he led the way to the landing, holding just the weight of the bridle-rein. His arm gave with her every hesitation. To his amazement she consented to try. The tow-craft was larger here--enough for a bullock-pair and cart--and better fitted to the landing. Step by step she went with him to her place.

Now Morning saw that in using the blind the first time he had done her another injury. She would not have gone back into the Hun but for that. She awed him. Something Fallows had said recurred--about her being unconquerable, different every day. Also Fallows had said, “She will kill you at the last....”

He drove back the Chinese, all but two pole-men, that would have gathered on the tow. This was quietly done, but his inflexibility was felt. Many signals were sent across, as the tow receded from the shore, and numbers increased on the opposite bank.

Eve, breathing audibly, swung forward and back with the craft, as it gave to the river. The towing junk, as in the Hun, held the other against the current; the rest was poling and paddling.... The junk itself slipped out of the way as the tow was warped toward the landing. Other junks were stealing in.... Morning already had paid. He felt the girth of the saddle, fingered the bridle, tightened his belt. A warm, gray day, but he was spent and gaunt and cold. Eve was hushed--mulling her bit softly, trembling with hatred for the Chinese.

The road ascended from the river, through a narrow gorge with rocky walls. The river-men were woven across the way. While the tow was yet fifteen feet from the landing, Morning gained the saddle. The ferry-man gestured frantically that this had never been done before; that a man’s beast properly should be led across. Morning laughed, tightened his knees, and at an early instant loosened the bridle-rein, for the mare to jump. The heavy tow shot back as she cleared the fissure of stream.

Morning was now caught in the blur of events. The Chinese did not give way for the mare, as she trotted across the boards to the rocky shore. Up she went striking. Again he had not known Eve. The back-dive into the Hun had not cured her. She would walk like a man and pitch back into Hell--and do it again.... Someone knifed her from the side and she toppled.

The fall was swift and terrible, for the trail sloped behind. Morning’s instinct was truer than his brain, but there was no choice of way to jump. He could not push the mare from him completely to avoid the cliff. He was half-stunned against the wall, and not clear from the struggle of her fall. The brain is never able to report this instant afterward, even though consciousness is not lost. He was struck, trampled; he felt the cold of the rock against his breast, and the burn of a knife.

The Chinese struck at him as he rose. The mare was up, facing him, but dragging him upward, as a dog with a bone. His left hand found the pistol. He cleared the Chinese from him, emptying the chambers.... Eve let him come to her. He must have gained the saddle as she swung around in the narrow gorge to begin her run. The wind rushed coldly across his breast and abdomen. His shirt had been cut and pulled free. It was covered with blood. He tried to hold the mare, but either his strength was gone or she was past feeling the bit. It was her hour. All Morning could do was to keep the road.

He was all but knocked out. He had mounted as a fighter gets up under the count--and fights on without exactly knowing. The mare was running head down. He tried his strength again. The reins were rigid; she had the bit and meant to end the game.... He loved her wild heart; mourned for her; called her name; told her of wrongs he had done. Again and again, the light went from him; sometimes he drooped forward to her thin, short mane, and clung there, but the heat of her made him ill. They came into hills, passed tiny villages. It was all strange and terrible--a hurtling from high heaven.... Eve was like a furnace....

And now she was weaving on the road--running drunkenly, unless his eyes betrayed.... The rushing wind was cold upon his breast. His coat was gone; his shirt had been cut. He tried to pull the blood-soaked ends together. At this moment the blow fell.

These Chinese had been quick-handed, and they knew where to search for a man’s goods. He was coldly sane in an instant, for the rending of his whole nature; then came the quick zeal for death--the intolerableness of living an instant. The wallet--the big story--some hundreds of tales in paper! It was the passing of these from next his body that had left him cold.... Fury must have come to his arms. The mare lifted her head under his sudden attack.

Yes, he could manage her now. The bloody mouth and the blind-mad head came up to him--her front legs giving like a colt’s. Down they went together. Morning took his fall limply, with something of supremely organized indifference, and turned in the mud to the mare.

She was dead. The gray of pearl was in her eyes where red life had been.... No, she raised herself forward, seemed to be searching for him, her muzzle sickly relaxed. She could not stir behind. Holding there for a second--John Morning forgot the big story.

Eve fell again. He crawled to her--tried to lift her head. It was heavy as a sheet-anchor to his arms.... Her heart had broken. She had died on her feet--the last rising was but a galvanism.... He looked up into the gray sky where the clouds stirred sleepily. He wanted to ask something from something there.... He could not think of what he wanted.... Oh, yes, his book of Liaoyang.

And now his eye roved over the mare.... Her hind legs were sheeted with fresh blood and clotted with dry.... Desperately he craned about to see further. Entrails were protruding from a knife wound. The inner tissues were not cut, but the opened gash had let them sag horribly. She had run from Tawan with that wound.... He had worn her to the quick in night; blinded her for the Hun crossing, when she would have done nobly with eyes uncovered.... He had not been able to keep her from killing herself.... John Morning, the horseman.... He had left a gaping wound in the spirit of Duke Fallows.... All that he had done was failure and loss; all that he had planned so passionately, so brutally, indeed, that the needs and the offerings of others had not reached his heart, because of the iron self-purpose weighed there.

Luban, Lowenkampf, Mergenthaler, even the Commander-in-chief, looked strangely in through the darkened windows of his mind. The moral suffocation of the grain-fields surged over him again.... He caught a glimpse of that last moment in the ravine, but not the taking of the wallet.... Was it just a dream that a native leaped forward to grasp his stirrup, and that he leaned down to fire? He seemed to recall the altered brow.

The pictures came too fast. The sky did not change. The something did not answer.... Eve was lying in the mud. She looked darker and huddled. He kissed her face, and as he gained his feet, the thought came queerly that _he_ might be dead, as she was. He held the thought of action to his limbs and made them move.

When he could think more clearly, he scorned the pain and protest of his limbs. He would not be less than Eve. If he were not dead, he would die straight up, and on the road to Koupangtse.

16

THIRTY-SIX hours after Morning left Eve, an English correspondent at Shanhaikwan added the following to a long descriptive letter made up of refugee tales, and the edges and hearsay of the war-zone:

Night of Sept. 5.... An American whose name by passport is John
Morning reached here to-night on the _Chinese Eastern_, having
left Koupangtse this morning. According to his story, he was with the
Russians, now in retreat from Liaoyang, on the night of Sept. 3, only
forty-eight hours from this writing.

Morning was in an unconscious condition upon arrival. His passage
had been fourth-class for the journey, and he was packed among the
coolies and refugees on an open flat-car so crowded that all but the
desperately fatigued had room only to stand. This white man had fallen
to the floor of the car, among the bare feet of the surging Oriental
crowd, beneath their foul garments.

... He was lifted forth from the car by the Chinese--a spectacle
abjectly human, covered with filth; moreover, his body was incredibly
bruised, his left puttee legging torn by a deep knife-wound that began
at the knee, and traversed a distance of eight inches downward--the
whole was gummed and black with blood; another knife-wound in his side
was in an angry condition, and his clothing was stiffened from flow of
it.

A few _taels_ in paper and silver were found upon him; the
passport, an unopened letter addressed to himself; also a manuscript
addressed to a San Francisco paper, and to be delivered by John
Morning. The natives reported that he had reached Koupangtse an hour
before the arrival of the _Chinese Eastern_; had employed a
native to buy him fourth-class passage, paying the native also to
help him aboard. He had collapsed, however, until actually among the
Chinese on the flat-car. He had tasted neither food nor drink during
the long day’s journey, nor in Koupangtse during the wait. The natives
affirm that he crawled part of the distance up to the railway station;
and that there were no English or Americans there.

Upon reaching here, Morning was revived with stimulants, his wounds
bathed and dressed, fresh clothing provided. His extraordinary
vitality and courage indicate that he will overcome the shocks and
exhaustion of a journey hardly paralleled anywhere, if his story be
true. He asserts that he must be on his way to Tientsin to-morrow
morning--but that, of course, is impossible.... He is not in condition
to answer questions, although undoubtedly much is in his dazed and
stricken brain for which the world is at this moment waiting.

In his half-delirium, Morning seems occupied with the loss of a
certain sorrel mare. He also reports the loss of his complete story
of the battle, the preliminary fighting, the generals in character
sketch, the terrain and all, covering a period of four months up to
the moment of General Zarubaieff’s withdrawal from the city proper.
This manuscript, said to contain over a hundred thousand words done on
Chinese parchment, was in a wallet with the writer’s money, and was
cut from him in the struggle on the bank of the Liao, when the wounds
were received. His assailants were doubtless _Hun huises_.

Whatever can be said about the irrational parts of his story, the
young man appears to know the story of the battle from the Russian
standpoint. He brings the peculiar point of view that it was the
millet that defeated the Russians, although the superiority of the
Japanese in _morale_, markmanship, fluidity, is well known, etc.

... Morning lay in a decent room at the Rest House in Shanhaikwan. There seemed an ivory finger in his brain pointing to the sea--to Japan, to the States. So long as he was walking, riding, entrained, all was well enough, and the rest was mere body that had to obey--but when he stopped, the ivory finger grew hot or icy by turns; and as now, he watched in agony for the day and the departure of the train for Tientsin.

He would require help. Below the waist he was excruciating wreckage that for the present would not answer his will.... They were good to him here. The Chinese coolies had been good to him on the open car.... Lowenkampf, Fallows, good to him--so his thoughts ran--the sorrel Eve was his own heart’s mate. He loved her running, dying, striking. She had run until her heart broke. He could not do less. She had run until she was past pain--he must do that--and go on after that.... Was it still in his brain--the great story? Would it clear and write itself--the great story?

That was the question. All was well if he could get Liaoyang out in words. He would do it all over again on the ship. Every day the ship would be carrying him closer to the States. He was still on schedule. He would reach America on the first possible ship after the battle of Liaoyang--possibly, ahead of mails. On the voyage he would re-do the book--twenty days--five thousand words a day. He might do it better. It might come up clean out of the journey, the battle itself and the pictures strengthened, brightened, impregnated with fresh power.... Three weeks--every moment sailing to the States--the first and fastest ship!... The driving devil in his brain would be at rest. The big story would clear, as he began to write. The days of labor at first would change to days of pure instrumentation. He would drive at first--then the task would drive him.... But he must not miss a possible day to Japan--to Nagasaki.... He had not money for the passage to America. At this very moment he could not get out of bed--but these two were mere pups compared to the wolves he had met....

They found him on the floor drawing on his clothes in the morning--an hour before the train. His wounds were bleeding, but he laughed at that.

“You see, I’ve got to make it. You’ve been very kind. I’ll heal on the way--not here. I’ve got the big story. I’ve got to keep moving to think it out. I can’t think here. I’ll get on--thank you.”

And he was on. That night his train stopped for ten minutes at Tongu, the town near the Taku Forts, at the mouth of the Pei-ho.... All day he had considered the chance of getting ship here, without going on to Tientsin, seventy miles up-river. The larger ships lightered their traffic from Tongu; he might catch a steamer sailing to-night for Japan, or at least for Chifu.... It was getting dark.

The face that looked through the barred window at the Englishman in charge of the station at Tongu unsettled the latter’s evening and many evenings afterward.

“Is there a ship from the river-mouth to-night?”

Morning repeated his question, and perceived that the agent had dropped his eyes to the two hands holding the ticket-shelf. Morning’s nails were tight in the wood; he would wobble if he let go.

“Yes, there’s the little _Tungsheng_. She goes off to-night----”

“For Japan?”

“Yes, but she doesn’t carry passengers--that is--unless the Captain gives up his quarters, and he has already done that this trip.”

“Deck passengers----”

“Sure, all carry coolies out of here--best freight we have.”

“Do you sell the tickets?”

“Who’s going?”

“My servant.... I won’t go on to Tientsin if I can get--get him on to-night----”

“The launch and lighter are supposed to be down shortly from Tientsin--that’s all I can say. It’s blowing a bit. She may not clear.”

“She’ll clear if any does?”

“Yes, Himmelhock has taken her out of here worse than this. You’d better decide--I’ve got to go out now. The train’s leaving.”

Seventy miles up the river, he thought,--the wrong way if he stuck to the train. Every mile that ivory finger would torture him. His brain now seemed holding back an avalanche. If he chose falsely, he would tumble down the blackness with the rocks and glaciers.... This Englishman looked a gamester--he might help. Perhaps he wasn’t a corpse.

“I’ll stay,” he said, and the story and all his purpose wobbled and grew black.... He mustn’t forget. He mustn’t fall.... So he stood there holding fast to the ticket-shelf, which he could not feel--held and held, and the train clattered, grew silent, and it was dark.

“Where’s your servant?”

Morning’s lips moved.

“Where is your servant?”

“I am my servant.”

“I can’t give a white man deck passage. It’s not only against the rules--but against reason.”

Morning groped for his arm. “Take me into the light,” he said.

The man obeyed.

“What day is this?”

“Night of September six.”

“I left Liaoyang the night of the third. I rode a good horse to death--along the Taitse, over the Hun and the Liao. I rode through the _Hun huises_ twice. I was all cut up and beaten--the horse went over backward in the Hun, and in the gut on the bank of the Liao.... I was in Liaoyang for the battle. I was there four months waiting for the battle. They took my story--hundred thousand words--the _Hun huises_ did, in the fight on the Liao bank. The horse killed herself running with me ... but I’ve got it all in my head--the story. I’ll get to the States with it before any mail--before any other man. It’s all in my head--the whole Russian-end. I can write it again on the ship to the States in three weeks.... I’ve got to get off to-night. You’re the one to help me.... See these----”

Morning opened his shirt and then started to undo his legging.

“For God’s sake--don’t.... But you’ll die on the deck----”

“No, the only way to kill me would be to wall me up--so I couldn’t keep moving.”

“I’ll go down to the river with you in a few minutes.”

And then he had John Morning sobbing on his shoulder.

17

THE Englishman at Tongu was a small, sallow man, with the face of one who is used to getting the worst of it. Tongu, as a post, was no exception from an outsider’s point of view. Morning saw this face in odd lights during the days that followed. It came to the chamber of images--and always he wanted to break down, and his hands went out for the shoulder.... He remembered a pitching junk in the windy blackness at the mouth of the Pei-ho. (He had seen the low mud-flats of the Taku forts from here in another service.)... The _Tungsheng_ looked little--not much bigger than the junk, and she was wooden. There was chill and a slap of rain in the blackness.

“Hul-lo, who is dere?” The slow, juicy voice came from the door of the pilot-house.

“Endicott. I’ve got a deck passenger----”

“Huh--dere dick as meggots alretty----”

“This is a kitchen coolie of mine--he must go. Send someone down to make a place and take his transportation----”

The grumbling that followed was a matter of habit rather than of effectiveness. Morning seemed to see the lower lip from which the voice came, a thick and loppy member.... The mate came down, stepping from shoulder to back, across the complaining natives. They were three deep on the deck. He kicked clear a hole in the lee of the cabin.... Morning sank in, and Endicott bent to whisper:

“Put the grub-basket between your knees and don’t take your hands off it.... Put the blanket over it. It’s a thick, good blanket. I could give you a better passage, but they wouldn’t take you--honest, they wouldn’t. If they see you’re white, tell old Himmelhock you’re Endicott’s house-coolie. He can’t do anything now.... If you live, write and send the big story to Endicott at Tongu.”

Morning was sinking to sleep. He felt the warmth of the blanket, a thick, rough blanket Endicott had donated. Its warmth was like the man’s heart.... Morning’s hands went out. A coolie growled at him.... There was no worry now. It was the night of the sixth, and he was sailing. He could do no more; the ivory finger in his brain neither froze nor burned.... The pitching did not rouse him--nor the men of sewers and fields--sick where they sat--woven, matted together, trusting to the animal heat of the mass to keep from dying of exposure. John Morning lay in the midst of them--John Morning whose body would not die.

The days and nights rushed together....

Sometimes he wondered if he were not back at the shipping--in some stock-car with the horses--but horses were so clean compared to this.... When he could think, he put clean lint to his wounds. He scorned pain, for he was on his way; and much was merciful coma.

There was rain, deluges; and though the air rose heavy as amber afterward, the freshness at the time was salvation. He learned as it is probable no other American ever learned, what it means to live in the muck of men. All one at the beginning and at the ending, it is marvelous how men separate their lives in the interval--how little they know of one another, and how easily foolish noses turn up. Here was a man alive--dreaming of the baths he had missed, of Japanese Inn baths most of all.

“Who am I?” he asked.... “John Morning,” would whip back to him from somewhere. “And who in hell is John Morning to revolt at the sufferings of other men?”

He had seen the coolies in the steerage of many ships--even these massed deck passages of the Yellow and China Seas and the Coasting trade. He had looked at them before as one looks into a cage of animals. Now he was one of those who looked out, one of the _slumees_. Once he asked, “Is this the bottom of the human drain, and if not--must I sink to it?”

The Chinese did steal his food that first night, but fed him occasionally from their own stock. Finding him white, they fouled him, but kept him warm.... The _Tungsheng_ ran into Chifu harbor to avoid a storm, and a full day was lost. John Morning had no philosophy then--a hell-minded male full of sickness--not good to view, even through the bars of a cage. But at best to sit five hours, where he sat more than five days and nights, would condemn the mind of any white man or woman to chaos, or else restore it to the fine sanity of Brotherhood.

And then the day when the breeze turned warm and the Islands were green!... Coolies were men that hour, men with eyes that melted to ineffable softness. It was like Jesus coming toward them on the sea--the green hills of Japan. Their hearts broke with emotion; they wept and loved one another--this mass all molten and integrated into one. It was like the Savior coming to meet them through the warm bright air. He would make them clean; their eyes would follow Him always....

Morning was not the only one who had to be carried ashore at Shimoneseki, after the quarantine officer had finished with the herd. His passport saved him. “I had to come. It was the first ship out of Tongu. Deck passage was the only way they would take me,” was the simple story. He was fevered, but strangely subdued that day. Himmelhock was at the door of the pilot-house, when Morning looked up from the shore a last time, and his native sailors, bare to the thigh, were sluicing the decks.

The bath was heaven. He was able to walk afterward. The officials burned his clothing, but made it possible for him to buy a few light things. The wound in his leg was healing; the bruises fading away. The wound in his side did not heal; it was angry as a feline mouth.

He had bandages, but no stockings; clean canvas clothing, but no underwear.... He found that he had to wait before answering when anyone spoke; and then he was not quite sure if he had answered, and would try again--until they stopped him. Somewhere long ago there was a parrot whose eyes were rimmed--with red-brown, and of stony opaqueness. He couldn’t recall where the parrot was, but it had something to do with him when he was little, almost beyond memory. His eyes now felt just as the parrot’s had looked.

It was a night run back to Nagasaki by rail--his thought was of ships, ships, ships. He could stand off from the world and see the ships--all the lines of tossing, steaming ships. Then he would go down to the deck of one--and below and aft where Asiatics were crowded together. To the darkest and thickest place among them he would go, and there lie and rest until the finger in his brain roused him. Then he would find that the train had stopped. It was the halt that awakened him.

There were two ships, all but ready to clear for the States, lying in the harbor of Nagasaki that morning. The first was the liner _Coptic_, but she had to go north first, a day at Kobe, and two days at Yokohama, before taking the long southeastern slide to Honolulu. She was faster than the American transport, _Sickles_ (with a light load of sick and insane from the Islands), but the latter was clearing for Honolulu at sundown and would reach San Francisco at least one day earlier than the liner. Moreover, the _Coptic_ would have recent mails; the _Sickles_ would beat the mails.

Money was waiting for him at Tokyo, less than an hour’s journey from Yokohama; he would have good care and a comfortable passage home on the old liner, but his brain burned at the thought. Four days north--not homeward.... The _Sickles_ was clipper-built--she was white and clean-lined, lying out in the harbor, in the midst of black collier babies. She was off for Home to-night. He had traveled home once before on a transport. He was American and she--the flag was there, run together a bit in the vivid light, but the flag was there! And to-night he would be at sea--pulling himself together for the big story, alone with the big story--the ship never stopping--unless they stopped in ocean to drop the dead....

The actual cost of the transport passage is very little, merely a computation for food and berth; the difficulty is to obtain the permit. As it was, he had not enough money, barely enough to get up to Yokohama, second class on the _Coptic_; and yet, this hardly entered. It was like a home city, this American ship, to one who had been in the alien heart of the Chinese country so long. He would know someone, and a telegram from ’Frisco would bring money to him. He had a mighty reliance from the big story.

The U. S. quartermaster at Nagasaki was a tired old man. He advised Morning to cable to Manila for permission. Morning did not say that he lacked money for this, but repeated his wish to go. The old man thought a minute and then referred him to Ferry, the _Sickles_ quartermaster. He had been doing this for thirty years, referring others to others so that all matters merely struck and glanced from him. Thus he kept an open mind. Morning wanted something to take from this office to Ferry of the _Sickles_. The resistance he encountered heated him. The smell of the deck-passage was in his nostrils; it seemed in his veins, and made him afraid that others caught the taint. The old quartermaster did not help him. Morning could hear his own voice, but could not hold in mind what he said.... The officer did not seem to be interested in Liaoyang. This disturbed him. It made him ask if he had not gone mad after all--if he could be wrong on this main trend, that he had something the world wanted.

He took a _sampan_ at the harbor-front and went aboard the transport. Ferry, the _Sickles_ quartermaster, was a tall, lean man with a shut smile that drooped. The face was a pinched and diminished Mergenthaler, and brought out the clouds and the manias of Morning’s mind.

Were all quartermasters the same? What had become of men? Had the world lost interest in monster heroisms? Ferry did not help him--on the contrary, stood looking down with the insolence of superior inches. Morning found himself telling about the sorrel mare. That would not do. He returned to the main fact that he had the big story and must get across the Pacific with it.

“I can’t take you----”

Morning heard it, but couldn’t believe. He tried to tell about the _Hun huises_ and the loss of the manuscript, the walk to Koupangtse----

“Really--it’s no affair of mine. I can’t take you on.... The _Coptic_ is sailing----”

And just now Mr. Reever Kennard appeared on the deck. The summer had added portliness. He was in flannels--a spectacle for children and animals.... The insignificance of all about was quickened when Mr. Reever Kennard appeared. The decks were less white, sailors, soldiers more enlisted. John Morning became an integer of the _Tungsheng’s_ deck-passage again, and the lining of his nostrils retained the reek of it.

“How do you do, Mr. Kennard?” he said. His back was different. He felt a leniency there, very new or very ancient, as he turned to Ferry, adding: “This gentleman knows me. We parted in Tokyo this Spring, when I went over with the Russians. I met him long ago in the Philippine service. He will tell you----”

Ferry’s face grew suddenly saturnine, his eyes held in the glance of the famous correspondent’s.

“You’ll please count it closed--I can’t take you.”

Morning now turned to Kennard, who was sealing with his tongue a little flap of cigar-wrapper which may have prevented the perfect draught. Morning bowed and moved aft, where the dust of the coaling was thick, and the scores of natives, women and men, who handled the baskets, were a distraction which kept the reality from stifling him. Presently he went ashore and it was noon.... He could not understand Kennard; could not believe in an American doing what Ferry had done, to a man who had the big story of Liaoyang. It was some hideous mistake; he had not been able to make himself understood.

The _Sickles_ launch was leaving the pier at two. Morning was there and took a seat. He was holding himself--the avalanche again--and rehearsing in his mind what he should say to Ferry. His brain was afire; the wound in his side had scalded him so long that his voice had a whimper in it. He had not eaten--the thought was repulsive--but he had bought drink in the thought of clearing his brain and deadening his hurt....

His brain was clearer on the launch, but the gin fumed out of him as he approached the upper deck, where Ferry’s quarters were.

The Quartermaster saw him, but was speaking to an infantry captain. Morning waited by the rail. Many times he thought--if he could only begin to speak _now_. Yet he feared in his heart when Ferry turned to him, he would fail. It was something little and testy in the man--something so different from what he had known in the great strains of Liaoyang--except for Luban. Yes, Ferry was like Luban, when Luban was in the presence of a fancied inferior.... They talked on--Morning thought of murder at last. A peculiar wiry strength gathered about the idea of murder in its connection with Ferry’s dark, mean face. He felt all the old strength in his hands, and more from days of pain--days of holding one’s self--will, body, brain.

“Well----” Ferry had turned to him suddenly.

Morning’s thoughts winged away with a swarm of details of the crime.... “I could tell you something of the Story--I could show you how they cut me on the Liao--the _Hun huises_----”

“If you come to this deck again--I’ll send you ashore in irons.”

At four that afternoon Morning saw the _Coptic_ draw up her chains and slide out of the harbor, with the swift ease of a river-ferry.... He could not count himself whipped on the _Sickles_--and this is the real beginning of John Morning. He was Fate-driven. The man who did not have the courage to ask his rights in Tokyo--to inquire the reason of his disbarment, was not through with the American transport _Sickles_. A full day ahead of the mails in San Francisco--and he was waiting for the dusk. The fight had been brought to him. He was dull to the idea of being whipped.

Three enlisted men were drinking in the little apothecary shop which Morning had used for the day’s headquarters. They belonged to the _Sickles_. They had been taking just one more drink for many minutes. He told them he was sailing on the transport and joined them in a _sampan_ to the ship when it was dark. The harbor was still as a dream; the dark blending with the water.... They touched the bellying white plates of the ship. Morning seemed to come up from infinite depths.... The men were very drunk; they had ordered rapidly toward the end; the effect caught up as swiftly now. They helped each other officiously. Morning put on the fallen hat of one who had become unconscious.... The watch was of them, a corporal, who was no trouble-maker. He blustered profusely and hurried them below.... Morning was bewildered. He had spoken no word, but helped the others carry the body, a wobbly deputation, down among the hammocks.... He heard the voices of those maimed in mind.... He placed his end of the soldier’s body down, left his companions, and made his way forward, to where the hammocks were farther apart. Early years had given him a sort of enlisted man’s consciousness of things; and he knew now not to take another’s place. He chose one from a pile of hammocks and slung it forward, close to the bulk-head of the bedlam, and well out of the lights.... He lay across his only baggage, a package containing a thousand sheets of Chinese parchment. He lay rigid, trying to remember if out-going ships took a pilot out of Nagasaki.

He heard the anchor-chain. He was very close to it. The voices of the sun-struck and vino-maddened men from the Islands were deadened by the hideous grating of the links in the socket.... It was not too late for him to be put ashore even now; since it was war-time. Of course there would be a pilot, for the harbor was mined.... He drew the canvas about his ears, but the voices of the brain-dead men reached him.... Cats, pirates, and river-reptiles terrified them; one man was still lost in a jungle set with bolo-traps; the emptiness of others was filled by strange abominations glad of the flesh again.

18

HE had been listening to Duke Fallows for a long time--Duke’s voice blended with war and storm and a woman’s laugh.... Then he reverted to the idea of murdering Ferry. Finally someone said:

“He’s a new one from Nagasaki. He’s got the fevers----”

And then:

“Who in hell is he?”

They began to ask questions. Morning answered nothing. Day had come. He heard the throb of the engines, felt the swell of the sea, but the strength of yesterday’s concentration was still upon him. It had built a wall around him, holding the life of his mind there; as a life of low desires imprisons the spirit to its own vile region after death.... He did not speak, but looked from face to face for Ferry.

They ceased to expect an answer from him.... A young doctor appeared. His eyes rolled queerly; his cheek folded over his mouth, as if he were beyond words from drink, and tremendously pleased with his prowess. They called him Nevin. He prepared himself profoundly for speech. Morning now realized the nimbleness of Nevin’s hands, unwinding the filthy bandages. Presently, the Doctor straightened up, passed his hand over his brow, tongued the other cheek, and after a sweating suspense ordered:

“Take him to the hospital.”

A white room.... The Doctor came again. They took his clothing and bathed him.... He heard and smelled the sea through an open port ... glad, but utterly weary ... waiting for Ferry.

“My God--not only cut, but trampled----” a voice said.