Ah Fun tore a few leaves of paper from a medicine book, and inserting them under the kang, struck fire to them. Then he resumed his play. After a while Dr. Chu Ping raised the quilt from his head and hoarsely whispered, “I—I—I am still shivering, Ah—Ah Fun. M—m—more w—w—wood.” Ah Fun looked about, but he saw no firewood. And he was too lazy to go in search. However, the doctor’s gold-crested cane stood in a corner. Well, why not? It was bamboo. It would burn. Into the kang went the cane, and right pleasantly did it crackle. But after a time Dr. Chu Ping again uncovered his head and begged weakly, “M—m—more w—w—wood, Ah—Ah Fun!” Once more Ah Fun looked round the room. There was positively no firewood in sight. However . . . upon a shelf lay half a hundred bamboo cylinders, tubes that contained medicines. In one bamboo was cuttlefish-bone. In another was ko fen (powdered oyster shell). The doctor had used that on old Mrs. Fuh Lung’s rheumatism, with good effect, too. In a third were salt and chieh tzu. A fourth held chen pi and shih hui (orange-peel and lime). The fifth contained chang nao (camphor, and ashes) . . . all good medicines and valuable indeed.
But . . . what did Ah Fun do? He chucked the first bamboo tube into the kang, and the tube crackled as the flames bit through. Presently, he cast in the second tube. Followed the third and fourth. Tube after tube, medicines and all, went into the kang, atop which lay Dr. Chu Ping.
Now it so happened that the fiftieth tube contained huo yao—(the medicine)—and huo yao is made of sulphur, saltpetre, and charcoal—those three, the very three that combine to make Gun Powder—as we call it—nothing less.
Dr. Chu Ping lay upon the kang, all a-twitch with the chill that had worsted him. His son, Ah Fun, threw into the kang a large tube of huo yao. The fire crackled smartly, eating the tube. . . . Then. . . . “BROOOOMP.”
Oh, that terrible Ah Fun. He has blown up the bed-stove. To say nothing of his honorable father.
It was raining heavily, but just the same Mrs. Low Moo came out and upbraided the doctor unmercifully for coming down in, and utterly havocking, her patch of huang ya tsai (her tender, pretty cabbages). She told him her every thought upon that subject, with such words as “Hun chang tung hsi (Stupid, blundering old thing you).” But Dr. Chu Ping merely gazed sheepishly at the destroyed cabbages, and at the hole in the room through which he had been blasted, and murmured, “Kai tan (Ah me, what a pity).”
And again came the other neighbors, the very kind people who loved Dr. Chu Ping and wished to help him in his troubles. These well-wishing neighbors came and said: “Beyond a doubt, that boy is to blame. Honorable doctor, why do you not break many stout bamboos upon the back of that boy—that lazy, good-for-nothing Ah Fun? He will be the disgrace of, and the death of you yet.” But Dr. Chu Ping rubbed his shoulder and said: “What? Beat Ah Fun? Why he is a good boy and a comfort. He just built me an excellent fire in the kang.”
Then the doctor limped into his house and awoke Ah Fun, asked him what had happened. Ah Fun, though he was bad—goodness knows, terribly bad—yet was truthful. Reluctantly, we must give him credit for that. He told of all that had happened: how he placed tube after tube in the kang—being unable to discover any firewood—and how the last tube had exploded, hurling his father through the roof.
Dr. Chu Ping wrinkled his brow till it was all hills and hollows. He pulled his long and neatly braided hair in a highly meditative manner. He felt first his right shoulder, then his left shoulder. He rolled his eyes upward to the limit of their travel. He gazed at the hole in the roof, where still fluttered a fragment of clothing on a jagged edge. He rolled his eyes downward and scrutinized the ruined kang. He felt of his two ears that still reverberated with the enormous explosion. Then he spoke. “My son,” said he, “it strikes me that we are on the verge of a great discovery. One of those medicines—though gracious knows which one—seems to be more than a medicine. It is good for something else—though dear knows what. Perhaps to grow wings, so that men may fly. It certainly enabled me to fly. We must make more medicines, and experiment.”