Wang the Ninth: The Story of a Chinese Boy

by B. L. Putnam Weale

"The new Brotherhood," he called so excitedly that the master heard him and reined in.

"Where?" he began in the vernacular, although the question was unnecessary. For the men had caught sight of him, and were roundly and bitterly cursing him as a foreign devil who merited death.

Without a word he rode slowly up to them. A youth with a sword in his hand had just commenced the posturing and the incantations, but something made him stop and watch the oncoming horseman as the others were doing. Without a word or an indication of his proposed action, the red-bearded master rode slowly towards the group who no longer dared to curse. When he was a few yards away, he suddenly drove his heels into his horse and was down on them before they knew what had happened. The lash of his mighty hunting-crop whistled through the air and caught the boy stripped to the waist, leaving a blood-red weal which made him shriek. Now as they fled he pursued them, lashing until he was exhausted. Then, slowly he rejoined his own people, who had not stirred or uttered a word.

"It will come," he said, breathing heavily from his exertions. "It will come; it will come everywhere—it will infect the whole city. I who have lived here long know." Then without further ado he resumed his way home as if nothing had happened.

This episode was more exciting to Wang the Ninth than his first initiation had been.

"The master is a man," he said that evening gleefully again and again. "He will not be afraid. And I who serve him am not afraid either."

Still fear came into the city gates very soon after that. It slipped in mysteriously just as the first practisers of the strange rites had come. A vague and curious blanket of apprehension settled visibly on every one, and made men afraid to look their fellows in the face. For once in their lives their garrulous tongues were stilled, and they sat waiting in silence. It was one of the most curious phenomena which has ever been seen—quite inexplicable save on the ground that certain processes of the human mind, which are common to us all, are sometimes induced in such powerful waves that none are capable of resisting them. The development of the drama was taking place as it were behind the scenes, yet understood by everybody. A million people in the capital waited obediently like hostages to learn their fate.

One morning it was reported that carts full of swords had passed in through the city gates with inscriptions boldly displayed on banners in blood-red characters. The city guards had not dared to interfere, the scattered crowd following the carts full of awe as though they were tumbrils bearing condemned men to the gallows. It was generally seen and noted how this curious convoy made its way to a big Temple, disappearing inside and giving no clue as to what was to follow.

The sight of those great stacks of swords redoubled all fears. But who was to do anything? There was the emperor and all his ministers inside the great Palace to govern the land; for the common people there was nothing to do but to tremble and submit.

Yet even these developments were distant and irrelevant compared with what Wang the Ninth saw going on around him. He was filled with surprise and suspicion. For his fellow-servants no longer wore anything foreign—they had carefully removed everything that might indicate that they were in foreign service. With his quick eyes he noticed not only what they did openly, but what they wished to conceal. Being wise beyond his years he said nothing but watched everybody and everything in the compound with the eyes of a hawk.