It was almost greater than he could bear.
CHAPTER XVI
What happened subsequently came to the boy in a succession of odd surprises which he did not attempt to correlate. Camps sprang up in the night round the foreign quarter like crops of mushrooms. The soldiers, their black turbans loosely tied round their heads and their gaily coloured tunics open on their chests, were of a different breed from any he had seen before. Sun-blackened, rough and defiant, they brought fear to every one and no one dared to venture near.
"It is curious," remarked the boy to a chance acquaintance, "that these should be our own people."
In his eyes they had become a symbol of disaster—something he had never reckoned with—particularly the small cannon ranged threateningly at two or three points with a stack of solid shot piled behind. He did not understand why the world should be turned so topsy-turvy.
One day, when he was out watching one of these camps, there was a general stir, and the men streamed off in hundreds in one direction. In his eagerness to learn what it was he went as close as he dared. At length the crowd parted and then quite distinctly he saw two men of the Sword Society in their blood-red regalia carrying a human head by the queue. They swung it about as they walked so that every one could see it.
He stared as if hypnotized. The two ruffians strutted boastfully along followed by the soldiery. He guessed that they were visiting the camp in order to infect the men with their own anarchy. He was not educated enough to wonder how it came to pass that in the middle of a great capital, with a vast Palace in the centre, and with Emperor and the Empresses seated within, assassins should hold such sway. So he remained just watching and wondering. And when the ruffians with their hideous trophy had disappeared and there was nothing more to observe, very slowly and very gravely, he rose to his feet (for he had been lying down), and made his way back through a deserted alley-way.
At the end of the alley-way there was a foreign sentry, and as he had seen him only an hour before, there was no occasion for him to be identified. Nevertheless he drew from his belt his pass—a bit of paper in a foreign language with a seal on it which always gave him a sense of importance.
"T'ai-to ping (there are many troops)," he repeated several times, pointing to the spot he had come from; and then he explained by signs that there were guns as well. Then with a wave of the hand he was off to find his master and report what he had seen.