Wang the Ninth: The Story of a Chinese Boy

by B. L. Putnam Weale

"Yangtsun—that was safe yesterday. Two of our men returned, having made their escape from the transport service. They declared that all the soldiers had gone."

"But where—in what direction?"

"It is not known," said the man curtly because the question revived his fears. "It was enough for our fellows to be set free—they did not stop to inquire what their captors might be doing."

The boy suddenly sat down with his knees drawn up against his chest in a characteristic attitude which signified excitement which he wished to conceal. He was not as cold as he had been because he was so greatly excited. His cotton clothing was indeed beginning to dry from the heat of his body; and as he now stripped off his shoes and cloth socks he felt almost comfortable in spite of his hunger.

"These are frightening days," he exclaimed sententiously. "Truly one hears enough every hour to make one fear to live."

Now he sorted all he had heard out on a system based on an intimate knowledge of his fellow-countrymen's methods in the face of clamant danger. Probably these men, after their kind, had fled far from their village into the back country on the first inkling of trouble—they had certainly disappeared as soon as the first shots had been fired in the battle they had described. What they had related was mere hearsay which had become greatly exaggerated with the passage of time. It was certain, of course, that the foreign army had retreated; otherwise the railway would never have been so completely destroyed. But he did not believe that all had been killed. That would mean that he would only find emptiness at the end of his journey. It had been rumoured that all foreign ships had been sunk or set fire to so as to remove all possibility of flight and to secure the death of all foreign men and women. Still he did not believe that any of these things had really happened. They had been tried perhaps. That was it—tried. Experience had taught him that the foreigners were far-seeing. They would never have allowed themselves to be trapped like that.

A sudden movement roused him from this brown study. In his fatigue he had nearly dozed off. Both the men had risen and were now standing at the doorway, calculating aloud their chances of getting home. The rain had certainly greatly slackened, and although it was still coming down heavily the worst was manifestly over. But in half-an-hour it would be completely dark: it was now or never for these two.

They suddenly made up their minds. Stripping themselves naked to the waist and rolling up their loose trousers to their thighs, they stepped out with a gruff word of farewell.

Once more the boy was left to his own devices.

The moment they were gone he peered into the corner where they had been sitting. Yes—they had been grass-cutting. Two large bundles of grass were stacked in the corner. Without compunction, he tore off the sweet-potato vine which bound the bundles; distributed the grass comfortably on the ground and then plunged luxuriously into it. He knew that they would not return until the morrow and by that time he would be far away. The steady fall of the rain and the warmth of the grass soon lulled him to sleep, and in spite of his hunger, he slept with that deepness which only comes to those who toil.