"It's a bad business. Everything has been taken, not a mule, not an animal, not a pig, not a chicken is to be found. There's a few beggars—that is all. My uncle, whom I came to find, has fled with the rest and all my journeying has proved fruitless."
"Then what will you do?" they inquired.
"I have no plan," he rejoined, making his face look very glum. "I must take things as I find them."
But soon afterwards, when he found the eldest wool-dealer alone, he made this proposition to him:
"My money is exhausted, so only for my food will I travel with you, finding the road and giving you early warning of danger. It will be well for you to have such a one as me, since I am fleet off foot and not timid by nature."
"We shall see, we shall see," rejoined the old man testily. "The cost is unimportant, but first must we wait here to discover the nature of the road ahead of us."
All that day was spent in fitful debate. The inn-servant, who declared he was of this district, for a handsome bribe undertook to find out from villagers the state of the road towards the next township which was ten miles off. But Wang the Ninth, who followed him stealthily, found that he went nowhere, only sitting down for a long time on a block of stone in a back street where he was well hidden; and finally returning to say that there was no trace of soldiers and that all was quiet within a great radius. Wang the Ninth began to suspect that he was in league with the robbers, and that was why he dared to remain in a place where there were hardly a dozen souls. But these suspicions he kept to himself for he was forming his plan.
That night he explained it privately to the eldest wool-dealer, drawing lines on the ground to show his meaning. He said:
"I have discovered that the river to the sea is only a few li distant from here, and that all the country is so badly flooded that if we cross the stream we can go by boat through the marshes for a long way. Then we can reach a point only a few li distant from the harbour. There will be no soldiers about, for what would soldiers be doing in marshes? As for the inn-servant he is a rascal. It would be well to leave here before he attempts some dangerous game."
The wool-dealer was so impressed by this common-sense that he called the others, and after much discussion it was finally settled that the next day they would make the attempt.