"You mustn't tickle his ribs with your heels when you get on," advised Jimmie. "That always makes him buck. It is a wonder he didn't tramp you when you were down."
"Holy schmoke!" cried Hans. "Vot a nose I vill haf! Me for the walks to Peeging!"
"I guess you'll have to give up going with us"' laughed Ned. "You may remain with the consul until we return. And help him hunt Frank and Jack, will you?"
Hans willingly agreed to this, and, with many handshakes and well-wishes from the consul, the boys were off for Peking. By this time the streets were rather quiet, although they knew that before they could pass beyond the limits of the great, sprawling town with its million of inhabitants dawn would be showing in the sky.
The swift ride through the city was a revelation to the American boys. All was strange with an atmosphere of age and decay. The habitations, save those occupied by foreigner—and these were grouped together—were mostly old and mean. The streets were in bad condition—worse than usual because of the softening effects of the rain—and the lights were, in places, infrequent.
Watchmen patrolling the thoroughfares in the idle manner peculiar to all alleged guardians of the night, gazed menacingly at the machines as they whirled by, talking in their spark language, as Jimmie expressed it, but the uniforms kept them at a respectful distance. Here and there were little tea shops, and before these were groups of natives, circled close together.
It seemed to Ned like a ride through a cemetery, the occupants of which had been awakened to life for an instant and would go back to their graves and their dreamless sleep again as soon as the machines had passed. The weight of ten thousand centuries seemed to hang over the place.
There was a faint line of dawn in the direction of the Yellow Sea when the boys came to the suburbs of Tientsin. Before them lay nearly eighty miles of rough road to the capital city. With good luck, they figured that they could make that in four hours.
Now, at dawn, the road which curved like a ribbon before them, started into life. From field and village streamed forth natives carrying and drawing all kinds of burdens. In that land the poor are obliged to be early astir, and even then the reward of their labors is small.
It was autumn, and the produce of the field was ripe for barter. There were loads attached to horses and loads drawn in carts; there were 'rickshaws, and bundles on backs, and on long poles carried over bent shoulders.