As it happened the night of the Propitiation of the Gods of the Waters fell on the night of initiation in this secret lodge on the street of Changsha. So just about the same hour when the wife was creeping fearfully through the still, dark park, others of mankind were slinking along through the shadows of the city walls and vanishing under the granite gate.
It was a strange gathering that slunk under the portals of that gloomy entrance: men in long silken robes, men in rags; merchants, thieves, sailors, scholars, artisans, soldiers, pirates. Men with soft white hands, pale faces and delicate in their courtesies, mingled brotherly with others almost black from storms and exposure; brawny, brusque, sombre, ferocious.
After the second hour of darkness had passed the outer gates were closed; and when the ponderous doors at the top of the Lion steps had been bolted, a gong sounded hoarsely from some unknown depths and before its deep echoes had ended this motley congregation of men standing about talking, smoking, disappeared, utterly vanished, so that there was not to be seen in all the Guild Hall man, rag, nor robe.
Presently the gong mumbled again; slowly, measuredly, five times this gong sounded, and as suddenly as they had vanished there sprang out of recesses, crevices and walls fecundate, a new race of men. When they disappeared they had had queues and shaven heads, now they came forth without them and about their crowns were turbans of red silk. A wild medley of satins and tatters had gone into the hidden places, but there came out an assembly all gorgeous in the antique robes of the Mings, so that it could not now be known who had come in rags, who in silks.
Again cymbals crashed, and the assembly arranged itself by twos other than at the head, and there one man marched alone, preceded by guards carrying upright heavy double-edged swords. This man, who walked alone, was the Great Elder Brother—the Grand Master of the Lodge. Behind him followed the Incense Master and Instructor; then the Third Elder Brother and Champion, after whom came the General of the Van and the Red Club; these were followed by the Five Generals, the Tiger Generals, the Eight Guards, the Iron Soles and members.
Slowly, solemnly, in time with the dirge-like booming of gongs and crash of cymbals the procession moved out of the first buildings, along the corridors flanking the court and disappeared through an opening beyond. After passing through a number of chambers and corridors they came to an entrance before which stood guards with drawn swords. The Guards preceding the Great Elder Brother stood face to face before them and then silently exchanged swords. They now entered the first anteroom, at the far end of which was another guarded door. Again the same solemn transfer of swords was gone through with, and the procession passed on into the second anteroom where, as before, swords were passed and the Great Elder Brother led the way into the third anteroom, at the far end of which were two iron doors. As the guards pulled these back there opened before them a huge Hall of Shadows.
The appearance of this Hall was such as to inspire terror. Just beyond the doors, extending their whole width, stretched a fiery moat, out of which flames leaped and crackled; in its depths the heat glowed white and green. Across this burning ditch, through the middle of the doorway, was a bridge of two planks, one copper, the other iron—symbolic of the bridge thrown down by the Immortal Tahtsunye and by which the Five Patriarchs escaped from Shaolintze. Over this bridge hung an arch of pendent swords glowing and quivering with the heat that rose from the furnace below. The only lights in the Hall—unless the stars are numbered—were the ditch of fire and in the centre two iron racks, where blazed bundles of fagots and which gave an uncertain enormity to the shadows within. On the sides were cavernous openings, in the floor abysses. The ceiling other than over the fiery ditch and fagots, was also full of uncertain shadows. In the far left-hand corner, hardly perceptible in this glaring dust, glowed like a blinking eye a taper on the Shrine of the God of War. Opposite in the darkness of the right-hand corner beamed another eye on the Altar of the Goddess of Mercy. Then there was the taper of the God of Earth and five tapers on the Shrines of the Five Patriarchs.
In the centre of the hall but beyond the braziers of fagots stood the Great Shrine, flanked on the left by a representation of Kaochi Temple—where the Five Patriarchs met the founder of the Deluge Family, Chen Chinan, and on the right by a miniature nine-story pagoda. In front of the Great Shrine was a lesser altar on which were placed the symbols of the Tien Tu Hin: symbols that have been revered by countless millions for nearly two centuries and a half—symbols the world may dread. On the smaller altar lay a stone incense vessel engraved with four large characters, Fuh Tsing, Fa Ming. In the centre was a Peck of Rice known as Muyangfu, in which were stuck the flags of the Five Grand Sections of the Deluge Family and the banner of the Commander-in-chief. On one side was placed a Red Club, having a phœnix engraved on one end and a dragon on the other.
On each corner of the altar stood a dwarf Cedar and Pine tree, symbolical of fidelity in oaths. Between them, ranged alternately on each side of the Muyangfu, was a red lamp to discern the True from the False; a seven-starred broadsword indicating that by the sword the Manchus will succumb and the Mings be restored; a Rule by which men can measure their conduct; a Pair of Scales to weigh Ming against Tsing, the True against the Traitors; an Abacus to reckon the time for their destruction; a Mirror, as was handed down by Nu Wo, to show who are good and who are evil; a White Fan for calling together the members of the Deluge Family; a Pair of Scissors for ripping open the black clouds that obscure the Ming sky; and finally a huge double-edged sword by which the disobedient and traitorous are put to death. The roof in front of the shrine and between the braziers was open and the stars shone down into shadows filled with terror; into that silence where man broods.
Silently the procession entered this vast hall, which at one time had appeared to them all as a colossal deep of doom. The Great Elder Brother, the Incense Master and Instructor took their places before the Great Shrine, the other officers ranging themselves in order to the rear.