The pent-up floods of the riot that had swollen to vast proportions after the cry had resounded over the city that Tai Lin’s wife had been stolen by priests, burst almost simultaneously through the three southern gates and dashing, seeping through the suburban streets, converged toward the Mission. These dark streams, with flaming wave crests, gurgling with snarls, yelps and threats; frothing, eddying, scowling, soon filled the street of Changsha. One stream had burst out of the Dragon Gate, another out of the gate of the Great Bamboo, and the overflow of these two torrents came together in front of Lodge of the Tien Tu Hin. The noise that rose when they came together was indescribable. It was a frightful splash of snarls and curses; a splatter of taunts and growls, while above all, distinguished by its persistency and vigour, rose a common howl:
“Kill the priests.”
When this uproar with its rage and strange silences fell upon the Children of the Deluge in their Chamber of Shadows, there was a general movement. Merchants became uneasy, fearful for their stores; thieves became desirous for plunder; soldiers to return to their posts; beggars to join the rabble; officials to their Yamens; pirates to their junks; silk robes to their mansions, but the rags would not return that night to their cellars.
The Great Elder Brother rose from his seat; Guards placed themselves in front of him; the Incense Master, the Instructor, followed by all others, took their places and the procession filed out over the bridge into the anteroom as solemnly and silently as it had entered.
The vast hall was empty. The fagots in the iron racks flamed, flickered, and went out. The fiery moat glowed white, green, lurid, then dark spots began to creep into it. After a while only the stars shone down into the Chamber of the World’s Dread.
The overflow from the Dragon Gate, being less than that from the Great Bamboo, was pushed back until there was a general commingling, then the whole rushed unresistingly downward toward the river and westward toward the Mission. Other torrents, chafing, foaming, hurled themselves against the walls of their narrow channels in mad endeavour to reach the river’s edge through the labyrinthine writhings of the suburban streets. Like floods restrained, it sometimes appeared as if they would overflow and surge straight down across the roof tops.
It was the rumble of these torrents just after they had burst through the city gates that the man Tsang had heard as he sat at the tiller. And had the wind not been strong or had there been no bend in the river, he would soon have heard a roar more ominous, more dreadful, as these torrents of howls poured into the basin surrounding the Mission.
The streets north and east of the Mission Compound were first filled, then on the west. And when all were overflowing, so that stragglers, trickling, seeping in, were being pushed back in the direction whence they came; these torrents churned, swirled, then surged out into the open space between the Mission and the river.
The Compound was surrounded, and the mob, as a sea, billowed and splashed against its walls. Like a great rock the Mission remained silent, with a gloomy hauteur, a scornful taciturnity, so that these waves only dashed against it to fall back upon themselves.
There were many similarities between this encircling flood of man with wave crests of flame and roar of tongues to a sea of waters. For this sea, girdling, eddying around the granite base of that gloomy parallelogram, ocean-like, broke and spattered. It had its froth and its depths, its calms and murmurs; its terrors; its tides and ebbs and billows. Sometimes its fire-crests, like those in the Bay of Tai Wan, moved forward in uneven undulations, then hurled against the granite barriers, flowed back and merged with another tide. Again these waves met in such a manner as to form whirlpools or a single force like a waterspout, only here a howl and flame-spout would drive its way ruthlessly through the waves and, lashing itself momentarily against the walls, subside and mingle with the rest. This sea had its evaporations and its residue; it accumulated, eroded and dissipated. But it howled where the ocean rumbled, snarled where it roared, and where the sea of waters murmured this flood talked to itself—a childish, terrible monologue.