"Very well, then," said Lord Cyril, stripping, too, and then the voice of a peace-maker that I knew well broke in and in a moment all was still. Takeuchi rode in on a mule. No hitting the dust for the proud feet of Takeuchi then, as I learned, nor afterward, when there were any other four feet that could be made to travel for hire.
"I want a 'betto,'" he said—which is Japanese for hostler—"for Fuji."
"Whatever need there be for Fuji, the accursed," said I, lapsing into such Oriental phraseology as I had read in books, "buy, and buy quickly—my money is in thy belt." He bought then and kept on buying afterward.
Straightway I fell again into sun-dreams with the yellow man near by whose mouth was wide, for it was my first experience with the God of Fire in his hell-hot Eastern home, and I strayed in them until I was shaken into consciousness by a white man with a beer-bottle in his hand. I remember a garden and trees next, a Chinese room with mats, a Chinese woman—the first I had seen—with a sad, pretty face, who rose, when I came to the door, and stalked into a house as though she were walking on deer-hoofs (every step she took on her tiny, misshapen feet made me shudder), and then the sound of Davis's guitar and Lewis's voice on the soft night air and under a Manchurian moon soaring starward above the Eastern city-wall.
... It is noon of the second day now and we sit in the shade of willow-trees. We left that first Chinese town of Kinchau and its dirty natives this morning at eight. The dragon's tail again had been drawn ahead through a narrow valley, rich in fields of millet and corn, from which on either side a bleak, hilly, treeless desert ran desolately to a blue mountain chain. Now, still on its trail, we sit in a green oasis, on real grass and under sheltering willows. A lot of little Chinese boys are around us, all naked except for a little embroidered varicolored stomacher which hangs by a cord from the neck of each—for what purpose I know not—and their elders are bringing water for us and sheaves of millet-blades for the menagerie of beasts we ride. They seem a good-natured race—these Manchurian farmers—genuine, submissive, kindly, but genuine and human in contrast, if I must say it, with the Japanese. Who was it that said the Chinese were the Saxons of the East and the Japanese the Gauls? I know now what he meant.
Lewis, in a big white helmet, has just ridden in on a diminutive white jackass. I envy the peace and content of both of them, for Fuji was particularly bad this morning. Again he passed everything on the road, and as we swept the length of a cavalry column, I saw a soldier leading a puny stallion a hundred yards ahead. When he heard us, he shouted a warning:
"Warui desu!"
At the same time the beast he was leading turned, with ears laid back and teeth showing, and made for us, dragging the soldier along. I was greatly pleased.
"Here, Fuji," I said, "is where my revenge comes in. You are going to get it now and, if I mistake not, literally in the neck."
But the brute attacked me instead—me. He got my right forearm between his teeth and held on until I shifted a stick from right hand to left and beat him off—the soldier spouting Japanese with French vivacity meanwhile and tugging ineffectively. I got away only after the vicious brute had pasted Fuji with both heels first on one side of my right leg and then similarly on the other, missing me about three inches each time. Fuji now shows blood but I am little hurt. Somehow in the scrimmage O-kin-san's charm—the little block of wood—was broken in its wicker case and whether the heels reached it that high I don't know. But it was a good omen—that it should be broken and its owner still come out unhurt—and it means that I am to be safe in this campaign. The puny brute had not strength enough to break an Anglo-Saxon arm—and it is his kind that make impossible for the Japanese certain big guns that the Russians use.