"Greatest people in the world," said the Irishman with an all-encompassing sweep of his right arm. "All happy—all peaceful. The soldier lowest here in the social scale—in Japan, the highest. Home the unit. Tilled the same soil for countless generations—always plenty to eat. We forced opium on 'em with war in '52. To think they've got to be cursed with our blasted, blasting materialism."
I had been through all that with the Irishman many times before, so we went on. From a gateway a cur barked viciously at us. An old man came out to call him in and the Irishman took the Chinaman by the arm and pointed to a walled enclosure on the extreme summit.
"I want to get in there." How, on sight, he wins the confidence of these people—men, women, and children—how he makes himself understood, not knowing a word of Chinese, I don't know. Straightway the old fellow went with us, the Irishman clinging to his arm, pounded on the heavy door and left us.
"What is it?"
"A monastery," said the Irishman.
An ancient opened the portal, by and by, and we went in—through an alley-way to a court-yard, stone-flagged—and I almost gasped. Temples age-worn, old gardens tangled and unkempt and trees unpruned, dropped in terraces below us; and with them in terraces dropped, too, the notched gray walls that shut in the hushed silence of the spot from the noise of the outside world. Black-and-white magpies flew noiselessly about among the trees. Somewhere pigeons cooed and butterflies were fluttering everywhere. It was a deserted Confucian monastery—gone to wreck and ruin with only one priest to guard it, but untouched by the hand of Russian or Japanese. Both use temples only when they must, and it seems that Occidentals have much to learn from Tartar and heathen in reverence for the things that concern the universal soul. To escape that compound, we should have pitched our tents there, I suppose, had we been allowed. But it was a place of peaceful refuge open to us all. An Irishman had found it, and sharing the discovery we sat there and dreamed in silence until the after-glow was gone.
... It is pretty mournful this morning—rainy, muddy, dreary, dark. We have established a policing system—each man taking turn; but the mud in the court-yard deepens and the smells fade not at all. We have flies, mosquitoes, night-bugs that are homelike in species and scorpions that are not. Every man shakes his shoes in the morning for a hiding scorpion. A soldier brought in a dead one to-day, that yesterday had bitten him on the hand. He was bandaged to the shoulder, and but for quick treatment might have lost his arm. It can't be healthy in here, but only Dean Prior and two others have been ill. What a game Dean it is, by the way! He laughs at his sickness, laughs when that big white horse with the weak back goes down in a river or mud-hole with him, and never complains at all. I have never seen such forbearance and patience and good-humor among any set of men. If a man wakes up cross and in an ill-humor—that day is his. He may kick somebody's water-pail over the wall, storm at his servant, curse out the food, and be a general irritable nuisance; but the rest forbear, look down at their plates, and nobody says a word, for each knows that the next day may be his. This forbearance is one benefit anyhow that we are getting out of this campaign, which is a sad, sad waste thus far. But Reggie appears at the door. As he marches past us we rise and sing the Marseillaise; when he marches back, we sing it again, and that smile of his is reward enough. There is good news—we are to go out on a reconnaissance to-morrow, ourselves.
Holy Moses! but that reconnaissance was a terrifying experience. We went out past the station where the last fight was, along a dusty road and up a little hill, left our horses under its protecting bulk, sneaked over the top, and boldly stood upright on the slant of the other side. Below us was a big rude cross over a Russian grave. Things were pointed out to us.
"You see that big camel-backed mountain there," said one of the Three Guardsmen. We levelled glasses. "Well, that's where the main body of the Russians are."