Mai Lo put us up at the best hotel, but the proprietor objected to receiving the “remains” of Prince Kai, and so the casket was left on board the steamer until we were ready to start—the next morning but one after our arrival. This made it necessary for the doctor and me to make trips to the boat from the hotel, since we dared not neglect any of the useless but impressive duties we had assumed in caring for the dummy corpse.
On the first of these excursions we were nearly mobbed by the natives; but fortunately our entire band was together and Nux and Bryonia cleared the way, using freely some stout lengths of bamboo.
So the rabble did not press us too closely, and on our following trips to the boat they were careful not to interfere with us, although they jeered and mocked “the foreign pigs.”
The attitude of the natives seemed to make the doctor very nervous; but the others of us did not mind their silly actions, as it was evident that we were feared as much as we were hated.
It appeared that Mai Lo had arranged for his caravan in advance—probably by the Chinese Imperial Telegraph—so we were delayed only two days in Ichang. The evening before we started Doctor Gaylord was again engaged in earnest conversation with his tourist acquaintance, and when we left him to go to bed—for we were to start at daybreak next morning—they were still talking together.
Joe aroused me next morning while it was still dark, and told me that I had barely time to dress and get my breakfast.
When the meal was finished—and Chinese breakfasts do not consume much time—we all marched down to the river, from the banks of which the caravan was to start.
There were three elephants and some twenty spindle-legged mules in the convoy, and our escort consisted of Chinese warriors carefully selected by Mai Lo.
The casket of Prince Kai was to ride in state upon one of the elephants, and to be accompanied by the doctor and myself, as his assistant. The doctor was late and had not yet arrived, so I personally directed the removal of the casket from the cabin of the steamer and saw that it was carefully loaded upon the elephant and secured just in front of the howdah. The beast was profusely decorated with flags and streamers of gay colors. The Chinese do not use black as mourning, and this was their way of honoring the memory of the late Prince. Some of the flags were embroidered with the regulation Earth Dragon, but others bore the figure of the Sacred Ape, which was the especial emblem of the House of Kai.
The doctor had not yet arrived by the time the elephant was loaded, and we began to be impatient. Mai Lo came to me to inquire why the noble physician was delayed, but I could not tell him. Messengers were sent back to the hotel, and in the meantime I watched two of the puffing, flat-bottomed little river steamers leave the bank a few rods away and begin a race down the river toward Shanghai. They had disappeared around the bend of the river a full half hour when a native touched my shoulder and stealthily handed me a soiled bit of crumpled paper.