Chrysanthème is certainly an adroit markswoman, and we admire her as much as she expected.
Then Yves, who is usually clever at all games of skill, wishes to try his luck, and fails. It is amusing to see her, with her mincing ways and smiles, arrange with the tips of her little fingers, the sailor's broad hands, placing them on the bow and the string in order to teach him the proper manner. Never have they seemed to get on so well together, Yves and my dolly, and I might even feel anxious, were I less sure of my good brother, and if, moreover, it were not a matter of perfect indifference to me.
In the stillness of the garden, mid the balmy peacefulness of these mountains, a loud noise suddenly startles us; a unique, powerful, terrible sound, which is prolonged in infinite metallic vibrations. It begins again sounding
more appalling: Boum! borne to us by the rising wind.
"Nippon Kané!" explains Chrysanthème,—and she again takes up her brightly-feathered arrows. "Nippon Kané (the Japanese brass); it is the Japanese brass that is sounding!" It is the monstrous gong of a monastery, situated in a suburb beneath us. Well, it is powerful indeed "the Japanese brass!" When the strokes are ended, when it is no longer heard, a vibration seems to linger among the suspended foliage, and an endless quiver runs through the air.
I am obliged to admit that Chrysanthème looks very charming shooting her arrows, her figure well bent back the better to bend her bow; her loose-hanging sleeves caught up to her shoulders, showing the graceful bare arms polished like amber and very much of the same color. Each arrow whistles by with the rustle of a bird's wing,—then a short sharp little blow is heard, the target is hit, always.
At nightfall, when Chrysanthème has gone up to Diou-djen-dji, we cross, Yves and myself, the European concession, on our way to the ship, to take up our watch till the following day. The cosmopolitan quarter exhaling an odor of absinthe, is dressed up with flags, and
squibs are being fired off in honor of France. Long lines of djins pass by, dragging as fast as their naked legs can carry them, the crew of the Triomphante, who are shouting and fanning themselves. The "Marseillaise" is heard everywhere; English sailors are singing it, gutturally with a dull and slow cadence like their own "God Save." In all the American bars, grinding organs are hammering it with many an odious variation and flourish, in order to attract our men.