The flight of Corporal Sweeney.
The corporal was unconscious of a voluntary act, and something seemed swiftly to drag him, as he wheeled and dashed for the entrance of an alley not more than ten yards away. A peddler's shoulder-yoke was splintered against his shoulder, and he thought that the bruising impact was the shock of the expected bullet; the yells of the sweetmeat-sellers at the alley's mouth sounded like the outcry he dreaded to hear; but the lieutenant and the sentry turned in time to see only the trail of sprawling Chinese left in the wake of the escaping prisoner. The sentry jumped in pursuit, stumbled into the tortuous alley, and saw a blank wall ahead. Between that and the Chien-men Road three lanes twisted off to left and right, and he ran up the nearest one at random.
Somewhere beyond the huddled houses, he could hear the thud of leather-shod feet, the staccato flight of which marked the trail of the deserter; but the pursuer could find no way through or around. When he entered the street beyond, there was no blue overcoat in the crowded field of vision, and the shuffling sound of felt-soled native shoes gave no clew. He returned to the lieutenant, genuinely weary and speciously disappointed. The officer was leaning over the body of the other prisoner, and there was keen unhappiness in his flushed young face.
"I've found an empty cart," he said to the sentry. "Help me carry this poor fellow to camp. He has no use for a doctor. As for Sweeney, he can't get away. He's hiding in the American section, and I will get the provost-marshal over the field 'phone from headquarters, and have the guard sweep the district from end to end. The man will be captured before morning."
This occurred to the fugitive, also, as certain to happen, when he staggered through a little courtyard, far in the heart of the "Chinese City," and fell into a corner of a smoke-fogged room. It was so nearly nightfall that the one occupant, failing to recognize the headlong visitor, yelled and scuttled away from the brazier which he was trying to coax into warmth against the winter night.
"It's me—all same me—come back. You no sabee this American soldier if men come to look see me," gasped the corporal.
The Chinaman nodded without speaking and slipped out. Sweeney was fighting for breath, and the fumes of coal-gas in the fetid room were suffocating him. He tore a hole in the side wall of oiled paper, and gulped his lungs full of the frosty night air. It was the room from which he had gone the day before, when, after drinking much Japanese beer, he had bought a quart of samshu to carry away with him.
It was the deadly, maddening samshu that had caused the downfall of Corporal Sweeney, and now he was trying to remember what had happened in the twenty-four hours before he had been marched down the Chien-men Road with the other prisoner. He knew that he had overstayed his leave, but that was a minor matter compared with the row in the canteen on Legation Street. He recalled that an American officer had entered the place to investigate the uproar, and the corporal's mind held a blurred picture of himself conspicuously cursing his superior officer with black oaths, and struggling to "knock the face off him." Then he had fled, to be picked up later by the lieutenant who had shot and killed Private Smathers on the way to camp.
The corporal drew back from the hole in the paper wall, and slumped down on the floor, a Chinese blue blouse tucked under his aching head.