The Praying Skipper, and Other Stories

by Ralph Delahaye Paine

"Say, thim kids did me more good than a barrel o' monkeys. Weren't they corkers? By the holy poker! I'm goin' to marry you off to a little squeeze-toed fairy in the big town over the way, an' you'll live without worrkin' forevermore. Maybe the old man will follow suit. It's me life ambition to be idle an' palatial. An' You Han will be the hottest sport in fifty li. Dinghowdy? All right?"

In the third hour they were not more than halfway across, and the short winter afternoon was reddening. The level desolation had begun to tumble up into crowding little hills and sand barriers among which the trail now and then entangled itself. But the air was crystal and windless, and scrambling to the top of one of the white hills, the corporal could see the faintest tracery of a towered temple on the farther side of the desert as a guiding landmark. It was a forced march, and a halt was made only for a fragment of supper and a swig for man and mule from the water-bottle on the pack. The moon rose in the sleeping dusk, but before it was clear of the scalloping ridges of sand the sky became spattered with rags of flying cloud. Presently the wind behind the angry scud began to pick up gusts of sand and flirt them from one crest to another. The travelers rubbed their eyes and coughed as they plowed steadily westward, steering a course by the cart-trail, still discernible, and by the moon behind them. "We're more 'n halfway over," shouted the corporal, "an' it's silly to be dr'amin' of losin' ourselves in this two-by-four desert."

Then the gray sky closed down in blackness everywhere, and leaping billows of sand seemed to meet it. The rush of the terrific wind wiped out the trail as if it had been no more than a finger-mark. There were no more hills nor winding passages among them, only a fog of whirling sand. The wind had an icy edge as it brought the killing cold of Mongolian steppes a thousand miles away. The deserter and the boy covered their faces with their hands, their garments; and almost instantly they were adrift, cowering, lost, helpless. So dense was the driving smother of sand that they could scarcely see the mule straining at the end of its halter-rope. The hillocks were shifting with a complaining roar, and the shriek of the wind in mid-air was pierced with a shrill rasp like the commotion of innumerable iron filings.

The corporal and You Han groped toward the side of a hillock, seeking a lee; but the flooding sand tumbled down its side knee-deep, and the wind sucked round and searched them out, as if in chase. The flinty particles pelted in sheets, and bit their faces like incessant volleys of fine shot. There was no more time to think of what should be done than when a swimmer is plunged over a dam.

It did not seem possible that the danger of death was menacing in this absurdly small theater of action, yet it could not have been many moments before the deserter began to realize where lay the odds in another hour's exposure to such a storm. All sense of direction had been snatched from him, and he fought only for breath. You Han had no knowledge of desert storms in his home on the bank of the Pei-ho. He gasped whatever prayers came to him, but placed his active faith, still unshaken, in the ability of his master to save him from the choking, freezing terror. The man and the boy were not only stifled, but soon benumbed, for neither had ever felt anything to compare with the searching cold of this blast. They stumbled from one hill to another, sometimes keeping their feet, falling oftener, rising more slowly, the little mule trying in vain to turn tail to the storm.

There could be no conversation. At length the deserter muttered drowsily to the storm such fragments as these:

"No place like home. It's the finish that's comin' to me. Cudn't take me medicine like a man. P'rhaps this'll blow over soon. I'm blinded entirely. Good God! forgive me poor cowardly sowl! I niver meant to go wrong. Had to bring that poor fool You Han into this mess."

The deserter pitched forward on hands and knees, his rifle buried somewhere in his circling wake. He caught hold of You Han's queue lest they lose each other, and then the mule pushed impetuously between them, ears forward, muzzle outstretched, trumpeting joyfully.

"He b'lieve can find. He sabee plenty," feebly sputtered You Han.

The frantic mule dragged the boy by the lead-rope a few paces, the corporal falling, sliding after, and then stopped. The linked procession could go no farther. You Han collapsed in a little heap, and the corporal toppled face down. The boy had tied the lead-rope around his own wrist, and the impatient mule was jerking it so that the forlorn figure in the sand seemed to make appealing gestures. The corporal was without motion, and with a mighty effort You Han pulled himself a little nearer, and the mule followed protestingly. The swaying curtain of sand closed in around the three figures.