“In a general way, certainly. Even though I may not share your optimism.”
“On your return to Shanghai would you be willing to call at once on Doctor Wu and discuss the matter?”
“Yes.... Yes, I will do that. I must leave you now. We are nearly at Kiu Kiang.”
Sun, glancing out the window, raised his hand. Doane looked; two small German cruisers, the kaiser's flag at the taff, were steaming up-stream.
“They know,” murmured Sun, with meaning. “I wish to God I could find their means of information. They all know. From the Japanese in particular nothing seems to be hidden. Two or three of your American war-ships are already up there. And the English, naturally, in force.”
“They must be on hand to protect the foreign colony at Hankow. The Szechuen trouble would justify such a move.”
But Sun shook his head. “They know,” he repeated. Then he clasped Doane's hand. “However.... that is a detail. It is now war. You will find events marching fast—faster, I fear, than we republicans wish. Good-by now. You will call on Doctor Wu.”
The steamer moved slowly in toward the landing hulk. Doane, from the boat deck, by the after bell pull, gazed across at the park-like foreign bund, with its embankment of masonry and its trees. Behind lay, compactly, the walled city. Everything looked as it had always looked—the curious crowd along the railing, the water carriers passing down and up the steps, the eager shouting swarm of water beggars. Below, the coolies swung out from the hulk, ready to make their usual breakneck leap over green water to the approaching steamer. Now—they were jumping. The passengers were leaning out from the promenade deck to watch and applaud.... Doane's thoughts, as he went mechanically through his familiar duties, wandered off inland, past the battlements and towers of the ancient city to the thousands of other ancient cities and villages and farmsteads beyond; and he wondered if the scores of millions of lethargic minds in all those centers of population could really be awakened from their sleep of six hundred years and stirred into action.
Could a republic, he asked himself, possibly mean anything real to those minds? The habit of mere endurance, of bare existence, was so deep-seated, the struggle to live so intense, the opportunity so slight. Sun Shi-pi and his kind were a semi-Western product. They were, when all was said and done, an exotic breed. They were the ardent, adventurous young; and they were the few. There had always been a throne in China, always extortionate mandarins, always a popular acceptance of conditions.
The lines were out now. And suddenly a blue-clad soldier climbed over the rail, below, balanced along the stern hawser, leaped to the hulk, and was about to disappear among the coolies there when a rifle-shot cracked and he fell. He seemed to fall, if anything, slightly before the shot. Another soldier, following close, was caught by a second shot as he was balancing on the hawser, and spun headlong into the water where the propeller still churned.