Then cried the messenger—Come, cease thy grieving,
Thy joy was terrible and exquisite,
Yet here are other joys, for God is kind....
But I will pay no heed, for I am weaving
A veil of words ... a veil of words ... that it
May fall about my heart and make it blind.
They were in a sampan crossing obliquely towards Chungking.
“S’posing we collide with a corpse ...” said Stone.
“You adorable kid,” said Tam, and the sampan rocked as he leaned over to pull the boy’s hair.
They collided with no corpses, nor with any of the sampans, loaded with retreating soldiers, coming from Chungking. The steps at the foot of which the sampan landed were moving with soldiers. A few earthenware jars stood on the lowest step, abandoned by their owners. On the beach, below the steps, a herd of beggars were raking with their fingers in a wilderness of refuse. One boy, who had committed some breach of muck-raking etiquette, was being held down by two women; his legs were being stretched by another boy and the taut muscles pounded by yet another avenger. His screams followed the travellers as they climbed the steps. There was a half open arched gate through the city wall at the top of the steps. The town within the wall was so silent that, for a long time, they could hear the screams of the beggar boy on the mud shore.