Their laborious and slanting course brought them finally to the opposite bank near to the point at which the Ichang steamer was moored.
“I’ll come on board and have a drink with you,” said Tam. “No need for us to part until we must.”
Whiskies and sodas stood like a bond between them. Stone wished he could really enjoy the taste of whisky. He hummed a little as though he were enjoying it, but he took his glass forward to empty it secretly into the Yangtze.
Tam and Edward stood against the railing of the steamer and watched the escaping soldiers land. The soldiers on this side seemed not very much disturbed by the fact that the advancing army was now in the city of Chungking and was firing from the walls upon the river. The fugitives on this side could not have been disturbed any more by anything. They were exhausted; they crept up the slopes limply, trailing their rifles in the mud; their mouths were open, their sunken eyes apparently shut; they made little whining sounds. Some of them lay resting, as flaccid as dead worms. A few had energy enough to impress the citizens of the town into their service. The sight of arms seemed to enchant the civilians. A long line of coolies, collected by soldiers, stood roped together in a slanting row up the steps, like cattle. Upon their sullen yet unprotesting shoulders would be placed the burdens which the soldiers themselves were too weak to carry.
Edward watched one soldier blindly seeking a human animal on which to place his pack. A child could have knocked that soldier down. He was thin and immature; he could pretend to be a man no longer; his shoulders drooped forward, his hanging head swayed between them; his eyes seemed shut; he dragged his rifle in the mud; he walked awry like a drunken man. Six big boatmen saw him coming towards them. He followed them as a senseless ghost or curse might follow, slowly and sightlessly. He followed them on to a moored junk and from that on to another. On the last junk in the line he came up to them. They would not fight; they could retreat no further. Still without seeming to see them he selected one. That one did not protest; he was driven away to be roped to the end of the growing line of cattle-prisoners on the steps.
“They’ll never come back, those men,” said Tam. “The soldiers shoot ’em when they’re through with ’em. Poor devils.”
He said “poor devils” in an intense tremulous voice, as though he were really sorry for the afflicted townsmen. Edward imagined him saying to himself, “I’m a tender-hearted chap, a man of wide sympathies. I must make that quite clear.”
“People never undeceive self-deceivers,” thought Edward. “We all conspire to pretend we are deceived.”
Tam took Edward’s arm with a roughly loving flourish and said in a brisk voice, as though brushing from his mind’s eye an unmanly tear—which he was nevertheless proud of—“A heart-breaking sight, old man, let’s sit on the other side of the deck.”
They did so. The sharp needles that denoted rifle fire from the other side were being injected into the shining body of the river. But though even Edward could sometimes hear the mewing twang of shots in the air, it was obvious that the marksmen were giving the foreign ship a fairly wide berth.