'That will never do,' Ping Wang declared. 'Put your beehive as it was before. We will walk in single file; I in front of you, and Fred behind you.'
In that order they had walked for nearly two miles, when a man, passing in the opposite direction, mistook Fred for an acquaintance. He stopped short, and shook his own hands. Fred knew that the Chinese, when they meet a friend, instead of shaking his hand, shake their own. Wishing to be polite, he shook his own hands in reply.
Then the Chinaman made some remark. Fortunately Ping Wang, having been nudged by Charlie, turned round, and seeing Fred being addressed by a Chinaman, explained that Fred was a man of weak intellect. The Chinaman was astonished, but having satisfied himself that Fred was not the man he had fancied, went on his way, turning round, however, after walking a few yards, to have a look at the three friends. Then he noticed that Charlie had no pigtail, and immediately shouted jeering remarks at him.
Ping Wang told the Pages what the man had said, and they agreed that it would be unwise for Charlie to enter Kwang-ngan as he was.
'I will leave you outside the city,' Ping Wang said, 'and come back to you as soon as I have bought a new queue.'
'But suppose somebody speaks to us?'
They were wondering what would be best, when Fred seized Ping Wang by the arm, and pointed to a spot some two hundred yards away from them.
'Are they human heads?' he gasped.
'They are,' Ping Wang answered gravely, and when they had gone a little nearer, all three could see clearly the heads of six Chinamen hanging by their pigtails from six tall canes.
'I have an idea,' Fred said. 'I do not like the notion, but we are in a difficulty, and as we must have another pigtail, I think we need not have any scruples about cutting off one of these.'