For two days the riot continued. For two nights there was no sleep but the sleep of death. The moans of the women, the groans of the men, fire and fresh alarms made sleep a thing that seemed years away. The city was red and the blood flowed. Loot and the lives of men, silver and the bodies of women, these things did the victors take as is old custom in China. Then came the third day and the general.
The foreigner in black clothes, the man of the religion of Jesus, had lived through these two days and two nights. “One can never tell,” said the soldiers, “what power these foreigners have.” “That is the foreigner’s house,” said the soldiers, “let it alone.”
The foreigner had lived through the two days and the two nights, but he had not slept. He had been thinking of the promise of the general. “There will be no looting after I enter the city”—these were the general’s words and the man who had spoken them had not yet entered. As a joke the speech was not bad, but too much blood and no sleep spoils the taste for jokes.
The general entered with an important noise of trumpets. Where he rode the looting stopped. He seemed weary, however, and did not ride far. The smoke of the many fires may have hurt his eyes. The day may have been too hot. In any case the general seemed discreetly weary and discreetly blind.
The man of the religion of Jesus came to the general. His words were to the point. “Is this the way you keep promises?” he asked.
The general did not like directness and he did not care to argue. “There is no looting,” he said, and with a smile he pointed down the street.
“There is looting everywhere except before your eyes.”
“There is none,” said the general. It was characteristic of him to add, “What there is must be stopped.”
“By whom?” asked the foreigner.
“Take one hundred men,” said the general, “go up and down in the city. If you see looting or outrage, cut off the guilty man’s head. As for myself, I have seen none.”