"She is passing from us now, O my husband," said the unhappy wife.
"It cannot be, woman; the god is but chastising you with a terrible fear, for your want of faith; for how is it possible he can refuse so trifling a favor as the life of a young girl, when I have daily offered sacrifices of animals, and money, and burned incense at his altar?"
Shocked at the man's superstitious belief in the power of Fo, and his brother idols, Nicholas made one other effort to shake it; finding, however, that it was useless, he paid the bill, purchased a lantern for himself and another for Chow, and they went on their way to the Buddhist monastery, the only house wherein he could find shelter for that night.
CHAPTER V.
ADVENTURE IN A BUDDHIST MONASTERY.—CHOW'S ENCOUNTER WITH A BONZE.
To Londoners who find it an easy matter to pass, at any time of the night, from one end of the metropolis to the other, it may appear that Nicholas and Chow had no very difficult task before them. Such however, was not the case, for in the first place, instead of open thoroughfares, the great streets of the cities of China are barricaded at the ends with chains, and the smaller ones with wicket-gates, at each of which is placed a watchman, whose business it is to question every pedestrian, and through the night to keep clanging a piece of hard wood against a hollow bamboo cane, for the purpose of showing his watchfulness.
As the boys, by aid of their lanterns picked their way through the streets, they found them deserted; with the exception of a few stragglers, each of whom carried a lantern, upon which was ostentatiously emblazoned his name and rank. Imagine all the gas lamps in London extinguished, and their places supplied by a few dancing will-o'-the-wisp kind of lanterns, and you will have a tolerable notion of the appearance of the great cities of China by night. Dismal, truly, but perhaps not more so than were the streets of London not many years since, when they were lighted by flickering oil lamps. Again, as were those of London at the very period when these adventures happened, the streets are so narrow that a good-sized carriage or wagon cannot pass through without danger to the people, but then the narrowness of the streets was less pardonable in Londoners of that age, than in the Chinese of the present, whose great people ride in sedan-chairs, and whose little people walk, and convey their goods to and fro in narrow carts, like barrows, with one centre wheel. The Celestials are at least consistent in fitting their vehicles to their streets, which is more than could be said of old London, with its gutter streets and heavy lumbering coaches, types of which may be seen every day in the London of the present time.
The street in which the inn was situated was one of the principal, and, therefore, of great length, and along the pavement, which was in the middle of the road, the boys trudged onward, passing every now and then beneath one of the numerous Pai-ho, or arches, which are erected to the memory of good magistrates and virtuous women, till they came to a lattice-gate which led into a smaller street, when their progress was arrested, for the watchman was not at his post. They waited for some time, till becoming impatient, Chow kicked the gate, when there arose such a queer hissing noise, that the boy fell upon his face, exclaiming, "My master, my master the demons of Yen-Vang have swallowed the watchman, and are guarding the gate in his stead."
"Thou art a foolish coward," said Nicholas, who clambered up the gate, and after looking through the wicket for a minute let go his hold and laughed immoderately. "O Chow, Chow, thou idiot! not to know a demon from one of thine own kind; surely these demons are nothing but geese;" and as the watchman opened the wicket Chow saw that the noise which had alarmed him had been caused by a couple of those birds, which the watchman had trained to cackle and hiss at the slightest noise, so that he might take a comfortable nap, with the certainty of being aroused when wanted by the hissing.