AN EXHIBITION OF THE RAIN-GOD'S ANGER
Mongolians, including Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans, can get along
with less sleep than any other of the world's people; and Jo, in spite
of having travelled and learned to speak English, still was a true
Mongolian. Therefore, he awoke quite refreshed after two hours of sleep,
and, moving with the utmost caution, so as not to arouse Rob, he left
their strange hiding-place, carefully closing and fastening its door
behind him. Then he swiftly made his way back to the city, where he
skirted its wall to the farther side, and forced an entrance through
a now dry culvert or water-gate. After showing himself at the several
guard-houses, that, if necessary, he afterwards might be able to prove
his presence in the city that night, he went to his own quarters, where
he made preparations for a journey. He ordered a horse to be brought,
saddled, and ready for travel, and sent for his lieutenant, a man who,
though older than he, was possessed of so little influence as still to
be under the orders of his junior.
To this officer Jo turned over command of the guard, telling him that he
considered the escape of the foreign devil, who had eluded them by the
exercise of magic arts, to be an event of such grave importance that he
was about to report it in person at Pao-Ting-Fu, and possibly to Pekin
itself. The young captain named these places in order to throw possible
pursuit off the scent, for he had decided to carry Rob in exactly the
opposite direction, or back over the way he had come, to Hankow. Having
thus arranged affairs to his satisfaction, he set forth at sunrise,
riding by way of the very gate through which Rob had made so hasty an
entrance the day before.
Jo was ready to leave the city a full hour earlier than this, and wanted
to do so; but even greater authority than his would be insufficient to
open the gates of any Chinese city before sunrise, and so he was forced
to await that hour.
Once in the open he rode with all speed, hoping to reach the temple of
the rain-god before any worshippers should appear, and while Rob still
slept. In this, however, he was disappointed, for, though he reached the
temple in advance of the priests who served it, and who, having joined
in the pursuit of the foreigner, had been forced to spend the night
in the city, he was dismayed to find a certain number of worshippers
kotowing and burning incense before the great image. These were wretched
farmers from the near-by country, who, having no work to do in their
burned-up fields, and with death from starvation staring them in the
face, had come in desperation to the only source they knew of from which
aid might be asked.
Another company of these people, who reached the place at the same time
with Jo, were provided with fire-crackers, with which they proposed to
arouse the god's attention if he should happen to be asleep. A bunch was
exploded as soon as they entered the temple, and to their awed delight
the efficacy of this proceeding was immediately apparent, for the image
of the rain-god trembled, and a muffled sound came from its interior.
Evidently the god, who alone was all-powerful in this emergency, had
been asleep, but now was awaking to the gravity of the situation. With
heads in the dust, the worshippers humbly bowed before his image and
implored his aid. Loudest of them all was the young officer who had
forced a way to the very front of the assemblage.
His prayer was in Chinese, of the mandarin dialect, which no one
present, except he, understood. Strange as it was to the ears of his
fellow-worshippers, it also contained words of another tongue still
stranger, that their ignorance did not permit them to recognize. Thus Jo
was able to call out, under guise of a prayer, and undetected:
"It's all right, Rob. I am here, and we are safe so long as you keep
quiet."
At this point some one at the back of the temple uttered a loud cry, at
which all the bowed heads were raised. Jo looked up with the others,
and, to his dismay, saw the great right arm of the god slowly lifting as
though to impose silence upon those who persisted in annoying him with
their unwelcome clamor. At this phenomenon the superstitious spectators
gazed in breathless suspense, and when the arm suddenly dropped back
into its former position they sprang to their feet.
They were not so much frightened as they were awed; for in China it has
often happened that the gods have seemed to enter certain of their own
earthly images, and by well-understood movements or sounds have caused
these to express their will to the people. It was reported that the very
image of the rain-god now under observation had been thus favored, and
upon previous occasions of grave importance had made motions of the arms
or head that only the priests could interpret. So the people now waited
in terrified but eager expectation.
Nor were they disappointed; for no sooner had the arm dropped than the
head of the image, which was big enough to hold a man, was seen to be
in motion. It certainly was bending forward and assuming an attitude
benign, but so terrifying that the awe-stricken spectators instinctively
pressed backward. As they gazed with dilated eyes and quaking souls the
great head was bowed farther and farther forward, until suddenly, with a
convulsive movement, it was seen to part from its supporting shoulders
and leap into the air.
The crash with which that vast mass of painted and gilded clay struck
the stone pavement, where it was shattered into a thousand fragments,
was echoed by shrieks of terror as the dismayed beholders of this dire
calamity plunged in headlong flight from the temple. Never before
in all the annals of priesthood had been recorded a manifestation
of godly anger so frightful and so unmistakable. From this time on,
that particular temple of the rain-god was a place accursed and to be
shunned; for if after this warning any person should enter it, he would
be crushed to death beneath the body of the idol, which surely would
fall on him.
So the people fled, spreading far and wide the dreadful news, and only
one among them dared return to the temple and brave the rain-god's
anger. This one, of course, was Jo, who, startled and alarmed by what
had taken place, had fled with the others. But he had paused while still
within the shelter of the grove, and, flinging himself to the ground for
concealment, had allowed the others to pass on without him. When all had
disappeared he arose and returned to the temple. As he re-entered its
dust-clouded doorway he was confronted by a spectacle at once so amazing
and so absurd that for an instant he gazed at it bewildered. Then he
burst into almost uncontrollable laughter.
The image of the rain-god already had acquired a new head, dishevelled
and dust-covered, to be sure, but one endowed with speech as well as
with motion, and which, when Jo first saw it, was violently coughing.
"I say, Jo Lee," called out a husky voice from this new feature of the
giant image, "I think it was a mean trick to go off and leave me shut
up in that beastly place. I mighty near smothered in there, and I don't
suppose I ever would have got out if an earthquake or something hadn't
happened. It almost shook down the whole house, and it knocked the roof
off as it was, nearly burying me in falling plaster besides."
"It isn't a house," explained Jo, laughing hysterically in spite of
his habitual Chinese self-control. "It's the image of a god. Don't you
remember crawling into it last night? I don't know how its head happened
to tumble off, but I expect you did it yourself. And now you have
managed to give it a new one, a hundred times more useful but not half
so good looking. I never in all my life saw anything so funny, and if
you only could see yourself, you'd laugh, too."
"Maybe I would," replied Rob, with a tone of injured dignity; "but if
you were as battered and choked as I am, you wouldn't laugh--I know
that much. Of course, I remember now all about this thing being a god,
only I was so confused when I woke up that I forgot all about where I
was. I only knew that there had been an explosion of some kind, and
that I should smother if I didn't get out. I could see a little light
up above and tried to climb to it by some ropes that I found dangling.
Two of them gave way slowly, while a third was so rotten that it gave
way mighty sudden. Then came the earthquake and an avalanche of mud that
nearly buried me; but I managed somehow to climb on top of it, and here
I am. Now I want to get down and out, for I don't like the place."
"All right. Drop down inside, and I will open the door."
Accepting this advice, Rob withdrew the head that had looked so absurdly
small on top of that great image, and in another minute slid out of the
open doorway far below, in company with a quantity of débris.
"Whew!" he gasped. "That was a sure enough dust-bath. Now let us get
outside and into an atmosphere that isn't quite so thick with mud."
"Wouldn't you rather remain in here and live than go out and meet a
certain death?" asked Jo, quietly.
"Of course; but, even so, we can't always stay shut up in this old
rat-trap."
"No, but it will be safer to leave at night, and also we have much to do
before we shall be ready."
"Have we?" asked Rob. "What, for instance?"
"It is my plan that you should travel as a priest under a vow of
silence, until we reach Hankow, while I go as your servant. If it is
agreed, then must your head be shaved in priestly fashion, your skin
must be stained a darker color, and we must obtain garments suitable."
"That's all right, so far as the priest business is concerned, if you
think I can act the character; but you are way off when you talk about
going to Hankow, for I am not bound in that direction. You see, I have
just come from there and am on my way to Pekin."
"But the road to Pekin is filled with danger."
"So is the road to Hankow. I ought to know, for I have come over it,
and I am certain, from the posters I saw displayed in every town, that
Ho-nan is a Boxer province by this time. Besides, Hankow is twice as far
away as Pekin."
"It is reported that all foreigners in Pekin have been killed."
"Including members of the legations?"
"So it is said."
"Well, then, the report can't be true. In the first place, the foreign
ministers would have called in troops of their own countries for
protection upon the first intimation of danger. In the second place,
to kill a foreign minister is to declare war against that minister's
country; and I don't believe that even the Chinese government is so
foolish as to declare war against the whole world. At the same time, if
there is to be any fighting I want to be where I can see it, or at least
know about it, which is another reason for going to Pekin. Besides, I
must go there, for it is in Pekin that I am to get news of my mother and
father. Only think, I don't even know for certain if they are alive. If
you didn't know that about your family, wouldn't you want to go where
you could find out?"
Jo admitted that he would.
"By-the-way," continued Rob, "speaking of families, I thought you had a
wife. Where is she? Are you going to take her with us to Pekin? Wasn't
she awfully glad to see you when you got back from America?"
For the second time that day the young Chinese laughed. "Yes," he
replied, "I have a wife. I think she is in Canton, for that is where my
father left her when he came north. No, I am not going to take her to
Pekin. No, she was not glad to see me when I came back from America, for
she has not yet seen me."
"If I had only known your wife was in Canton, and where to find her, I
should have called," said Rob, soberly.
The idea thus presented was so absurd that Jo laughed again as at a good
joke, for in China no man ever calls on the wife of another.