"Kill him!"
"Smother the brute!"
"Give him an overdose!"
"Now, ain't this an outrage!"
"Hi, there, One Lung, give us a rest, for God's sake!"
"Throw him out in the yard."
Daylight brought to Saunders infinitely grateful respite from a world
through which he had fled from flaming dragons that shrieked, as if in
torture:
"Ay oh"--"Ay oh"--"Ay oh!"
The grip of his delirium weakened in a few days, and the surgeon called
him a "mild case." At the end of a week, Saunders was able to sit up
a little and talk with the men around him. But the violence of these
early impressions in hospital had unstrung a system drained by long
service in the Philippines, and by the contrasting hardships of the
cold winter in North China. The gloomy temple frightened the soldier,
for sometimes the private has nerves, but he kept his fears to himself,
thinking them womanish. He fell to brooding too much of home, and the
more he dwelt upon the distance between Peking and those who loved him
the more insistent became his morbid fear that he would not go back
with his company.
It happened almost daily that the Ninth Regiment band trailed through
the hospital compound, playing a dead march. There was always a halt in
front of the stone stairway, and after a few moments the dragging music
sounded fainter and farther away. A little later those in the temple
could barely hear the silvery wail of "taps" floating from a corner of
the outer wall, where a line of mounds was growing longer week by week.
Then the band returned, playing a Sousa march or a "rag-time" medley.
The listeners in hospital filled in the gaps between the music, and the
mind of Saunders was busiest of them all in picturing the routine of a
soldier's funeral in Peking.
The surgeons looked him over in morning inspection rounds, and said
there was nothing the matter to prevent his recovery. "Shorty" Blake
and "Bat" Jenkins of P Company strove to make Saunders take some
interest in life, and would have been cheered if he had even sworn at
the rations and the lack of hospital comforts. They brought him jam
and condensed milk from the commissary-sergeant, which he refused to
eat; they assembled around his cot the most vivacious convalescents,
selecting as entertainers those valiant in poker and campaign stories.
Finally Saunders was persuaded to overhaul his haversack and show
his slender store of souvenirs gathered in Peking. Blake and Jenkins
moved over to pass opinion on the riches, and Saunders welcomed them
tremulously:
"I was plannin' to take some things home to mother and sister," he
began, "but I didn't have a chance to get much while the lootin' was
busy. Wouldn't have done me any good if I had, when the captain had the
tents searched and collared most of the company stuff. I ain't sorry I
missed it on the loot, for the old lady 'ud throw out o' the window all
the stuff I sent her, if she thought it wasn't paid for. She's fierce
in backin' foreign missions, an' the Chinamen is her purticuler pets."
Shorty broke in with an oath: "Yes, I know all about P Company's
captain and his hair-trigger conscience. He swiped all our loot, but
he sent home forty-seven mail packages, duty free. I got that from the
postal clerk. What you got left, Saunders?"
The invalid spread an embroidered panel of crimson satin and a roll
of blue silk on the edge of his cot, and threw a handful of silver
ornaments and a cloisonné snuff-box on the blankets.
"I didn't loot even this stuff," he said, with an apologetic air, "but
bought it along the Chien-men Road, so it could go to the home folks
with a clean bill of ladin'."
The spectators sniffed incredulously, but with unexpected tact hid any
livelier display of doubt.
"Why don't you mail the goods home with a letter, and send a good
jolly?" said Jenkins. "We'll get 'em off for you. There's a mail wagon
goin' to Tientsin early to-morrow mornin'. Tell the old lady you're fat
an' sassy. She'll call in the whole village to show 'em the presents
from her brave soldier boy out among them poor, benighted, gentle,
murderous Chinese heathen."
Saunders rallied for the afternoon, scrawled a letter, and sent his
gifts. Then he buried his head in the blankets and wept, the effort
having stirred new depths of hopeless homesickness. Through the
following week he failed to gain in strength and spirits, and the
surgeon mentioned "nostalgia" once or twice in chatting with the nurse.
"He may lie there and flutter out, with no disease worth a diagnosis,"
said the "medico." "The poor idiot thinks he would die on the way if
he was shipped across country to Taku, to connect with a transport;
and he's sure he'll be buried if he stays here. If we can get a little
strength in him, I'll see what I can do to get him started home."
Saunders was not yet a dying man, but the natural process of recovery
seemed at a standstill. There came a sharp turn for the worse after
"Shorty" Blake limped in with a letter, which he tossed to the languid
private with a cheery shout of--
"Wake up, Jim; here's the latest news from home. Hurry and tell us the
price of butter an' eggs at the corner store."
But Saunders read the letter in silence, and while he read, his thin
young face twitched, tears came, and the helpless length of him moved
in little jerks that rippled the blankets.
The chaffing queries of his comrades were unanswered, and the patient
seemed to be asleep through the afternoon and evening. When the light
of the next morning filtered through the latticed windows of oiled
paper, "Shorty" Blake saw Saunders grope for the letter under the
blanket roll that served him for a pillow, and read it again. His voice
was weaker than before, as he beckoned Blake and Jenkins to the cot,
and said:
"Here's what comes of my leavin' home to be buried in this muck-heap of
a town--an' my folks turned out to starve. You might as well read it,
though you can't do any good."
Shorty saw a woman's handwriting, and he took the closely written
sheets with singular gentleness. The spelling was imperfect in spots,
and there were many erasures, but he stumbled through the uncertain
lines, which said:
"MY DEAREST SON--
"No letter has come from you since you left the Philippines, but
I'm sure you are all right, because no notice has come to me from
the War Department as your next of kin. All I know is that your
regiment is in Peking, and I hope and pray you are with it, all
safe and sound. Sister Mary and me are pretty busy, as there has
been no one to help us with the place since your brother died last
spring. I know your enlistment ain't up for another year, and
it's wicked to desert, and they would shoot you for it anyhow, and
whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth; but it does seem kind of hard
when we want you so much at home that you have to be fighting them
poor Chinamen when I've been sending money for their souls these
thirty-seven years. But as long as we all have our health there
ain't any real troubles I suppose.
"I don't mean to find fault and you mustn't worry about us. I'm as
active as a cricket and Mary hasn't been ailin' any to speak of.
It's been a good long spell of dry weather, and that's good for
my rheumatism, but it wasn't very encouraging for the crops. The
mortgage on the house and farm is due in six weeks, and I can't get
a renewal, though it's only six hundred dollars, as you know. The
bank people is that haughty about the thing that I don't exactly
see how we can get around them.
"But where there's a will there's a way, and the Lord tempers the
wind to the shorn lamb, and if we ain't got any cash, there's
others worse off. Your uncle Joseph is breakin' up fast, and he's
ten years younger than me. He's the last of the tribe that's left
on either side, and his family won't have anything to spare when
he's gone. Of course it's hard to think of losing our old place,
but I'm still pretty spry, and my black silk is good as new. I
can't just quite tell where Mary and me will be if we leave home so
soon, but you write just the same and the postmaster will know. You
remember him, that stumpy, light-haired Jameson that married one of
the Martins.
"God bless you, my poor wandering boy.
Your loving
"MOTHER."
Jenkins was reading over "Shorty's" shoulder, and several hairy faces
framed in gray blankets had edged silently nearer.
"Well, what do you think of that?" said a Sixth Cavalry corporal.
"And here's Saunders been givin' up the ghost without havin' any real
troubles. Now it's time for you to brace up, and beg, borrow, or steal
the dough and shoot it along to the old homestead. That letter was
written more'n a month ago."
But Saunders had turned his face away and was a useless member of
the ways and means committee, which convened with "Shorty" Blake as
chairman. A praise-worthy burst of philanthropic ardor subsided when
it met the cold fact that the paymaster had not visited camp in two
months, and was not expected in Peking before three weeks later.
Investigation revealed also that nearly all the available cash in P
Company had passed into the hands of three expert poker players, who
were reported as being "hard as nails, and wouldn't give a dollar to
save their own mothers from the poorhouse."
Saunders showed no symptoms of interest in these endeavors, largely
because he foresaw their magnificent futility. He was in a condition
of hopeless apathy, and beyond rereading the letter from home now and
then, made no effort to rally. He kept a tally of the days remaining
before the foreclosure of the mortgage, with a series of thumb-nail
scratches on the frame of his cot.
There were twelve days to be marked off when "Shorty" Blake, who had
been discharged as cured, clattered into the ward, and yelled as he
leaned over Saunders:
"I lost track of my dates while I was in this gold-plated asylum, and
my discharge is due to-day, and I was figurin' my enlistment wasn't
up for another week. There's a squad of discharged men goin' down to
Tientsin in a wagon-train to-morrow, and I've drawn my travel pay, got
my papers, and I'm off for little old New York. Here's where I drop off
on the way an' do what I can for your old folks in Kansas. Got anything
you want to send them?"
Saunders became almost animated as he rolled over and tried to speak in
a fluttering whisper:
"I ain't got any money for 'em; but tell 'em I was doin' well when you
left me, and to keep their nerve, an' I'll get back as fast as I can.
But speakin' between us, Shorty, there's nothin' doin' for me, and I'll
be planted before you get to 'Frisco. Maybe I've got some little trick
to send along. Wait a minute. Fish around under the cot and find me a
roll of rubber blankets."
The uproarious "Shorty" opened the bundle and disclosed a jade teapot,
in a wrapping of wadded silk. It was a flawless bit of carving,
fashioned from a solid block of imperial green jade, no more than a
pretty toy to the soldiers, who examined it indifferently and wondered
why Saunders wished to send it to his mother.
"It's the last thing I've got," he explained, "and the last present
they'll ever get from me. I think they'd like to know I wasn't so
blamed forgetful at the finish. Just lug it along, Shorty, an' if it
don't get broke on the way, you can mail it when you cross the country."
The wish and the token were a sick man's whim to Blake, but he wrapped
the jade teapot and tucked it in a soft corner of his haversack when he
packed his kit late that night. He was vaguely aware that his purpose
of finding the distressed family of Saunders would not survive the
journey home, yet he had meant it when he made the promise. He believed
Saunders as good as dead, because he had seen men die of homesickness
in the field hospitals of the Philippines.
"I'll send his silly teapot to his folks," he told another discharged
private of P Company, as they climbed into a four-mule wagon next
morning; "and I'm sorry I can't help him out, same as you are. If the
doctor would pack the poor fool in a wagon and ship him to the sea,
he couldn't any more than die on the way, and there 'd be a fightin'
chance he'd brace up."
With this farewell tribute of sympathy, the fortunes of Private
Saunders slipped into the background among the varied interests which
occupied the attention of the late Private Blake along his route to
Taku Bar.
In the hospital, Saunders continued to let go his grip on life as
gently as possible. Tangible woe and regret had become active agents in
assisting the passive manner of his fading away. A new major-surgeon
came up from Tientsin to assume charge of the hospital, and he was
angry when he examined Saunders and heard the history of the case.
"That man is dying of homesickness and worry," he growled to the
hospital corps private in the ward; "and now he hasn't enough vitality
left in him to risk moving in an ambulance. He'd snuff out like a
candle on the way to Tientsin, and you can't keep him alive more than
two weeks longer. He may as well die in some comfort as be jolted to
death."
Much of the time in the following week Saunders hovered along the
borderland of dreams which were not wholly disquieting, for he had
become on friendly terms with the gilded dragons on the shadowy
rafters, and now and then they talked to him. The sick men of P Company
had been sent back to duty, and Saunders did not know those who had
taken their places along his aisle of the columned temple. When he
noticed them, it was to whisper little inconsequential memories of
home, and to tell passers-by of some new discovery gleaned from an
intimate familiarity with numberless gilded dragons that never slept.
He still noted the tally marks on the frame of his cot, and when he was
too weak to reach them, the man in the nearest cot scratched a cross
for him until only seven marks remained. The letter was no longer
read, but the tragedy it told was woven through much of the delirious
talk of the patient.
Meantime "Shorty" Blake had been routed with heavy loss among the
canteens and other diversions of Tientsin, and, greatly the worse for
wear, made his way to Taku and boarded a Japanese transport bound for
Nagasaki. He went ashore in that entertaining port with three Mexican
dollars as the melancholy remnant of his pay and travel allowance "to
the place of enlistment," and presented his papers to the American
quartermaster stationed in Nagasaki, who gave him an order for
transportation on the next United States transport sailing for San
Francisco.
Discharged Private Blake was much disconcerted when he was informed
that no Government vessel was to stop en route from Manila in less than
two weeks, and that he was stranded "on the beach," with several other
recent losses to the fighting strength of the army in the Orient. A
bundle of looted silk had been exchanged in Tientsin for bottles of
astonishing Scotch whiskey made in Shanghai, and there was nothing
else of cash value in the light marching order of ex-private Blake. He
hired a room in a toy-like Japanese hotel, and late that night returned
without his three Mexican dollars, but with the perverted energy of a
runaway automobile. Charging headlong through the dainty paper walls of
the hotel rather than be annoyed by trying to find the door mobilized
a small army of Japanese policemen, and memory came back to Blake when
he was dragged into the street, his haversack hurled at his head by the
agitated landlord.
Daylight found him very thirsty and nervous, wandering along the
edge of the bay, waiting for a glimpse of a blue army blouse and the
tenuous hope of a small loan. He leaned against the stone wall of the
Hatoba, with his haversack under his tortured head, and twisted as his
cheek rubbed a hard lump beneath the canvas. Ramming his hand into the
haversack with a peevish curse, "Shorty" pulled out a package wrapped
in wadded silk, and unrolled a teapot of green imperial jade. A stocky
manikin of the Nagasaki police was standing near, and the soldier
addressed him and the sleeping harbor without partiality:
"If I didn't forget all about Jim Saunders and his teapot, I'm a liar.
An' he must be dead an' planted by this time, an' the old homestead
gone to hell, an' nothin' left but this looney little teapot as his
last will an' testament. I'll surely send it to Kansas all right, tho'
it ain't goin' to cheer the old lady very much. The teapot must be
worth as much as a dollar and a half."
Then the demon of thirst gripped Blake by the throat, and the effort of
swallowing fairly shook him. He slipped the teapot into his haversack,
and to his credit it must be told that he struggled with temptation
for several minutes. Then he muttered weakly: "I ain't goin' to sell
it. The teapot will be all safe in hock till I can send for it or make
a strike. Who's goin' to know the difference, anyway? Saunders had no
business to pass away like a sick chicken, an' load me up with this
billy-be-damned piece of bric-a-brac."
But shops and saloons were not yet opened, and "Shorty" Blake walked
heavily along many blocks of silent streets, his thirst more raging and
insistent as he found himself thwarted. Every scruple vanished and he
was ready to sell the teapot for the price of a pint flask of anything
searching and fiery.
The rattle of rickshaw wheels made him suddenly alert, and he stumbled
toward the sound. As he turned a corner there was a collision, and
the racing coolie in the shafts slid on his head, while the passenger
barely saved himself from an ugly backward fall. The Japanese officer
so nearly upset accepted the awkward apologies of the soldier derelict
and politely asked whether he had been hurt. "Shorty" pulled himself
together and, saluting instinctively, he spoke with breathless haste:
"No, sir, no damage done, and I hope you wer'n't shook up; but don't
you want to buy a prime jade teapot, and help out an American soldier
who's broke, an' ain't got no other means of support? I know it ain't
worth much, bein' nothin' but a toy, but I need the price, whatever it
is."
The officer bowed as if honored by the confidence, and replied: "It
is not customary to sell jade teapots in the streets so early in the
morning, and I am in the hurry to arrive with my duty. But Japan and
America are so great friends since Peking, eh? Is it not? A-h, is
th-a-a-t the jade, and from Peking, eh? I do not know everything about
jade, but there are many good times for you in that teapot; ha, ha! I
think so. I am not so mean to rob the honorable soldier. You will make
a borrow of this two yen--two dollars--all right, eh? And you will take
my card and the teapot will come with you at my house at noon hour, eh?"
Before the beclogged brain of "Shorty" Blake had caught up with these
directions, the rickshaw was whisking around a curve of the hillside,
and the derelict was left staring after, the jade teapot in one hand,
and two one-yen notes in the other. Visions of wealth made him tingle,
and he rewrapped the treasure with reverent deliberation. Then began
another battle with a battered fragment of a conscience, and the voice
of Saunders was so distinct in his ear that he turned suddenly more
than once to mutter to the empty street:
"I'm on the edge of the shivers. It's a bad sign when you hear voices
as plain as that. It's that baby whine of his, always cryin', 'Ten
days more an' the folks will be homeless and starvin', an' I can't do
nothin'.'
"Holy smoke! I've heard that string of dates often enough to keep track
of 'em. An' there's three more days leeway or I've missed my count.
An' me with a fortune in this little monkey-doodle teapot, if that Jap
wasn't stringin' me."
From stories told later to his "bunkie" on the transport, it is
probable that "Shorty" Blake passed through great mental stress during
the forenoon of his second day in Nagasaki, but that this ordeal was
nothing compared with his torments after an interview with a wealthy
dealer in curios at the home of a major of Japanese infantry on the
hill. There is reason to believe that the discharged private of the
China Relief Expedition kept his appointment in a fairly sober
condition, although much shaken and easily startled. An hour later, the
Japanese officer accompanied "Shorty" Blake to the telegraph office and
the branch of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, with an air of anxious
guardianship, as if determined to see a wavering project through to
the finish. Shorty skipped references to his escort in subsequent
narratives, as if the topic were painful, dismissing his interview with
the sweeping summary:
"I had to go an' put that little Jap wise to the whole hard-luck story
of Jim Saunders. Then he talked to me like a Dutch uncle, and had me on
the mourners' bench in no time. Them Japs is strong on filial duty, and
he never let up on me till the job was done."
Twenty-four hours later, the Signal Corps operator at the American
army station in Peking copied a message addressed to "J. Saunders, P
Company, Ninth Infantry, Field Hospital No. 1."
"Sold teapot for eight hundred dollars gold. Have cabled six
hundred to old lady to bust mortgage. Will bust Nagasaki wide open
with balance. If not dead, brace up.
(Signed)
"SHORTY."
It seemed indecent to carry this telegram to the bedside of Private
Saunders. He had lost all interest in the world of men and things, yet
was inexplicably lingering, as if caught in an eddy as he drifted out.
Fantasies had fled, and his mind was clearing, as if to pay some heed
to the important business of ceasing to be. The message was first read
by the major-surgeon, and there was more than professional interest in
his tone, as he said to the nurse of the ward:
"Give that man ten drops of digitalis and a dose of brandy, and try to
wake him up enough to understand this telegram. It's the only thing
on earth that may pull him through. He told me his troubles, and this
ought to be his salvation."
The powerful stimulants stirred a current of life in Saunders, and he
heard and comprehended the tidings from "Shorty" Blake, and the heroic
compromise of that distressed soul who had saved the home of his
"pal," but could not let go his grip on the remainder of the windfall.
The invalid gulped and there was almost the shadow of a grin in his
stammering whisper:
"That b-b-blamed fool Shorty is a ---- angel, ain't he? I-I don't
b-believe I'm d-dead yet. Say, can I go home if I'll get strong enough
to stand the hike?"
This effort exhausted Saunders and he slept awhile. The surgeon was
taking his pulse when he awoke, and the friendly nurse holding a cup of
beef tea to his lips.
"You seem to have quit making an ass of yourself," said the surgeon;
"and I've seen your company commander this afternoon. If you can work
up enough strength to stand the trip to the coast, I'll see that your
discharge papers are made out. You'll be no more good to the army."
The same inducement had previously failed to interest Saunders, but now
he had determined to live, in the mighty inspiration of joy and hope
renewed. He drank beef tea and begged for more, and when he flashed
a feeble sputter of profanity because he was not allowed a bit of
bacon, the ward became noisily cheerful. The captain of P Company was
not a hard man, but he had suspected Saunders of malingering until the
major-surgeon told him the private's hospital history, and how he had
been saved from death by the miraculous intervention of the departed
and flagrantly notorious "Shorty" Blake.
"Saunders isn't a bad soldier," said the captain, "but he's always been
a bit too sentimental and broody. And if he's decided to save another
funeral in the company, you'd better ship him home before he changes
his mind. We can't feed him on another batch of such stimulating news
if he slumps again. I'll look after his discharge papers, if you will
certify him for disability."
It was three weeks later when Saunders, very thin and somewhat wobbly,
waited in Nagasaki for the next transport homeward bound from Manila.
He met a discharged corporal of Riley's Battery whom he had seen in
hospital, and the gunner was eager to tell a highly colored tale whose
peroration ran:
"And I was just in time to see the finish of 'Shorty' Blake's
bombardment of Nagasaki, and it must have been a wonder all the way.
They took him off to the transport in a sampan, with four little Jap
policemen sittin' on his head and chest, and him kickin' holes in the
cabin roof. The only night I was out with him he was playin' a game
of turnin' rickshaws upside down, and sittin' on the axle, with the
passenger yellin' murder underneath until Shorty got ready to move on.
I asked him where he got all his money for rum and police court fines,
and he was that twistified with booze, he says:
"'I ripped the mortgage off the old homestead like the hero in a play,
and took my commissions like J. P. Morgan reorganizin' a railroad.
If you don't believe it, ask the Jap whose name begins with a jade
teapot.'"