TUESDAY, October 16.
We are up at daylight and off again. In the cold, magnificent dawn,
upon a clear pink sky, the sun rises and shines without heat on the
green plain, and on the deserted place where we have slept.
All at once I leap to the ground with an instinctive longing for
activity, anxious to move, to walk. Horrors! At a turn in the path as
I am running fast without looking where I am going, I almost step on
something in the form of a cross,--a naked corpse lying face downward
with extended arms, half buried in the mud and of a corresponding
color; the dogs or the crows, or some Chinese who wanted the queue,
have taken the scalp, leaving the cranium white and minus hair or skin.
It grows colder each day as we get farther away from the sea, and the
plain begins gradually to slope upward.
Junks pass as they did yesterday, going down the river in files with
military stores, and are under the care of soldiers of all the nations
of Europe. Then come long intervals of solitude, during which no living
thing appears in this region of millet and reeds. The wind that blows
more and more bitterly is healthful; it dilates the chest, and for the
moment redoubles life. So we march along between the sorghos and the
river, on the everlasting frosty path that leads to Pekin, without
fatigue, without any desire to hurry, but always ahead of the solemn
Chinamen, who, tugging at their ropes, continue to draw our floating
house, keeping up their pace with the regularity of machines.
There are a few trees now on the banks, willows with very green leaves
of a variety unknown to us; they seem untouched by the autumn, and
their beautiful color is in striking contrast to the rusty tones of the
grass and the dying sorghos. There are gardens too,--abandoned gardens
that belonged to hamlets that have been burned; our Chinamen sometimes
send one of their number on a marauding expedition, and he brings back
armfuls of vegetables for our meals.
Osman and Renaud, as we pass by ruined houses, sometimes pick up
articles which they think necessary for the embellishment of our
dwelling,--small mirrors, carved seats, lanterns, even bunches of
artificial flowers made of rice paper, which may have adorned the
headdresses of massacred or fleeing Chinese ladies, and which they
naïvely use to decorate the walls of the room. The interior of our
sarcophagus soon takes on an air of distinction quite droll and
barbaric.
It is astonishing how soon we accustom ourselves to the perfectly
simple life on the junk, an existence of healthy fatigue, devouring
appetites, and heavy sleep.
Toward the evening of this day the mountains of Mongolia, those which
tower above Pekin, begin to appear on the distant horizon, on the very
border of this infinitely level land.
There is something especially lugubrious about the twilight to-day. The
sinuous Pei-Ho, narrowing hour by hour at each turn, seems to be but a
tiny stream between its silent shores, and we feel altogether too much
shut in by the confused growth which conceals such sombre things. The
day goes out in one of those cold dead colorings that are a specialty
of Northern winters. All that there is in the way of light comes from
the water, which reflects more vividly than the sky; the river, like
a mirror, reflects the sunset yellows; one might even say that it
exaggerates the sad light, as it runs between the inverted images of
the reeds, the monotonous sorghos and the already black silhouettes
of the few trees. The solitude is deeper than that of yesterday.
The cold and the silence settle down upon one like a winding sheet.
There is a penetrating melancholy in feeling the slow oncoming of the
night in this nameless spot, a certain anguish in looking at the last
reflections of the neighboring reeds,--reflections which continue, even
though ahead of us darkness claims the hostile and unknown distance.
Happily, the hour for supper is here, the longed-for hour, for we are
very hungry. In our little retreat I shall find again the red light of
our lantern, the excellent soldier's bread, the smoking tea served by
Toum, and the cheerfulness of my two good servants.
Toward nine o'clock, just as we pass a group of junks full of people,
all Chinese,--marauders' junks evidently,--we hear cries behind
us,--cries of distress and death, cries that are horrible in the
stillness. Toum, who lends his fine ear and understands all that these
people are saying, explains that they are engaged in killing an old man
because he has stolen some rice. We were not numerous enough or sure
enough of our party, to interfere. I fired two shots into the air in
their direction, and all became still as if by magic; we had, no doubt,
saved the head of the old rice thief at least until the morning.
Then it is quiet until daylight. After midnight, tied up no matter
where among the reeds, we all sleep a sleep that is undisturbed. It
is calm and cold under the stars. There are a few shots fired in the
distance. We are conscious of them, but they do not wake us.
WEDNESDAY, October 17.
We rise at daybreak and run along the bank in the white frost; the dawn
is pink, and soon the sun rises bright and clear.
Wishing to take a short cut through the everlasting sorghos fields and
to rejoin the junk which is obliged to follow a long turn in the river
further on, we cross the ruins of a hamlet where frightfully contorted
bodies are lying, on whose blackened members the ice has formed little
crystals that shine like a coating of salt.
After our noon dinner, as we emerge from the semi-obscurity of our
sarcophagus, the Chinamen point to the horizon. Tong-Tchow, the "City
of Celestial Purity," is beginning to show itself; great black walls
surmounted with miradors, and an astonishingly tall, slender tower, of
a very Chinese outline with twenty superimposed roofs.
It is all distant still, and the plains about us are full of horrors.
From a stranded junk emerges a long dead arm, of a bluish tone. And
the bodies of cattle borne by the current pass by us in a perfect
procession, all swollen and exhaling a bovine pest. A cemetery must
have been violated hereabouts, for on the mud of the shore there are
empty coffins with human bones alongside them.
V