From a Manchurian Notebook: I. The Adventure of the Red-Beards

I

I AM sitting in the quaint little office of our company in Harbin, the last important city of China before one steps over into Siberia. Personally, I should find it hard to think of facts and figures in an office which has for its outlook a curved tiled roof, with curious gargoyles and dragons holding on to the ridgepole. I am sure that in such a place as this I could not put a pin through my mind, sticking it down to business and a desk. It all tempts my fancy away to fairies, goblins, and suchlike folk. Fortunately for me, I am the wife of the business man and not the business man himself, and my thoughts are free to wander.

This is an adventurous life we are leading. At present, my husband’s work takes him all over the three northern provinces that make up Manchuria, and I go with him. This means that we roam from silent Siberia on the north to the Great Wall of China on the south, from Mongolia on the west to Korea on the east. Great Manchuria, at once the hope and despair of China! it is her frontier-land, and, as such, with its potential possibilities, is the ‘big chance’ for the man crowded out of the other eighteen provinces. Mongolia and Manchuria are China’s unsettled tracts, and are, between them, rich in all resources; therein lies her peril, for other nations are determined to get hold of this border-country. With each disturbance in her internal affairs, the foreign powers have wrested from her some new rights in these frontiers. Harbin, which I sit looking out upon, is half Russian; beyond the curved, tiled roofs, I can see the golddomed churches of the Russians; they, and all that they signify, overshadow the city. From here, the Russians spread north and south over the land. All of Manchuria above the Amur River is now a part of Siberia, and to the south the Russians hold the railroad half-way through the province.

In the far southeast, on the Korean border, is the city of Antung; it, too, is no longer purely Chinese. Insinuating themselves among the substantial buildings of the natives, are the frailer Japanese houses. So does the Japanese insinuate himself into Chinese life, spreading his tentacles up from the south, farther and farther each year. Even now, his ‘railway zone of influence’ extends so far north that it touches that of the Russians. The little man from the tiny islands over the way wants, and intends to have, this splendid land. He checked the Russian advance, but there is no one to stop him and his greed knows no end. Ah, well, there is at least a little more time left to the Chinese before the Japanese bustle in and take possession, killing the personality of frontier China as they have ruthlessly killed native life and customs in Korea. While these days remain we shall roam here. For a little while we shall forget the greed of nations. To-morrow we leave them and their strife behind, for we are going to start for one of the real outposts of the world — even of Manchuria, which is an outpost itself.

From Harbin we go a day’s journey up the Sungari River to Hulanho, where we drop all outside communications; then, by native cart, we travel due north to Peilintzu and on to Hailun over the great northern plain of Manchuria. A thousand li (over three hundred miles) by the slowest possible mode of travel, during the worst time of year, in a bandit-inhabited country: that is what such a journey implies. We shall present our passports in every important town, thus securing an escort of Chinese soldiers; but often the escort is small and the individual soldier none too brave. One never knows just what is going to happen next in this part of the globe; herein lies half the fascination of it — which confirms my suspicion that we are thoroughgoing vagabonds at heart.

In the early fall in Manchuria, the natives undergo a sort of magic change from farmer to bandit. It seems something of a psychological somersault — one day a plodding farmer, the next a highwayman. After the tall kaoliang, or giant millet, is cut, and escape is not so easy over the bare plains, another clap of the hands and lo, a peaceful farmer once more! It is not only the farmer who plays this exciting game; many another staid member of the community has his little fling. Some even combine their rôles, differentiating according to the seasons. With the Oriental’s disregard for conditions, a man is often bandit, merchant, and magistrate all at once.

The bandits are almost as old as the country itself. Long ago they disguised themselves with red beards, in consequence of which they have been called hung-hu-tzu — red-beards — ever since. Once they were orderly, trustworthy souls, taking only their ‘just toll,’ insuring ships and carts and men, and robbing only those who were too penurious, or possibly too independent, to pay the exemption fee. These bands had their insurance headquarters in the large towns, in the houses of many a leading merchant; and, as most of the Chinese regarded this blackmail as they regard taxes of any kind, to this day these merchants (if not their agents, who do the actual holding-up) move in the best Chinese society. But more and more, as Manchuria has become the borderland of various civilizations, the ordered ways of these brigand bands have grown disordered; countless farmers and unpaid soldiers have made themselves self-appointed members, until, along all the main grain ways, whether cart roads or rivers, the little red flag of insurance is now of no avail — every man’s hand is turned against his brother. The confusion is made still greater by the influence of those bordering, socalled civilized, countries. It is whispered by those who know the inside of things out here that the Japanese furnish arms and encouragement to wouldbe Chinese robbers. The more disorder there is, the better the pretext for Japan to extend her already extensive police district. Furthermore, we cannot be altogether sure that the escorts given us will not be in league with bandit groups. Strangely enough, in such a case they may prove the better protection. If soldiers who secretly belong to organized bands are appointed as escorts to foreigners, they warn the other members of their bandit group of the passport and its influence with the powers that be. It makes me feel that the gargoyles and the dragons outside have spirited me away to Alice’s Wonderland — a higgledy-piggledy world where soldiers are outlaws and we seek their protection.

Like all true pilgrims, we start with light hearts and few possessions. A native cart is only an oak box with a rounded top, latticed sides, open front, and plank bottom. This structure, which, like Wendy’s house, must have been measured just to fit (for it is exactly high enough and long enough for one person — if he be of medium size — to sit in), is set on heavy oak shafts. The shafts extend out in front, making a little platform for the driver, and in back, forming a place for the luggage. This substantial affair rests, exactly in its centre, without a vestige of springs, on a wooden axle, at the ends of which the great wheels turn. Of necessity, then, we curtail our living to the utmost simplicity: there is little room and less security for earthly treasure, for the springless cart jars everything into a more or less unrecognizable condition. Clothes jostle and rub until there are holes in them; bottles break, and crackers are often reduced to crumbs. After many experiments, we have finally made our baggage consist of a stout, seamanlike chest holding the minimum of clothes, a bedding roll, and a smaller chest in which we store away a few tins of meat, crackers, butter, and milk. For the rest of our food-supplies we must depend upon the country; chickens, eggs, and rice we can always get, and there is no place in China, no matter how far afield you may wander, where you cannot get a cup of tea for a penny or two.

II

We left Harbin this morning on a little stern-wheel paddle-boat. Tonight we are in Hulanho. The boat harbored all sorts and conditions of men: Russian peasants, Chinese frontiersmen, strange nomadic people, all journeying away from the confines of civilization. All day the boat, with its strange mixed load, paddled toward Hulanho. The banks, high as our heads, shut us in to the speculation of the crouching men, who filled every crack and crevice without regard to comfort. Those Russians — were they, perhaps, escaped exiles? Those squatting Chinese, silent and enigmatic — were they, any of them, members of the brigand bands that infested the region? Those nomads — like us, did they feel a restless spirit within, calling them to new country? Never had my fellow man seemed more interesting, more unfathomable. Why were we all there, and whither were we going? The inscrutable faces of the oriental throng gave back no answer; neither did the inscrutable, deep-blue sky full of marvelously white Manchurian clouds. Each man’s secret remained his own, but the splendid sun shone over us all as we pushed slowly up the shallow river between the high banks.

We forgot home and kindred, we felt pagan — free; there stirred within us a sense of new life, yet strangely old — the free, wandering life rightly inherited by every man from the days when all the world roamed. Underneath the layers of modern convention, does not the wanderer’s spirit lie hidden within us all? Has it not started into life at unlooked-for moments, even when we walked a city pavement, or sat in a wholly business-like office, as the smoke of a bonfire reached our nostrils, or as we caught glimpses of night skies above tall buildings — awakening within us, for the instant, strange, restless cravings for a lost freedom? Here, with the modern world far, far away, a wild sweet spirit took possession of us. To-morrow will bring us to the long trail, the out trail, at last! And tonight I am sitting in a Chinese inn on a brick k’ang — a northern Chinese bed. I am writing by the light of a tiny lamp, and that of a luminous young moon, and one very brilliant star. Outside, the trail leads on, on into the moonlight; a dream-trail, a moon-trail, beckoning, enticing. Surely to-night we have touched the magic spring of the earth; earth-trail joins moon-trail.

To-day is to-morrow! The earth stirs and we wake with her, such is our close communion out here where the artificiality of our civilization is swept from us. We wake to quiet and a soft stirring breeze tapping on the paper window-panes; but as the sun rises clear of the horizon, the huge courtyard pulses with the life of a hundred journeyings. Settler and bandit and nomad start the day’s business. The stir of departure tinges the very air. Even the carts look as if they were all of the same mind, anticipating the start. In a Manchurian inn there are two gates at opposite ends of the court — one where you come in, one where you go out. As the carts are never turned round in the inn enclosure, they bear now, as always, an expectant mien as they stand with their shafts toward the gate of departure. Mules and ponies and horses munch their grain at the rude stalls; servants pass with kettles of steaming tea; men and women are climbing into the tiny interiors of the ‘Peking’ carts; carters are harnessing their trains of mules to the heavily loaded grain carts, one, two, three, and even four, one in front of the other. Mules and donkeys are braying, men are shouting; there is the habitual oriental bargaining and quarreling. We, too, join in the din of departure. Our two carts are soon ready. In one we store the extra baggage and the never-to-be-left-behind ‘ boy.’ In the other my husband deftly piles sacks of grain, leaving just room enough for me to squeeze in and take a half-reclining position, with my feet almost touching the first mule’s tail. A ‘ Peking’ cart is an altogether fearsome thing to ride in, unless you are wedged in so as not to shake with each jar of the springless planks beneath you; but, as I have discovered, this same primeval vehicle, arranged by an old-time follower of the Chinese road, becomes quite an endurable means of travel.

I wriggled myself into the remaining space between the sacks, my husband swung himself onto one shaft, the driver let his long whip sing over the backs of the mules, sprang to his seat, and we jerked into motion. We rode from the thronging mules and men, through the great gate of leaving — jolting and bumping over its uneven sill, down into the ruts of the road. Our escort came riding toward us on horseback, and our procession of carts and soldiers passed from the single street of Hulanho out on the red-brown track, stretching away over the plains. We had left the other travelers behind, and we had the road to ourselves. I leaned back against the grain sacks, perfect peace possessing me, as I watched the ribbon trail ahead. There was such profound tranquillity all round us that we did not disturb it with a single word; it was the fulfillment of the restless spring striving, and amid this quiet plenty we rode on and on, without fret, without anxiety.

Nor did the little world-old villages that we traveled through bring any bustling discord: there was the same peace and abundance. On the rounded tops of the brown mud dwellings lay great heaps of yellow corn, and through the open gates of the mud walls we saw, across the courts, strings and strings of red peppers hanging by the house doors. Now and then we met the very oldest form of cart — with the two wheels turning on a fixed axle; they were grain carts, now loaded with stalks of kaoliang, and we brushed their leaves in passing them on the narrow way, as the oxen pulled them slowly, slowly to their destination. The villages were empty now, for everyone was busy in the harvest fields; there were only a few old women drawing water at the wells or washing clothes in the stone troughs that stood near. During their age-long existence, all the villages seemed to have acquired a meditative calm. The wayside shrines with their smoking incense testified to the fact that there was time, even now in the harvest season, to worship the gods. In the open country we forded streams, and we drove through the high-standing grain and the low-growing beans. We watched the naked men working with implements of Abraham’s time, and the women in bright-red trousers and blue upper garments gathering the grain into bundles, and the little children following behind, making a last gleaning of the ground in order that nothing, not even the smallest kernel, should be lost. Over us all the marvelous northern sunshine poured steadfastly, hour after hour.

At last, the morning with its simple scenes had slipped away, and we stopped to eat at the side of the way. It was the usual inn — one long room with the two k’angs, or brick platforms, running parallel down the longer sides, and the rafters blackened with the smoke from the braziers. It was cool and empty just then, so we sat cross-legged on one of the k’angs, eating our tiffin of coffee and eggs from the low k’ang table, polished and black with the feastings of travelers unnumbered. As our ‘boy’ came and went, lifting the bamboo curtain at the door, we caught glimpses of the heated, glimmering air of noon. Over the inn court there was now no bustle of leave-taking; everything drowsed in the noon-day. The two-wheeled carts rested on their backs, their shafts high in the air; the mules munched and munched in ruminative content. The carters lay asleep in curious oriental attitudes on benches as wide as my hand. Stretching ourselves on the matting on the k’ang, in the same untutored simplicity, our bodies and spirits loosened their hold on the actual, and we too slept. We woke at last, feeling the hard brick beneath us. It was mid-afternoon!

‘Boy! boy!’ we called, tumbling off the k’ang. (When in trouble in China, always call the boy.) ‘You no belong proper boy. You have sleepee. Plenty piecie hung-hu-tzu kill two gentlemen, night time no have catchee place sleep.’ (When you wish to vent your anger in China, vent it on the boy; that is partially why you have him — to be the scapegoat.) In answer to our wrath, the boy sat up sleepily. We hustled him, we hustled the carters. We were thoroughly aware now of the danger, for the inns are far apart in this region of Manchuria. But with all our hustling no one else hustled. Finally, remembering the fate of him who hurried the East, we forebore; but not being able to become altogether passive, we paced up and down, up and down — after the fashion of the West. In due course of time — according to the oriental mind — the mules were harnessed, the baggage in place, and we drove leisurely forth, our fellows stoically calm, we impatient.

But a little way, and the care-free spirit of the open road once more controlled us. We walked hand in hand, we sat on little hillocks awaiting the carts we had outdistanced, we felt the glee of escaped children; the day seemed a stolen day from some other existence when life was made up of roving. At last we were tired, and climbed into the cart and lay against the mustysmelling grain sacks. We were silent again; the dusk settled down, a revivifying moment when there seemed a vapor of spiritual life hovering over the earth. So we journeyed until twilight deepened into night, and the stars and the moon came out. Late in the evening, the carters drove their tired mules through the shadowy gateway into the moon-lighted inn-enclosure. We were late indeed! Fifty or more carts and two hundred travelers were ahead of us. Looking into the one common room, we saw that the two k’angs were crowded with sleeping humanity. We thought with horror of such a man-filled night after the spacious world we had lived in all day, so we made a bed of straw in the cart and lay there, close together in silent companionship. It was a solitude made perfect, out there with only one’s mate, the animals, and above — the sky and the moon.

III

The next day a new life seemed stirring; the farther we went, the younger it seemed to grow. The methods of work in the fields and villages were as much of the past as they had been on the previous day, but the mud dwellings often looked new. We were touching the frontier, where men, mostly from the overcrowded provinces of Shantung, with more vision and initiative than their fellow townsmen, had come for their ‘big chance’; and they were getting it! The crops were bumper ones; the grain-towers of spiral matting that could be made high or low according to the amount of grain to be put in them, stood up high above everything else in the landscape. The men in the hongs, with whom we talked business, cared nothing at all for a small commission; they were used to realizing twenty and thirty per cent on their money. At noon we found our inn was brand-new — a new inn in China! The words clash to the point of absurdity. One says inn, and at once the vision of a black and age-old interior rises up before one. But there the impossible stood, with the hoops of red cloth — the infallible sign of the Chinese hostelry — swinging gayly in the breeze before the door. We entered, to find shavings on the floor, and the whole place as clean as a Dutch hearth. Furthermore, the entire town was new. The inn-keeper was a Shantung man, driven out of his own province in a year of bad crops. That was two years ago, and this year he was building a complete village, bringing men and women from his old home to people it and work for him. He and his creation were the epitome of this life, young and vital, yet even now, in its beginnings, old with the inherited traditions of the East.

Now we perceived that each day more of convention and its ways was slipping from us. We had our regular rations of crackers, eggs, and a cup of coffee — just one cup apiece, for the tiny pot that fitted into the food-chest would not hold more than two cups. That ended the eating question. We wore thin shirts and khaki trousers — just alike. That ended the clothes question. We forgot the strivings and cravings of the world, as we count it, in this country whence our civilization had so utterly vanished. We grew to want little and to know no haste. The days came to us with more and more elemental meanings, elemental appeals, On the fourth day we reached Peilintzu. The life of the Orient surged in the streets with all its overpowering force. It was evening. From the latticed sides of the cart, as we rumbled along, I watched the dim city. The soft flickering lights threw into relief the elements of the primitive, existing everywhere, and now daily becoming a part of us. In the dark huts open to the streets, bean-oil lamps flared and flickered above families bending low over their evening meal. With bowls held to their mouths, they ate eagerly, with original, elemental hunger. In the shops ware men naked to the waist, their brown bodies glistening in the light; and all the streets were crowded with venders striking their cymbals, shouting their wares. Beggars in sackcloth and dirt limped, and groveled, and whined, holding out begging hands and raising their voices for alms, alms. High above these noises and above the creaking of the cart-wheels, came the shrilling, barbaric music of the onestringed violins playing the wedding guests into strange, unnamed moods, and of the pounding tom-toms beating forth the wailing mysteries of death. Before our eyes, in naked simplicity, was the drama of existence which we, in our civilization, veil and disguise and ignore — the rude joy over food, the ugliness of want, the passion of love, the uncontrolled sorrow of death. In the summer night, feasting and want, love and death, all lifted their voices.

And again we passed through the shadowy gateway of the night’s stopping-place, into the court with its moonlighted roof and its quiet, munching beasts. Day by day, night by night, this primordial existence was piling up its experiences within us. Life surcharged with rudimentary meanings was calling us more and more insistently to live as profoundly as we could.

But we had yet to touch the very heart of fundamental things.

We stayed a day in Peilintzu, for my husband had work to do and we must present our passports at the yamen (the official house and office). We were not at all sure we should be allowed to go on. From Peilintzu to Hailun was the stretch of country reputed to be full of the bandits. We spent the day in the hongs and prowling over the city. The one-storied mud buildings, baked brown by the northern sun, made the place look like an encampment of gophers. There were no pagodas, or temples, or even a city wall, to break the stretch of rounded roofs — only the high-standing grain-towers of fresh matting, which spoke of business prosperity. But for some reason Peilintzu was quite as fascinating as the more characteristic Chinese cities with their beautiful walls, half-ruined temples, and pagodas. Perhaps its charm was the freedom of the plains, of which I caught glimpses beyond the brown city; perhaps it was the daring, almost lawless, freedom of the pioneer inhabitants.

The market street was the most surprising thing of all. Away out here, where we felt as if we had come to the jumping-off place of the earth, — here where a white woman had never been,

— we found a market-place as busy as Wall Street, though altogether Eastern. The long street was full of carts and mules and pack-donkeys, of buyers and sellers and money-changers. Fortunes were made and lost on that street, in grain and the great gamble in beans, Here, where man made no pose, I began to realize how ruthless business is

— how innately it pertains to the savage instinct of struggle for food and shelter.

When I entered the hongs, I could scarcely comprehend the large investments with twenty and thirty per cent returns, the very air was so pervaded with the enervating, idle ease of the wealthy Eastern gentleman. We all but stumbled in the dark rooms heavy with smoke and the odor of incense. Vassals, whose duty it was to serve every whim of those oriental business men, stood on every side. A crowd of them always ushered us into the inner offices, where sat the managers amid the dust-covered ancestral tablets and the paper panes of the sealed windows. One retainer would bring us tea, one waterpipes. Then there was always a modern touch — one would offer us British American Tobacco Company cigarettes. The smoke of Western business had penetrated even into the inner sanctuaries of these hongs.

In the late afternoon, just after we had returned to the inn, the head official of the town came to see us. He was a little sawed-off Oriental, clad in Chinese clothes and a derby. We were indeed honored, for we were only merchants— and business is not one of the time-reverenced occupations here. Farmer and scholar and official stand above the merchant. After much Eastern politeness, he told us that he thought we could go on, and that he would give us an escort of two soldiers! We could have blessed the absurd little man in the long gown and derby, who put his pride in his pocket — or more correctly, as he was a Chinese, up his huge sleeve — and made going on possible for us, for we wanted with all our hearts to see the country ahead.

IV

Promptly on time the next morning, our escort appeared riding bravely up the street, their rifles over their shoulders. They were literally covered with bandoliers — one had two hundred rounds, the other a hundred and fifty. Thus we started prepared for battle, but the day passed without event, in the same quiet as the previous days. We were not safe yet. We should have reached Hailun that night, but a rain, the evening before, had softened the roads, which were no more than paths through the fields, until our heavy wheels sank deep into the sticky mud, turning more slowly than ever. We strained our eyes into the gathering dusk for some sign of Hailun, but in vain. Had we known it, Ilailun was many li away. Although Chinese carters have been over a road innumerable times, they can scarcely ever tell how near you are to your stopping-place. They will say you are ten li away, but at the end of the ten li they will tell you — without seeing the incongruity of it — that your destination is still not ten, but twenty li farther on! Why should you wish to know? they evidently wonder; it will not get you there any sooner. Just plod on and on, and by and by, if Fate wills it, you will be there. That is all there is to it. Why discuss it?

As we drove farther and farther in the dim September twilight, the mere physical needs, food and shelter, became the most important things on earth. Hailun was, to us, but a mirage of bodily comfort, forever in the distance. Cart-tired, weary beyond all expression, the whole blessedness of living was bed, and food, and safety. Our uncouth mule-drivers, who had known no other wants in all their existence, were not more single in their desires, this night, than we. Around us lay the land in perfect peace. The tall kaoliang rustled its corn-like leaves about us. Higher than a man’s head, higher than a man on horseback, it stood, of fering shelter. We cried out to claim its protection, to stretch ourselves in the cart and sleep! But we knew with fear — instinctive fear like that of the natives— that the high grain could also make safe the escape of marauding bands. There was no protection to be hoped for from the peaceful earth. Man had despoiled it, and to man we must look for help. At last we came to a little make-shift inn, but there was no room for us and it had begun to rain! But in a smaller building, where wheat was stored within the inn enclosure, we slept on top of the grain-sacks — man and woman of the West, carters and soldiers of the East.

There is no delaying, in the morning, on the Chinese road, for the carters are early astir and they see to it that you have no rest, until in desperation you, too, get up. So, despite the night’s experiences, we made our tiffin place next morning by nine o’clock. So said our watches, and the sun, so far as we could tell, agreed with them. Having quickly disposed of our coffee and eggs, we pushed on to one of the many small rivers we had been continually crossing. As usual, the ferry-boat was on the other side and the boatmen were eating their chow and refused to hurry. Our escort, exceedingly wroth at such an indignity — as they reckoned it — to their distinguished selves, fired off their guns a couple of times. It was a fine display of empty authority, but, at any rate, we did not have to wait longer: the ferry, as we grandly called the mud-scow (with boards across the hold for the cart-wheels to rest on), slowly worked across the river by means of poles. For once, the carts rolled aboard without their wheels slipping off the narrow planks that led to the boat. For once, the mules behaved as if ferrying was the greatest joy of their lives, stepping demurely into the prow, scorning the very thought of skipping gayly into the kaoliang at the moment of embarkation, as we had known them to do. So we were quickly aboard, keeping well in the stern to avoid the mules’ heels, — and across we went.

Then we started to climb. After going steadily upward for about an hour, we came out on the northern plain. It looked for all the world like ‘the land east of the sun and west of the moon’ of the folk-tales, a great never-to-beforgotten country, vast and rolling, and, as far as one could see, covered with crops of all kinds — kaoliang, beans, corn, buckwheat. The oats and wheat had already been harvested, leaving large patches of rich brown earth. Here and there on the huge expanse were scattered groups of four or five mud houses. The productiveness and the immensity of that plain held us enthralled. It was as if we had stumbled into a mythical land, where things grew of their own accord, where there were not men enough to gather in the abundance, where nature appeared graciously to dispense with man and the sweat of his brow. The Manchurian sunshine, that glorious potion, fell like golden wine over those boundless stretches. Faint was our Anglo-Saxon heritage; we were lost to all but the long vagabond days, the simple living in inns, the carts bouncing along over the roads. Around us was the shining air; within us the love of the open way. We had inherited the earth! There it lay!

Then suddenly, from the quiet road ahead, a cloud of dust arose. As we strained our eyes to see, there came riding out of it three or four men. Each man was pulling after him by leading straps a number of animals: that much we could see.

‘Heavenly mud!’ cried my husband, shading his eyes with his hand, ‘they’re riding hell for leather. Something’s up!’

Now we were near enough to understand their shouts: —

‘Hung-hu-tzu lai — Hung-hu-tzu lai!’ (The red-beards are coming! The redbeards are coming!) ‘They are fighting — ten li off — at an inn — they are chasing us — to get our horses — Hunghu-tzu lai — Hung-hu-tzu lai!’

‘For God’s sake, hurry!’ cried my husband, fairly lifting me on to the high shaft of the cart and jumping after me — we had all been walking. The carters jumped to their places, simultaneously making their long whips whistle and crack in the air. Down they came on the mules’ backs. The carts sprang forward with a terrific bounce. The escort were urging their horses and loading their rifles. ‘Have your revolver ready!’ my husband shouted to me, as he slipped his own out of his belt. It was a wild ride! Across the fields! Through the kaoliang! Over the beans! Behind and amongst us the frightened bearers of the news, their horses and their mules! On, on, over the furrows, plunged our clumsy train, the carts rocking until it seemed they must tip over. All around us the terrified men yelled savagely, and the whips hissed and whizzed. Behind, steadily getting nearer, a cloud of brown dust!

Nearer came the cloud of dust. We knew the full meaning of it. With painful vividness there flashed through my mind something they had told us in Harbin of a traveler in this country who had left his fellows, one day, to go on alone; the next morning they found him stripped of all his possessions and of his life, too. There lay the beautiful earth spread out like a feast before us, but from us, too, as from him, might go the sun, and the wind, and all the earth. I clutched more firmly my revolver. I heard the strange horsemen yell: ‘A hundred in the band! ’ How slowly we moved! How they gained on us!

On over more beans, through another field of kaoliang we went. Suddenly, right in front of us, hidden until now by the tall grain, stood a walledr-in farmhouse. We sprang to the ground. We hammered frenziedly on the door. Would they, oh, would they, let us in? Already the brown cloud was resolving into a mass of men, furiously riding! Still they delayed within. We could hear the farmer-family talking — they thought we were the bandits! Precious moments were passing. Bullets were now going ‘ phut! ’ in the dirt around us. Hope was all but gone when, through a loop-hole, some one within spied us — the foreigners! Then they knew and opened their gates! Horses, mules, men — we all whirled into the court, swept on by the overwhelming instinct to live. The great doors swung to behind us, the heavy wooden bars clattered into place. We were safe!

In the courtyard of that far-away farm-house we waited, our hearts beating fast with the fear and the joy and the vision of that ride. Only a short time had passed since we had been idling along the road, but in those wild moments our souls had been saturated with the pure instinct of self-preservation. Our Anglo-Saxon world of possible conquests, possible possessions, possible fame, had been shown to us as mere trappings. In one revealing flash we had seen the beauty of naked existence, had been mad with the desire for life. It was not the sordid struggle to keep body and soul together that takes place in our own present-day civilized cities; it was the exaltation of a race for our lives amid the glowing abundance of the clean earth. That moment, surcharged with primitive vitality and vividness, had erased from our souls all the pallidity, the colorlessness, of past conventional experience. At last it had been given to us to throb with the pulsing heart of the elemental! Through it, we felt life’s profound significance. Some things are made known only to vagabonds. In the open world, far away from the bustle and blinding competition for conquests, possessions, and fame, we had tasted living in its essence.

We had little notion how long we should have to stay with the farmer and his family. The remainder of the bandits who had followed the horseowners would probably not attack us behind high walls, unless they were reinforced. Perhaps we might go on in the morning, but there was no certainty of it: all depended on the bandits, for we dared not go on, with an escort of two, until that band of a hundred was accounted for.

My husband paced the court, his eyes full of light. ‘This business is surely an exciting one,’ he exclaimed half anxiously, half exultantly. The husband in him was anxious, the vagabond exultant. But both of us being largely vagabond, we dismissed care and entered with zest into the joys of our forefathers, into the game dear to all when the world was young — the game of what will happen next.

No siege was attempted that night, and gray dawn found the soldier of the last watch asleep by the loop-hole. We hoped that the Red-Beards had decided that it was better not to molest us. After much discussion, we concluded that we would wait until noon and then, if there was no sign of the bandits, we would risk going on. All the morning we watched and scouted in the immediate vicinity. No robbers appeared, but neither was there a single traveler venturing forth on the road.

Nevertheless, at noon we started forth, with one soldier ahead, and one behind the carts. I sat inside our vehicle with my revolver loaded, watching the way ahead, while my husband, in order to see above the rounded top of the cart, stood on the narrow space in front, where he usually sat, and watched for sudden attacks from the rear. The road was deserted; no one else dared make the attempt to push forward. Evidently the historic RedBeards were still about.

But by and by, when the tension was getting well-nigh unbearable, for me at least, we began meeting carts coming from Hailun. At any rate, traffic was being resumed.

‘ Greetings of the road,’ we called out in Chinese; ‘ what of the Hung-hu-tzu? ’

‘ Soldiers have gone out, caught some and shot them,’ was the laconic answer.

We rode on until we could see distinctly, in the fading evening light, the low mud dwellings of Hailun. Crowds of people were standing on the housetops. Coming through a field of kaoliang, in the twilight silence we saw, hanging from the branches of a tall tree, the bloody heads of the bandits.