Chapter IV: 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.