Adventure, December 3, 1920 — page 126: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

116 satiated a European child of ten. He would pass beyond the city gate and eat it in the shadow of the walls. The corner he found was cool and compara- tively pleasant; at least one was not trampled underfoot. On all sides low clay mounds arose, gutted by the Winter rains, now cracked and parched, and the low tile-roofed sheds of brick- yards blocked the view of the country beyond. ° Behind him the great city wall rose gray and somber with here and there a half-ruined tower or a great rent in the masonry showing its age and lack of repair. At its base lay heaps of rubble, broken brick and rubbish. Leaning against one of these piles, gray, parched, the color of the prevailing dust and rubbish, were the remains of what had once been aman. A pair of horribly twisted legs, scarcely human, protruded from the litter of rags which enveloped him. His eyes were wide open and glassy, his thin, drawn lips parched and cracked, and his bald head covered with patches of eczema and dry brown scab horrible to behold. It was Ching-yi, an old acquaintance of Tong’s, who some years previously had been struck down by a falling derrick while unloading a sugar steamer from Singapore. Tong squatted beside this wreck of humanity. “How goes it, old friend?” he inquired. The glassy eyes turned slowly in his direction and gazed for a time without recognition. Then the parched lips began to move. at first pro- ducing no seund, then a hoarse whisper. “Badly, badly,” he wheezed. “I have not tasted food for days and am too weak to crawl farther.” Tong preduced his rice, though hungry him- self, amd watched his famished companion greedily swallowing the grains, which he con- veyed to his mouth with fingers that resembled the claws of a bird of prey. After the last morsel was consumed Ching-yi uttered a sigh of content. “That was good,” he whispered. “But why don’t your sons take care of you?” questioned Tong. “They are strong and hearty.” “They departed three months since on a fireship, and I know not what has become of them. I am all alone in the world with none to help me.” | Tong regarded him in sorrow. “Once more the doings of the White Devils,” he thought. | After a while he again addressed him, but he answered not, and though his glassy eyes were open and staring he evidently had fallen asleep, soothed to rest by the much needed food. Tong continued on his way. The sun was already low in the west and casting long purple shadows over the clay hills and rubbish heaps - as he approached an open space which seemed literally packed with humanity. Adventure Every point of vantage and disadvantage was thronged with people, and even the tiled roofs of the brick kilns were occupied by spectators squatting or prone on their bellies. Above all arose a hum, a buzzing as of an enormous swarm of blue-bottle flies, which rose and fell with the swaying mass. Tong understood at a glance. It was the place of execution, and he well knew that pres- ently some poor wretch would fall under the sharp sword of the law. A mighty impulse seized upon him and spurred him onward, and he pushed his way to right and left through the dense throng, slipping under like an eel and climbing over where needful. It was not the mere spectacle that prompted him, for Tong had seen too many heads fall to feel idle curiosity. It was a great desire to stand among his fellows, shoulder to shoulder, to do, to act, he knew not what! Suddenly he found himself in the foremost row. Three prisoners knelt before the ditch which would presently be their grave. They were stripped to the waist, with hands tied behind them so tightly that the cords cut into their flesh, and their pigtails had already been cut off and thrown into the ditch before them. LOOKING closer, Tong became aware that he on the left was his old friend Houling, the porter. His eyes stared straight into the ditch, and his face was as expressionless and his air as indifferent as if the whole affair were no concern of his, while the mighty muscles of his trade lay in knots and bundles on his very bones without a suspicion of fat anywhere to drag the contrast of his anatomy into harmony. His two companions were just Chinamen like ten million others, lean, underfed, underdeveloped. Tong could not get within speaking distance of his friend, but he inquired of a neighbor what they had been up to. Several volunteered in- formation. It appeared that Houling together with two acquaintances had broken into the house of a White Devil and had helped themselves to a watch and several other desirable trifles. But Chinese justice, though ordinarily sloth- ful, is swift when it comes to satisfy the demands of the hated and feared alien; and so it came to pass that Houling and his friends were seized behind the shed of the coal-yard an hour or two before with the booty still upon their persons. The headsman now approached sword in hand. Houling, who was nearest, patiently bent his head downward for his greater con- venience, and Tong noticed that his tied hands, black and grimy, were so tightly clutched to- gether that the shoulder muscles lay on either side of his neck in huge white rolls. Twice the broad blade flashed about the head (E(0) vOOK (E@)