Tramping on Life Part 34

But I was all excitement over the prospect of making my way ash.o.r.e to where the Allied troops were fighting....

Dawn ... we were anch.o.r.ed in Taku Bay among the wars.h.i.+ps of the Allied nations ... grey wars.h.i.+ps gleaming in the sun like silver ... the sound of bugles ... flags of all nations ... of as many colours as the coat of Joseph.

"Well, here we are at last!"

Next day the work of unloading the cattle began ... hoisted again by the horns from our boat of heavy draught to the hold of a coasting steamer, that had English captain and mates, and a Chinese crew.

Some of the steers were so weak that they died on deck ... as they were dying, butchers cut their throats so their beef could be called fresh.

The only one who desired to go ash.o.r.e there, I made my way, when it was dark and the last load of steers was being transferred to sh.o.r.e, down below to the hold of the coaster. I stood in a corner, behind an iron ladder, so that the cattle couldn't crush me during the night ... for the Chinese had turned them loose, there, in a ma.s.s.

I stumbled ash.o.r.e at Tongku, a station up a way on the banks of the Pei Ho river.

My first night ash.o.r.e in China was a far cry from the China of my dreams ... the Cathay of Marco Polo, with its towers of porcelain.... I crept, to escape a cold drizzle, under the huge tarpaulin which covered a great stack of tinned goods--army supplies. A soldier on guard over the stack, an American soldier, spotted me.

"Come, my lad," lifting up the tarpaulin, "what are you doing there?"

"--Trying to keep from the wet!"

"--run off from one of the transports?"

"Yes," was as good an answer as any.

"You're pretty cold ... your teeth are chattering. Here, take a swig o'

this."

And the sentinel reached me a flask of whiskey from which I drew a nip.

Unaccustomed as I was to drink, it nearly strangled me. It went all the way down like fire. Then it spread with a pleasant warmth all through my body....

"Stay here to-night ... rather uncomfortable bed, but at least it's dry.

No one 'ull bother you ... in the morning Captain ----, who is in charge of the commissariat here, might give you a job."

That next morning Captain ---- gave me a job as mate, eighty dollars Mex. and a place to sleep, along with others, in a Compound, and find my food at my own expense....

Mate, on a supply-launch that went in and out to and from the transports, that were continually anchoring in the bay. Our job was to keep the officers' mess in supplies....

"And, if you stick to your job six months," I was informed, "you'll be ent.i.tled to free transportation back to San Francisco."

My captain was a neat, young Englishman, with the merest hint of a moustache of fair gold.

Our crew--two Chinamen who jested about us between themselves in a continuous splutter of Chinese. We could tell, by their grimaces and gestures ... we rather liked their harmless, human impudence ... as long as they did the work, while we lazed about, talking ... while up and down the yellow sweep of the Pei-ho the little boat tramped.

"It's too bad you didn't arrive on the present scene a few weeks, sooner," said my young captain ... "it was quite exciting here, at that time. I used to have to take the boathook and push off the Chinese corpses that caught on the prow of the boat as they floated down, thick ... they seemed to catch hold of the prow as if still alive. It was uncanny!"

We slept, rolled up in our blankets, on the floor of a Chinese compound ... adventurers bound up and down the river, to and from Tien-Tsin and Woo-s.h.i.+-Woo and Pekin ... a sort of caravanserai....

Though it was the fall of the year and the nights were cold enough to make two blankets feel good, yet some days the sun blazed down intolerably on our boat, on the river....

When we grew thirsty the captain and myself resorted to our jug of distilled water. I had been warned against drinking the yellow, pea-soup-like water of the Pei-ho....

But one afternoon I found our water had run out.

So I took the gourd used by the Chinese crew, and dipped up, as they did, the river water.

The captain clutched me by the wrist.

"Don't drink that water! If you'd seen what I have, floating in it, you'd be afraid!"

"What won't hurt a Chinaman, won't hurt me," I boasted....

The result of my folly was a mild case of dysentery....

In a few days I was so weak that I went around as if I had no bones left in my body. And I wanted to leave the country. And I repaired to Captain ---- who had given me the job, and asked him for my pay and my discharge. He lit into me, disgusted, upbraiding me for a worthless tramp....

"I might have known that you were of that ilk, from the first, just by looking at you!"

He handed me the eighty dollars in Mexican silver, that was coming to me.... I repaid the captain the forty I had borrowed, for food.

"Sick! yes, sick of laziness!"

Captain ---- was partly right. I had an uncontrollable distaste for the monotony of daily work, repeated in the same environment, surrounded by the same scenery ... but I was also quite weak and sick, and I am persuaded, that, if I had stayed on there, I might have died.

I sat on one of the wharves and played host to a crowd of romantic thoughts that moved in their pageant through my brain ... now I would go on to Pekin and see the great Forbidden City. Now I would dress in Chinese clothes and beg my way through the very heart of the Chinese Empire ... and write a book, subsequently, about my experiences and adventures ... and perhaps win a medal of some famous society for it ...

and I had a dream of marrying some quaintly beautiful mandarin's daughter, of becoming a famous, revered Chinese scholar, bringing together with my influence the East and the West....

I reached so far, in the dream, as to buy several novels of the Chinese, printed in their characters, of an itinerant vendor....

The everyday world swung into my ken again.

Three junks, laden with American marines, dropping down the river from Pekin, cut across my abstracted gaze ... the boys were singing.

They marched off on the dock on which I sat. They were stationed right where they deployed from the junks. Men were put in guard over them.