The Argosy, Vol. 76, No. 3 — page 102: what you’re looking at

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

572 that wandered off into odd clucks and gurgles as the opium began to bite. “Tt has always been—so. It—will —be—to the—end of time. It was— stolen. Every seven—years—it has been taken and—no man—can tell what comes. Yes, yes, yes. The gods are great and—the spirits of the fathers—cannot lie. They have told ine—so many years ago that man can- not count. Odah, yes, they told me— it was stolen and the track of the steal- ing is like the trail of the death lash- ings of the great python that we killed above the Great Wall when—when—l was yet a young man. War I say— war and pestilence and famine. Aye, famine, too! The famine that Farther Hind knows—and all by reason of in- nocent blood. Weknow! We priests of the Shan-tse! We who eat no eggs, because eggs are life—we who drink no milk, because milk is but white blood when all is said. We priests who eat only lentils and drink water—a pure heart and a tender hand shall rule the world, says Confucius. Are we wiser than our fathers? ” Whether it was the overdose of opium, for Enloe had given him three of the pills, or some other reason, none could say, but as they sat watching they saw the glare in his eyes die away and the steady, even light of sanity break as dawn breaks at sea. The Chinese interpreter took up his task, pushing officiously to the head of the cot. ’ “ Him say—take the blox—the ac- cursed blox it—bling all time trouble, and take to some place where it can no more be steal. No, no, no! Not throw away.” He almost shrieked as Enloe, as the shortest and easiest solution to the problem, was about to throw it through an open port. “ Him say no can throw away—it come back. Him say it cannot—what you say?—be destroyed. Him Shan-tse! Him know. “How him know? Him Lhassa man, where all mans know all things; where mans makes talkee with gods by little, little mills that blow an’ blow THE ARGOSY. as the gods send wind. Blow prayers east; blow prayers west. Mebbe so him say wind blow prayers stlaight up to—throne of all the gods—” “H-m! Maybe. Maybe it’s opium or just his mind wandering. What else him say, Song Loo?” “ Him say—Yung-gwaizai—foreign devils take blox—take Shanghai lock up in wonder house—” ~“But what is it for Heaven’s sake—” “ Yes, that it. Heaven’s sake! Him say that. Him say Englishman in Shanghai keep wonder hause—him can tell, That no my pidgin, Him no can makee pleesee talk no more—”’ Sure enough, when they bent over him, they saw that the old man was dead. * Wonder Downs. doctor? ” “Oh, the wonder house? house?”’ mused Miss “What is the wonder house, Why, ‘the museum, I think—yes, that must be it. I seem to. half-way remember that, that is what the natives call it. Let’s go on deck.” For seven days the Atlanta swel- tered north and south, up and down the coast-—-that coast that never showed more than a dim line of brown smudge against the western sky. On the first night the old bonse was dropped astern with a grate-bar at his feet and Marjorie cried a little _as she saw that sharp fin astern that had followed them clear from Swa- tow, turn suddenly as the great fish up-ended in his hunt for that long bundle that churned up_ iridescent bubbles as it tailed away in the wake astern. Terrible enough on land, death seems absolutely unnecessary at sea and, to tell the truth, she had grown to like the quiet, old priest who suffered so uncomplainingly and who spoke of the Lords of Life and Death as though they were his own personal friends. So they tramped up and down the seas waiting till the cool southwest COMicdoo S CO@