On to Pekin/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
SOMETHING ABOUT THE PEOPLE OF CHINA
Gilbert Pennington had been in many close quarters before, and these had taught him the valuable lesson of being on his guard at all times.
Consequently, when the two rebels faced him, they found him with pistol drawn, and, before either of the enemy could fire, the young lieutenant blazed away. He shot to kill, knowing only too well that his life hung in the balance; and the rebel with the pistol went down, with a bullet in his breast, seriously, if not mortally, wounded. The Filipino's weapon went off as he fell, but the bullet spent itself in the air above the little jungle.
Meanwhile, however, the second rebel was not idle; and, though Gilbert leaped to one side to avoid being made a target of, he received a ball from the gun in his shoulder,—a flesh wound, painful, but of not much consequence.
The shot in the magazine rifle was evidently the last one; for, having fired it, the Filipino closed in by aiming a blow at Gilbert's head with the stock of his weapon. The blow did not land as intended; but it struck the young lieutenant's arm, and his pistol was knocked skyward just as he was on the point of pulling the trigger a second time.
All of these movements had taken but a few seconds of time to execute; and none of Gilbert's men knew what was occurring until they followed the sounds of the shots, and found the young lieutenant in a hand-to-hand encounter with the rebel over the possession of the Mauser rifle. The rebel was a powerful fellow, much older than Gilbert, and heavier; and he was rapidly getting the better of the encounter, when Carl Stummer came up on the run.
"Drop dot!" roared the German soldier; and, taking aim, he fired on the Filipino, hitting him in the knee. At once the man sank down, moaning with pain; and the gun came into Gilbert's possession.
A moment later a shouting was heard from down the river; and two companies of the regulars came up the bank through the water and mud, and over the rocks, as speedily as the state of the situation permitted. They soon caught sight of the insurgents, and opened a well-directed fire, at which the enemy took to their heels with all possible speed.
"I owe you one for that, Stummer," said Gilbert, as soon as he saw that the man before him was out of the contest for good. "You came up in the nick of time."
"Dot's all right," answered the private, modestly. "But say! ton't ve besser safe dot poat?"
"To be sure, we'll save the boat," cried Gilbert; and, leaping out into the stream, he secured it, and tied it fast to one of the trees.
The rain was now coming down harder than ever, and this rendered the pursuit of the rebels very difficult; yet it was felt that they must not be allowed to get away, and the whole of the first battalion were sent after them, leaving the second battalion to cross the stream in four cascoes which the insurgents had possessed.
Being wounded, Gilbert was not called upon to take part iu the pursuit of the fleeing guerillas; for such they properly were, having no regular military organization. He walked around until he found the surgeon of the regiment, who bound up the wound, after washing and probing it.
"It was a narrow shave for you, Ueutenant," said Surgeon Gilson. "A little lower, and you would have been a dead man."
"Well, they say a miss is as good as a mile," responded Gilbert, with a faint smile. "But I am thankful to God that I escaped," he added earnestly.
It was nightfall before the second battalion was landed over the river; and then the other regular companies came in, bringing with them nine prisoners, including two that were wounded. The battalion had had several men wounded, but none seriously.
"I fancy this is our last round-up in Luzon," said Major Morris to Captain Banner and Gilbert. "If all goes well, we ought to reach Manila by to-morrow evening."
The night was spent in the village of Giguenen, where there was a small garrison of American volunteers; and here the prisoners were lodged in the local jail, until the authorities at Manila should decide what was to be done with them.
The storm cleared away during the night; and travelling the next day was, consequently, a little better, although the roads were still almost impassable. In some spots the carts could not get through with their loads; and the men had to "ferry" the goods across, the turnouts coming over empty.
"I believe the Philippines want good roads more than anything else," observed Gilbert. "In all the time I've been here I've hardly seen a decent highway outside of Manila."
"We are bound for a country where the roads are still worse," returned Captain Banner. "I've been reading up on China lately, and I've learned that there is hardly a respectable highway in the whole Celestial Kingdom. Even the streets of Pekin, the great capital, are out of repair, and have been for centuries."
"And yet Chinese labor costs next to nothing. I can't understand it."
"The common people don't want to pay out a single cash for public improvements, that's the reason. Besides that, there comes up the old Chinese saying that 'what was good enough for my father and grandfather is good enough for me.'"
"They must be a terribly backward nation."
"Backward doesn't express it, lieutenant. They are so out of date that they are actually musty. And the worst of it is, because their history dates back so much further than ours,—several thousand years before Christ,—they imagine they know it all and are really a superior people."
"I am almost ashamed to confess it, but I am very backward on the geography of China," went on Gilbert. "I know it's a mighty big country and swarming with millions of people, and that is about all I do know."
"Yes, it is a big country; for its area is about five millions of square miles, although its original eighteen provinces are only about two millions of square miles in extent,—some geographers say a million and a half. The population of the provinces is reckoned at a hundred and seventy-five million. But this is mere guess-work, for China has never taken a census."
"With so many people, there ought to be many large cities."
"No, the large cities are but few in number. The largest, of course, is Pekin, the capital, on the Pei-Ho, which contains probably a million and a half to two million inhabitants; and the next is Shanghai, the great seaport town. Pekin cannot be reached by large boats; and its searport, so to speak, is Tien-Tsin, which is also on the Pei-Ho, not many miles from the Gulf of Pechili."
"Then, if there are not many large cities, there must be a host of small ones."
"China, so I have read, is a country of villages; and there are vast territories where these villages, each containing a hundred or two hundred inhabitants, are less than half a mile apart. You see the Chinese farmer doesn't live on his farm excepting during the time he has to watch his crops, to keep them from being stolen. He lives in the village, along with all of his neighboring farmers; and all of them go out to work every morning, taking all their tools with them, and even the bucket and windlass for the well, and return at nightfall."
"I think I should rather live on the farm. We always lived on our plantation in Virginia, before we moved to Richmond."
"And so did my folks live on their farm in the Mohawk Valley, New York State, Pennington. But you must remember that, with so many people to feed, farming lands in China are valuable; and so they can't afford land for farm-houses or out-buildings or even for fences. Many a farm is not over half an acre in extent, and that has to support a family of six or eight."
"Phew! We had over two hundred acres in Virginia!"
"And we had a hundred and twenty at home; and father said he sometimes felt cramped up, because he didn't own right to the top of the mountain. If it wasn't that John Chinaman can live on next to nothing, he would starve to death."
"But certainly all the people are not so poor."
"There are some rich people in the cities, but the majority merely live from hand to mouth. The richest man of all is Earl Li Hung Chang, one of the viceroys, who visited the United States some years ago. He is a millionaire many times over, and a very powerful political leader in the bargain. They say he is the only viceroy who enjoys the confidence of the dowager empress and the young emperor."
"It's a wonder he doesn't make a move to enlighten his people, and get them to take up Western ideas."
"There is too much of religion and superstition in the way. The Chinamen all believe in geomancy, as it is called. According to that, no street in a village must be straight for fear the Evil Spirit may sweep through too easily, and no door in a house can be directly opposite to another for the same reason. The cities and towns are all laid out according to the rules of geomancy, as expounded by the so-styled learned men who make the mysterious art a life study. Even the grave of a rich man is not located until the geomancer has been well paid in order to locate a spot where wind and weather cannot disturb the spirit of the departed one."
"Such superstition is almost beyond belief."
"That is only the beginning of it. They believe in all sorts of signs and omens, and won't even cook a meal at a fireplace unless the latter is located near a door or window, so that the evil spirits in the food can find an easy way out of doors."
"Humph! I wonder what they would say to some of our up-to-date inventions,—the telephone, for instance?"
"I don't know about the telephone; but they do say that in the interior the people believe the telegraph wires are bewitched, and they won't walk under them excepting with their eyes closed and while holding their breath, or else while repeating some verse from Confucius. For many years they wouldn't allow a railroad to go through, because such a road would disturb the graves that are scattered here, there, and everywhere instead of being in regular cemeteries, as in our own country."
"I reckon the people in the interior are even more ignorant than those on the seacoast."
"They are, if the books I have read are to be believed. One writer says that some Chinamen were surprised to learn that he, as a 'foreign devil,' did not have three legs and a horn, and that others thought he had a hole through his breast through which a pole could be thrust whenever he wanted to be carried from place to place. Another writer says he was also asked about the hole, and that the natives were surprised to learn that he could bend his knees, having heard that no 'foreign devils' could bend their knees to their gods. This writer had a camera with him, and came close to having his head cut off through trying to take some snap-shots in the village. He added that numerous Chinamen think that photographs must be made out of babies' eyes; and, as very few of the poor natives of the interior have any use for a girl baby, they sometimes offer to sell such a baby to be sacrificed, so that the eyes can be made up into photographs!"