Bert Wilson, Wireless Operator Part 17

"It's queer, too, why it is so," mused Bert. "If they were specially genial and adaptable, you could understand it. But, as a rule, they're cold and arrogant and distant, and they don't even try to get in touch with the people they rule. Now the French are far more sympathetic and flexible, but, although they have done pretty well in Algiers and Tonquin and Madagascar, they don't compare with the British as colonizers."

"Well," rejoined Ralph, "I suppose the real explanation lies in their tenacity and their sense of justice. They may be hard but they are just, and the people after a while realize that their right to life and property will be protected, and that in their courts the poor have almost an equal chance with the rich. But when all's said and done, I guess we'll simply have to say that they have the genius for colonizing and let it go at that."

"Speaking of justice and fair play, though," said Bert, "there's one big blot on their record, and that is the way they have forced the opium traffic on China. The Chinese as a rule are a temperate race, but there seems to be some deadly attraction for them in opium that they can't resist. It is to them what 'firewater' is to the Indian. The rulers of China realized how it was destroying the nation and tried to prohibit its importation. But England saw a great source of revenue threatened by this reform, as most of the opium comes from the poppy grown in India.

So up she comes with her gunboats, this Christian nation, and fairly forces the reluctant rulers to let in the opium under threat of bombardment if they refused. To-day the habit has grown to enormous proportions. It is the curse of China, and the blame for the debauchery of a whole nation lies directly at the door of England and no one else."

By this time they had pa.s.sed through the British section and found themselves in the native quarter. Here at last they were face to face with the real China. They had practically been in Europe; a moment later and they were in Asia. A new world lay before them.

The streets were very narrow, sometimes not more than eight or ten feet in width. A man standing at a window on one side could leap into one directly opposite. They were winding as well as narrow, and crowded on both sides with tiny shops in which merchants sat beside their wares or artisans plied their trade. Before each shop was a little altar dedicated to the G.o.d of wealth, a frank admission that here, as in America, they all worshipped the "Almighty Dollar." Flaunting signs, on which were traced dragons and other fearsome and impossible beasts, hung over the store entrances.

"My," said Ralph, "this would be a bad place for a heavy drinker to find himself in suddenly. He'd think he 'had 'em' sure. Pink giraffes and blue elephants wouldn't be a circ.u.mstance to some of these works of art."

"Right you are," a.s.sented Tom. "I'll bet if the truth were known the Futurist and Cubist painters, that are making such a splurge in America just now, got their first tips from just such awful specimens as these."

"Well, these narrow streets have one advantage over Fifth Avenue," said Ralph. "No automobile can come along here and propel you into another world."

"No," laughed Bert, "if the 'Gray Ghost' tried to get through here, it would carry away part of the houses on each side of the street. The worst thing that can run over us here is a wheelbarrow."

"Or a sedan chair," added Tom, as one of these, bearing a pa.s.senger, carried by four stalwart coolies, brushed against him.

A constant din filled the air as customers bargained with the shop-keepers over the really beautiful wares displayed on every hand.

Rare silks and ivories and lacquered objects were heaped in rich profusion in the front of the narrow stalls, and their evident value stood out in marked contrast to the squalid surroundings that served as a setting.

"No 'one price' here, I imagine," said Ralph, as the boys watched the noisy disputes between buyer and seller.

"No," said Bert. "To use a phrase that our financiers in America are fond of, they put on 'all that the traffic will bear.' I suppose if you actually gave them what they first asked they'd throw a fit or drop dead. I'd hate to take the chance."

"It would be an awful loss, wouldn't it?" asked Tom sarcastically, as he looked about at the immense crowd swarming like bees from a hive. "Where could they find anyone to take his place?"

"There are quite a few, aren't there?" said Ralph. "The mystery is where they all live and sleep. There don't seem to be enough houses in the town to take care of them all."

"No," remarked Bert, "but what the town lacks in the way of accommodations is supplied by the river. Millions of the Chinese live in the boats along the rivers, and at night you can see them pouring down to the waterside in droves. A white man needs a s.p.a.ce six feet by two when he's dead, but a Chinaman doesn't need much more than that while he is alive. A sardine has nothing on him when it comes to saving s.p.a.ce and packing close."

At every turn their eyes were greeted with something new and strange.

Here a wandering barber squatted in the street and carried on his trade as calmly as though in a shop of his own. Tinkers mended pans, soothsayers told fortunes, jugglers and acrobats held forth to delighted crowds, snake charmers put their slimy pets through a bewildering variety of exhibitions. Groups of idlers played fan-tan and other games of chance, and through the waving curtains of queerly painted booths came at times the acrid fumes of opium. Mingled with these were the odors of cooking, some repellant and some appetizing, which latter reminded the boys that it was getting toward noon and their healthy appet.i.tes began to a.s.sert themselves. They looked at each other.

"Well," said Ralph, "how about the eats?"

"I move that we have some," answered Tom.

"Second the motion," chimed in d.i.c.k.

"Carried unanimously," added Bert, "but where?"

"Perhaps we would better get back to the English quarter," suggested Ralph. "There are some restaurants there as good as you can find in New York or London."

"Not for mine," said Tom. "We can do that at any time, but it isn't often we'll have a chance to eat in a regular Chinese restaurant. Let's take our courage in our hands and go into the next one here we come to.

It's all in a lifetime. Come along."

"Tom's right," said d.i.c.k. "Let's shut our eyes and wade in. It won't kill us, and we'll have one more experience to look back upon. So 'lead on, MacDuff.'"

Accordingly they all piled into the next queer little eating-house they came to, but not before they had agreed among themselves that they would take the whole course from "soup to nuts," no matter what their stomachs or their noses warned them against. A suave, smiling Chinaman seated them with many profound bows at a quaint table, on which were the most delicate of plates and the most tiny and fragile of cups. They had of course to depend on signs, but they made him understand that they wanted a full course dinner, and that they left the choice of the food to him. They had no cause to regret this, for, despite their misgivings, the dinner was surprisingly good. The shark-fin soup was declared by Ralph to be equal to terrapin. They fought a little shy of indulging heartily in the meat, especially after Bert had mischievously given a tiny squeak that made Tom turn a trifle pale; but in the main they stuck manfully to their pledge, and, to show that they were no "pikers" but "game sports," tasted at least something of each ingredient set before them. And when they came to the dessert, they gave full rein to their appet.i.tes, for it was delicious. Candied fruits and raisins and nuts were topped off with little cups of the finest tea that the boys had ever tasted. They paid their bill and left the place with a much greater respect for Chinese cookery than they had ever expected to entertain.

The afternoon slipped away as if by magic in these new and fascinating surroundings. They wove in and out among the countless shops, picking up souvenirs here and there, until their pockets were much heavier and their purses correspondingly lighter. Articles were secured for a song that would have cost them ten times as much in any American city, if indeed they could be bought at all. The ivory carvers, workers in jade, silk dealers, painters of rice-paper pictures, porcelain and silver sellers--all these were many _cash_ richer by the time the boys, tired but delighted, turned back to the sh.o.r.e and were conveyed to the _Fearless_.

"Well," smiled the doctor, as they came up the side, "how did you enjoy your first day ash.o.r.e in China?"

"Simply great," responded Bert, enthusiastically, while the others concurred. "I never had so many new sensations crowding upon me at one time in all my whole life before. As a matter of fact I'm bewildered by it yet. I suppose it will be some days before I can digest it and have a clear recollection of all we've seen and done to-day."

"Yes," said the doctor, "but, even yet, you haven't seen the real China.

Hong-Kong is so largely English that even the native quarter is more or less influenced by it. Now, Canton is Chinese through and through.

Although of course there are foreign residents there, they form so small a part of the population that they are practically nil. It's only about seventy miles away, and I'm going down there to-morrow on a little business of my own. How would you fellows like to come along? Provided, of course, that the captain agrees."

Needless to say the boys agreed with a shout, and the consent of the captain was readily obtained.

"How shall we go?" asked Ralph.

"What's the matter with taking the 'Gray Ghost' along?" put in Tom.

The doctor shook his head.

"No," said he. "That would be all right if the roads were good. Of course they're fine here in the city and for a few miles out. But beyond that they're simply horrible. If it should be rainy you'd be mired to the hubs, and even if the weather keeps dry, the roads in places are mere footpaths. They weren't constructed with a view to automobile riding."

So they took an English river steamer the next day, and before night reached the teeming city, full of color and picturesque to a degree not attained by any other coast city of the Empire. Their time was limited and there was so much to see that they scarcely knew where to begin. But here again the vast experience of the doctor stood them in good stead.

Under his expert guidance next day they visited the Tartar City, the Gate of Virtue, the Flowery PaG.o.da, the Clepsydra or Water Clock, the Viceroy's Yamen, the City of the Dead, and the Temple of the Five Hundred Genii. The latter was a kind of Chinese "Hall of Fame,"

with images of the most famous statesmen, soldiers, scholars, and philosophers that the country had produced. Before their shrines fires were kept constantly burning, and the place was heavy with the pungent odor of joss sticks and incense.

They wound up with a visit to the execution ground and the prisons, a vivid reminder of the barbarism that foreign influence has as yet not been able to modify to any great degree. The boys were horrified at the devilish ingenuity displayed by the Chinese in their system of punishment.

Here was a poor fellow condemned to the torture of the cangue. This was a species of treebox built about him with an opening at the neck through which his head protruded. He stood upon a number of thin slabs of wood.

Every day one of these was removed so that his weight rested more heavily on the collar surrounding his neck, until finally his toes failed to touch the wood at the bottom and he hung by the neck until he slowly strangled to death.

"Yes," said the doctor, as the boys turned away sickened by the sight, "there is no nation so cruel and unfeeling as the Chinese. Scarcely one of these that pa.s.s by indifferently, would save this poor fellow if they could. They look unmoved on scenes that would freeze the blood in our veins."

"This is bad enough," he went on, "but it is nothing to some of the fiendish atrocities that they indulge in. Their executioners could give points on torture to a Sioux Indian.

"They have for instance what they call the 'death of the thousand slices.' They are such expert anatomists that they can carve a man continuously for hours without touching a vital spot. They hang the victim on a kind of cross and cut slices from every part of his body before death comes to his relief.

"Then, too, they have what they name the 'vest of death.' They strip a man to the waist and put on him a coat of mail with numberless fine openings. They pull this tightly about him until the flesh protrudes through the open places, and then deftly pa.s.s a razor all over it, making a thousand tiny wounds. Then they take off the vest and release the victim. The many wounds coalesce in one until he is practically flayed and dies in horrible torment."

The boys shuddered at these instances of "man's inhumanity to man."

"Life must be horribly cheap in China," observed Tom.

"I wonder if such terrible punishment really has any effect as an example to criminals," said Ralph.

"I don't believe it does," put in Bert. "We know that formerly in Europe there were hundreds of crimes that were punishable with death. In England, at one time, a young boy or girl would be hung for stealing a few shillings. And yet crime grew more common as punishment grew more severe. When they became more humane in dealing with offenders, the number of crimes fell off in proportion."