BITTER wind was blowing from the north. and there was a crackle of thin ice at the edge of the paddy fields and dykes. To eastward the first faint lines of light were breaking the thick-packed banks of cloud, broadening slowly and tipping their dark edges with saffron and pink and pearl. Behind us the world lay still brooding in darkness, filled with the grey melancholy which haunts the hour before the dawn. Slowly, as the light grew, houses and trees stood forth like ghosts, and the walls of Soochow. half-a-mile away, took form, grim and silent, against the skyline. We stood under the lea of a big grave and waited. A hundred yards away, in the unploughed paddy, we could hear the faint fluttering and babble of feeding duck; the morning flight would soon begin.
It was a favourite spot of ours, this, between the feedinggrounds and the Great Lake. Hither, when the north wind blows. mallard flock at dusk with widgeon and pintail and teal; year after year, in January and February, impelled by phantom voices from the past, following the long trail of heredity, and at dawn they flight southwards. Sometimes we come here at sunset, especially when the moon is nearing the full, but this morning I had overcome the Major's chronic objections to early rising, and by six o'clock we were out. It was bitterly cold. Hugging the shelter of a protecting sycamore we blew on our fingers and waited, while old Rex, whining gently in protest against our inactivity, snuggled his head between Ah Kong's knees.
"Major," said I, "it's beastly cold; but they ought to be moving soon.
Jim's reply was irrelevant. " I was just thinking," he said, "that it's just getting on for midnight in London town. The band must be tuning up for supper at the Savoy. Can't you see it all, Phil? Those tired foreign noblemen in the plush clothes, collecting hats at sixpence each; in the corners the children of Israel at their coffee, and, in the distance, the red-shaded lights and the tables glittering in silver and white? Can't you hear the rustle of silk skirts and the sob of that ugly gipsy's violin? It's only just a little way over yonder, just as we left it, and the sun will look down on it all in a few hours. It's all there, the rush of life, the music and the women, the pick of the best on earth, and here we stand like idiots, freezing to death on a Chinarnan's grave."
"We might be doing much worse, old chap. It's this sort of thing that makes the lights of London look so jolly bright for a time when we get back to them. There's many a man in town to-night who'd change places with us and be glad of the chance."
Jim, lighting his pipe, struck a match on the tombstone at our feet. The laconic inscription winked at us between the puffs.
"It's a queer business, anyway," he went on. " Observe here, since the days of George the First, Chang Li-ping, erstwhile Sub-prefect, has slept in peace (provided the Taipings didn't make fuel of him), and many later Chang.s have burned their joss-sticks on his mound and then crept under it themselves, without a sight or sound of foreign devildom to disturb their celestial peace. And now, here we come from the ends of the earth, digging up their bones to make roads for our fire-wheel carts, shooting guns over their ancestral heads, and shocking their indignant shades with talk of strange sing-song houses overseas. Phil, the gods of the East are dying. Old Li told me so only yesterday."
"The East will get others, Jim. And they will not be ours."
Out of the grey dawn and above the voice of the north wind there came a whirr of wings, faint at first, but rushing swiftly to a clear crescendo.
"Look out ," whispers Ah Kong, eagerly pointing have got duck come; largee piccee," and a pair of mallard, flying fast and low, come straight over the edge of the grave. So close are they that the purple and bronze of the drake's wing send a swift message of beauty to the mind dormant beneath instincts of destruction. Terror lies in the sidelong glance of the dark eyes, in the lilt and swift upward curve of their flight. Ten yards away and one loud hopeful quack expresses their pent-up feelings; another ten, and they collapse, suddenly overtaken by Destiny, as the guns speak out.
At the first shot a mighty rushing of wings rises from, the nearer paddy. We catch a glimpse, a glint of brown and grey, as a bunch of teal sweeps over the farther dyke. From all sides comes the warning quack of mallard, circling like restless ghosts overhead. To the left a flock of widgeon comes hurtlliig by, leaving three of their number behind. As the light strengthens the flight begins in earnest, and for twenty happy minutes we are in the thick of it. Many birds, after each shot, pass wide to left and right, but the grave is a good screen, and those that follow keep their accustomed line, some even swerving in, decoyed by the fluttering of a winged bird in the paddy. Teal and mallard suffer especially from this fatal curiosity; drop one of a bunch, and the others, describing a wide circle, will frequently swoop back, singly and in pairs, low flying over the dykes.
The last of our bag was a pair of geese that came looming up unsuspectingly out of the distance, leisurely flapping their way to the lake after the night's feed. Ah Kong, keeping watch, gave warning, but there was no time to change our No. 6; nor was there need, for they came so straight upon their doom that, passing overhead, they got our first barrels at twenty yards and died straightway in their tracks. Rex, released from durance, brought them in, his whole body stiff with pride of the chase, his face puckered up with canine mirth, and snorting joyously through his nose. Then came ten minutes of retrieving wounded and dead birds (how curious is the apathetic surrender of the larger ducks and geese as compared with the dogged instinct of preservation and cunning of a wounded teal!), and Ah Kong shouldered a heavy gamestick as we filled our pipes. And so back to breakfast. The short promise of the dawn had died; east to west the sky was murky grey, and the rain had set in steadily evidently for the day.
On our way back to the boat a curious incident occurred, one of those things which make natives believe in foreign devildom. As we came round the corner of a fir-planted mandarin grave a cock pheasant rose straight ahead; going his best he was 'ust reaching the shelter of some trees when Jim fired, and the last we saw of the bird was a head-overheels collapse. At the corner where he fell Rex got the scent and followed it into some cover. There. amidst the graves, we came upon an old woman gathering fuel; she had seen no bird, she said; the collie could find no sign of it, and Rex could not pick up a line. It was only a little clump of trees, and all around lay the bare fields; yet we searched in vain.
"He didn't look like a runner," said Jim. "Hallo, what's the matter with Rex? "
The dog had given it up as a bad job some minutes before and had followed Ah Kong, who, with the curious hang-dog manner which natives in foreign employ assume when talking to their countrymen, was still questioning the old woman. Suddenly Rex began to display most unusual interest in the old lady, smelling and pawing at her skirts. Ah Kong seized the situation at once; a rapid altercation followed, and then, with all the sangfroid of a conjurer and something at the same time reminiscent of the contortionist, the old sinner dived into her own recesses, so to say, and produced our bird, tied by one leg to some unidentified inner garment. The thing was done with a sad dignity that made us almost apologetic; but something had to be said.
"Miserable and worthless one, " I said, "why did you try to steal our pheasant?" Rex, with the bird in his mouth, wagged a vociferous tail.
"How did I know it was your pheasant? " she answered I caught the bird running in the wood. But I give it to you because your dog has a devil-gift of mind-clearness and knows secret things. Take him away." So we took him away, and, as we went. the poor soul observed audibly that she had known this pheasant since its youth up, or words to that effect. and that it did not belong to the men from overseas.
The Saucy )lane lay moored near the great stone bridge, whose fifty-three arches, the natives say. are never more than fifty-two if you count them from south to north. Its Chinese name is "I The Bridge of the Precious Girdle," and the story goes that in the good old days when Chinese officials were really the " fathers and mothers " of the people, when they cared, and paid, for public works, and before squeezing had been raised to a fine art, vast sums were spent on the canals, bundings, and bridges of the great trade route between Soochow and Hangchow. (That this is true we know who have seen the crumbling ruins of all that stupendous masonry.) But for this bridge either the funds or the good intentions gave out, so that for two years it remained unfinished; therefore the tow-path ended in space, and thousands of toilers, in sight of their journey's end, had perforce to "eat bitterness." Then, travelling on Imperial business, came a Great Man (so great that they who tell the story to-day have forgotten his name), who, seeing the unfinished bridge, waxed indignant and sorrowful. Forthwith he saw the Governor and the Treasurer, and finding them without funds (there was no lekin in those good days) he gave them his own girdle of turquoise and rubies and jade; and so the work was finished. It is a pretty story, and it gains in effective contrast with the methods of to-day. There stands the bridge, murmurous as of old with the shouts and songs of coolies bending to the towrope, smooth-polished by the unnumbered feet of all those who have crossed it and gone their ways; but the ironwork has been sadly pilfered, many of the stone lions have been thrown down or defaced, while here and there a melancholy wreckage of coping-stones and railing hangs perilously over the water. And although these are the days of Young China, and reform and sovereign rights, the common people's highway is still nobody's business.
There is good snipe-ground near the Bridge, and golden plover frequent the waste places of the "Settlements," so that, as we trudged towards the boat, there were two voices within us: one the call of the wild. the Spartan cry, the voice of the hardy sportsman-a voice which meant breakfast in damp clothes and a day on the narrow dykes with the rain in our eyes, but withal the screech of snipe rising from the lotus-ponds and the joy of a fast bird well dropped. Also, there was in the air., despite the rain, a first faint message of spring, a suggestion, as of distant music and colour, somewhere behind the veil of grey. But the other voice sang luringly of soft things; of baths and breakfast uiihurried. of tobacco and books in the cosy cabin of the Saucy fane, with the rain pattering on the roof for greater comfort.
To be quite honest about it, after a mental struggle in which the sight of Rex's drooping tail and muddy coat had their effect, the Spartan voice allured me less than that of Sybaris, but I would not have said so for worlds. I would leave that to Jim-knowing his little weaknesses-and thus preserve my own "face," while acquiring some merit for making graceful concessions. We all do this sort of thing at times.
Breakfast was laid when we came aboard; there was a savour of frizzling bacon and coffee that tickled the nostrils most gratefully; compared to the dreary dampness of everything outside, the cabin certainly was a very pleasant place indeed.
"Well, we've 'made a fairly decent bag," said Jim. "Lowdah, come and pull off my boots."
Iwas scraping the mud oiT mine at the gangway in a rather ostentatious way, while Ah Kong was busy drying Rex with a wisp of straw, speculating, as I knew, on the chances of a long day at dominoes with the lowdah and the cook.
"Not worth while changing for breakfast, old chap," I remarked casually. "We'll be out again in an hour." But I felt the rain trickling down the small of my back, and the thud of Jim's boots on the cabin floor was like music in my ears. Heroism was foredoomed (so be it), but the soul of me was glad, and that comfortable lying knave, conscience, made no sign.
"Not much," As long as this rain goes on, the snipe may rest in peace so far as I am concerned. Don't believe in making a toil of pleasure. Be aisy, man; we'll move the boat up to the Custom House and look in on old Merryman at tiffin time. It'll be an act of real charity to him, and you can let him expound his latest theories on the reform movement. Anyhow, no paddy fields in the rain for this child. We've got plenty of books."
"Jim," said I, "you're as bad as one of your Chinese recruits. Here we come, a hundred miles or so, to shoot snipe . . ."
"Poppycock. We came to enjoy ourselves, and I mean to do it. Now, just take your boots off, have a bath, and content yourself with a sense of futile virtue."
I had played the Spartan, and honour was safe without more words, and so the boots came off. And then it was that Ah Kong assumed the part that conscience had not played and deprived me of acquired merit. As the second muddy boot hurtled out on to the deck he looked up. The anxious look of a minute ago had given place to one of virtuous sorrow.
"Master no shootee more?" He asked it with an

Under the old grey qvalls of Soochow." implied reproach unmistakable. "Countryman talkee have got plenty snipe just now."
"No. Ah Kong. Have got some pidgin inside city. Come back shootee this evening."
He looked at me and said nothing; but when it comes to saving one's face, it is hard work fooling a Chinaman.
As we sat over our leisurely breakfast the boat moved, with the slow and silent motion of the yuloh, along the canal and under the old grey walls of Soochow-Soochow,' once the Paris of China. belauded of Marco Polo, thrice sacked in the Taiping days. On the tow-path half-a-dozen miserable specimens of sodden humanity pulled doggedly towards the city gate, but there was hardly any other sign of life. Here and there a boat, propelled by invisible hands, shot past us in silence, but most of the river~craft lay huddled for shelter under the high banks, and all the life of the fields had taken refuge in the houses, which stood out, like weary sentinels, amidst the waste of rain-swept paddy. Even between the walls and the Canal. in that No-man's land where the beggars and rag-pickers of the city have their motley homes of old boat hulks and matting, the only living things visible were a pig, some hens too hungry to abandon the search for food, and an old woman patiently struggling with wet straw to boil her rice pot under the shelter of a grave.
"Jim," said I, as we lay on our bunks and soothed our Capuan souls with Craven mixture, " let's leave old Merryman alone for to-day. We'll go up to the P'an Men and then, if it clears, we'll take a walk through the city, look up Wimple, and hear what he thinks of the boycott in these parts. Then we can have the boat meet us over yonder by the camp, and shoot again in the afternoon."
"Right oh! " said jim. He was in that blissful state of mind which would have made him say "' Right oh " to any proposal which would leave him the immediate certainty of half an hour's undisturbed idleness. But I know he does not love Wimple.
So the boat lapped lazily on past the lonely Custom House towards the P'an Men, the busiest of all the gates of the city, the place to which the Chinese officials said the 'raiIway line must never come-until they had bought up all ral the land near the terminus; past the Foreign Settlement, so carefully located, where no trade can ever come near it, in the usual " place apart," most closely resembling, in its carefully marked out town-lots and grass~grown roads that lead nowhere, the delectable City of Eden; past the latest encampment of foreign-drilled braves who, even in the rain, cease not from their martial bugling, apparently the only feature of our military system that the Chinese really appreciate and enjoy. All over the country you will find them, singly and in squads, these soldiers of the coming military power, sturdily practising, by the hour, the war-calls of Europe. Here at Soochow the tuition had originally come from France (via Japan, no doubt).

Mademoiselle, avez-vous du tabac Avec une pipe comme ga?

The old familiar notes, blown lustily by a bucolic brave holding the usual umbrella in his free hand, seemed to come from some weird haunt of the utterly incongruous. What, in the name of all things outlandish, is the phantom voice of the Little Corporal doing here in the rain under the walls of Soochow?
Jim looked at the matter dilterently; the sound stirred his military instincts, and the instincts of the British officer may be generally described as a forward policy whose objective includes the entire habitable globe.
"If they must learn bugling," he said, "which is all damned nonsense until they've learned drill and discipline, why can't they stick to one kind? I've only heard one real Chinese bugler; he was a little Mahommedan sergeant in the Weihaiwei regiment, and to hear him play 'Lights Out' or 'Puddings and Pies' was a treat. I remember once . . ."
I created a diversion, drawing his attention to the Japanese Settlement, where, in one corner of its deserted space, a few braves were drilling (without umbrellas) under the stern eye of an instructor from Dai Nippon.
"Aye, Phil," he said, thoughtfully addressing the window-pane, "it was the little foxes that ate up the vineyard, wasn't it? I believe there's a good deal of sympathy possible between us and the Japanese; we are proud of him as a fighting man, and he likes us for being fairly truthful, and for some other things; but even in the happiest of families the fool brother gets more kicks than ha'pence, and that's what I don't quite like about this alliance. We're the fool brother, and every Jap in the country knows it."
"Do you think he'll make warriors of our Celestial friends, Jim? "
"That's another story. China's a big country, big enough to hold many tribes and tempers, and I've no objection to his being drill sergeant so long as it's a square game. All we want is a fair field and no favour, and I wish we were quite sure of getting it."
"Yes, we kept the ring for them."
"And the stake was the open door. But it looks as if, when they keep it open, there's going to be a door-keeper, and the Japs will be admitted half-price. If they do, it will be our own fault, the fitting penalty for national imbecility and ignorance."
"Surely, Jim, it's a question of economics? We declined to fight Russia for the open door in China, because the British taxpayer didn't want to part with another penny in the pound for a trifle like that. So Japan did the job for us, and thus the British public can go comfortably to sleep again, after reading in The Times that, thanks to our gallant little allies, the Far East is henceforth. as Providence meant it to be, our oyster, and will yield up to us its fatness without the aid of any cutlery or energy of ours."
Jim snorted. "Yes, that's the way John Burns and Churchill talk, as if trade and taxes were the only things worth thinking and living for. Can't they realise that the moral effect of that Japanese friend of ours over yonder, drilling his fellow-Asiatics, must be felt all over the East, to the Indian Ocean and round the world again? If Eilgland wants to claim any open door or share of her heritage in Asia she must keep her end up. It's that, or go.
The discussion might have gone on, although I secretly agreed with jim, because there was nothing better to do, also because I like to see him excited, and this is one of the few topics that draw him. Just then, however, there was a hail from the tow-path, and the boat stopped. A bedraggled and muddy individual, with an oil-paper um- brella, was telling the lowdah, in most excellent vernacular, to let him come aboard. It was our friend the Reverend Mr. Wimple, of the Soochow Mission of Latter-day Saints (U.S.A.), semi-political adviser of the Governor of Klangsu.

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