T midnight I awoke; for a moment all the subtle atoms and ences that make up the living Ego, the legion forces of consciousness and memory, refused to return from their wanderings in the great Shadow Land; it needed the familiar rumble of Jim's snore to restore the realities of time and place. At that stertorous summons each particle of grey matter stood smartly to attention, and the citadel was manned against the terrors of darkness. Swiftly, then, the captain of those mysterious hosts reassured me of my pin-prick place in the Universe. Next came the reports of outposts, restoring communication between yesterday's rear- guard and the advanced line of to-morrow. So I sat up ill bed, listening for the song of the wind in the sail or the squeak of the yuloh on its pivot. There was no sign of life or movement on board, neither murmur of gliding water nor splash of pole from the bows. We were at anchor, laid snugly by in some sheltering backwater; every man on board was asleep.
Slipping on a dressing-gown and Mongolian socks, I groped my way to the stern. A spluttering lamp tied to the rudder-post showed the yulohs drawn in-board and idle,, the sail was down, its cordage creaking in the breeze, which came gently whispering across the river on its way to the south. The other boats lay moored a length astern. The tide had ebbed; phantom junks, silent and mysterious, were gliding down in mid-stream. It was an unfamiliar and unfriendly world, under the thousand glittering eyes of night.
Noah was in his bunk, deep buried under a mass of greasy quilts, a samshu bottle on a shelf near his head exhaling its fragrance as the key-note of a fantastic medley of stinks.
" O son of a turtle," said I, " get up! "
1said it once,-I said it twice,-I went and shouted in his ear, but he slept as sleep the drunken or the dead. So I pulled off the quilts. He gave a little quivering sigh, like a tired child, and rolled over on his stomach, as one who protects something precious. Then I prodded him with the first kitchen implement that came handy, which happened to be the toasting-fork. This stirred him, at last, to incoherent speech.
"Head wind," he grunted, " ebb tide. There is no help for it, you can't go on to-night." And swiftly clutching the bedding he rolled it tightly round him, with his back to the wall, looking out upon me with a goblin bloodshot eye that blinked horribly in the flickering candle-light.
"Thou lump of baked mud, predestined to re-birth as a pig, get up!"
Ireviled him, argued and threatened,-he tucked himself the tighter in his wrappings, and finally addressed himself once more to sleep. So I found a jug of water and poured it down the back of his neck. That did it: with a yell as of ten thousand scalded cats, Noah arose. In five minutes three of the crew had tumbled up drowsily from the depths; two manned the yuloh, one went forward to pole, and we were under way.
I mention this incident because it reveals several truths useful to houseboat travellers: firstly, that if you sleep at night, the lowdah will assuredly sleep also; secondly, that while lowdahs as a class are truculent and depraved-for reasons already explained-a drunken lowdah is the very devil; thirdly, as was said long ago by an early British diplomatist who had mastered some of the secrets of the East, these people yield nothing to reason, but everything to fear; and, lastly, that there is nothing so terrifying to a Chinaman as cold water applied to, or near, his head.
The jealous care with which the Celestial guards his pigtail from water is a peculiar characteristic of the race. which the Rev. Arthur Smith has neglected to explain. The fact is due, no doubt, to some deep-rooted instinct, some remote aversion of organic memory; be that as it may, its results confront us every day, in the umbrellas and enormous hats of husbandmen. in the effect of a shower on the most excited mob. 'Tis a subject which deserves the attention of the Royal Asiatic Society.
Noah was not a fair specimen of the Chientang river men, who, as a class, are good-humoured philosophers and well disposed. They have a certain sturdy independence of bearing, not ungrateful in a land where servility largely prevails; towards officialdom and politics they are cheerfully indifferent, unless their time-honoured rights are infringed or there be talk of steam-launches invgding the river. It is a boast with these water-men that their forefathers have sailed the Chientang juiiks since the days of the Yuan Dynasty, and they would have you know that the Manchus are usurpers. But the Throne's affairs are not theirs, and so long as the tax collector is reasonable and trade brisk, they are not concerned with questions of State. As for the foreigner, if he be a missionary who bargains like a native and travels in a hurry, let him use his own boat; but sportsmen are notoriously squeezable, heaven-sent Savers of largesse, whose boats move leisurely, with long days of rest -and therefore welcome. They have something of the sporting instinct, too, these sturdy oarsmen, and no little knowledge.of the habits of water-fowl, and if you treat them well (which only means as fellow-creatures) they will tell you where to look for feeding geese, and work the boats warily into range of duck and teal.
Having removed Noah's' blankets as a precautionary measure and heard him, horribly muttering, give orders to yuloh till daylight, I went back to bed. Once warmed to their work the coolies stuck to it cheerily, knowing that to-morrow would bring idleness and sleep. The lowdah's grievance was evidently not theirs. It was grateful and comforting to hear the steady swish of the long stern sweep, the low voices of the men, and the faint tap, tap of the lowdah's pipe; to feel the gentle rocking of the boat; to snuggle down in the blankets with a sense of virtue and duty nobly done. Every now and then, from the pole-man in the bows, there came a weird cry (long-drawn and quivering in the silence, like the voice of some lonely ghost seeking its mate), and from our boats astern, or from others out in mid-stream, came faint tremulous replies. Thus, on the Chientang, they make the world-wide instinctive appeal to Xolus, attuned by centuries of experience to the local ways of the Wind god, as all men have done from the beginning of time whose ways have lain upon the waters. It was good to lie there in the darkness, to feel oneself again amidst the old companionable gods whom we have slain with machinery, to hear the words of men who still speak of Poseidon and Pan and all the tutelary spirits of the woods and hills, even as they spake who followed Ulysses of old upon the wine-dark seas. Gbod to drift back even for a little whi@, out of our clockwork modernity, to this forgotten backwater where the voices are sti ill heard that whisper down the ages-voices that remind us of things our souls knew long ago when the world was young.
Our boatmen keep their watches by the stars, or by some occult mechanism in their stomachs; and they changed them with man-of-war precision, three men on and three off, day and night. Those who came off duty would slide down into the bowels of the ship, and, sitting round a sooty, spluttering lamp, smoke rapid pipes and talk for half an hour before curling up to sleep. The smell of those pipes, of that evll,lamp, and of close-packed humanity was wafted from the depths, a pungent and abominable incense of labour. Through cracks in the flooring one could see, amidst the gloom and smoke of that cockpit, the little group, squatting on their haunches, a Rembrandt vision of Oriental faces in deep shadow, and from their drowsy talk came shreds and patches of the little things that make the sum of their little lives-Liu San's luck at dominoes, the quality of Noah's rations, the chances of wind and weather. The relations of these men with each other and the world in general were instinct with a certain rugged gentleness and courtesy, by no means the least of the benefits that the racemind has acquired from centuries of Confucianism. Their virtue of chronic cheerfulness was less easily accounted for -probably an accidental foregathering of good-humoured souls, possibly a local benediction for merit acquired by virtuous forebears. Seldom have I met men so visibly contented upon such small provocation; it was a thing to inspire wonder, and a lingering desire for the prescription. From the rowers in the stern came songs before sunrise, songs all day long, droning recitation, and high-pitched falsetto tales of love and war; from the rice-pot there came ever the cracking of new and flavoury jokes. There was one fellow in particular, a squat, merry-faced Sancho Panza, whose stock of Rabelaisian stories was apparently inex- haustible, and whose poling was done to an accompaniment of songs and war-whoops most original and invigorating. His mahogany complexion was mottled and pitted with small-pox, and his friends-he seemed to know every man, woman, and child on the river - called him " Beancurd." As I drowsed ofF to sleep, he was explaining, amidst frequent tappings of pipes, the organic disturbances and horrible results that usually follow the sudden application of cold water to the human body, especially in the case of drunkards, and he cited a case that had occurred in his wife's mother's family, where a sleeping watchman, thus rudely awakened, had run naked through the land for more than a hundred ", and thereafter persisted in considering Bean-curd." himself a tortoise. It was evident that any signs of eccentricity on Noah's part would be readily discounted.
Lambton sleeps, as he does everything else, thoroughly therefore he had heard nothing of my midnight discussion with Noah. But at daybreak he was up and about, and from the borders of No-man's Land I heard him warmly inviting Jim to come and walk the dogs along the bank; to which Jim replied that it was bad for animals to be disturbed in the middle of the night. Then the gang-plank was let down, and we heard a cheery whistling above our heads, getting rapidly fainter. I gathered that we were skirting a hill, which meant we had crossed to the east bank of the river. The whistling died away in the distance, and we lay cosily wondering where we were, and how long it would take to get Jim to breakfast. Suddenly we heard Lambton's voice in the distance, shouting words indistinct, but of unmistakable wrathful purport; a moment later I was on deck and saw him at the top of a small hill waving excited arms in the direction of Hangchow. But the hillock was at a bend of the river, and our view was confined to a projecting spur, where the fir trees stood close-packed in shadow, covered with glistening fairy lace of silvery strands. I recognised the spot-Li Shan-aiid knew that, from his perch, Lambton could see the valley of Fu Yang to the south on the opposite bank, some two hours' journey up-stream. And I rejoiced at having kept Noah up to the mark.
But, as the Latins discovered long ago, the best laugh is that which finishes the story. Lambton, stalking moodily downhill and getting within range, announced his intention of keel-hauling the lowdah and then going back to bed. Coming close, he explained that our convoy-dogs, beaters, and all the necessary impedimenta of the chase-were nowhere to be seen. The best thing to do would be to sal 'I back and find them. This was one up to Noah.
As Lambton jumped aboard, Thurlsby emerged in a purple dressing-gown embroidered with white storks, and I told them the tale of the night. It was clear that Noah had taken his revenge by allowing the other boats to part company, a thing contrary to his sailing orders and all recognised usage among lowdahs. Unless prompt and stern measures were taken. there would be an end to discipline for the trip; we should be at the mercy of this cross-grained winebibber. This being unanimously carried, after a brief council of war, Gehazi was ordered to summon Noah from his lair. Rubbing bloodshot eyes, and blinking at the light, he squirmed his way forward, and, being evidently nervous, gave himself courage, after the manner of his kind, by taking an intelligent interest in the horizon and noisily abusing Bean-curd, who was swabbing the deck.
In disciplinary cases it is usually best to deal with a Chinaman through another, superior to him in rank and if possible not of the same province; for thus, in the eyes of his fellows, he loses more face, and what is more, he cannot snatch the fearful joy of pretending not to know what you are talking about, a dodge which even Viceroys do not disdain, on occasion. So Gehazi was appointed Inquisitor, duly prompted, and bidden to speak fiercely.
Noah, with the crew looking on, and well aware that much face hung upon the issue, tried all the usual tricksat first he affected surprise, looked around for the missing boats with a sympathetic eye, and protested his innocence as that of a man far famed for honesty from his youth up. Had he not carried missionaries, and was he not the possessor of a certificate of character from Dr. Main, whose, name was better than silver in all that land? Reminded of his sailing orders and the undeniable fact that beaters and dogs are necessary for shooting, he disdained responsibility; were there no lowdahs on the other boats, and had we no servants to tell them what to do? Because he had made a bargain on their behalf, must he be answerable for all their offences? And from so monstrous a suggestion of injustice he rapidly generated wrath-matter (for the gallery), and, becoming truculent, told Gehazi that a lowdah of thirty years' good repute was not to be thus bullied,-had he not already been despitefully used?-and if there was to be any more trouble, the foreign gentlemen had better get another boat. He was becoming noisy when Jim quietly intervened.
"Gourdful of bad samshu," he said. "you have received $,2 5 bargain money, you are guaranteed by the junk company, and there are Prefects at Fuyang and Hangchow-it was your business to see that the other boats did not drop behind. You are no lowdah. but the son of a sodden mud-carrier. Are we to go back and lose a day because of your drunken foolishness? "
Noah, abashed by straight talk, suggested we should await the coming of the boats. There were birds, he said, in the hills.
"Yes. we will go up the hill," said Jim, ',but you will sleep no more to-day-you will go down river with two men and bring them quickly. And if they are not here by midday you will lose a day's hire. Now, mud-turtle, be off, or you spend to-iilght in the nearest yamen."
With a little gentle persuasion the thing was done, and Noah disappeared down-stream, in a sampan rowed by two coolies, whose object would naturally be to get back to their own rice-pot as soon as possible. The boats turned up before noon, and,, satisfactory relations having thus been established on rational principles, Noah's behaviour for the rest of the trip was that of a sadder but much wiser man. Ignorance and vacillation (which are the component parts of our political benevolences) merely incite the Asiatic to his lawful prey. But deal with him firmly, in all justice, and he gives up monkeying with his destiny and yours.
So, waiting for the convoy, we spent the morning on the Li Shan. Pheasants were scarce, for here the hills run right down to the river, with little intervening cultivation and few of those wooded groves and oases in the open where the birds love to lie in the heat of the day. The hills were high and thickly wooded, stretching back to the south and east, a very goodly sight for eyes weary of horizons unbroken; a country where, if local reports speak true, leopard and deer and pig abound, and where to camp out would be a delight. The hill-men are brisk, sturdy folk, kindly spoken, with a something of frank independence,, as if to be raised but a few hundred feet from yonder crawling ant-hills of the plain were enough to endow man with a new backbone and the eye of speculation. In all their little valleys water-wheels were turning to the music of fernfringed waters, making the coarse buff paper in which shopkeepers wrap their parcels from one end of China to the other; on every hillside clearing, on threshing-floors, and on the grassy banks of ancestral tombs it lay drying, each square sheet separate, in sunny, patches, testifying to the untiring industry of this race and its pitiful ends. A thousand years ago they made the same paper in the same way by these murmuring mountain streams.
To tramp the woods without beaters or dogs was healthy exercise, but the bags would not be the heavier for it, so we made for the river where, in the scrub and thick cover at the foot of the hill, we found bamboo partridge. They were plentiful enough, lying in coveys at the edge of the covert, and by taking turns to flush them from the inside, we got some lively sport and five couple of the little brown birds. But the hillside being the only retreat, the coveys flushed like Roman candles, skirted the bush for a few yards, and then turned sharply in again, so that the only chance was to stand back and wait for snap-shots. At this game Lambton speedily became an expert. To know where the birds are likely to be, how the covey will spring, and how far you may let them go, are things which come by instinct to the man versed in woodcraft.
At noon there was a shouting in the distance, and our malingerers sailed round the bend. Then, in a little while, Ah Kong and his fellow dog-wallahs, with great yapping and turmol 'I of the joyful pack, came to meet us. Of course there was a story, most circumstantial, of a broken yuloh, to save Noah's face; but we paid no heed.
Before a good northerly wind we bowled along to Fuyang, where a long valley, dotted with copses, stretches far into the hills-hills covered with bracken and low scrub such as pheasants love. Here, at our landing, we sprang and killed a deer from the first thicket, a brace of pheasants from the long grass on its sunny side, and a couple of snipe from the paddy field in which it stood. And here for two days we scoured the low hills, after beating the copses of the valley, revelling in the glorious sunshine and the silent underwoods, all red and gold under the first touch of frost; and the bag already made a brave showing at the stern of the beaters' boat.
On a long trip, where transport to one's base is uncertain, the cleaning and hanging of game is a matter which requires more care than it generally gets. To keep birds in good condition they should be cleaned at once, stulted with dry charcoal, marked with the date of killing, and hung in the shade. Chinese sportsmen send their game to market packed tight in the hold of a dirty boat, with the result that it comes to table at best tasteless, at worst savouring of things unpleasant, so that epicures speak evil thereof, cornparing it unfavourably with the hand-reared fowls of England. But cure and hang your birds properly, and they have a flavour as subtle and aromatic as the best fowl that ever lay on a poulterer's slab.
Another word to the wise. Let not the cook in cleaning pheasants or deer make away with that most succulent morsel, the liver. The meat of red-deer. as a standing dish, is uninteresting, but (I have said it before) it makes excellent food (with rice) for the dogs, and is therefore valuable where beef and mutton cannot be bought. But the liver is a delicacy which the Chinese fully appreciate, most edible and toothsome, so that unless you insist upon its preservation, they will tell you " have makee throw away." Also I know of no better dish for breakfast than pheasant liver on toast. Wang-li, the cook, knows my penchant in this matter and is complaisant, but the average menial will either trust to your forgetfulness of bird anatomy or sturdily protest that pheasants have no livers worth mentioning, and certainly none worth eating.
One item in the bag, a civet cat which, fleeing before Shicla and Rex, emerged untimely upon Thurlsby's gun, was not hung in our larder, but at the farthermost point of the dog-boat. Lambton, with the cheerful help of Beancurd, thick gloves, and a rope, skinned it on the bank at sunset; but the smell of that feline was upon him and on the dogs, an all-pervading and persistent smell that africted our nostrils for days. So strong was the effluvial memory of the beast that, when the dog-boat was to windward, it drowned the flavour of our post-prandial tobacco; but Thurlsby, regarding it already as a disinfected and decorative hearthrug, declined to throw it overboard. So it remained; but a close season for civet cats was voted nem. con.
From Fuyang we worked up-stream to Liuchia Chwang (hamlet of the Llu family), where thick woods skirt the foothills, and where a thick undergrowth of bracken, scrub, and heavenly bamboo affords ideal hunting-ground for partridge. Here Peter, Rex, and Lambton's spaniel (hired from a sporting tax collector) had a field day, which laid them out for forty-eight hours (Peter was duly carried home in a basket slung on the beaters' poles), and fifteen brace of birds were brought to bag, each one representing glorious moments of expectation, successful stratagem, and triumph. In addition to our half-dozen beaters, most of whom were unconscious of any purpose or method in their work, and blundered about erratically in tolerant good-humour, there were woodcutters abroad, and children attracted by the chance of picking up an empty cartridge, so that promiscuous snap-shooting was out of the question and our chances considerably reduced. And the birds were certainly less plentiful than of old; this is bound to be (as I have told you in another Place), because the newfangled ways of Young China have created a demand for game on the menus of their fashionable restaurants. Here, in the heart of the woods, we met several trappers, and realised that the bamboo partridge's habit of lying close and flying low make him an easy mark to the skilful netter. With a little ground-bait at the edge of an isolated clump of cover, these men will sometimes snare half-a-covey at one stroke. A few years hence and we shall probably find no shooting except in a few deserted places, remote from railways and the pernicious effects of universal education-such as Mongolia, or Ireland, or Saghalien.
Towards sunset Jim bagged a fox, and thereafter there emerged from the underwoods a grass-cutter, loudly wailing and exhibiting a pellet wound in the calf of his leg. It was only a scratch,' but a crowd gathered as if by magic, sympathetic and garrulous; so the victim, accompanied by all the house of Liu, was invited to the boat, where Jim anointed the wound with listerine and cold cream; then, with largesse of a dollar and two cigars, he departed amidst his admiring friends. Whatever may be the opinion of the Chinese as to the doctrines and general doings of the white man, they have an implicit belief in his virtue and skill as a healer. This is the result of medical missionary work, and it is no small thing. Wherever you go, amongst the junkmen on the river or in the villages of the outlying hills, these people will tell you of marvellous cures of the Hangchow Mission Hospital, of the wondrous skill and sovereign remedies of the good doctors who visit the outlying stations. This touching confidence of theirs in one undeniable virtue of the foreigner will bring women to you with their sick children. and men with their tales of woepitiful visitants and most embarrassing. Jim's knowledge of first aid to the wounded, and the houseboat's medicine chest, often served their turn; his consultations on the tow-path were frequent and interesting; and by the end of the trip he was beginning to take himself seriously as a practising physician. So was Bean-curd.

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