Here was a very sore thing for Wang the Tiger to bear, and one that he had not known before. He was worse off than many another man, too, because where other men have but their own families to feed, here was he with a vast horde dependent on him and they all very ignorant men, ready to complain, and content only if they were well fed and well paid, and loyal only so long as they were given what they held to be their due. From one place and another in Wang the Tiger’s territories the revenues ceased to come in fully and at last as the waters stayed through the summer and when autumn came and there was no harvest, then by the winter of that year there were no revenues except the one upon the opium which was smuggled into those parts, and even this was much shrunken, since people could not buy and so the smugglers took their goods to other places for the time. Even the salt revenues ceased, for the waters washed away the salt wells, and the potters made no more wine jars, since that year no new wine was brewed.
Now Wang the Tiger was in great distress and for the first time in all his years as a lord of war and ruler over territories, in the last month of that year he could not pay his men. When he saw what was come he knew he must save himself by harshness alone, nor dared he show pity lest they take it for weakness in him. He called his captains to him, therefore, and he shouted at them as though they had done some evil and as though he were angry at them,
“All these months you men of mine have been fed while others starved and you have had wage as well! Now your wage must be food only, for my silver is gone, and no revenues will come until these times are over. No, and in a month or so, I shall have no silver left even to feed you and I must borrow a vast sum from somewhere, if you are not to starve, and if I and my son are not to starve with you.”
Now as he spoke thus Wang the Tiger made his face hard and he glared at his men from under his brows and he pulled at his beard angrily, but secretly he looked to see what his captains did. There were mutinous faces among them and when they had gone out in silence there were those whom he kept as spies about him always who came back to tell him,
“They say they will fight no war until their dues are given them.”
When he had heard his spy whisper this Wang the Tiger sat gloomy for a while in his hall, and he thought on the hearts of men and how ungrateful they are, and he thought how he had fed his men well and as usual during all these hungry months when the people starved and died and they did not love him the better. Once or twice he had said to himself that he might even take some of that private store of silver that he kept for his own lest he be put to it hard in some retreat and vanquishment in some war, but now he swore his men might starve and he would not rob himself and his son for any of them.
Still the famine did not cease. Everywhere in that region the waters lay and men starved and since there was no dry land in which to bury them, their bodies were cast out upon the water and floated there. There were many bodies of children, because men grew desperate at the unceasing wail of hungry children who could not understand why they were not fed, and so in the darkness of night and despair some parents even laid their children into the water; some did it out of pity for their children, for it seemed a shorter, sweeter death, but some did it because of the little store of food they had left, and they would not divide it with any other, and when two were left in a family then sometimes those two schemed secretly as to which was the stronger.
By the New Year, and none remembered it was a festival, Wang the Tiger gave his men but half their usual food, and he himself ate no meat in his household, but only grain gruel and such poor stuffs. One day as he sat in his own room thinking on what a pass he had come to, and wondering that his good destiny was in such abeyance, there came a man out of his guard who stood day and night about his door, and the man said,
“There are six men to see you who come from your own army and to stand for all the others. They have something to say.”
Then Wang the Tiger looked up sharply out of his gloom and he asked,
“Are they armed?”
To this the guard replied, “I do not see any arms on them, but who can know the heart of any man?”
Now Wang the Tiger’s son sat in the room at a little desk of his own, and his head was bent over some book he studied diligently. Wang the Tiger looked at him, thinking to send him away. And the lad rose at that instant and made as though to go away. But when Wang the Tiger saw him so willing his heart hardened suddenly and he thought to himself that his son must learn how to deal with men who were rebellious or savage, and so he cried out,
“Stay!” And the lad sat down slowly, as though he did not know what to make of it.
But Wang the Tiger turned to the guardsman and he said,
“Call the whole guard to come in and stand about me, and let them bring their guns ready set as though to make attack, and call the six men in!”
Then Wang the Tiger sat himself in a great old armchair he had which had once been the magistrate’s own chair, and there was a tiger skin thrown over the back of it for warmth. There Wang the Tiger sat, and his guards came in and stood to right and to left of him, and Wang the Tiger sat and stroked his beard.
The six men came in and they were young men, hardy and easily moved and daring as young men are. They came in courteously when they saw their general sitting there with his guards about him and the points of the guns glittering about his head, and the one who had been chosen to speak made his proper obeisance and he said,
“Most Merciful, we have been chosen by our comrades to come and ask for a little more food. Indeed, we are not fed. We do not say anything of wage now, seeing the times are so hard, and we will not ask for arrears in our wage now. But we are not fed, and day by day we grow weaker, and we are soldiers and our whole trade stock is in these bodies of ours. We have but a poor loaf of bread a day. For this we come to you, to put the matter before your justice.”
Now Wang the Tiger knew what ignorant men are and he knew they must be kept frightened or they will not obey their leader. He stroked his beard furiously, therefore, and he coaxed his anger to rise in his breast. He thought of all his kindness to his men, how he had not used them hard in war and how he had gone against his will in letting them take their booty after siege, and how he had always paid them and seen them well clothed, and how he was himself a good man and not lustful and exorbitant in his desires as so many men are, and as he thought of all this he felt his good anger begin to rise in him that these men of his could not bear hardship with him when it was the will of heaven and no fault of his own, and the more he thought of this the more he fanned his anger and tried to increase it. When he felt some semblance of it rise in him he made haste to use its strength, for he knew what he must do, and he roared out,