In the darkness Mayli lay down again upon her bed. Now that she was about to leave, and indeed perhaps forever, her mind seemed to be one vast confusion. Why was she going? The will to go had begun half idly as a wish partly made of loneliness, partly made of her reluctant love for Sheng, partly out of a true longing to be useful to her country. Now all of these parts had become a whole. She was going. She knew that Burma had become the single gate for China to the rest of the world. The gate must be kept open, for only through that gate could help come against the enemy.
… This purpose to hold open the gate of Burma was indeed the purpose of every man in those three divisions of soldiers, the purpose in every heart, man or woman, who set out the next day at dawn upon the march. The singleness of their purpose tied them together closer than a family, and they all felt their closeness. Yet who put it into words? The start was made like any other start, in a confusion of noise and bawling shouts, of complaints against loads too heavy, of small stubbornnesses and sudden quarrels. First the trucks were loaded to go as far as they could go. Goods and women were loaded into trucks and then men crowded in where they could. To one man in each truck a plan was given of where the route lay and where all must wait for each other at the end of the road.
Mayli, in her stiff cloth uniform, her pack strapped to her shoulders, stood ready at the head of her young women. They were dressed alike, and as she was dressed, and in their gravity each young face looked strangely like the next. Next to her stood her four aides. Their hearts were like her own, beating with excitement and fear and will for victory. Siu-chen’s round red-cheeked face was like a solemn child’s, and An-lan was paler than usual. Chi-ling, the young widow, looked sad and a little weary, as though for her the march had already begun. But Hsieh-ying, the girl who had suffered no hardships yet, was smiling and gay and her eyes were black and shining and her lips red because she kept biting them.
“Watchers of the wounded!” a man’s voice yelled. “Protectors of the sick! This way — this way!”
A little lieutenant waving a sheet of paper shouted at them and hastily Mayli stepped forward and with her all the others, and they marched forward to the trucks that had been set aside for them, and they began to climb in, the girls courteously waiting for Mayli to climb first into the seat beside the driver, who was a big common-faced fellow with small eyes set close under bristling brows of stiff black hairs.
A moment, a scream or two, some excited laughter, and they were ready to start. Now the truck where Mayli sat was the first in the four that carried them, and when the driver pushed a handle, it would not start. He stamped both feet and pushed another, and still it would not start. At that he cried out to heaven and beat the sides of his head with his palms and cursed his vehicle heartily.
“You who slept with your own mother!” he roared at the truck. “Have I not stuffed you full of foreign oils and poured water into your belly? Did I not burn incense for you to the gods yesterday? Now what more will you have?” He jumped down from his seat and kicked the truck well in its under parts and then leaping into his seat, pushed yet another handle.
All was of no use. The vehicle groaned and hissed and roared inside, but it did not move. Then Mayli who had often sat in foreign cars abroad saw a small handle and she pointed to it.
“Let that fly back,” she told the man.
He grinned at her and let it fly back, and the truck moved at once. He was not in the least abashed that he had forgotten to do this one necessary thing, and he complained as the truck bounced and leaped along the rough road. “The trouble with these foreign inventions is that none go far enough, in my opinion. If these foreigners are so clever at such things, why not go something further and add a self-releasing brake, so that the vehicle can remember its own needs? This cursed brain of mine, how can it think for me and for a vehicle, too? Must everything rest upon me?”
Now at this moment Mayli saw that the hood of the truck had been removed, and that all the inner parts of the engine were open to the dust and the rain. “Is it not very unwise to have the cover off the engine?” she inquired. “If it rains, we may be stopped, or if the engine clogs with dust.”
The driver pulled his little cap sidewise over his eye that was opposite her to leave his eye clear that was next her. “What am I that twenty times a day I must heave up a cover and put it down again?” he said. “I took the cursed thing off.”
This he said in the gayest and most careless manner, and all the time he talked he drove that vehicle like a wild animal down the road. Soon Mayli was speechless, and all she could do was to cling to her seat and brace her feet against the floor, for she was thrown from side to side, and up and down, and the man said grinning at her, without staying in the least his fearful speed, “Lady, it would be better to put another soldier on the other side of you, so that you would have us both for cushions.”
“Can you — can you — not go a little slower?” she gasped.
But he shook his head to this. “This accursed son of an obscene mother,” he shouted at her above the din and rattle. “If I let him go slower than this he thinks it is time to rest. No, once I let him know it is time to go, I must keep him going until I myself am too hungry and must stop for food. Besides, in the afternoon he never goes as well as in the morning. Do foreigners not work in the afternoon?”
She shook her head and did not try to answer except with laughter for by now what breath she had was not for talking.
How welcome was noon of that day! Without a word to prepare her the driver stopped the vehicle suddenly and seized her by the shoulder to keep her from shooting out over upon the ground, for the glass was gone from the windshield. The stillness was dazing. She sat for a moment in it to collect herself, but the man had already leaped down and he was pushing his way into an inn and shouting for food. Then when she had rested a moment she was compelled to laugh again and so she climbed down.
“I feel I have already marched a hundred miles,” she said to Hsieh-ying who ran forward to help her. They clustered around her and Hsieh-ying said:
“This afternoon I will change places with you, for I saw how your driver paid no heed to any clod in the road. Now the man in our truck was a student and he is very clever and escaped the ruts and the clods.”
But the truth was that Hsieh-ying, being a hearty woman, had liked the heartiness of that soldier who had driven the truck. This Mayli divined and let pass with a smile.
So when they had eaten of what had been prepared for them, great bowls of rice and meat, and cabbage, nothing could prevent Hsieh-ying from climbing in beside the big-faced fellow and Mayli found herself beside a pale thin young man who nodded to her without smiling when she took her seat.
It was true that this was a very different fellow. He knew his vehicle like a brother, and he handled it with care and the vehicle moved along as smoothly as a cat. It was the same road and no better than it had been, but how different it was! Mayli said, “You drive this, car as though you knew it.”
“I do know,” the young man said. “I am an engineer. I have a degree from an American college.”
“Then why are you doing this?” she asked.
Without knowing it she spoke in English and in English he answered her. “I was studying in America — my last year — and then I couldn’t go on. I had to come home and get into it. Well, I went to Chungking and waited and waited. Months. Nothing happened. This chance came and I took it.”
“Nothing happened?” she repeated.
His lip curled. “I hadn’t what it takes to get through to the big fellow,” he said.
“What it takes?” she repeated.