“We are safer in the jungle with the snakes,” Sheng told those men who followed him.
Now all put on their green coats and wound branches of trees about their heads so that from above they would be the color of the earth and so less easily seen. And Mayli, walking with her women, bade them, too, wind branches about their hair. They were very pretty, she thought, watching them, and so young that they made a game even of this trick against death, laughing at each other, and one bending to twist another’s crown of green more gracefully, and some were careful what leaves they chose, and Pansiao found scarlet jungle flowers on a vine and twisted them into her crown, and her round merry face under the flowers made them all look at her and smile.
And Sheng was in the vanguard, pushing on ahead of all the others, and Mayli and her women were in the rear, and still those two did not meet or know that they were part of the same battle. Across the grave business of the day and the night, even through the weariness of the march, each thought for seconds, for a moment, of the voice and the look that had been like, and yet how could they be one another’s? And still the war carried them on, a part of itself, and separating them with the heavy duties each had to do, so that there was no time for thought or dreaming.
Each night when the company halted, Mayli must make sure that her women were fed and that they were safe for the night, and Sheng, when his men had eaten their rice cakes and dried beancurd and dipped up whatever water could be found to drink, must pore over his maps and send out his spies to see what could be learned about the enemy and about the trapped white men.
By now the whole countryside knew that the white men were encircled and a sort of glee was upon every face. It was an evil merriment, and Sheng took it as an enemy thing, for it was against them, too, because they went to the aid of the white man. Especially it was against every hapless man of India, who lived in these parts, for the people of Burma hated the people of India heartily, for they thought those Indians had come into Burma and had taken work and rice that belonged not to them but to the people of the land. Everywhere Sheng found this hatred as he pushed the spearhead westward and southward, and Sheng three or four times saved an Indian or even a family of them from the hatred of the people of Burma. One of these left his comrades out of gratitude and followed Sheng for a whole day. But at the end of the day Sheng felt his devotion a burden and he called Little Crab to take the dark fellow away and let him live among the men.
“I am not easy with his eyes always on me and his leaping forward to help me wherever I move,” Sheng said.
For so the Indian did, Sheng having saved him when some Burmese had drenched him with oil and set him on fire. So from that day on Little Crab took care of the man and somehow told him what to do, and the man obeyed him like a dog.
Now the General had appointed Charlie Li to come with Sheng, for Sheng was still a man of the hills to some degree and not used to being far from home. But Charlie was a man of any country where he set his foot, and he read people as farmers read the clouds and winds and he caught the thoughts of people like the breath from their mouths. So in the nights that they were upon this march he came back each night to Sheng and told him what he had found, for by day, in his beggar’s garb, he wound in and out of the people on both sides of the march and ahead of it, and now he had enough of their language to know half what they said and to guess the rest.
“A generation will not undo the hatred we are making for ourselves, that we side with the white men in this war and not with our own,” he told Sheng sadly. “It is we, they all say, who are betraying our side of the world. The enemy is spreading it everywhere that it is only we who help those who have ruled us. If it were not for us, and this is what I hear everywhere, the war would be won by now, they say, and the white men gone.”
Sheng sat apart from his men at night to talk with Charlie, and tonight he sat on a rotted stump near the edge of a jungle where they had encamped well away from a village, so that if any came near they could see him coming. All around the encampment soldiers were awake and watching, for well they knew their danger. He sat there, his big slender hands clenched on his knees, his knees apart, and his head up and his eyes watching. He did not cease to turn his eyes here and there as he answered Charlie.
“If I had not suffered what I have suffered at the hands of these East-Ocean dwarfs, and what I suffered I will tell no man, if I had not seen what I saw in the city near my father’s house and if I had not seen what happened in the village of my ancestors, men I might have said that these people do well to say we have betrayed our own. But I have seen and I never forget. White men I do not know. I never spoke to one since I was born. But the East-Ocean dwarfs I do know and I have seen them, and they are my enemies until I die, and after I am dead I will not forget.”
His voice came out of the night like low thunder and he went on. “Do I love the white men whom I have never seen? Am I a fool? No, it is not to save the white men that I sit here tonight, my feet on this earth that is not mine, whose sands and winds are strange to me. But if the white man is the enemy of my enemy, then the white man is my friend.”
“The country is rotten with spies,” Charlie said. He pulled his ear restlessly. “Among the priests nine out of ten are for the Japanese. Among the people not one will lift his hand against them.”
“Then these people are my enemy, too,” Sheng replied heavily. He rose and looked out over the dark alien land spread around him. He sniffed the night wind. “Even the winds smell evil,” he said. “There is a rotten smell to them.”
“It is the jungles,” Charlie said. “The jungles are rotting.”
They were silent for a long moment, each unwilling to speak out his fear to the other.
“I am going to sleep,” Sheng said at last, his voice as hard and dry as a dog’s bark.
“Well, I will sleep an hour or two and then be on my way,” Charlie replied. “I shall meet you somewhere or other. Do not look for me, but before night falls again I shall fit my footstep to yours.”
“By the third dawn from this we should be there, unless the white men have retreated still farther,” Sheng said.
“Retreat!” Charlie repeated. “They cannot retreat. They have not a single road open to them now. And they do not know how to travel without roads for their machines.”
The two young men laughed without mirth and so parted.
… In silence the march went through the last day. By now the General knew to the third of a mile where the white men were waiting for rescue. He had communication by messenger with the American but he did not rely on it. The American was even more strange here than he was himself. No, he thought through that last long day, he must lean only on himself. To fight this war was beyond the white man who knew well only his own kind. He was filled with a strong scorn of these white men, all of them, who had left their countries to come here to fight among people whom they could not tell one from the other. He smiled bitterly many times as he marched that day, on foot like his men, his face spotted with shadows from the tree twigs around his hat.
“These white men!” he thought in mingled fear and scorn. “They cannot tell one brown face from another. Let an enemy stand before him and say he is a friend and the white man does not know the difference.”
For his spies had brought back hundreds of stories. The enemy did not wear a uniform but went in a pair of drawers and on their feet were only sandals or rubber-soled shoes and they mingled with the people of the country who clothed themselves thus, and the white men took them all for one, not knowing the language of any of them. Here they had ruled for hundreds of years, and yet they knew not one face from another nor one tongue from the next.