XVI
BUT NOT THE NEXT night nor the next nor for six nights after that did Sheng and Mayli meet. For at dawn the next day those whom the mosquitoes and the leeches had not waked, or the sandflies and all those many teasing insects and small creatures which dwell in wild lands, now were awakened by low-flying enemy planes which strewed fire even on the rear where Mayli and her women were. She had lain down for an hour or two and Pansiao beside her, after Sheng left, and she had commanded An-lan to stay within her sight, on the pretense that she might need her, but truly to watch the girl whose silence she did not trust.
When she lay down she would have said she could not sleep, for her thoughts were torn and troubled indeed, but she did sleep, being still so young and now very weary. From this sleep she too was awakened by the thundering of bombs very near and she leaped out of her sleep, dragging Pansiao with her, and they fled into the edge of the jungle. There in the half darkness they clung together. A flying rain had fallen a little while before, a rain which had not waked them in their shallow tent, but which had wet every leaf and bush, and now in spite of the heat and the stillness of the morning this rain made them feel chill. Nor was it safe even here, for all knew that the enemy crawled through the trees like monkeys, disguised in green, and so Mayli looked fearfully about her. But instead of that enemy, at this moment she saw near her a short thick serpent rearing its head from behind a rotting log.
“Do not move,” she whispered to Pansiao. “There is an evil-faced snake watching us.”
So, not daring to move, they clung together staring in horror at that snake, while above them the planes soared and dipped and soared again with loud whines of sound, and each time they dipped the thunder fell. The snake grew angry as it listened and now it began to weave itself back and forth lifting its squat head out of the nest of its own body and darting out a thin, split thread of scarlet tongue.
Pansiao watched it and her face grew pale. “I think that is no snake,” she whispered. “I think it is a demon.”
In this close wet heat, in the dripping wet, the two girls stood motionless, watching the creature. It dipped its head and then moved it slowly from right to left and back and forth, its two round black eyes fixed upon them, and though it was twenty feet and more away from them yet Mayli too began to be sure it had an evil intent toward them.
“We must not stay here,” she whispered to Pansiao. “Let us move away so slowly that it does not know we move.”
So they began to move slowly backward to the edge of the jungle again, forgetting in this terror the enemy above. But the instant they began to move thus in retreat, terror took them entirely and without thought and with nothing indeed except mad fear they ran into the middle of the road and not once did they look back at that serpent.
“Do you think perhaps it blames us for all this noise?” Pansiao asked anxiously, when they had stopped.
“Perhaps indeed it does,” Mayli said. “That I had not imagined,” she added, and in the midst of the danger and the explosions to the right and to the left of them she gave a second’s wondering thought to the creatures in this jungle, used to silence since the world began and now crazed doubtless with what they could not understand.
She was to remember often in the next days the terror which had seized her and Pansiao together when they fled from the snake. For something of the same terror seemed to possess the armies in retreat in these days. The enemy made sorties over them five and six times a day as they moved toward the rear, and each time the dead were more than could be buried and the wounded more than could be cared for, and there was no sleep and little time for food and no appetite for the poor stuff that was given them to eat, for they had lost communication with the rest and must eat what could be found. In those few days Pansiao grew thin and white and Siu-chen’s ruddiness was streaked with paleness. There was not strength now for tempers or quarreling. Those who lived did what had to be done for the dying.
And over them and under them and about them like blankets of wet wool was the eternal heat, which did not abate night or day. By day the sun was not to be borne, and they longed for the night. Then in the night the hotness of the dark was so hateful that they longed for the day again. This was the season of the mango showers, those light and fleeting rains which fall suddenly and soft out of seemingly sunny skies, the rains to which in better years than this the people had looked forward with thankfulness for the ripening of the fruit. Now while the showers gave a moment’s respite from heat they sent a lasting chill through bodies weakened by battle. Indeed there was no good thing to be said of these days. They were an endless struggle and striving to retreat more quickly, until at last this retreat grew to terror in them all, a panic that spread from body to body, for it was flesh that feared and mind was dead.
Thus did six days pass and Mayli saw Sheng not once. She had not looked for him, it is true, for there had been no time in this retreat. But on the evening of the sixth day retreat was held because a heavy rain that afternoon had mired them and had clouded the skies too so that for a while the enemy did not come out. For the first time in all these days and nights Mayli took time to wash herself. The rain came down, steady and soft, and she took out from her pack the last piece of soap she had saved jealously since she left home. She called Pansiao a little apart and told her to hold up a piece of matting between her and the road, and behind that matting she washed herself clean in the rain.
It was while she did this that she saw Pansiao’s face peeping over the matting, the rain streaming down her cheeks, and she said,
“Now what shall we do? I see that Third Brother of mine coming near.”
“Does he come?” Mayli exclaimed. “Then I will dress myself quickly.”
So she did and in a moment she was ready for she had only to put on her wet uniform and bind her wet hair and there she was.
So she came out from behind the matting and there was Sheng. The first thing she saw was that he looked ill and then she saw that his arm was tied into a rough sling with a short length of hempen rope.
“Oh, you are wounded!” she cried.
“I don’t say it is enough to call a wound,” he replied. “It is a nail hole that I had six days ago and I thought the wound clean, but now I think there was poison on the nail.” And he told her how he had felt a sting and had found a nail buried in him to the head.
“Let me see it,” she cried, and she drew him aside into the little tent, and made him unwrap the cloth he had torn from the tail of his shirt. There was indeed before her eyes a very ugly angry wound, for his arm had swelled and pus was coming out of the hole and small red veins ran up and down his arm and shoulder.
“Oh you stupid!” she cried, her fright making her angry, “how could you not tell me about this before now?”
“Who has had time to think of himself?” he said.
And what had she to reply to this? She turned to Pansiao who was looking at them with anxious eyes.
“Go and call the doctor,” she said. “Tell him this time it is your brother.” And away Pansiao went running to find Chung, and while she was gone Mayli washed the wound with medicines from her own kit.
Now shyness fell upon them, and yet it seemed good to them to be alone in spite of all their evil circumstances. It could be only a few minutes, they both knew, and each quickly set about to think what to say in those few minutes, and for some words that would last until they were alone again. And Sheng who was always outright spoke first and he said, “If ever we come out of this trap in which we are I will not wait one day longer to know your true mind about me.”