He followed the path by which he had come, through already it was nearly lost. The twigs he had bent were straightening themselves and the crushed grasses rising. In another hour it would look as though no human foot had ever walked that way. But in less than that hour he came into the small clearing they had made for their hiding place. He found Sheng awake, his eyes sensible and clear. The Englishman had propped him up against a pile of small branches, and he was standing there, his hands on his hips, looking down on Sheng.
“I was just hoping you’d be back soon,” he remarked to Charlie with great cheerfulness. “This beggar came to when you’d only just gone. I expect it was the egg. But he doesn’t know a word of English, does he?”
“Not a word,” Charlie said.
And then as though the Englishman were not there Sheng began to talk in his own voice, weak enough but resolute again.
“Where are my men?” he asked.
For a moment Charlie thought to himself that he must shield Sheng a little longer from the truth. But he decided quickly that the truth must be told. Let Sheng bear it as he could, and get his strength together for the return.
“Those men are destroyed,” he said.
“Destroyed?” Sheng repeated.
“The white men cut the bridge after they had crossed,” Charlie said. “You remember that?”
Sheng nodded, his black eyes fixed on Charlie’s face. “The enemy came out from the village at the same instant and with them were yellow-robed priests,” Charlie went on. “I saw them plunging at us and at that moment you fell, and I caught you. Suddenly the Indian was there — he had followed us. And he helped me and we escaped here but how do I know where the others are beyond that? I saw the enemy fall upon them, their guns blazing and their bayonets shining and plunging. But I and the Indian were bearing you away into the forest. We did not stop even to rest for half a day.”
Sheng lifted his eyes upon the Englishman and let them move up and down that tall thin young man, who had not understood one word of what was being said. Now he stood there grinning like a boy, full of good nature.
“Who is this long white radish?” Sheng asked Charlie.
“I stumbled upon him in the forest, and he nearly choked me, mistaking me for a devil, and then he came with me when I persuaded him otherwise,” Charlie said.
The two Chinese and the Indian stared at Dougall and he stood patiently, still good-natured, under their stares.
“Does he say why they left us without a way of escape after we had rescued them?” Sheng asked.
“I have not asked him,” Charlie replied.
“Ask him now,” Sheng commanded.
So without ado Charlie changed his tongue and he asked the Englishman, “Why did you fellows destroy the bridge after you had gone over and so left us with no retreat, when we came to save you?”
Dougall opened his blue eyes wide. “I’m sure we couldn’t have done that,” he said.
This Charlie told to Sheng, changing his tongue again.
“Does he not know what happened?” Sheng asked.
“He knows nothing,” Charlie replied.
“This fellow,” Sheng declared after a moment, “is a deserter. Ask him why.”
“Why have you left your army?” Charlie asked Dougall.
The young face of this Englishman burned red again under the thin white skin. “I was fed up,” he said. “Any one could tell we were licked,” he said again after a moment. He examined his long pale hand. It was covered with red scratches and the nails were broken and black. “It was simply too silly,” he said at last. “The commanders themselves didn’t know what they were doing they were retreating so fast. It was every man for himself.” He smiled, shamefaced. “After all,” he said in his bright confident way. “What’s the use, you know? If we win the war, this’ll all come back to us. If we lose — well—” he shrugged: “Then what would be the use of fighting for this bloody bit of heathen ground?”
This Charlie translated to Sheng and Sheng groaned in his weakness. “Ask him what he will do now,” he commanded again.
“What will you do now?” Charlie asked.
“I?” Dougall lifted his head and looked at one face and another. “Why, I’ll simply come along with you, if you fellows don’t mind. It was most awfully lucky my finding you — I mean, because you can speak English, you know.”
“He says he will come with us,” Charlie told Sheng.
Sheng closed his eyes.
“He did give you some white pills he had,” Charlie said, “and it is also true that he has made your bed of those ferns and he has held your arm in the sunshine to heal it. Can a man help it that his mother gave birth to a fool?”
Sheng smiled bitterly without opening his eyes. “Since he is our ally,” he said, “let him come.”
Two days later they set out for the west again. Sheng was on his feet, weak but ready to live.
XIX
THE GENERAL LOOKED AT the American. He made his face blank to hide the repulsion and the refusal which tingled inside him to his very fingertips. He wanted to say what he felt, that nothing this American could do would save any of them. He wanted to say what they all knew, that the battle here had been lost before any of them ever trod upon the soil.
“I have sacrificed one division,” he said. “Not one of the Fifty-Fifth has returned. Where are they?”
“Heaven knows,” the American replied. “I have never heard of such a thing as a division disappearing, but so it is.”
The General determined to be patient. “It is impossible for one army alone to fight, you understand,” he said. He made his language simple and plain for this foreigner. The foreigner was proud of his Chinese but he did not know that he spoke as a foreigner does, having learned from simple men. “You understand? I am given orders to hold a sector of the line. I hold. My men fight without regard to life. Then we are given the order to retreat so that the line can be straightened. What do we find? While we have been fighting our allies have been retreating without notice to us. We have to give up what we have been holding at the cost of our lives. Is this the way to fight a winning war?” The American’s thin cheeks flushed. He did not answer.
“You white men,” the General said distinctly. “You are determined to save each other’s faces.”
He slapped his knee and rose, saluted with sharpness, wheeled and went away. He nodded at a guard curtly, his own guard waiting at the door fell in behind him and he marched to his own quarters, holding his slight body very straight. He had now made up his mind that he would never see his wife or his sons again. The conviction made him cold inside as he had once felt when he had eaten a foreign frozen dish — ice cream, they called it. The pit of his stomach felt like that now. He suddenly wished that he had a woman to talk to as he might talk to his wife. His wife, though younger than he by six or seven years, was sensible and quick to think of a way out of trouble. But she was thousands of miles away. He entered his own gate and passed the guards without seeing them. In his tent he sat down and closed his eyes and rubbed both hands slowly around and around his head. He was really desperate. Sheng had never returned. Meantime the rate of advance of the enemy was tripling itself. At first the advance had been at not more than ten miles a day. Then it was twenty and now it was thirty and forty miles a day.