“Was there?” Charlie asked. “There was one among them whom I knew, too.”
The two men stared at each other in this field of death. The enemy was gone, sweeping northward toward Lashio to cut off the Big Road into China. They were safe from the enemy, but who could save them now from sorrow? It seemed to Sheng that he must speak Mayli’s name only to ease himself of fear, and he said to Charlie, “I mean that tall one — surnamed Wei and named Mayli.”
“That one?” Charlie exclaimed and for one evil instant Sheng feared that he and Charlie loved the same woman. But Charlie went on quickly, “And the one I know is a little thing, like a child, who follows Mayli all the time as though she were a small dog.”
“Why, that is my sister!” Sheng cried. “That is Pansiao.”
“Is Pansiao your sister?” Charlie shouted.
And these two young men in the midst of the death around them seized each other’s hands, and they let the tears come into their eyes. Each would have spoken to the other but the Englishman spoke first.
“What do you chaps plan to do? I say, what next? I hope you know now I was right — we should have gone straight to India.”
… What was there for Sheng and his companions to do indeed but to move toward the jungle where they would be out of the stench of the dead, so that they might plan what step lay ahead? Yet neither Sheng nor Charlie could leave the dead until they had walked everywhere among them to see whether or not Mayli and Pansiao were there. There were many others whom they knew, but what hope had so few of burying all these? They moved those whom they knew best so that they lay decently and they found a torn piece of tent cloth and covered the dead General against the flies. They searched everywhere for the two women, and when at last they could not find them, the heat being now very intense and the flies fearful in number, they went into the jungle for shade and to find water and to eat the little food they had in their pockets, which they had bought with the money the merchant had given Sheng.
Now the jungle was as all are, and it was difficult to find a path into it, and now it was the Indian who led them. He searched out the only slight path he saw and thus they went by the very way where Mayli and the women had gone that morning, some four hours or five before this. By this same path Mayli had found the women easily when she went stumbling into the jungle, and she found them there clinging together in fearful silence. A rain had begun to fall, as rains did fall out of these low skies and all around them the sound of the rain drummed down and they looked here and there for the enemy, lest they could not hear a footfall because of the rain. So indeed they did not hear Mayli, and she came upon them before they knew and they put out their hands and drew her into their midst, tears streaming down their faces with the rain. And she put back her wet hair from her face and asked herself what now could be done. Where would they go in this enemy country and how could a handful of women escape and where would they find their own again? The trees about them were vivid green in the rain and small monkeys stared down at them, parting the leaves like humans to peer at them, and Mayli shivered to see those little dark faces, for so the enemy hid, too, in the trees like monkeys, and who knew whether monkeys and men were not hidden there together? So they all felt the presence of the enemy, and this terror passed from one to the other like cold flame, until seizing each other’s hands they ran in blindness toward the road.
Mayli came first to herself and she pulled back and shouted at them, “Stop — stop — we are all fools — where are we going?”
At the sound of her voice they stopped and they all looked at her, and Pansiao began to cry because she was so hot and weary and frightened. Then looking at these faces Mayli knew that indeed she must think for all of them, and she tried to quiet her own panting while she thought what indeed they could do.
The rain had stopped again and around them the wet green light shone deep and soft. If they had been able to see beauty, they could have seen this beautiful, but to them the light seemed only strange and dangerous and the dripping leaves and trees only drenching and shelterless and they were hungry and even thirsty for the rain had sunk through moss and loam and there was no stream near.
At this moment they heard men’s feet crashing through the jungle near by and men’s voices. They shrank together at the sounds, fearing enemy men more than all else. Suddenly they were women, these who had been so strong and ready to suffer, who had shared the hardships of battle and had walked stride for stride beside the men in their army. But when they now heard these voices of men they forgot everything except that they were female and therefore at the mercy of the male. Clinging to each other and motionless and silent they stood close together, staring in the direction of the men.
The path ran near to where they stood, and there was no time to run back, nor did they dare lest they be heard. The voices came nearer and they listened, and what Mayli heard was a complaining English voice, speaking English words.
“I say, you chaps,” the voice said. “I shan’t have any boots left on my feet for tomorrow if we keep this up.”
She put her finger to her lips, and she loosened herself from the others and crept forward, and parting the green branches a little she looked through them and saw sitting on the edge of the path three young white men. They were ragged and empty-handed except for the rifles which each clutched. One of them had taken off his boot and was looking at it sorrowfully.
She crept nearer. Should she speak or not? They were pale, weary, lost-looking men, very young, she saw, little more than boys. Yes, she would speak.
“Hello!” she said softly, “hello!”
They leaped to their feet, their eyes staring, their guns ready.
“You there!” the one without the boot said sternly, “are you friend or foe?”
She stepped out from the bushes which hid her. “Since I am Chinese,” she said, “I must be friend.”
XXII
THE THREE YOUNG ENGLISHMEN looked at Mayli. She saw in these three pairs of pale eyes the white man’s old doubt. Chinese! Friend or foe?
“You need not be afraid of me,” she said quietly. “Even if I am not English, still I am only a woman.”
“Are you alone?” the first young Englishman asked. He had lowered his gun, but he still grasped it so hard that she saw his thin dirty hands were white at the knuckles.
“No, I am with four others,” she replied. “We escaped from the battlefield today.”
“What battlefield?” he asked.
“Did you not come from the road?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Quite the opposite,” he said. “We’ve been wandering through the jungle for days without seeing a road. We don’t know where we are. We had an idea we were going toward India, you know, but not seeing the sun rise or set in this beastly green darkness we may be entirely wrong.”
She took from her pocket the little compass Chung had given her. “You are going southeast,” she said.
“Good God!” he said in a low voice.
The Englishmen forgot their fear in their dismay and they lowered their guns. One of them, a short square fellow who had been thickset and was now so thin that his flesh hung on him, took off his ragged sun helmet and scratched his head that was bald from heat and filth. The third, the youngest, turned very pale under the grime streaked on his unshaven cheeks. “Do you mean all this time we’ve been walking in the wrong direction, Hal?” he asked of the first one.
“Looks like it,” that one replied.
He buttoned the ragged coat that was open over his naked body. “Are the Japs south of us or where?” he asked Mayli.
“They passed through here this morning,” she said, “going north and east. How far from here they are now I cannot tell.”