The alleys were more cramped, the houses smaller and more dingy; the open drains stank with rotting refuse, at which cowering, mangy dogs with rheumy eyes furtively sniffed and nibbled. And every alley teemed with bustling Chinese, on foot, in rickshaws, in those strange, large wheelbarrows. Everywhere they were shouting their wares, bargaining, hawking and spitting, eating, bawling out conversations across the narrow spaces. The rickshaw coolie often had to stop when he met another rickshaw or a wheelbarrow head on, and every time a wheedling cluster of beggars gathered round them, children, women, old men. The coolie hissed at them through his teeth and shooed them away, as if he too regarded them as worthless dross. Mason merely sniffed and surveyed them distantly through half-closed lids.
'We're in the Chinese city now,' he said, as they lurched into another festering alley. 'Longer way round, but I wanted to show you something.' He tilted his topee down over his forehead against the sun.
Shading his own eyes against the heat and glare, Denton gazed passively down at the coolie trotting like a human horse between the shafts. Sweat was running down his creased neck, and his loose, patched tunic was wet with it wherever the faded blue cloth touched his bony body. Under his rolled-up trousers, his legs too were running with sweat. Denton watched the glistening rivulets trickling down between the dried splashes of dung on his protruding ankles.
Some way ahead there seemed to be the dull confused murmur of a crowd. Mason stirred ponderously beside him, taking a gold watch out of his fob. He opened the case and frowned down at it. 'Twenty past nine,' he muttered. 'Should be at it by now.' Denton glanced at him questioningly, but he settled back again without explanation, only letting a secretive little smile twitch his small red lips beneath the ginger bristles of his moustache.
The muffled murmuring grew gradually louder and more distinct, then suddenly the alley gave onto a wide open space. It was full of Chinese, all peering towards the centre, laughing and talking excitedly in their shrill, hoarse voices. Women with babies strapped to their backs, men in long gowns, coolies and children - some of them perched on their parents' shoulders. Near the centre, Denton saw a sprinkling of European men in straw hats and topees.
The rickshaw had stopped. 'Stand up and you'll see something,' Mason said in his loud, peremptory voice. 'Get a good view from here. One of the local sports.'
The coolie, panting, held the shafts level for him, grinning slyly at Mason as if the two of them were sharing some private joke. Behind, the rickshaw carrying the trunk stopped with a long-drawn-out sigh from the coolie as he lowered the shafts to the ground.
Gingerly Denton stood up, gazing over all the bobbing and turning heads, each of which was also straining to see. The crowd suddenly hushed, so that his voice sounded too loud when he asked 'Where?'
'In the middle. Can't you see anything?'
The rickshaw lurched as Mason stood up unsteadily himself, gripping Denton's arm above the elbow. The coolie muttered as he balanced the shafts again. He too was stretching his neck to see. 'There, look,' Mason pointed. 'Over there.'
'Where? Oh.' Denton saw a Chinese kneeling in a small clearing of the crowd. He was bare to the waist. Another stood behind him, pulling his arms back, while a third seemed to be yanking his head forward by the queue. It was as though they were wrestling. Or, rather, as if the two standing men were using the other as the rope in a tug of war.
'What are they doing?' he turned to Mason uneasily, a vague premonitory fear gathering like a cloud on the blank skies of his mind.
'Watch.' Mason's brown button eyes were gleaming slightly. His grip tightened on Denton's arm.
Denton looked back. A fourth man, obscured till now by the crowd, had appeared. He raised both arms. His hands held a heavy sword. The sun glinted a moment on the blade. The crowd was silent and still, as if frozen. Not even a baby cried. For one paralysed second Denton gazed in disbelief, his heart thudding helplessly, at the two braced men, at the kneeling victim, at the tensed, poised swordsman. Then the swordsman's arms swung and the heavy blade hurtled down in a flashing arc. Denton heard the soft thud as it sliced through the kneeling man's neck. The head dropped off and a dark spurt of blood shot out from the trunk as it collapsed onto the earth. The man holding the queue jerked the dripping head up in the air and swung it round and round like a ball on a chain. The headless body lay there twitching and jerking, like a fish flapping desperately about on the stones of a jetty.
An exultant roar, deep-throated and satisfied, had gone up from the crowd, and now they were surging forward round the body in a sudden powerful tide, men, women and children fighting to dip their hands in the blood that was still pumping from the severed neck.
Denton slumped down suddenly, shuddering. The rickshaw rocked and Mason wobbled dangerously. 'Hey!' he exclaimed, 'Watch what you're doing, can't you?' Then he eased his own body down carefully. 'That was a pirate,' he said, the sudden indignation fading from his voice, replaced by a tone at once gloating and indifferent. 'You'll see plenty of that before you're through. Still want to join the service?' He chuckled when Denton didn't answer, and called out to the rickshaw coolie, who was still grinning appreciatively, standing on tiptoe to peer over the crowd while he balanced the shafts.
'Chop-chop! Chop-chop!' Mason shouted at him again, clapping his hands impatiently.
With a reluctant shake of his head, the coolie turned them round and pulled them away, leaning against the cross-piece.
'See them putting their hands in the blood?' Mason asked. 'They think it's lucky. It's not their hands actually. They were holding cash, see? It makes the cash lucky. They think it'll make them rich.' He chuckled again, thickly and chestily. 'It may be nineteen hundred and three in England, but it's the Middle Ages out here. Still want to join the service? Hobson's choice, I expect.'
Again Denton gave no answer. But Mason didn't seem to notice. 'Of course they do get the blood on their hands as well,' he added reflectively. 'But it's the money they care about.'
A deep, wild, ecstatic roar welled up behind them again. Like the roar of the crowd at the football match his father had taken him to see before he left England. England, how far away!
'There goes another one,' Mason nodded over his shoulder. 'They'll be at it all morning.' He took a cigar out of his breast pocket and cupped his large hand carefully round the match as he lit it. 'Want one?' he offered perfunctorily as he buttoned the flap again. 'No? Suit yourself. Yes, they stick their heads on poles when they've chopped 'em all off.' He glanced round, funnelling a pale blue stream of smoke out between pursed lips. 'There's a couple over there, look.'
2
'YOU'RE LUCKY TO GET THESE QUARTERS.' Mason threw his topee onto the bare mattress and strode with a tread that shook the floorboards to the shuttered French windows, through which the sunlight shone in blinding slits. The Chinese servant in white jacket and trousers, who had met them deferentially at the entrance to the mess, let Denton's trunk down carefully with a groaning sigh and stood expectantly, his quiet, slant-lidded eyes glancing respectfully from Mason to Denton.
Mason was unbolting the shutters. He turned, his half-smoked cigar between his teeth. 'Must get you some of the local cash,' he muttered. He pulled a handful of change grudgingly out of his pocket, selected a tiny coin and with a 'Here!', held it out for the servant, who fumblingly caught it as he let it go.
'Give the boys the odd cent or two, it oils the wheels,' Mason advised Denton loudly as the servant left the room on slippered feet, pocketing the coin. 'Don't overdo it, though. The blighters get greedy in no time. You can change your English money downstairs.' The bolt on the shutters moved with a squeak and he swung them back, then unlocked the doors behind them. They opened onto a large veranda which ran the whole length of the room.
'You've got a sitting room next door. View of the harbour from both rooms, look. Bathroom's back there.' He seemed better-humoured since the execution, strolling round the room and humming, looking about him appreciatively.
Denton went obediently out onto the veranda and looked numbly out. Two floors below was the street they had come along, teeming with rickshaws, those strange large wheelbarrows, and people hurrying up and down, many