Deeper and deeper drooped the dull grey gloom, like a curtain falling slowly and impenetrably over all things.
A vivid but broken flash of lightning, blazing in a flare of blue and amber, poured livid reflections, and illuminated with dreadful distinctness, if only for one ghastly moment, the stupendous cliffs of the Ichang Gorge, whose wall-like steepness suddenly became darkened as black as ink.
Thus, with a grand impressiveness, this great gully in the mountains assumed hugely gigantic proportions, stretching interminably from east to west, up to heaven and down to earth, silhouetted to the north against a small remaining patch of golden purple, whose weird glamour seemed awesomely to herald the coming of a new world into being, lasting but for a moment longer, until again the blue blaze quickly cut up the sky into a thousand shreds and tiny silver bars. And then, suddenly, with a vast down swoop, as if some colossal bird were taking the earth under her far-outstretching wings, dense darkness fell--impenetrable, sooty darkness, that in a moment shut out all light, all power of sight. Then from out the sombre heavens deep thunder boomed ominously as the reverberating roar of a pack of hunger-ridden lions, and the two men, aliens in an alien land, stood beneath the tattered matting awning with a peculiar fear and some foreboding. We were tied in fast to the darkened sides of the great Ichang Gorge--a magnificent sixteen-mile stretch, opening up the famous gorges on the fourth of the great rivers of the world, which had cleaved its course through a chain of hills, whose perpendicular cliffs form wonderful rock-bound banks, dispelling all thought of the monotony of the Lower Yangtze.
Upstream we had glided merrily upon a fresh breeze, which bore the warning of a storm. All on board was settling down into Yangtze fashion, and the barbaric human clamor of our trackers, which now mutteringly died away, was suddenly taken up, as above recorded, and all unexpectedly answered by a grander uproar--a deep threatening boom of far-off thunder. In circling tones and semitones of wrath it volleyed gradually through the dark ravines, and, startled by the sound, the two travelers, roused for the first time from their natural engrossment in the common doings of the _wu-pan_, saw the reflection of the sun on the waters, now turned to a livid murkiness, deepening with a threatening ink-like aspect as the river rushed voluminously past our tiny floating haven. Strangely silenced were we by this weird terror, and watched and listened, chained to the deck by a thousand mingled fears and fascinations, which breathed upon our nerves like a chill wind. As we became accustomed then to the yellow darkness, we beheld about the landscape a spectral look, and the sepulchral sound of the moving thunder seemed the half-muffled clang of some great iron-tongued funeral bell. Then came the rain, introduced swiftly by the deafening clatter of another thunder crash that made one stagger like a ship in a wild sea, and we strained our eyes to gaze into a visionary chasm cleaved in twain by the furious lightning. Playing upon the face of the unruffled river, with a brilliancy at once awful and enchanting, this singular flitting and wavering of the heavenly electricity, as it flashed haphazardly around all things, threw about one an illumination quite indescribable.
For hours we sat upon a beam athwart the afterdeck, in silence drinking in the strange phenomenon. We watched, after a small feed of curry and rice, long into the dark hours, when the thunder had passed us by, and in the distant booming one could now imagine the lower notes streaming forth from some great solemn organ symphony. The fierce lightning twitched, as it danced in and out the crevices--inwards, outwards, upwards, then finally lost in one downward swoop towards the river, tearing open the liquid blackness with its crystal blade of fire. The rain ceased not. But soon the moon, peeping out from the tops of a jagged wall above us, looking like a soiled, half-melted snowball, shone full down the far-stretching gorge, and now its broad lustre shed itself, like powdered silver, over the whole scene, so that one could have imagined oneself in the living splendor of some eternal sphere of ethereal sweetness. And so it might have been had the rain abated--a curious accompaniment to a moonlight night. Down it came, straight and determined and businesslike, in the windless silence, dancing like a shower of diamonds of purest brilliance on the background of the placid waters.
Very beautiful, reader, for a time. But would that the rain had been all moonshine!
Glorious was it to revel in for a time. But, during the weary night watches, in a bed long since soaked through, and one's safest nightclothes now the stolid Burberry, with face protected by a twelve-cent umbrella, even one's curry and rice saturated to sap with the constant drip, and everything around one rendered cold and uncomfortable enough through a perforation in its slenderest part of the worn-out bamboo matting--ah, it was then, then that one would have foregone with alacrity the dreams of the nomadic life of the _wu-pan_.
Our introduction, therefore, to the great Gorges of the Upper Yangtze--to China what the Niagara Falls are to America--was not remarkable for its placidity, albeit taken with as much complacency as the occasion allowed.
I do not, however, intend to weary or to entertain the reader, as may be, by a long description of the Yangtze gorges. Time and time again have they fallen to the imaginative pens of travelers--mostly bad or indifferent descriptions, few good; none better, perhaps, than Mrs. Bishop's. But at best they are imaginative--they lack reality. It has been said that the world of imagination is the world of eternity, and as of eternity, so of the Gorges--they cannot be adequately described. As I write now in the Ichang Gorge, I seem veritably to have reached eternity. I seem to have arrived at the bosom of an after-life, where one's body has ceased to vegetate, and where, in an infinite and eternal world of imagination, one's soul expands with fullest freedom. There seems to exist in this eternal world of unending rock and invulnerable precipice permanent realities which stand from eternity to eternity. As the oak dies and leaves its eternal image in the seed which never dies, so these grand river-forced ravines, abused and disabused as may be, go on for ever, despite the scribblers, and one finds the best in his imagination returning by some back-lane to contemplative thought. But as a casual traveler, may I say that the first experience I had of the gorges made me modest, patient, single-minded, conscious of man's significant insignificance, conscious of the unspeakable, wondrous grandeur of this unvisited corner of the world--a spot in which blustering, selfish, self-conceited persons will not fare well? Humility and patience are the first requisites in traveling on the Upper Yangtze.
Reader, for your sake I refrain from a description. But may I, for perhaps your sake too, if you would wander hither ere the charm of things as they were in the beginning is still unrobbed and unmolested, give you some few impressions of a little of the life--grave, gay, but never unhappy--which I spent with my excellent co-voyager, The Other Man.
It is a part of wisdom, when starting any journey, not to look forward to the end with too much eagerness: hear my gentle whisper that you may never get there, and if you do, congratulate yourself; interest yourself in the progress of the journey, for the present only is yours. Each day has its tasks, its rapids, its perils, its glories, its fascinations, its surprises, and--if you will live as we did, its curry and rice. Then, if you are traveling with a companion, remember that it is better to yield a little than to quarrel a great deal. Most disagreeable and undignified is it anywhere to get into the habit of standing up for what people are pleased to call their little rights, but nowhere more so than on the Upper Yangtze houseboat, under the gaze of a Yangtze crew. Life is really too short for continual bickering, and to my way of thinking it is far quieter, happier, more prudent and productive of more peace, if one could yield a little of those precious little rights than to incessantly squabble to maintain them. Therefore, from the beginning to the end of the trip, make the best of everything in every way, and I can assure you, if you are not ill-tempered and suffer not from your liver, Nature will open her bosom and lead you by these strange by-ways into her hidden charms and unadorned recesses of sublime beauty, uneclipsed for their kind anywhere in the world.
Think not that the life will be luxurious--houseboat life on the Upper Yangtze is decidedly not luxurious. Were it not for the magnificence of the scenery and ever-changing outdoor surroundings, as a matter of fact, the long river journey would probably become unbearably dull.
* * * * *
Our _wu-pan_ was to get through the Gorges in as short a time as was possible, and for that reason we traveled in the discomfort of the smallest boat used to face the rapids.
People entertaining the smallest idea of doing things travel in nothing short of a kwadze, the orthodox houseboat, with several rooms and ordinary conveniences. Ours was a _wu-pan_--literally five boards. We had no conveniences whatever, and the second morning out we were left without even a wash-basin. As I was standing in the stern, I saw it swirling away from us, and inquiring through a peep-hole, heard the perplexing explanation of my boy. Gesticulating violently, he told us how, with the wash-basin in his hand, he had been pushed by one of the crew, and how, loosened from his grasp, my toilet ware had been gripped by the river--and now appeared far down the stream like a large bead. The Other Man was alarmed at the boy's discomfiture, ejaculated something about the loss being quite irreparable, and with a loud laugh and quite natural hilarity proceeded quietly to use a saucepan as a combined shaving-pot and wash-basin. It did quite well for this in the morning, and during the day resumed its duty as seat for me at the typewriter.
Our boy, apart from this small misfortune, comported himself pretty well. His English was understandable, and he could cook anything. He dished us up excellent soup in enamelled cups and, as we had no ingredients on board so far as we knew to make soup, and as The Other Man had that day lost an old Spanish tam-o'-shanter, we naturally concluded that he had used the old hat for the making of the soup, and at once christened it as "consommé à la maotsi"--and we can recommend it. After we had grown somewhat tired of the eternal curry and rice, we asked him quietly if he could not make us something else, fearing a rebuff. He stood hesitatingly before us, gazing into nothingness. His face was pallid, his lips hard set, and his stooping figure looking curiously stiff and lifeless on that frozen morning--the temperature below freezing point, and our noses were red, too!
"God bless the man, you no savee! I wantchee good chow. Why in the name of goodness can't you give us something decent! What on earth did you come for?"
"Alas!" he shouted, for we were at a rapid, "my savee makee good chow. No have got nothing!"
"No have got nothing! No have got nothing!" Mysterious words, what could they mean? Where, then, was our picul of rice, and our curry, and our sugar?
"The fellow's a swindler!" cried The Other Man in an angry semitone. But that's all very well. "No have got nothing!" Ah, there lay the secret. Presently The Other Man, head of the general commissariat, spoke again with touching eloquence. He gave the boy to understand that we were powerless to alter or soften the conditions of the larder, that we were victims of a horrible destiny, that we entertained no stinging malice towards him personally--but ... _could he do it?_ Either a great wrath or a great sorrow overcame the boy; he skulked past, asked us to lie down on our shelves, where we had our beds, to give him room, and then set to work.
In twenty-five minutes we had a three-course meal , and onwards to our destination we fed royally. In parting with the men after our safe arrival at Chung-king, we left with them about seven-eighths of the picul--and were not at all regretful.
I should not like to assert--because I am telling the truth here--that our boat was bewilderingly roomy. As a matter of fact, its length was some forty feet, its width seven feet, its depth much less, and it drew eight inches of water. Yet in it we had our bed-rooms, our dressing-rooms, our dining-rooms, our library, our occasional medicine-room, our cooking-room--and all else. If we stood bolt upright in the saloon amidships we bumped our heads on the bamboo matting which formed an arched roof. On the nose of the boat slept seven men--you may question it, reader, but they did; in the stern, on either side of a great rudder, slept our boy and a friend of his; and between them and us, laid out flat on the top of a cellar were the captain and commodore--a fat, fresh-complexioned, jocose creature, strenuous at opium smoking. Through the holes in the curtain--a piece of sacking, but one would not wish this to be known--dividing them from us, we could see him preparing his globules to smoke before turning in for the night, and despite our frequent raving objections, our words ringing with vibrating abuse, it continued all the way to Chung-king: he certainly gazed in disguised wonderment, but we could not get him to say anything bearing upon the matter. Temperature during the day stood at about 50 degrees, and at night went down to about 30 degrees above freezing point. Rains were frequent. Journalistic labors, seated upon the upturned saucepan aforesaid, without a cushion, went hard. At night the Chinese candle, much wick and little wax, stuck in the center of an empty "Three Castles" tin, which the boy had used for some days as a pudding dish, gave us light. We generally slept in our overcoats, and as many others as we happened to have. Rats crawled over our uncurtained bodies, and woke us a dozen times each night by either nibbling our ears or falling bodily from the roof on to our faces. Our joys came not to us--they were made on board.
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