He saw a massacre--or the remains of it--where fifteen thousand yellow
men and one white priest lay dead. He saw Republican China, 40,000
strong, move out after the banditti, shouldering its modern rifles,
while its regimental music played "Rosie O'Grady" in quick march time.
He saw the railway between Hankow and Pekin swarming with White Wolf's
bloody pack, limping westward from the Honan-Anhui border with
dripping fangs. He peered into the stinking wells of Honan where women
were cutting their own throats. He witnessed the levity of Lhasa
priests and saw their grimy out-thrust hands clutching for tips
beside their prayer-wheels.
In India he gazed upon the degradation of woman and the unspeakable
bestiality of man till that vile and dusty hell had sickened him to
the soul.
Back into Europe he drifted; and instantly and everywhere appeared the
awful Yankee--shooting wells in Hungary, shooting craps in Monaco,
digging antiques in Greece, digging tunnels in Servia,--everywhere the
Yankee, drilling, bridging, constructing, exploring, pushing, arguing,
quarrelling, insisting, telegraphing, gambling, touring, over-running
older and better civilisations than his own crude Empire where he has
nothing to learn from anybody but the Almighty--and then only when he
condescends to ask for advice on Sunday.
And Clive, nevertheless, longed with a longing that made him sick, for
"God's country" where all that is worst and best on earth still boils
in the vast and seething cauldron of a continent in the making. There
bubbles the elemental broth, dregs, scum, skimmings, residue,
by-products, tailings, smoking corruption above the slowly forming and
incorruptible matrix in its depths where lies imbedded, and ever
growing, the Immam, the Hope of the World--gem indestructible, pearl
beyond price. Difficilia quae pulchra.
And once, Clive had almost set out for home; and then, grimly, turned
away toward the southern continent of the hemisphere.
In Lima he heard of an expedition fitting out to search for the lost
Americans, Cromer and Page, and for the Hungarian Seljan. And that
same evening he met Captain Dane.
They looked at each other very carefully, and then shook hands. Clive
said: "If you want a handy man in camp, I'd like to go."
"Come on," said Dane, briefly.
Later, looking over together some maps in Dane's rooms, the big blond
soldier of fortune glanced up at the younger man, and saw a lean,
bronzed visage clamped mute by a lean bronzed jaw; but he also saw two
dark eyes fixed on him in the fierce silence of unuttered inquiry.
After a moment Dane said very quietly: "Yes, she was well, and I think happy, when I left New York.... How
long is it since you have heard from her?"