"And yet the guide was not so far out of the way, according to the Chinese idea. The Chinese bring food to the graves of their friends, and leave it there as an offering. The spirits of the dead are believed to linger around the spot and to eat this food, but it is really devoured by the priests and others who stay around the cemetery, and what they do not eat or carry away is consumed by the birds. At certain seasons they have grand festivals, when many thousands of people go to the cemeteries with offerings for the dead, and good things for themselves. The affair is more like a picnic than a ceremony of mourning; and when it breaks up, the mourners go to the theatre or some other place of amusement. The best burial-place is on a hill-side, and the tomb is made in the form of a terrace, or rather of three terraces, with steps leading up to them. As you look at it[Pg 413] from a little distance, the tomb has the shape of a horseshoe, or, better still, of 'Omega,' the last letter of the Greek alphabet.He found Emmeline alone, just beginning to make tea in the heavily fluted tea-pot with its equipage of harlequin cups and saucers. Alice and John were somewhere in the grounds. Hugh had gone to see his young lady (the expression was Mrs Keelings), and she herself had suffered a slight eclipse from her usual geniality owing to her mother having stopped the whole afternoon, and having thus interrupted her reading, by which she meant going gently to sleep on the sofa, with her book periodically falling off her lap. The first two times that this happened she almost invariably picked it up, on the third occasion she{48} had really gone to sleep, and the rumble of its avalanche did not disturb her. But the loss of this intellectual refreshment had rendered her rather querulous, and since she was not of very vigorous vitality, her querulousness oozed in a leaky manner from her instead of discharging itself at high pressure. A tea-leaf had stuck, too, in the spout of the tea-pot, which made that handsome piece contribute to the general impression of dribbling at Mrs Keelings tea-table; it also provided her with another grievance, though not quite so acute as that which took its rise from what had occurred at lunch.
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The captain went on to say that there were many pirates in the waters around Canton, and all along the southern coast. The government tries to suppress them, but it is not easy to do so, and hardly a day passes without the report of a robbery somewhere. All trading-junks are obliged to go heavily armed, and out of this fact comes a great deal of the piracy, as a junk may be a peaceful trader at one o'clock, a pirate at two, and a peaceful trader again at three. It takes very little to induce a Chinese captain to turn pirate when he sees a rich prize before him, and he has no trouble in winning over his crew. It is impossible to distinguish the pirate from the trader; and as the coast is seamed with island passages and indented with bays, it is easy for a junk to escape after she has committed a robbery.Wont I just come in this afternoon after my football and my preachment, and get some{111} opodeldoc for my bruises and some muffins for my little Mary, and some refreshment for my silly tired brain. God bless you!"Ah, he is, I doubt not, but the burnt-out ruin of what he was half a year ago. You perceive, he has not succeeded; he has not devoured her; actually she has turned his fangs upon himself and has defeated his designs toward her as if by magic. And yet the only magic has been her vigilance, her courage, her sagacity. Smith,"--again he stroked the mane of his charger--"if I tell you--""I--I didn't want you to be--taken too unpleasantly by surprise--just at the--end. You know what's--happening,--don't you?""Even an absurdity," said Gregg, quietly, "may contain the positive truth. I admit it's ludicrous, but we both agree that it's inexplicable. We have to fall back on conjecture. To my mind there is something suggestive about that persistency in the future of things familiar to us. Suppose they have found a way of keeping things going, just as they are? Hasn't the aim of man always been the permanence of his institutions? And wouldn't it be characteristic of man, as we know him to-day, that he should hold on to purely utilitarian things, conveniences? In this age we sacrifice everything to utility. That's because we're getting somewhere in a hurry. Modern life is the last lap in man's race against Time."Just for a moment the Doctor tried to realise that he was looking upon the supreme marvel of human ingenuity. He made an effort to stretch his brain once more in order to grasp the significance of this paragon of eight thousand years hence. But he did not succeed. The strain of the past hour reached its first climax. He began to tremble violently. His elbow went back with a sharp jerk and smashed three bottles standing on the shelf behind him. He made little whimpering noises in his throat.
