CHAPTER III - ‘ATHWART THE FLATS AND ROUNDING GRAY’

Summary

October 13.—We halted a day at Shan-Hai-Kuan, and the next morning, just as we were starting, we heard a very loud altercation in the courtyard, and found old Lazarus wrangling with the head muleteer, who owed him some wages. The old man declined to start for Peking without payment; he had laid an embargo on the headman's donkey, and was sitting down in the gateway, stolidly holding the reins, which he declined to give up. The head muleteer, having no money, thus found the animal that he had only lately redeemed from pawn again seized as a pledge, and matters seemed fairly to have arrived at a dead lock. They wrangled thus for upwards of an hour, anyone passing by, of course, stopped, not so much to listen as to join in the dispute; two soldiers, who had been sent to escort us, became very energetic, and looked as if they were quite capable of solving the problem on Solomon's system, even if they did not conclude by cutting off the heads of a few of the bystanders by way of encouraging the others; the little boys ran about in high glee, or crawled between the legs of their elders, thoroughly enjoying the sport; until at last we ended the dispute by promising to see the old man righted.

Matters thus being settled without any bloodshed, we mounted our ponies, and with our escort rode away a couple of miles to Ning-Hai, an ancient and deserted city, built a few yards from the edge of the sea.