of cornfields, water
flows in streams in the roads, water spreads in lakes over the compounds,
it oozes from beneath the very walls of the go-downs. You would not be
surprised at any moment to see the tide returning to envelop you. In
this liquid mud a cart can make a trail by the simple process of
continuing forward. The havoc is created in the millet and the ditches
its iron-studded wheels dig in the mud leave to the eyes of the next
comer as perfectly good a trail as the one that has been in use for many
centuries. Consequently the opportunities for choosing the wrong trail
are excellent, and we embraced every opportunity. But friendly Chinamen,
and certainly they are a friendly, human people, again and again
cheerfully went far out of their way to guide us back to ours, and so,
after two days, we found ourselves five miles from New-Chwang.

Here we agreed to separate. We had heard a marvellous tale that at
New-Chwang there was ice, champagne, and a hotel with enamelled
bath-tubs. We had unceasingly discussed the probability of this being
true, and what we would do with these luxuries if we got them, and when
we came so near to where they were supposed to be, it was agreed that one
of us would ride on ahead and command them, while the others followed
with the carts. The lucky number fell to John Fox, and he left us at a
gallop. He was to engage rooms for the four, and to arrange for the care
of seven Japanese interpreters and servants, nine Chinese coolies, and
nineteen horses and mules. We expected that by eight o'clock we would be
eating the best dinner John Fox could order. We were mistaken. Not that
John Fox had not ordered the dinner, but no one ate it but John Fox. The
very minute he left us Priory's cart turned turtle in the mud, and the
largest of his four mules lay down in it and knocked off work. The mule
was hot and very tired, and the mud was soft, cool, and wet, so he
burrowed under its protecting surface until all we could see of him was
his ears. The coolies shrieked at him, Prior issued ultimatums at him,
the Japanese servants stood on dry land fifteen feet away and talked
about him, but he only snuggled deeper into his mud bath. When there is
no more of a mule to hit than his ears, he has you at a great
disadvantage, and when the coolies waded in and tugged at his head, we
found that the harder they tugged, the deeper they sank. When they were
so far out of sight that we were in dang