Kai Lung's Golden Hours. Bramah Ernest

of my ill-formed mouth,” said N’guk at length. “If we at once put forth our strength, the degraded Wun Sei is ground—”

      “Sun Wei, All-knowing One,” murmured an attending spirit beneath his breath.

      “—the unmentionable outcast whom we are discussing is immediately ground into powder,” continued the Highest, looking fixedly at a distant spot situated directly beyond his painstaking attendant. “But what follows? Henceforth no man can be allowed to whisper ill of us but we must at once seek him out and destroy him, or the obtuse and superficial will exclaim: ‘It was not so in the days of—of So-and-So. Behold’ ”—here the Great One bent a look of sudden resentment on the band of those who would have reproached him—“ ‘behold the gods become old and obese. They are not the Powers they were. It would be better to address ourselves to other altars.’ ”

      At this prospect many of the more venerable spirits began to lose their enthusiasm. If every mortal who spoke ill of them was to be pursued what leisure for dignified seclusion would remain?

      “If, however,” continued the dispassionate Being, “the profaner is left to himself he will, sooner or later, in the ordinary course of human intelligence, become involved in some disaster of his own contriving. Then they who dwell around will say: ‘He destroyed the alters! Truly the hands of the Unseen are slow to close, but their arms are very long. Lo, we have this day ourselves beheld it. Come, let us burn incense lest some forgotten misdeed from the past lurk in our path.’ ”

      When he had finished speaking all the more reputable of those present extolled his judgment. Some still whispered together, however, whereupon the sagacious N’guk opened his mouth more fully and shot forth tongues of consuming fire among the murmurers so that they fled howling from his presence.

      Now among the spirits who had stood before the Pearly Ruler without taking any share in the decision were two who at this point are drawn into the narration, Leou and Ning. Leou was a revengeful demon, ever at enmity with one or another of the gods and striving how he might enmesh his feet in destruction. Ning was a better-class deity, voluptuous but well-meaning, and little able to cope with Leou’s subtlety. Thus it came about that the latter one, seeing in the outcome a chance to achieve his end, at once dropped headlong down to earth and sought out Sun Wei.

      Sun Wei was reclining at his evening rice when Leou found him. Becoming invisible, the demon entered a date that Sun Wei held in his hand and took the form of a stone. Sun Wei recognized the doubtful nature of the stone as it passed between his teeth, and he would have spat it forth again, but Leou had the questionable agility of the serpent and slipped down the other’s throat. He was thus able to converse familiarly with Sun Wei without fear of interruption.

      “Sun Wei,” said the voice of Leou inwardly, “the position you have chosen is a desperate one, and we of the Upper Air who are well disposed towards you find the path of assistance fringed with two-edged swords.”

      “It is well said: ‘He who lacks a single tael sees many bargains,’ ” replied Sun Wei, a refined bitterness weighing the import of his words. “Truly this person’s friends in the Upper Air are a never-failing lantern behind his back.”

      At this justly-barbed reproach Leou began to shake with disturbed gravity until he remembered that the motion might not be pleasing to Sun Wei’s inner feelings.

      “It is not that the well-disposed are slow to urge your claims, but that your enemies number some of the most influential demons in all the Nine Spaces,” he declared, speaking with a false smoothness that marked all his detestable plans. “Assuredly in the past you must have led a very abandoned life, Sun Wei, to come within the circle of their malignity.”

      “By no means,” replied Sun Wei. “Until driven to despair this person not only duly observed the Rites and Ceremonies, but he even avoided the Six Offences. He remained by the side of his parents while they lived, provided an adequate posterity, forbore to tread on any of the benevolent insects, safeguarded all printed paper, did not consume the meat of the industrious ox, and was charitable towards the needs of hungry and homeless ghosts.”

      “These observances are well enough,” admitted Leou, restraining his narrow-minded impatience; “and with an ordinary number of written charms worn about the head and body they would doubtless carry you through the lesser contingencies of existence. But by, as it were, extending contempt, you have invited the retaliatory propulsion of the sandal of authority.”

      “To one who has been pushed over the edge of a precipice, a rut across the path is devoid of menace; nor do the destitute tremble at the departing watchman’s cry: ‘Sleep warily; robbers are about.’ ”

      “As regards bodily suffering and material extortion, it is possible to attain such a limit as no longer to excite the cupidity of even the most rapacious deity,” admitted Leou. “Other forms of flattening-out a transgressor’s self-content remain however. For instance, it has come within the knowledge of the controlling Powers that seven generations of your distinguished ancestors occupy positions of dignified seclusion in the Upper Air.”

      For the first time Sun Wei’s attitude was not entirely devoid of an emotion of concern.

      “They would not—?”

      “To mark their sense of your really unsupportable behaviour it has been decided that all seven shall return to the humiliating scenes of their former existences in admittedly objectionable forms,” replied the outrageous Leou. “Sun Chen, your venerated sire, will become an agile grasshopper; your incomparable grandfather, Yuen, will have the similitude of a yellow goat; as a tortoise your leisurely-minded ancestor Huang, the high public official—”

      “Forbear!” exclaimed the conscience-stricken Sun Wei; “rather would this person suffer every imaginable form of torture than that the spirit of one of his revered ancestors should be submitted to so intolerable a bondage. Is there no amiable form of compromise whereby the ancestors of some less devoted and liberally-inspired son might be imperceptibly, as it were, substituted?”

      “In ordinary cases some such arrangement is generally possible,” conceded Leou; “but not idly is it written: ‘There is a time to silence an adversary with the honey of logical persuasion, and there is a time to silence him with the argument of a heavily-directed club.’ In your extremity a hostage is the only efficient safeguard. Seize the person of one of the gods themselves and raise a strong wall around your destiny by holding him to ransom.”

      “ ‘Ho Tai, requiring a light for his pipe, stretched out his hand towards the great sky-lantern,’ ” quoted Sun Wei.

      “ ‘Do not despise Ching To because his armour is invisible,’ ” retorted Leou, with equal point. “Your friends in the Above are neither feeble nor inept. Do as I shall instruct you and no less a Being than Ning will be delivered into your hand.”

      Then replied Sun Wei dubiously: “A spreading mango-tree affords a pleasant shade within one’s courtyard, and a captive god might for a season undoubtedly confer an enviable distinction. But presently the tree’s encroaching roots may disturb the foundation of the house so that the walls fall and crush those who are within, and the head of a restrained god would in the end certainly displace my very inadequate roof-tree.”

      “A too-prolific root can be pruned back,” replied Leou, “and the activities of a bondaged god may be efficiently curtailed. How this shall be accomplished will be revealed to you in a dream: take heed that you do not fail by the deviation of a single hair.”

      Having thus prepared his discreditable plot, Leou twice struck the walls enclosing him, so that Sun Wei coughed violently. The demon was thereby enabled to escape, and he never actually appeared in a tangible form again, although he frequently communicated, by means of signs and omens, with those whom he wished to involve in his sinister designs.

      ii. THE PART PLAYED BY THE SLAVE-GIRL, HIA

      Among the remaining possessions that the hostility of the deities still left to Sun Wei at the time of these happenings was a young slave of many-sided attraction. The name of Hia