FullReads

“All this was in the street; but sometimes I got him to come into my own courtyard to do his tricks there, that I might watch him more carefully. But watch as I might, I could never see how he did this particular feat. He used to do it with no clothes on except a pair of short trousers, for in the hot season, you must know, the lower classes of Chinese go about naked to the waist. Indeed, hot as it is, they don’t wear hats. The juggler possessed both a hat and a jacket, as it happened, but he took them off when he did his trick.”

“And what was the trick?” asked several impatient voices. “What did he do?”

“He used to swallow ten or twelve needles one after the other, and ‘wash them down’ with a ball of thread, which he swallowed next, and by and by he used to draw the thread slowly out of his mouth, yard after yard, and it had all the needles threaded on it.”

“Oh, Cousin Peregrine!”

“He used to come quite close to me, Maggie, as close as I am to you now, and take each needle–one after the other–between the finger and thumb of his right hand–keeping all the other fingers away from it, stick the point of it for a moment into his other palm, to show that it was sharp, and then to all appearance swallow it bodily before your eyes. In this way he seemed to swallow successively all the twelve needles. Then he opened his mouth, that you might ascertain that they were not there, and you certainly could not see them. He next swallowed a little ball of thread, not much bigger than a pea. This being done, he seemed to be very uneasy (as well he might be!), and he made fearful faces and violent gestures, and stamped on the ground, and muttered incantations, and threw up his hands and eyes to the sky; and presently the end of a thread was to be seen coming out between his teeth, upon which he took hold of this end, and carefully drew out the thread with all the needles threaded on it. Then there was always much applause, and the small coins used to be put pretty liberally into the hat which he handed round to receive them.”

“Was that all?” asked the young gentleman of the adventure books.

“All what, Fred?”

“All that you thought wonderful.”

“Yes,” said Cousin Peregrine. “Don’t you think it curious?”

“Oh, very, Cousin, and I like it very much indeed, only if that’s all you thought wonderful, now I want you to tell us what you did that the Chinese thought wonderful.”

“It’s not very easy to surprise a town-bred Chinaman,” said Cousin Peregrine. “What I am going to tell you about now happened in the country. It was up in the north, and in a part where Europeans had very rarely been seen.”

“How came you to be there, Cousin Peregrine?”

“I was not on duty. I had got leave for a few days to go up and see Pekin. Therefore I was not in uniform, remember, but in plain clothes.

“On this particular occasion I was on the river Peiho, in one of the clumsy Chinese river-boats. If the wind were favourable, we sailed; if we went with the stream–well and good. If neither stream nor wind were in our favour, the boat was towed.”

“Like a barge–with a horse–Cousin Peregrine?”

“Like a barge, Maggie, but not with a horse. One or two of the Chinamen put the rope round them and pulled us along. It was not a quick way of travelling, as you may believe, and when the Peiho was slow and winding, I got out and walked by the paths among the fields.”

“Paths and fields–like ours?”

“Yes. Very like some bits of the agricultural parts of England. But no pretty meadows. Every scrap of land seemed to be cultivated for crops. You know the population of China is enormous, and the Chinese are very economical in using their land to produce food, and as they are not great meat-eaters–as we are–their fields are mostly ploughed and sown, so I walked along among rice-fields and cotton-fields, and with little villages here and there, where the cottages are built of mud or stone with tile roofs.”