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CHAPTER IV
So Marco Polo goes over and salutes him politely.
"I wonder if you mind my sitting down by you for a while," he says.
"I perceive you're from China."
The sea-captain waves him politely to his place.
"I'm from China." He smiles. "You guessed right."
"Is it long since you've been in China?"
"Well, that depends upon what you call long," says the captain.
"If you mean time, it's one thing. If you mean voyage, it's another.
For you've got to take into account," says he, "adverse winds,
roundabout turns to avoid currents, possible delays to have the
ship scraped free from the parasite life that does be attaching
itself to the strakes, time spent in barter and trade. Other
matters, too; the attacks of pirates; cross-grained princes who
don't want you to be leaving their ports with a good cargo in your
hold; sickness; loss of sails and masts; repairs to the ship. It
wasn't a short journey and it wasn't a long one."
"It will be a long ways to China, I'm thinking."
"I can tell you how long it is from China to here, and you can
reverse that, and you will get a fair idea of how long it is from
here to China. I left Zeitoon with a cargo of porcelain for Japan,
and traded it for gold-dust, and from Japan I went to Chamba to lay
in a store of chessmen and pen-cases. And from Chamba I sailed to
Java, which is the greatest island in the world. Java is fifteen
hundred miles from Chamba, south and southeast, and it took me four
months sailing, but a sea-captain cannot pass Java by, for it is
the chief place for black pepper, nutmegs, spikenard, galingale,
cubebs, doves, and all the spices that grow.
"And I stopped at various small islands from there, until I came
to Basma, which is the island of the unicorns. And there we trade
in pygmies, which ignorant people think are human folk. They are
just a wee monkey, with all the hair plucked out except the hair of
the beard. There is great money in them.
"I stopped at Sumatra for cocoanuts and toddy, and just for water
at Dragoian. Dragoian is not a good city. It is filled with
sorcerers who have tattooed faces. At Lambri I put in for the
sago you buy from the hairy men with tails.
"Son, never stop at the isle of Andaman. The men there have faces
like dogs. They are a cruel generation, and eat every one they can
catch. I could tell you a story, but I would not spoil this fine
spring night. Go rather to the island of Ceylon, and see the King's
Ruby, which is the greatest jewel in the world. I stopped there and
at Coromandel for the pearls the divers go down in the sea for, and
there are no clothes on that island, so that every one goes naked
as a fish. And there is the shrine of Saint Thomas. I was there.
"Gujarat, Tana, I stopped there. The Male and Female Islands I put
into for ambergris. Svestra, which is full of magicians -- I was there,
too. Madagascar and Zanzibar, where they live on camel flesh, I was
there. And from Zanzibar I came north to Abyssinia, because I had
to get an ostrich there for the King of Siam. And there was a letter
and a parcel for the Sultan of Egypt. So I went to Cairo. I had a
month on my hands, so I thought I'd run over and see Venice, because
it's a hobby of mine, you might say, to see the world.
"Now let me reckon. Four and three makes seven, and four more are
eleven, and six are seventeen, and let us say nine with that, and
you have twenty-six. And the month I'm forgettng on the rocks of
Aden is twenty-seven, and a week here and a week there for bad winds
and such like. It would be safe to put that at three months. So it's
two years and a half since I left China."
"You never," says young Marco, "met anybody in China by the name
of Polo?"
"Poh-lo? Poh-lo? China's a bigger place nor you would imagine,
laddie. There's half a hundred million people there."
"These were foreigners," Marco explained, "traders. They were
at the court of the great Khan."
"Polo? Polo? Well, now, I think I've heard of them. Was one of
them a big red-bearded man with a great eye for a horse and a great
eye for a woman?"
"That would be my Uncle Matthew."
"For God's sake! And was the other a cold, dark man, a good judge
of a jewel and a grand judge of a sword?"
"My father, Nicholas Polo."
"For God's sake! You're the son of one and the nephew of the other?"
"Did you know them?"
"Ah, laddie, how would I be knowing people like that! Sure, they're
great folks, high in the esteem of the grand Khan, and I'm only a
poor sailorman."
"But you heard of them."
"I heard of them. They were in good health. And I heard they were
on their way home, though they would travel overland and not risk
the great dangers of the sea. I suppose, if they go back to China,
you'll be going with them?"
"I don't know," says Marco Polo.
"You ought to see China. It's a great country, a beautiful country."
"It would have to be very great and beautiful," says Marco Polo, "to
out-weigh the greatness and the beauty that are here. You mustn't
think I'm running down your country, mister," says he; "but for
greatness, where is the beating of Venice in this day? What struck
Constantinople like a thunderbolt but the mailed hand of Venice?
When the Barbary corsairs roamed the seven seas, so that it was no
more safe for a merchant vessel to be sailing than for a babe to be
walking through a wild jungle, it was Venice who accepted the challenge
and made the great sea as peaceful as the Grand Canal. Who humbled
proud Genoa? And hurled the Saracen from Saint John of Acre's walls?
Venice. And as for magnificence, the retinue of our doge when he goes
to marry the sea with a ring it makes the court of Lorenzo seem like
a huckster's train."
"It is a crowning city."
"And as for beauty, sir," went on Marco Polo, "there is nothing in
the world like San Marco's, and it ablaze in the setting sun, and
the great pillars before it rising in tongues of flame. And was
there ever in all time anything like the Grand Canal at the dusk
of day, and the torches beginning to show like fireflies, and the
lap of the water, and stringed music, and the great barges going
by like swans, now a battle-hacked captain of war, now a great
gracious lady? And the moon does be rising. . .
"You've sailed all the way from China and seen strange and beautiful
things, but I remember one summer's day, when I took out my little
sailing-boat and went out on the water to compose a poem for a lady,
and the water was blue -- oh, as blue as the sky's self, and the sands
of the Lido were silver, and the water shuffled gently over them,
as gently as a child's little feet. And there was a clump of
olive-trees there so green as to be black, and there alighted
before it a great scarlet Egyptian bird. And the beauty of that
brought the tears to my eyes, so that I thought of nuns in their
cells and barefoot friars in the hollow lands, and they striving
for paradise. What did I care about paradise? A Venetian I. So
why should I want to go to China?"
"You have made a great case for the grandeur and beauty of Venice,"
says the sea-captain. "It is lovely, surely," says he, filling his
pipe; "but finer poets nor you, my lad," says he, lighting it, "have
tried to describe the grace and beauty of Tao-Tuen, and," says he
taking a draw, "have failed."
"Tao-Tuen is a beautiful name. It is like two notes plucked on a
harp. And it must be a wonderful place, surely, if great poets
cannot describe it."
"It is not a place," said the captain, "it's a girl."
"As for women, Venice --"
"Venice be damned!" said the sea-captain. "Not in Venice, not in
all the world, is there the like for grace or beauty of Tao-Tuen.
They call her Golden Bells," he says.
"Is she a dancing-girl?" Marco asked.
"She is not a dancing-girl," says the sea-captain, "she is the
daughter of Kubla, the great Khan."
"A cold and beautiful princess," says Marco Polo.
"She is not a cold and beautiful princess," says the sea-captain.
"She is warm as the sun in early June, and she may be beautiful and
a princess, but we all think of her as Golden Bells, the little girl
in the Chinese garden."
"Did you ever see her?" says Marco, eagerly. "Tell me."
"I saw her before I left," says the sea-captain. "I was at the
Khan's palace of Chagannor," says he, "seeing of the chief of the
stewards was there anything I could get for him, and I in foreign
parts. And as I was being rowed back along the river by my ten
brawny sailormen, what did I pass but the garden of Golden Bells.
"And there she was by the river-side, a little brown slip of a girl
in green coat and trousers, with a flower in her dark hair.
"And I lower my head in reverence as we pass by. But I hear her
low, merry voice, by reason of which they call her Golden Bells.
"'Ho, master of the vessel.' she calls. 'Where do you go?'
"And the sailors back water with a swish, and I stand up respectfully,
for all she is only a slip of a girl.
"'I go to foreign parts, Golden Bells,' I tell her; 'to far and
dangerous places, into the Indian Ocean. To the Island of Unicorns
and to the land where men eat men.'
"'I hope you come back safe, master of the vessel,' she says. 'I hope
you have a good voyage and come back safe. It must be a dreadful
strain on your people to think of you so far away.'
"'In all this wide land,' I tell her, 'there is none to worry about
me. I have neither chick nor child.'
"'Golden Bells will worry about you, then,' she said, 'and you in the
hazards of the sea. And take this flower for luck.' And she gave me
the flower from her hair. 'And let it bring you luck against the
anger of the ocean and the enemies all men have. And let me know
when you are back, because I'll be worried about a man of China and
him in danger on the open sea.'
"And wasn't that a wonderful thing from a daughter of Kubla to me,
a poor sailor-man?
"The son of the King of Siam came to woo her with a hundred princes
on a hundred elephants, but she wouldn't have him. 'I don't wish to
be a queen,' she told her father. 'How could I be a queen? I am
only Golden Bells.' Nor would she have anything to say to the
Prince of the Land of Darkness, who came to her with sea ivory and
pale Arctic gold. 'The sun of China is in my heart, and you wouldn't
have me go up into the great coldness to shiver and die?'
"So she remains in her garden by the lake of Cranes with Li Po,
the great poet, him they call the Drinker of Wine, to make songs
for her; and the SANANG Tung Chih, the great magician, to perform
wonders for her when she is wearied; and Bulagan, her nurse, to take
her to her heart when she is sad.
"And sad she is a lot of the time, they tell me. She sits in her
garden in the dusk, playing her lute, and singing the song of the
Willow branches, which is the saddest love-song in the world. . .
"And why she should be singing a sad love-song, is a mystery, for her
soft, brown beauty is the flower of the world. For there would be
no lack of suitors for her, nor is she the one to refuse love.
The only thing I make of it is that the right hour hasn't come.
"The beauty of Venice jumps to your eyes, but the beauty of this
pulls at your heart. Little brown Golden Bells, in her Chinese
garden, singing the song of the Willow Branches at the close of day. .Is that not better nor Venice?"
But he got no word out of Marco Polo, sitting with his chin cupped
in his hands. And that was the finest answer at all, at all. . .
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