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To much the same effect wrote Michie, whose opinion is of weight, and from whom we have already quoted: "The theory that China's decadence is due to the fact that she has long since reached maturity and has outlived the natural term of a nation's existence does not hold good.
"Ha, ha," said Xavier, shaking with unseemly mirth, "you have never heard ze alligator sing, Michie?" "Alligator!" cried Nick; "there are babies in the water, I tell you." "Ha, ha," laughed Xavier, flinging off his blanket and searching for his flint and tinder. He lighted a pine knot, and in the red pulsing flare we saw what seemed to be a dozen black logs floating on the surface.
The last person who saw him as he was leaving the town was the blacksmith of Spottiswood, John Michie. He tried to persuade Michie to accompany him home, which he refused to do as it would take him several miles out of his way. Keane begged him most earnestly to go with him as he said he must pass the Foul Fords that night, and he would rather go through hell-fire than do so.
Gradually Xavier ceased his jesting and became quiet. "Looks like a hurricane," said Nick. "Mon Dieu," said Xavier, "you have right, Michie," and he called in his rapid patois to the crew, who lounged forward in the cabin's shade. There came to my mind the memory of that hurricane at Temple Bow long ago, a storm that seemed to have brought so much sorrow into my life.
Michie went on to say that "when either a Russian or a Chinese meets a European, say an Englishman, he instinctively recoils from the blunt, straightforward, up-and-down manner of coming to business at once, and the Asiatic either declines a contest which he cannot fight with his own weapons, or, seizing the weak point of his antagonist, he angles for him until he wearies him into acquiescence.
Two or three sentences in this chapter are memorized from a sermon I heard years ago, preached by Rev. H. E. Michie, M.A., of Stonehaven. "He is despised and rejected of men." Isaiah liii. 3. Some two or three years ago the picture, "He was despised and rejected," by Sigismund Göetze, was on view in Glasgow.
Neither party would move a step forward, and presently the Yunnan outrage got hopelessly mixed with every other disputed question of the day; new demands sprang up beside old ones; both parties, as Michie says, found themselves "entangled in a perfect cat's-cradle of negotiations," and the Chinese in the privacy of their yamêns were beginning to ask themselves gloomily, "Will the English fight unless we make full reparation?"
"For shame, Xavier," cried Nick; "and you are balked by such things?" Xavier thought this an exceedingly good joke, and he took his pipe out of his mouth to laugh the better. "Me? Mais non, Michie. And yet ze Alcalde, he mek me afraid. Once he put me in ze calaboose when I tried to climb ze balcon'." Nick roared.
I am choost like an ox for three days, und chew grass. Prairie grass, is it?" "Mo pas capab', Michie," said the cook, with a terrified roll of his white eyes. "Herr Gott!" cried Swein Poulsson, "I am red face. Aber Herr Gott, I thank thee I am not a nigger. Und my hair is bristles, yes. Let us in the kitchen go."
"You laugh, Michie," he said to Nick, a little resentfully. "I who speak to you say that there is four foot on each side of ze bateau. Too much tafia, a little too much excite " and he made a gesture with his hand expressive of total destruction; "ze tornado, I would sooner have him " "Bah!" said Nick, stroking Xavier's black beard, "give me the tiller.
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