As the storm roared on, never ceasing, it stirred the Dragon's blood in
Kan Wong's veins. The pick and shovel irked his hands as he swung them;
his palms began to itch for the weapons that the soldiers bore. Now and
then he came upon a gun where it had dropped from its owner's useless
hands. He studied its mechanism, even asking the Foreign Devil overseer
how it was worked, and, being shown, he remembered and practised its use
whenever opportunity offered. He took to talking with his
fellow-workers, some of whom had themselves fought with the rebels of
New China, who, with just such Foreign Devils' tools, had clipped the
claws of the Manchu Dragon, freeing the Celestial Kingdom forever from
its crooked grip. He took much interest in these war implements. He
became more intimate and friendly with his fellows, feeling them now to
be brothers in a danger that had awakened the soldier soul beneath the
brown of his coolie skin.
Little could he make of all the strife about him. All of which he was
sure was that this was the Dragon's Field, and he, a Son of the Dragon,
had been guided to it to fulfil a destiny his forefathers had begun in
the Yangtze Valley when with the "Hairy Rebels" they had waged such war
as this. The flying death all about him that now and then claimed toll
of one of his own kind was but a part of it; but all the time he grew to
hate his humble work and long for a part, a real part, in the fighting
that raged ahead, where an unseen enemy, of whom he grew to think as his
own, hurled destruction among them.
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