Page:Ballinger Price--Fortune of the Indies.djvu/196

 out with it. Mark and Alan sprang up and followed then, and climbed out, stiff and uncertain, upon the bank. The boat-crew was straggling toward the city-wall, and Chun Lon walked very courteously beside the boys. Perhaps they could have escaped then, but there was the box to be considered, bobbing ahead on the shoulder of a coolie. No, this was not the time.

They entered the city through a broken bronze door above which hung a silent gong. Within the gates all was utterly still. Gaunt shapes of stone dwellings rose darkly against the lesser dark. Gradually the boys began to realize a strange thing. This was a dead city. Here no human creature lived; no eyes looked down from these blank windows. It was one of the places where the Tai-pings had wrought destruction and desolation half a century before. The flow of civilization had passed it by; no new inhabitants had come to build up its toppling walls and clear its ruined, haunted streets. Only a few wary peasants lived like animals in hollowed huts outside its walls.

Behind a mottled marble fish-pond where