Page:Frank Owen - The Wind That Tramps the World (1929).djvu/107

 star-like eyes and lashes arched like bridges over lotus ponds. He was dressed in robes of gold and silver, embroidered of sunbeams and colored by coral dawns. He was a young god and the moon was his brother. Often at night he climbed up into the gaunt pine trees and conversed with the moon which had become tangled in its branches. Sometimes when the wind whistled weirdly around the eaves of little houses, Chinese mothers whispered in hushed voices. "List to the murmurings of Fu Hsi chatting with the moon."

Strange mad tales but enthralling to the listeners for the Chinese are poetical. They glory in fanciful things.

Others there were who discounted the whisperings of his great beauty. They declared he was an evil spirit, a Jinni who used the vast swamp for a bed in which to sleep. When he bathed in the waters of the Yellow Sea, vast typhoons rose. When he was angered and stamped about, the earth quaked with fear, houses fell down, mountains trembled. Sometimes he went abroad disguised as a big cloud of smoke. All the big smokes know each other and they ramble about the sky at will. It was said whenever a child disappeared or a pig or a dog that the Jinni of the swamp had consumed it. Poets sang of his awesome power and several timid souls erected effigies to him which they bowed down before in worship.

So the controversy continued over Fu Hsi nor did it abate as time passed for no one ever saw him. The