Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/43

Rh Henel rifle and more, oh many more than three hundred cartridges.

Petuna was also really only a village with the identical type of fang-tzu which we had seen all along the bank. The single difference was that the houses were more in number and crowded together, forming the larger streets and alleys thronged with Chinese and Manchu men, women and naked children, with carts piled high with kaoliang and sacks of millet, beans and flour, most of these thoroughfares being filled with pigs, chickens, mud and dirt, dirt without end! A larger two-storied building with a Chinese curved roof and surrounded by a mud wall flanked one side of an open square. Two mast-like poles with long streamers carrying a line of Chinese hieroglyphs dominated the entrance and marked the enclosure as the Yamen, the official residence of the Taotai with his small garrison, which acted as the local police.

As it was necessary for me to obtain certain documents from the Taotai, I visited the Yamen. When I entered, a large, broad-shouldered Chinese in blue trousers and a short blue coat, was sitting on a raised platform in the centre of the main building directly opposite the entrance gate, whose painted wooden screen protected all this, however, from the gaze of the passers-by. The man wore also a peculiar red apron with a black, curling border. He gave me an indifferent glance and continued his work—a strange and ominous one, for he was scouring with brick dust and oil an immense heavy sword with a large curving blade. A small table with a red frontal cloth carrying two black hieroglyphs stood in front of the raised platform. A little distance apart five Chinese knelt with their necks imprisoned in great heavy cangues, their hands tied to a long pole and their ankles fastened with chains. Bending under the weight of the heavy wooden