“Yi Yong-ik.”
In a way we were a travelling menagerie.
The word went on ahead, so that all the country folk flocked to the roadside to see us pass.
It was an unending circus procession.
In the towns at night our inns were besieged by multitudes, so that we got no peace until the soldiers drove them off with lance-pricks and blows.
But first Kim would call for the village strong men and wrestlers for the fun of seeing me crumple them and put them in the dirt.
Bread there was none, but we ate white rice (the strength of which resides in one’s muscles not long), a meat which we found to be dog (which animal is regularly butchered for food in Cho-Sen), and the pickles ungodly hot but which one learns to like exceeding well.
And there was drink, real drink, not milky slush, but white, biting stuff distilled from rice, a pint of which would kill a weakling and make a strong man mad and merry.
At the walled city of Chong-ho I put Kim and the city notables under the table with the stuff—or on the table, rather, for the table was the floor where we squatted to cramp-knots in my hams for the thousandth time.
And again all muttered
“Yi Yong-ik,” and the word of my prowess passed on before even to Keijo and the Emperor’s Court.
I was more an honoured guest than a prisoner, and invariably I rode by Kim’s side, my long legs near reaching the ground, and, where the going was deep, my feet scraping the muck.
Kim was young.
Kim was human.
Kim was universal.
He was a man anywhere in any country.
He and I talked and laughed and joked the day long and half the night.
And I verify ate up the language.
I had a gift that way anyway.
Even Kim marvelled at the way I mastered the idiom.
And I learned the Korean points of view, the Korean humour, the Korean soft places, weak places, touchy places.
Kim taught me flower songs, love songs, drinking songs.
One of the latter was his own, of the end of which I shall give you a crude attempt at translation.
Kim and Pak, in their youth, swore a pact to abstain from drinking, which pact was speedily broken.
In old age Kim and Pak sing:
“No, no, begone!
The merry bowl
Again shall bolster up my soul
Against itself.
What, good man, hold!
Canst tell me where red wine is sold?
Nay, just beyond yon peach-tree? There?
Good luck be thine; I’ll thither fare.”
Hendrik Hamel, scheming and crafty, ever encouraged and urged me in my antic course that brought Kim’s favour, not alone to me, but through me to Hendrik Hamel and all our company.
I here mention Hendrik Hamel as my adviser, for it has a bearing on much that followed at Keijo in the winning of Yunsan’s favour, the Lady Om’s heart, and the Emperor’s tolerance.
I had the will and the fearlessness for the game I played, and some of the wit; but most of the wit I freely admit was supplied me by Hendrik Hamel.
And so we journeyed up to Keijo, from walled city to walled city across a snowy mountain land that was hollowed with innumerable fat farming valleys.
And every evening, at fall of day, beacon fires sprang from peak to peak and ran along the land.
Always Kim watched for this nightly display.
From all the coasts of Cho-Sen, Kim told me, these chains of fire-speech ran to Keijo to carry their message to the Emperor.
One beacon meant the land was in peace. Two beacons meant revolt or invasion.
We never saw but one beacon.
And ever, as we rode, Vandervoot brought up the rear, wondering,
“God in heaven, what now?”
Keijo we found a vast city where all the population, with the exception of the nobles or yang-bans, dressed in the eternal white.
This, Kim explained, was an automatic determination and advertisement of caste.
Thus, at a glance, could one tell, the status of an individual by the degrees of cleanness or of filthiness of his garments.
It stood to reason that a coolie, possessing but the clothes he stood up in, must be extremely dirty.
And to reason it stood that the individual in immaculate white must possess many changes and command the labour of laundresses to keep his changes immaculate. As for the yang-bans who wore the pale, vari-coloured silks, they were beyond such common yardstick of place.
After resting in an inn for several days, during which time we washed our garments and repaired the ravages of shipwreck and travel, we were summoned before the Emperor.