“They’ve done the same thing for twenty centuries,” Langdon answered, following Sydney’s gaze; “what was good enough for their ancestors is good enough for them, is their motto, and nothing that we can say will ever move them. After you’ve been here for a few years, Mr. Monroe, you’ll cease wondering at anything you see the Chinese do.” Suddenly the lads felt themselves grasped by the strong hands of Langdon and drawn down into the thick grass. The silence was broken by a faint sound of voices that seemed to come from directly below them. Langdon motioned the boys to remain where they were, and crawled noiselessly forward to the edge of the embankment surrounding the village. Phil could now hear a high-pitched nasal voice, raised excitedly after the Chinese fashion, with many loud and piercing notes. He could see Langdon ahead of him partly hidden in the grass, and his curiosity was aroused to know what this midnight meeting might foretell. Then the voices ceased and the noise of tramping feet came clearly to his ears. From out of the shadows, but a few yards from where Langdon was lying, a squad of Chinese soldiers moved off into the night, over the road they were traveling, toward Ku-Ling. After a few minutes had elapsed, the soldiers’ footfalls dying away in the distance, Langdon rose to his feet and joined the impatient midshipmen. “They were soldiers!” Sydney exclaimed. “We distinctly saw their uniforms as they entered the road.” “What were they saying? Could you hear?” Phil questioned eagerly. “One of them was the man you fought with at the gate,” Langdon answered; “it’s just as I supposed: there was a movement on foot to attack the mission if that party was successful in destroying the gateway. The one doing all the loud talking was ‘saving his face,’ as the Chinese say; he was explaining that a monster, half man and half bird flew down from the wall and put out the fuse as fast as he could light it, and that he had mortally wounded the ‘devil,’ but fear having entered his heart, he had run away as fast as he could, followed by his companions. He says that the ‘foreign devils’ can change into these monsters whenever they wish, and that their breath is like fire.” Phil gasped in astonishment at the ludicrous account of his battle with the soldier. “But his companions will not believe any such tale as that,” he cried; “surely they’ll know it is made up out of whole cloth?” “On the contrary,” Langdon answered, “they’ll believe it, and what’s more he believes it himself by this time. Doubtless he was so frightened that he remembers little that happened, and their imagination is so vivid that a Chinaman will generally believe his own words as they fall from his lips.” “What would have happened if they had been successful?” Phil questioned. “That small body of men could not have intended attacking us.”