At noon, Lionel James and little Clarkin rode by and shouted that the Japanese Commandant there had a lunch ready near by. We found half a dozen tables set in the walled yard of a Chinese farmhouse. All of us were expected, but the others (except the Japanese correspondents who were on hand) had gone on. There was a nice sergeant there and a grave major with medals, and there were soldiers with fans to keep off the flies, while we sat in an arbor, under white Malaga-like clusters of grapes, and had tea and beer and tinned Kobbe beef and army crackers. The rain started when we started on--and when it rains in Manchuria, it really seems to rain. I was on foot in a light flannel shirt, and had no coat or poncho. In ten minutes the road had a slippery coating of mud, I was wet to the skin and, as my boots had very low heels, I was slipping right, left, and backward with every step. Clarkin and James overtook me and we took turns walking. In an hour the road was a very swift river, belly-deep and with big waves--dangerous to cross. Miles and miles we went through muddy cornfields for four hours, until we could see, across a yellow river, the high, thick walls of Kaiping through the drizzling mist. I waded the river, waist-high, and on the other side an interpreter gave me a white mule, which I took in order not to get my boots muddy again. We wound into a city gate, were stopped by a sentry and sent on again around the city walls and three or four miles across a muddy, slushy flat, full of deep wagon-ruts and holes. After much floundering through mud, and the fording of many streams, we found the Commandant with his shoes under his chair and his naked feet on the rungs. James clicked his heels and saluted. We all took off our hats, but as he neither rose nor moved naked foot toward yawning shoe, we put them back on again. We must go to Kaiping, he said, and he was very indifferent and smiled blandly when we told him that we had just waded and swum from Kaiping. Just the same we had to wade and swim back--by the same floundering way and through gathering darkness. We missed the way, of course, rode entirely around the city walls, rode through Kaiping and back again, and finally struck an interpreter who piloted us to this Chinese temple where I write. I was cold, muddy, hungry, and tired to the bone. But the button on the dragon's tail was there, and Brill the gentle; and, mother of mercies! they had things to eat and to drink. An hour later, Davis came in half-dead--leading Prior on Williams and Walker. He had struck the same gentleman of the naked foot and yawning shoe, had been sent on, and had gone into a stream over his head and crawled on hands and knees most of the way through pitch dark. He didn't mind himself, but Prior was elderly and was ill. Davis wanted the Commandant to take him in, but he refused and Davis was indignant: "I wouldn't turn a water-snake out of doors on a night like this."