“Suffer not that apprehension to retard your impending eloquence,” replied Shan Tien affably.  “Be assured that the gods have exactly the same manner of behaving in every land.”

“Furthermore,” continued Cho-kow, with patient craft, “I am a man of barbarian tongue, the full half of my speech being foreign to your ear.  The history of the much-accomplished Tian and the meaning of the dreams that mark those of his race require for a full understanding the subtle analogies of an acquired style.  Now that same Kai Lung whom you have implicated to my band—­”

“Excellence!” protested Ming-shu, with a sudden apprehension in his throat, “yesterday our labours dissolved in air through the very doubtful precedent of allowing one to testify what he had had the intention to relate.  Now we are asked to allow a tomb-haunter to call a parricide to disclose that which he himself is ignorant of.  Press down your autocratic thumb—­”

“Alas, instructor,” interposed Shan Tien compassionately, “the sympathetic concern of my mind overflows upon the spectacle of your ill-used forbearance, yet you having banded together the two in a common infamy, it is the ancient privilege of this one to call the other to his cause.  We are but the feeble mouthpieces of a benevolent scheme of all-embracing justice and greatly do I fear that we must again submit.”

With these well-timed words the broad-minded personage settled himself more reposefully among his cushions and signified that Kai Lung should be led forward and begin.

The Story of Ning, the Captive God, and the Dreams
that mark his Race

i.  The malice of the demon, Leou

When Sun Wei definitely understood that the deities were against him (for on every occasion his enemies prospered and the voice of his own authority grew less), he looked this way and that with a well-considering mind.

He did nothing hastily, but when once a decision was reached it was as unbending as iron and as smoothly finished as polished jade.  At about the evening hour when others were preparing to offer sacrifice he took the images and the altars of his Rites down from their honourable positions and cast them into a heap on a waste expanse beyond his courtyard.  Then with an axe he unceremoniously detached their incomparable limbs from their sublime bodies and flung the parts into a fire that he had prepared.

“It is better,” declared Sun Wei, standing beside the pile, his hands buried within his sleeves—­“it is better to be struck down at once, rather than to wither away slowly like a half-uprooted cassia-tree.”

When this act of defiance was reported in the Upper World the air grew thick with the cries of indignation of the lesser deities, and the sound of their passage as they projected themselves across vast regions of space and into the presence of the supreme N’guk was like the continuous rending of innumerable pieces of the finest silk.