and Ch’u Yuan sung, was surprised with the far churr of startling wings under the stars.  Ears intent to listen were surprised; but only for a moment;—­ there was that angry howling again from the northern hills and the southern forests:  the two great Tigers of the world face to face, tails lashing;—­and between them and in their path, Chow quite prone,—­the helpless Black-haired People trembling or chattering frivolously.  Not for such an age as that Chwangtse and Ch’u Yuan wrote, but indeed you may say for all time.  What light from the Blue Pearl could then shine forth and be seen, would, in the thick fog and smoke-gloom, take on wild fantastic guise; which, as we shall see, it did:—­but what Chwangtse had written remained, pure immortality, to kindle up better ages to come.  When China should be ready, Chwangtse and the Pearl would be found waiting for her.  The manvantara had not yet dawned; but we may hurry on now to its dawning.

The Crest-Wave was still in India when China plunged into the abyss from which her old order of ages never emerged.  Soon after Asoka came to the throne of Magadha, in 284 B.C., Su Tai, wise prime minister to the Lord of Chao, took occasion to speak—­ seriously to his royal master as to the latter’s perennial little wars with Yen.* “This morning as I crossed the river,” said he, “I saw a mussel open its shell to the sun.  Straight an oyster-catcher thrust in his bill to eat the mussel; which promptly snapped the shell to and held the bird fast.—­’If it doesn’t rain today or tomorrow,’ said the oyster-catcher, ’there’ll be a dead mussel here.’—­’And if you don’t get out of this by today or tomorrow,’ said the mussel, ’there’ll be a dead oyster-catcher.’  Meanwhile up came a fisherman and carried them both off.  I fear Ts’in will be our fisherman.”

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* The tale is taken from Dr. H.A.  Gile’s Chinese Literature.
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Which duly came to pass.  Even in Liehtse’s time Ts’in characteristics were well understood:  he tells a sly story of a neighboring state much infested by robbers.  The king was proud of a great detective who kept them down; but they soon killed the Pinkerton, and got to work again.  Then he reformed himself,—­and the robbers found his kingdom no place for them.  In a body they crossed the Hoangho into Ts’in;—­and bequeathed to its policy their tendencies and aptitudes.

Ts’in had come to be the strongest state in China.  Next neighbor to the Huns, and half Hun herself, she had learned warfare in a school forever in session.  But she had had wise rulers also, after their fashion of wisdom:  who had been greatly at pains to educate her in all the learning of the Chinese.  So now she stood, an armed camp of a nation, enamored of war, and completely civilized in all external things.  Ts’u, her strongest rival, stretching southward to the Yangtse and beyond, had had to deal with barbarians less virile than the Huns; and besides, dwelling as Ts’u did among