nce,
and dropping the chain, fled to the furthest recess of the tent,
followed by the still threatening Fang.

There is an expression among us, "Cheng-hu was too considerate: he tried
to drive nails with a cucumber." Cheng-hu would certainly have quickly
found the necessity of a weapon of three-times hardened steel if he had
lived among these barbarians, who are insensible to the higher forms of
politeness, in addition to acting in a contrary and illogical manner
on all occasions. Instead of being repelled and discouraged by Fang's
outrageous behaviour, they clamoured to be admitted into the tent more
vehemently than before, and so successfully established the venture that
the one to whom I must now allude throughout as Fang signified to me his
covetous intention of reducing the performance by a further two and a
half minutes in order to reap an added profit and to garner all his rice
before the Hoang Ho rose.

As for myself, revered, it would be immature to hold the gauze screen of
prevarication between your all-discerning mind and my own trepidation.
From the moment when I first saw the expression of utterly depraved
malignity and deep-seared hate which he had cunningly engraved upon his
face by means of the coloured inks, I was far from being comfortably
settled within myself. Even the society of the not inelegant being of
the inner chamber, whom it was now my part to console with alluring
words and movements, could not for some time retain my face from a
back-way instinct at every sound; but when the detail was reached that
she sank into my grasp bereft of all energy, and for the first time I
was just succeeding in forgetting the unpropitious surroundings, the
one Fang, who had entered with unseemly stealth, suddenly hurled his
soul-freezing battle-cry upon my ear and leapt forward with uplifted
knife. Perceiving the action from an angle of my eye even as he
propelled himself through the air, I could not restrain an ignoble wail
of despair, and not scrupling to forsake the maiden, I would have taken
refuge beneath a couch had he not seized my outer robe and hurled me
to the ground. From this point to the close of the entertainment
the vigorous person in question did not cease from raising cries and
challenges in an unfaltering and many-fathomed stream, while at the same
time he continued to spring from one extremity of the stage to the other
surrounded by every external attribute of an insatiable tiger-like rage.