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Corean Dawn excerpt (Page 10)
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another raw mussel, watching T’ang and his crew devour the raw seafood and the cha barley water as they skirted the coastline. On shore, a particularly high mountain named Changsan loomed.
“Thank you, Mister Jewell. But no one owes me a thing. See that mountain?”
“I see it. An impressive mountain. Is the entire country filled with mountains?”
“Much of it, and that's a small one. It is named Changsan. Fires are lit at sunset, the day’s report flashed from a beacon to other mountaintop sites all the way to Seoul to update the Corean king on the state of Chaoshien,” said Tubert. “Five lines radiate out from, and back to Seoul. The basic codes are one for peace, two for anything suspicious, three for possible threat, four to tell of extreme peril. Five signals for military invasion. So one always knows what the royal family is being told. The system is seven-hundred years old. And Chaoshien’s royal family at all times has their pulse on the state of the kingdom.”
The wizened old Chinaman tacked the sails, expertly capturing the evening breeze that propelled the sampan along the pretty coast hundreds of yards from the shoreline, beating eastward, towards hotsprings that bubbled from the ground near the long, magnificent half crescent white sand beach of Haeun¬dae. At dusk, they anchored one hundred yards from the shore. Tubert called to a small Corean fishing boat that rowed him, Jewell and the Chinese cap¬tain to the shore lapped by gentle waves.
A few hundred feet inland, among a path lined by one-story inns and rice-wine houses, hot springs bubbled gently from the rocks. Tubert led the apprehensive foreign giant and the nervous Chinese into an alley with eateries, entering the courtyard of the largest restaurant and inn complex that surrounded the hot springs, where a middle-aged Corean woman approached them, kowtowing. She evidently knew Tubert.
“Bowls of rice, and bulgo-gi steak strips,” said Tubert, the broiled soy sauce marinated steak strips that were palatable to non-Coreans. “Plenty of fried mandoo. And hot soup. Do you have eel and shark steaks?”
“Assuredly, Soldier Brother,” said the proprietess, noticing the freshly healed wound on the edge of the barbarian’s scalp that had never been there before. “Of the freshest, finest quality! We’ve not seen you in three years.”
“The blind girl is still here?”
“Yes, the sightless one with healing hands is still with us, and many of the others. Would you like her now?”
“My friends need relaxation. We’ll soak in the hot springs. Then a massage, followed by food in your small pavilion, and lots of cold Japanese beer.”
“And the honorable hunter?”
“He stays in the Chemulpo, but sends you his best regards.”
The woman in the white baggy skirt and blouse led them through a passageway of tiny rooms that formed a circle around a twenty-five foot wide hot spring, the water bubbling and steaming in the cool of that idyllic early spring evening.
“Strip,” said Tubert, in English to Theodore Jewell, and in Mandarin to T’ang, removing his clothing, placing his revolver close to the edge of the pool.
“Er, I don’t think so, Timothy,” said Jewell, spotting the Corean woman leading three young Corean females, one being led by the hand, towards them. “I mean, I
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