But the officer didn’t shake the professor’s hand. He dropped to his knees and touched his forehead to the dock three times.

“Teacher,” he said, “in case we don’t meet again, thank you for the honor of having been your student. May favorable winds attend your journey.”

“My dear boy,” Professor Kang said, no longer smiling. There were tears in his eyes. “You’re the one who will need favorable winds. You and your comrades.”

AS THE UNIVERSITY’S laborers hitched donkeys to carts and secured baggage onto handbarrows, the professor watched another overloaded ferry cross from the city side of the river. Dockworkers barely had time to put down the gangplank before the passengers surged off. Some rushed to the riverboats, pleading to get on. Some took the open road heading west. Others headed into the forest.

A man pulled a handcart loaded with trunks, furniture, his wife, and four children. An old woman with bound feet rode in a rattan armchair tied to a pair of bamboo carrying poles shouldered by two men, her sons. A young mother trudged by, a baby slung across her back, a basket of provisions on one arm. A boy followed, a toddler clinging to his back. The professor wondered what the woman had left behind so that she could bring three children.

Finally, the convoy was ready to move. The students lined up single file, each following the person ahead. Some of the carts carried lamps. They entered the forest, taking a road that cut through the hills of Laoshan Forest. Pine trees and foliage provided cover from the enemy, but between the darkness and the travelers ahead of them, the students made slow progress.

They faced a journey of more than a thousand miles, some of it through terrain that might be safe one day and enemy occupied the next. Yet from the murmured conversations Kang overheard, the students seemed more concerned about the distance they’d have to walk than danger from the enemy. For them, it was the greatest adventure of their young lives. They were so touchingly confident, believing they would all make it safely to Chengtu under the university’s protection. The professor offered a silent prayer to the gods that it would turn out so.

Chapter 5