Part 11

"Slower than promotion for merit in the service," was the reply.

"You haven't it so bad. You can always amuse yourself drilling 'that ambulance corpse of yourn,' as General Leatherbottom calls it."

"Divil a bit: There's nothin' more for me to t'ache thim. Tuk till it loike ducks to wather. Can imitate me till if they were wanst in service outfit I'd swear it was the multiplication table of meself a'marchin' down the road."

Sinclair laughed.

"That's just what I've been noticing," he said. "When you took hold of them every man jack toed in. Now they all turn their toes out at a little more than an angle of forty-five degrees, just as you do. And right down to that little spindly chap, twenty-five inches around the hips, they all strut as if they were as broad in the beam as yourself."

"Bedad thin, I'm not the only wan! It's the same wid your bhoys inside. They're jist reduced copies of yourself. They bate Banagher for imitation."

"Suppose we leave those fellows to look after things for a couple of days and run over to Tamsui while business is slack. If things were to brighten up a bit here, we might not get another chance."

"Faith, an' I'm wid you. But, begorra, we had better see to it that each of us has a bit of a shtick an' a gun handy. I hear that there are disturbances iverywhere, an' it's little manners the haythen are showin' to Europeans since the Frinch shtarted to mix it up wid thim."

"The last time he passed, Dr. MacKay told me that there was a good deal of rioting and some murdering. But he seemed to go about his work as if it were perfectly safe. And, so far as I could find out, he never carries any weapons."

"May the saints preserve him, that is a man! I was born a Roman Catholic, an' I intind to die a Roman Catholic. But, if it was advice about me sowl's salvation I was wantin'--and betune you an' me I'm needin' it badly enough--it's to him I'd go rather than to a church full of the priests that are feedin' fat on me paternal estate."

Their arrangements were soon made, and they were off. Even on the much-travelled way between the camp before Keelung and the capital there were evidences of disorder and lawlessness. Bands of marauders were out. Many of them were well armed, as they included numbers of irregular levies who had deserted with the arms and ammunition with which they had been supplied when they enlisted. Wayfarers had been robbed, and some who resisted had been murdered. Lonely farmhouses were looted and burned. In some cases the men were killed and the women foully abused. Some considerable towns had been attacked and terrorized into paying tribute.

But it was on the native Christians that the heaviest blow fell. Nearly everywhere they were hounded down, their little churches were destroyed, their houses were ransacked, their goods pillaged, and themselves cruelly beaten and tortured. Even when they succeeded in reaching hiding-places, they were often betrayed by their own relatives and given over to the inhuman cruelties of the heathen.

So serious was the danger that the consul issued a warning to his nationals and those of other nations for whom he acted not to venture beyond the limits of the port, where they could be under the protection of the gunboat, as well as of the Chinese garrison. At that moment Dr. MacKay, Sinclair, and Gorman were the only white men who were outside of the protection of large forces of disciplined soldiers.

Several times on their way Sinclair and his companion were faced by armed men. But they moved resolutely forward. As the marauders opened up to let them pass Sinclair caught the word "I-seng" (the life-healer), while Gorman laughed to hear himself described as "Ang-mng-kui (the red-haired devil). Their reputations had preceded them and stood them in good stead.

Elsewhere tragedies were being enacted. Five or six miles south of the road which they were travelling, nestling in among the foothills of the great mountain-chain which occupied all the centre of the island, was the prosperous town of Sin-tiam. There the missionary had gathered together a congregation of worshippers and built a church of unplastered stone.

With the eye for beauty in nature which characterized him, he had chosen a site at one end of the town, where a little dell smiled between some verdured hills and the river. In front of the church door lay a beach of shingle, round which curved the swift, clear green waters of the Sin-tiam River. Its farther bank rose steeply from the water's edge, a hillside luxuriant with trees and vines, ferns and grasses, their vivid green all starred with roses and morning-glories, or the massed beauties of myrtle-trees and honeysuckle. Behind the first abrupt hill rose higher hills, and beyond these mountains, in whose impenetrable jungles and savage retreats the wild headhunters had their home. Behind these again giant peaks towered into the heavens.

Into this paradise of beauty, bloodthirsty, heathen men burst and their rage turned it into a perdition. Early one fair summer morning the black flags of a party of marauders were seen approaching the town. The respectable citizens, whether heathen or Christian, hurriedly closed and barricaded their shops and houses. The worst element of the population rushed out to join the freebooters.

Like a pack of hungry wolves they entered the town on the run, yelling, screaming, beating drums, blowing horns, firing their guns. It was evident that they had a concerted plan, for they did not halt, but with yelp and yell and animal snarl they swept through to the far end, where the Christian church was situated. They poured into the native preacher's house, which adjoined the church. It was deserted. At the first alarm some of the Christians had rushed to the church, and hurried their pastor and his family by a circuitous route to a safe hiding-place. They knew that he would be the first victim. They hoped that their own obscurity would be their protection.

After a vain search for the preacher, the black-flags returned to loot his house and destroy everything they could not carry away. Then they began to search for other victims. Unfortunately in their haste the pastor and his friends had forgotten the roll of church members, which was in the drawer of the desk on the church platform. It was the death warrant of some of the flock.

With yells of savage delight the persecutors tore it open and began to read out the names:

He was a tolerably well-to-do merchant. At the mention of his name the mob scented plunder, and the most active fairly fought with one another in the rush to be foremost for the spoil. Lee Soon had sent his wife and daughter to a hiding-place in a forsaken mine in the neighbourhood. With his young son he remained to take care of his property. On the first assault of the mob he tried to parley with them and offered them gifts if they would leave him unmolested.

"Do you think that we would take part when we intend to get all?" was the jeering reply.

"We'll have no parley with friends of the foreign devils," yelled others.

All the while a rain of bricks and stones fell on the barricades he had hastily put up. Others climbed on the roof and tore off the tiles. In a short time a breach was made and they rushed in. Lee Soon was seized by the hair and dragged out over the piles of bricks and rubbish. Every one who could get a kick at him, a blow with a bamboo pole or the butt of a gun, gave it with insensate fury. At last he lay bleeding and unconscious in the midst of the street. But the mob still trampled upon him.

"Now will you go into the barbarian's religion?" cried one.

"Where is your God now?" shrieked another.

Meanwhile others were stripping the house and shop of its contents. Others still were searching high and low for the women of the household. Enraged at not finding them, they dragged out his son, Lee Ien, a mere youth, kicking and beating him as they had done his father.

"He has given his sisters to the foreign devils."

"Might as well give them to the beasts, for the foreign devils are the offspring of beasts."

"We'll teach him to give the women of our country to foreign devils."

Dragging the unfortunate youth to a tree, they threw the end of his long braid of hair over a branch and pulled until he was lifted off the ground. Then they spit on him, jeered him, and prodded him with their poles, making his body swing to and fro.

"Now will you forsake this Jesus faith and go back to the gods of your ancestors?"

Around his neck and from various parts of the torn scalp blood was oozing and trickling down. The body writhed in agony. The youth, really only a boy in years, was alone, ringed round by foes. From the drawn, quivering lips came the prayer:

"Lord Jesus Christ, help me! Jehovah God, give me strength!"

A wild yell arose from another part of the town. More victims had been found. There was more loot. Those who had been torturing Lee Ien were anxious to get a share. They released their hold on his hair and rushed off with the others. He fell in a limp heap on the ground.

With the physical toughness of his race, he soon recovered and hurried to where he had last seen his father. He found that a heathen neighbour, more pitiful than the rest, had carried him into a place of safety and had brought him back to consciousness.

Tan Siong had escaped, but came back to help some of his fellow-believers. He accomplished this and effected their escape. But it was by sacrificing himself. He was caught, and being a man of some prominence special tortures were devised. Sharp-edged splits of bamboo were placed between the fingers of both hands. Cords were wound tightly around the fingers, pressing the angles of the bamboo into the flesh.

"Will you forsake the black-bearded foreign devil?"

"Pastor MacKay has never done me anything but good. He healed me when I was sick. He saved my son's life when he had the fever. Why should I forsake him?"

The cords were drawn more tightly. The blood oozed out around his nails and along the edges of the bamboo.

"Will you give up the barbarian's religion and go back to the gods our ancestors worshipped from of old?"

"The gods our ancestors worshipped are only idols. They cannot see or hear or understand our prayers. I cannot go back to them. I believe in Jehovah God, maker of heaven and earth----"

A rifle butt fell with a sickening thud on his head and, with the blood still oozing from his finger-tips, Tan Siong lay senseless on the earth. His tormentors rushed off to find other victims to rob and maltreat.

So the morning wore away. There were about forty families of Christians. Probably the majority of the individuals in them escaped with their lives, and by keeping in hiding did not suffer torture. But all lost their possessions. Many were put to the test of indescribable physical agony. Yet they did not deny their faith.

There were two, a man and his wife, so humble that they thought they might be overlooked. They could not flee. They were both between sixty and seventy years of age. The wife's feet, crushed and broken by being bound for a lifetime, would not bear her in flight. Her husband, with a devotion rare in a Chinese and the more beautiful because of its rarity, determined to stay with her and meet his fate whatever it might be. They hoped that their insignificance might save them.

But Lim Tsu had for many years been a maker of idols. Then he had lost faith in those gilded bits of wood or plaster he had so long offered to others to worship. He had heard strange words from some native Christians. Then he had heard them from the lips of the foreign pastor. After long hesitation he gave up the beliefs of his fathers, gave up the practices of a lifetime, what was harder still, gave up the means of a livelihood, and accepted the Christian faith. From that hour Lim Tsu was a marked man. He was the worst of renegades.

His name and that of his wife, Oo-a, were nearly the last upon the communion roll, for they had been but recently received. When they were read out a howl like that of a pack of wild beasts went up from the mob, and with one consent they flocked pell-mell towards the humble cottage of the former image-maker. He heard them coming, and with his aged wife met them outside the door. Was it something in the calm demeanour of the old couple, standing quietly there with the summer sun shining on their whitening heads, which awed them? The ones in front paused, irresolute. Those behind pressed them forward.

"Friends, whom do you seek?"

"Lim Tsu, the idol-maker."

"Lim Tsu, the idol-maker, is not here. But Lim Tsu, the worshipper of the living God, is here. Friends, I am Lim Tsu."

The leaders of the mob quailed before the quiet dignity of the old man. But the crowd behind pressed them on. They held a hurried consultation while the old Christian and his wife stood quietly waiting.

They were seized by the arms and led towards the river. The spot chosen was the beach of clean shingle in front of the church. Unlike the other prisoners who had been taken that day, they were not beaten. But the feeble old woman hobbled painfully over the stones. Her husband encouraged her:

"If they drown us, it will not take long. Just a moment and it will all be over. Then we'll not be old any more. Your feet will not pain you any longer. I'll not have the fever. We'll not have to worry about getting rice to eat. Just a moment and all these things will be forgotten. In heaven there is no suffering."

As their feet touched the edge of the water they were halted. One of the leaders said to them:

"Lim Tsu, you used to make images of the gods. You used to worship the spirits of your ancestors. You used to perform the rites as our fathers have done since ages eternal. But now in your old age you have been bewitched by the foreign devils and joined the Jesus belief. If you leave the barbarian's religion and go back to the faith of your fathers, it will be well. You will be safe and men will honour you. If you do not, we will drown you both."

"Friends," came the quiet, firm reply, "I do not believe in idols. I made them for many years. I know that they are only wood or stone or earth or plaster. I know that I can knock them down and break them, or throw them into the fire and burn them. How could they help me? Now I worship the true God, who made the earth and the sea and the sky, who made us all, for we are His children. And I worship Jesus Christ, His Son, whom He sent into the world to save me. You may drown us if you will. But we will not give up the Jesus belief."

Yells of rage burst from their persecutors. They were pushed forward into the water up to their knees. Again the offer was made, and again refused.

Execrations, foul language, inarticulate screams of rage rose from the throng on the bank. The old couple were pushed farther into the stream. The water had risen to the old man's arm-pits. It was up to the woman's throat. Again they were halted.

"Lim Tsu and Oo-a, his wife, will you give up the Jesus belief? If not, we will drown you."

The old woman's thin treble rose in answer:

"I cannot give up the Jesus belief. Jesus is my Saviour."

"You may drown us if you will," answered her husband. "That will not hurt us much. It will soon be over. But we can never deny the Lord Jesus."

For a few moments the mob-leaders paused. They were plainly nonplussed by such constancy. Even the rabble on the bank hushed their howling.

Oo-a's grey head swam on the surface of the clear green stream. She turned her face upward. Before her were the steep green hills, thick with trees and ferns and grasses, and all starred with flowers, on which she had looked since her childhood. A bird sang in the thicket. The cicadas shrilled ceaselessly in the hot sunshine. All the world was at peace. Why was man so cruel? She lifted her eyes to the blue sky which bent over her. Her thin tremulous voice was heard in prayer:

"Pe Siong-te."[#]--"Father God, help a weak old woman. Make her strong to confess her Lord. For Jesus' sake."

[#] Pronounced, Pay Seeong-tay.

Then the old man lifted up his voice, and she joined him in that immortal prayer which ever circles the world around and runs through all time:

"Goan e Pe ti thi nih."[#]--"Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done----"

[#] Pronounced, Go-an a Pay tee thee neeh.

Their voices were silenced by the waters. Their captors had plunged them under and held them there. The fair flowers still bloomed on the high bank. The birds sang on. The cicadas shrilled their monotonous melody. The sun poured down its wealth and bounty on the evil and on the good. Only a few bubbles rising to the surface told where the souls of the two martyrs had been set free to go home to God.

Just plain, ignorant old Chinese peasants! Alone amidst their enemies, all unknown and unknowing, unsupported by and unthinking of the world's applause! Yet without a murmur they died for their faith. Even an Apostle Paul could do no more.

*XVIII*

*TO THE RESCUE*

Two days later Dr. Sinclair and Sergeant Gorman were nearing the capital on their way from Keelung to Tamsui. Sometimes they talked and laughed. Sometimes they walked in silence one following the other along the narrow trail, each busy with his own thoughts. Sinclair was thinking of a perplexing, teasing young woman of queenly stature and bearing, with eyes and mouth which haunted him in spite of his determination to persuade himself that he was unconcerned. He knew that she was still in Tamsui. McLeod had sent him a note the last time the _Hailoong_ was in port. Mr. MacAllister had made trips to various ports on the mainland, and to South Formosa. But his wife and daughter remained at Tamsui in the congenial company and care of Mr. and Mrs. Beauchamp.

Sinclair wondered to himself in what humour he would find this wayward maiden who had so suddenly been projected into his life, and now occupied so large a place in his thoughts. Why was she so capricious with him? She was not like that with others. With Captain Whiteley or McLeod or Mr. Beauchamp she was amiability itself. Apparently she treated Carteret quite differently from him. Even with himself there had been moments when she had been cordial and kind. In those brief spells of friendliness she was irresistibly fascinating.

But most of the time she seemed to bend all her energies to making him feel uncomfortable. Why did she do it? Was it possible that McLeod was right? Or was it that his approaches were disagreeable to her and she was trying to make him keep his distance? That was much more likely. But he would find out. He was not going to make a fool of himself by pushing himself in where he was not wanted. He closed his teeth firmly. His lower jaw was set and stern. He would find out this time. He would either make or mend it.

But he did not.

He had hardly made the aforementioned resolution when it and even the object of his thoughts were driven out of his mind altogether. From a high bank beside the road, covered with a thicket of bamboo, a native boy of fourteen or fifteen years dropped into the middle of the pathway at Sinclair's feet. His face was drawn with fear. His eyes had a strained, hunted look. Without any of the customary salutations, he poured forth a stream of nervous, fluent Chinese, in which Sinclair could catch nothing but his own title of "I-seng" and "Kai Bok-su" (Pastor MacKay).

"Here, Gorman, can you make anything out of what he says? There is evidently trouble somewhere, and Dr. MacKay is in it."

"Hould on, boy! Go aisy! Fwhat the divil wud you expect a Christian man to make out of such a jabber as that?"

Then in Chinese:

"You talk too fast. Speak slowly. Don't be afraid. If there is any trouble, we'll help you out."

Getting a grip of himself, the excited boy told them that he was the son of one of the Christians of Sintiam. He related the events of two days before. He said that Dr. MacKay had heard of what had taken place and, in spite of the pleadings of his converts, had insisted on going to the help of those who were still in danger. He was already there, and if the black-flags caught him they would assuredly kill him. He, the boy, had been sent out to look for some Chinese troops, but had found them instead. Would they come to Pastor MacKay's rescue?

"Begorra, an' that we will!" exclaimed Gorman, as he gave his heavy stick a couple of fancy twirls around his head, felt for his revolver to assure himself that it was there, and plunged into the carrier coolie's basket to get more cartridges.

"Tell the coolie to go on to Taipeh and wait for us there. Tell this boy to guide us to Sin-tiam by the shortest route. He needn't try to hide us. We don't care if those devils do see us."

Sinclair spoke in sharp, incisive tones. Instinctively the sergeant came to attention and saluted. It was the accent of command.

In another moment they had left the main road, which they had been following, plunged through the bamboos, and headed directly south. Soon their guide picked up a blind pathway which zigzagged through a labyrinth of rice-fields, dropped into shady ravines, or climbed a projecting spur of rock. The afternoon sun blazed down upon them. But with relentless energy they pressed on. Peasants working in their fields uttered loud cries of wonder, not unmixed with alarm, as the two foreigners strode silently, determinedly past. The native boy never ceased from his steady run. The long, powerful strides of the two whites pressed continually on his heels.

The day was wearing on as they drew near their destination. The by-path they were following did not join the main road entering the town, but led over some wooded hills nearly at right angles to the principal highway. While still unable to see the town, they heard wild yells and occasional shots. Their rapid walk quickened into a run.

As they came over the last bluff, through an opening in the shrubbery they could see the end of the town where the main road entered it. Just emerging from between the houses was a man dressed in white and wearing a sun-helmet. It was MacKay. He was walking steadily, resolutely out along the road which led towards the capital. Behind him, in close but irregular order, was a band of natives--men, women, and children. Among them were a few sedan chairs, evidently carrying aged and wounded. Pressing upon their rear, crowding upon them on either side, threatening to block the road in front, was a screaming, jeering, cursing mob. Black flags were waving over their heads; guns were discharged; mud and filth were thrown; howls like those of beasts of prey burst from them in chorus.

The situation was obvious. MacKay had appealed to the Chinese authorities at the capital to protect the Christians. They had replied that they could not protect them in outlying districts like Sin-tiam, but would protect them if they came to the capital, where there was a garrison. He was endeavouring to bring the survivors to where their lives would be safe. They had lost their homes, their property, their church. They had only their lives left. He was trying to save these.