Part 12

But the mob were determined that they should not escape. They crowded closer and closer on the native Christians, but still opened up before the missionary. His cool, resolute demeanour, the instinctive recognition of unruffled courage and conscious superiority made them give way. As the little band passed out of the town they began to fear that their prey was going to give them the slip. Bricks and stones were flung. Jostling passed into interchange of blows. Shouts of "Kill the barbarian. He is not very big. Tear the foreign devil in pieces" mingled with inarticulate yells of rage.

Suddenly with a surge from behind the mob flung themselves like wolves on their prey. The Christian maidens, always the first victims, were being dragged away, their terror-stricken shrieks mingling with the fiendish yells of their captors. Sedan chairs were overturned. Men and women were beaten down. The hopelessly outnumbered Christians were fighting desperately for their lives.

At the first sound of the onslaught, MacKay turned back. He would save his people or share their fate. The muzzle of a rifle was jabbed against his chest. Like a flash he thrust it up with his left hand and it was discharged harmlessly past his ear.

It was the last time that Chinese freebooter ever pulled a trigger. Simultaneously with the explosion of the rifle Sinclair's stick came down on his head and cracked his skull like an eggshell.

The same instant, with a wild "Hurroosh!" Gorman was into the melee. MacKay's Highland blood was up, too. Alongside of his bigger and heavier companions he was proving that his slight, sinewy frame had not for nothing gone through more than a dozen years of strenuous training in that tropic clime.

For a few minutes it was rough-and-tumble fighting, with foot and fist and shillelagh. Friends and foes were so mixed together that Sinclair and Gorman were afraid to use their revolvers. But the terror those big, fiercely-fighting foreigners inspire in the hearts of a Chinese mob fell on the rioters. They loosed their holds on their prey and fled in wild disorder, hurried by the barking of the two revolvers and the fall of some in whom the bullets had found their mark.

"Thank you, Dr. Sinclair; Sergeant Gorman. You have done me, and you have done my poor people, a great service."

"It seems that we did happen to come at the right time," replied Sinclair.

"You didn't happen. God sent you."

"Perhaps that is the right way to put it, Dr. MacKay. At any rate, we are glad to have been here. Now we must look at those people. I am afraid that some of them are pretty badly hurt."

All three turned their attention to caring for the sufferers and to making them as comfortable as possible. When they reached the capital Sinclair found it necessary to remain there several days to care for some who were most seriously injured.

Before he felt free to leave them to make his intended trip to Tamsui word came that there had been some sharp skirmishes around Keelung and a considerable number had been wounded. So he and Gorman turned back to duty.

This was the reason why he did not at that time succeed in making or mending his relations with Miss MacAllister. Perhaps it was better for him that it was so. His exploit in coming to the rescue of MacKay was likely to stand him in better stead than a premature demand for explanations.

But Sinclair did not know that. He was not versed in the ways of women. Like most men in love, if he had been allowed his own way, he would have made a mess of it. When Providence came to his rescue and sent him back to Keelung without seeing Miss MacAllister, he was inclined to fall out with Providence.

But his sense of duty and his habitual good-humour prevailed. And when he saw again the strained, eager looks of the wounded men, saw hope come into their faces as the word passed from lip to lip, "I-seng lai" (the life-healer has come), he was glad that he had done his duty. He was at his chosen work.

*XIX*

*ALLISTER*

On the morning of the 24th of September, Sinclair, looking down from a mountain height on the town and harbour of Keelung, saw one of the warships get up steam and put out to sea. Watching it with his glasses, he saw it heading north, and then west, till even the trailing smoke disappeared beyond the far blue coast line which curved away towards the northernmost point of the island.

"I'd give something to know where that Frenchman is heading for and what mischief he has in mind."

"Bedad, an' if he doesn't do more than he's been doin' here these last six weeks, he'd better give up the job."

"That's just the reason why I think that he may be intending to try his hand somewhere else. He can't do any more damage here without a land force. But there are other places where he could--Tamsui, for example."

"Begorra, an' if I thought there was goin' to be a shindy there, it's not one minute longer I'd spind kickin' me heels around this ould dead-an'-alive camp. I'd be makin' for Tamsui as fast as the two legs of me cud carry me."

"So would I. But there doesn't seem to be any movement among the rest of the fleet. We'll just keep a sharp lookout and perhaps we'll get some word from Tamsui. If there's anything doing there, I'm blamed if I am going to be stewed up here and miss the fun."

Two days later Sinclair was again at his lookout. From the departure of that first French warship which had steamed away to the west, either he or Gorman had kept a constant watch on the movements of the French fleet. Perhaps it was all because of his anxiety to be where he was most needed. Perhaps there were other reasons which he did not mention to Sergeant Gorman.

He had found a shady seat for himself beneath the wide-spreading fronds of a tree-fern, and through his glasses was carefully scanning the squadron of men-of-war in the harbour below. A footstep sounded on a rock near him. It was Gorman:

"A letter for you from Dr. MacKay. A boy has jist arrived wid it. I thought that you moight want to see it at wanst."

"Thank you, Gorman," he replied, tearing it open. "Just as we thought. He says that the _Chateau Renaud_ arrived off Tamsui on Wednesday.... That's the day we saw her leave here.... Over-hauled the _Welle_ yesterday, and the _Hailoong_, too.... Then Mac's at Tamsui. Boys, but I'd like to see him! ... Says that the consul has got a hint somewhere that the French are going to bombard Tamsui.... What did I tell you, Gorman? ... Thinks we had better come back there at once and take his boys with us.... So do I.... Says your ambulance corps can take care of any wounded there are likely to be here.... Of course they can. Whether they can or not, I'm going."

"Another moving!" exclaimed Gorman, who had been using the glasses.

"What! By Jove, you're right!"

Sinclair was manifesting unwonted excitement.

"We'd better start at once if we want to get through this evening. Pretty nearly thirty miles of a walk if we should happen to miss the launch. I'd like to get there before the _Hailoong_ sails. I want to see McLeod."

Gorman's left eye, which was invisible to Sinclair, winked and that side of his face assumed a most comical expression. The other eye looked straight out at the landscape, and the other side of his face was judicial in its seriousness. He was a man of some perception.

"An' you think that the hospital here will get along widout us?" he asked.

"Of course it will! I'm going to Tamsui."

"Faith and you're a man afther me own heart. Let the hospital go to Ballyhack. I'm wid you.... There she goes headin' for the west. The _parley-voos_ are plottin' somethin' an' we want to be there whin it happens."

* * * * *

Late that afternoon practically the whole foreign population of North Formosa and the officers of the _Locust_ were gathered on the deck of the _Hailoong_. Captain Whiteley and McLeod were giving what they called their "Farewell At Home!" After their experience of the day before they were doubtful whether they would be allowed to enter the port again so long as the Frenchmen stayed.

It was perhaps the largest party of foreigners which had ever gathered in North Formosa. Consular, mission and custom staffs, merchants, the doctor, naval officers, visitors, and hosts, they numbered thirty or more. The measure of uncertainty, the spice of a possible peril, added zest to their intercourse. Just out of sight over the projecting ridge of the hill to the north of the harbour, the _Chateau Renaud_ was lying at anchor. That very day the long, low, sinister-looking _Vipere_ had slipped into the very mouth of the harbour. She could be plainly seen from where they sat chatting and sipping their tea on the deck of the _Hailoong_. Every one felt that these engines of war were big with potentialities of danger and death.

As usual, since her arrival in Formosa, Miss MacAllister was the centre of attraction. Bald-headed seniors like De Vaux and Boville vied with young men like Carteret and mere youths like Lanyon for her company and her smiles. But for reasons best known to herself she chose to give those privileges in much the largest measure to McLeod. As one of the hosts he had not in any way tried to monopolize her. But she showed so marked a partiality for his companionship that it did appear as if he had the monopoly.

"It seems as if no person but a seaman has any show with the ladies to-day," said Carteret with that indefinable bitterness of tone which he so often used. It called attention to the fact that each of the ladies present was deep in conversation with an officer of one or other of the ships.

"By my faith, it can't be the sea which is the attraction," retorted Lieutenant Lanyon, "for none of them will look at me. In Miss MacAllister's case it is the clannishness of the Scotch," he continued, loud enough for her to hear. "If McLeod weren't a Mac, he'd have no more show than I have, and that's no show at all, at all."

He thought that he would draw her by his very boldness, as he had done on more than one occasion before. All the satisfaction he got was:

"Now, Mr. Lanyon, please do not let everybody on board know that you cannot get a lady to talk to you. There's mother. She has just finished her conversation with Captain Whiteley. I know that she will take pity on you."

Lanyon joined as heartily as the rest in the laugh at his own expense, and, accepting her suggestion, was soon amusing himself and Mrs. MacAllister with his boyish tales of adventures and scrapes in the navy.

Meanwhile Miss MacAllister was saying to McLeod:

"Really, Mr. McLeod, I do not know what some of these men are made of. To think that they could sit here doing the little routine work of their offices, with battles going on within twenty miles of them, and never so much as go to see what a battle is like! I wanted to go myself. But father and the consul wouldn't let me."

"You must remember, Miss MacAllister, that the majority of things which are called men are not men. They are only dressed up to look like men. When they get in danger or any other place which needs men, all the man in them disappears and there is nothing left but the clothes."

"But Dr. MacKay says that Dr. Sinclair and Sergeant Gorman have not been in any real danger since they went over there. He says that the Chinese respect them too much to molest them."

"Yes; but that is where the difference comes in. Sinclair is a man. So is Gorman. So is MacKay. The Chinese know it, and they are safe. But some of the others--not all, only some--are not men. They wouldn't be safe."

"I wish that I were a man."

"If you were, I venture to say that you would be a soldier."

"I had a brother once. He was a soldier."

"I did not know that you ever had a brother. You never told me that."

By this time they had left the company on the forward deck and, walking away aft, were leaning on the rail. She was in a more subdued and meditative mood than McLeod had ever seen her before.

"No," she said, "I never told you. I rarely tell anybody. I do not know why I am telling you now."

McLeod listened in sympathetic silence. He knew that behind this fact of the brother of whom she seldom spoke there must be a tragedy. If she wished to tell him, he would listen. But if she did not, he would respect her reserve and not seek to pry into its privacy.

"My brother was an officer in a crack English cavalry regiment. He fought in Egypt and was mentioned in despatches after Tel-el-Kebir. But he was the only Scottish officer in the regiment, and the only son of a tradesman. The rest were Englishmen and sons of do-nothing aristocracy. They never ceased twitting Allister about being a Highland kern, and that his father was a shopkeeper, and had started life as an errand boy. The fact that he was mentioned in dispatches made them worse. They were jealous."

She paused for a moment. McLeod did not speak. She glanced at him. His face was set. One hand was clenched. The other gripped hard on the rail. She understood and went on:

"Two of them were especially insulting. At mess one evening they went beyond endurance. Allister was not quick with his tongue. He was slow of speech and could not answer them. But there was another way open, and he took it. He was big and strong, as big and strong as Dr. Sinclair. But not fair like Dr. Sinclair. He was dark like mother. He called the two of them out from mess, and with his bare hands gave the biggest of them a terrible thrashing. The other ran to his tent for his sword and revolver. When Allister went after him, for his Highland blood was up and nothing could stop him, the coward hid behind the excuse that they must fight as gentlemen. But when it came to fighting with revolvers, the Englishman who had been thrashed claimed that it was his right to fight the duel, as it was he who had been beaten. And the coward was glad to let him."

She paused again. Her face was pale, but her eyes showed the fire which burned within. McLeod was breathing hard, as if in a physical struggle.

It was quickly arranged and quickly over. Out there on the sand in the moonlight they faced each other and fired only once. Allister was not hit. The Englishman was shot through the lung. The regimental doctor said that he could live only an hour. He could not check the flow of blood.

"A few minutes afterwards Allister rode out of camp towards Alexandria. His orderly, who was Highland like himself, brought us word that he could not stand the thought of what it would mean to father and mother and me, that he should be tried and convicted of murder. That was two years ago to-day. Since that we have never heard a word."

For the first time in her recital McLeod spoke: "Did the Englishman die?"

"No, he did not. He is now strong and well. What is better, he bitterly repented the wrong he did my brother. He came to father and mother seeking our forgiveness, and was forgiven. Now he is helping to search the world for Allister. What became of the coward we never heard, except that he was dismissed from the service for cowardice. We never knew his name."

"That is the real reason why your father is spending so much time in those out-of-the-way places of the Far East. He hopes to get word of your brother."

"Yes. Mother is convinced that Allister is dead. But father and I cannot believe it. We believe that he is living, and that we shall find him. And father believes that it will not be very long. He told me only this morning that he was convinced that it would be soon."

"The Highland second sight."

"Yes. God grant that it may be so."

"Amen!" said McLeod solemnly.

For some minutes they leaned on the rail in silence. Her eyes were fixed on the water, which was flowing upstream with the rising tide. McLeod was looking away up the river to where he could distinguish the little passenger launch emerging from a fleet of cargo boats and bat-winged junks. It was steaming straight down the river at full speed. Presently he said:

"I wonder what's up. The launch is heading for us instead of going to her jetty."

"There are some Europeans on her," Miss MacAllister replied. "I can see two men wearing helmets under the awning. They evidently are coming on board."

Then she uttered a faint cry. One of the men had stepped from under the awning and stood at his full height on the bow of the launch. The next instant he took off his helmet and waved it at McLeod. The sunlight gleamed on a mass of fair hair.

"Oh!" she said. "It is Dr. Sinclair. As he stood up I thought it was Allister. Their figures are exactly alike. But it was foolish of me."

McLeod seemed hardly to heed what she was saying. He had climbed on the rail, was frantically waving his white cap, and yelling like a schoolboy.

"What cronies you two are!" she said with mock severity, but laughing all the while. "Talk about the Scotch being clannish! You Canadians beat anything I ever met for clannishness."

"Just some Canadians," answered McLeod. "Will you excuse me?" he called back as he went below.

"Those two must be desperately in love," she said to herself as she smilingly responded to Sinclair's courteous salutation from the bow of the launch.

The next instant McLeod had hold of both Sinclair and Gorman and was ushering them up the companion-way. The sergeant would have declined. But McLeod would take no refusal. The company present were his and Captain Whiteley's guests. And whoever they chose to invite would have to be received as such. And not only Sinclair, but the consul and others who had known him noticed that Gorman's brogue and exaggerated Irishisms were dropped as easily as if they had all been assumed, and the Irish noncom was as much at ease and as correct in his behaviour as any of those who boasted gentle birth.

*XX*

*THE INFALLIBLE EXPERTS*

The next evening (it was a Saturday) Dr. Sinclair dined with the MacAllisters. To his surprise, and much to his delight, he was the only guest. For the first time he saw something of their home life. He saw, too, Miss MacAllister in a role different from anything he had seen before. Up to this time he had always met her as a passenger or a guest, with no responsibilities save those of amusing and being amused. She had been the centre of an admiring circle, free to be as whimsical or wayward as the fancy of the moment suggested. That evening she shared with her mother the duties of hostess and devoted herself to making the evening pleasant for their guest. And Sinclair thought that never before had a single evening brought him so much enjoyment.

He wondered at the change. Was it another side of her character? Or was it that she had changed her attitude towards himself? The previous afternoon he had noticed that she received him with a frank cordiality which had surprised and delighted him. But she had been just as ready with gay banter and raillery as ever, especially when talking to Lanyon or any others of the guests who pressed their attentions upon her. This evening there was none of that. Bright and entertaining she certainly was. But there was not a trace of the whimsical, teasing spirit she had formerly manifested, nor a word which could make him feel uncomfortable. As the evening sped away he felt himself becoming more and more fascinated. He had met many beautiful and attractive women, but never one who cast such a spell over him.

Mrs. MacAllister was not extremely cordial. She did not wax enthusiastic over him as she had done over De Vaux and Carteret. But she was a Highland hostess in her own home. And though it might be only a temporary home in a foreign land, and though she had not been anxious to have Dr. Sinclair for dinner, she had too much of the hospitality of her native hills to do otherwise than endeavour to make him feel that he was welcome there.

Mr. MacAllister was cordiality itself. In Sinclair he found a kindred spirit. His interest in men, to whatever race they might belong, his keen insight and trained powers of observation, were refreshing to the shrewd business man after the many men he met who went about the world with eyes which did not see. From the moment they sat down to dinner until they rose from it he plied Sinclair with questions and compared the doctor's observations with his own.

"You have had a great opportunity of studying the Chinese during the last couple of months," he said. "I envy you. Since you went over to Keelung I have visited Foochow, spent another short spell in Amoy, and travelled over a considerable part of south Formosa. But I have felt all the time that I really did not get into touch with the natives. I couldn't speak their languages. I was staying always in the homes of foreigners. I came into contact with the Chinese only, as it were, at second hand. But for one who has just arrived among them, you have had a remarkable experience and an exceptional opportunity. I envy you."

"It has been an opportunity, though of course too short to form anything like final conclusions. Nevertheless, I saw enough to convince me that the greater part of the information about China which is being served up to the Western world by so-called authorities is absolutely unreliable. The ten-day tourists and meteoric newspaper correspondents get only surface impressions, and even these are generally wrong."

"We had one of them here while you were at Keelung and father was in the South," said Miss MacAllister.

"Is that so? I had not heard. Who was it?"

"Mr. F. L. Y. Urquhart, the famous traveller and authority on China."

"Indeed! How long did he stay?"

"Arrived from Foochow on the gunboat _Falcon_ in the forenoon. Called on the consul, the commissioner of customs, and ourselves. Lunched on the _Locust_. Went up river in the afternoon. Stayed one hour, and returned by the same launch. Had tennis and tea at the consulate. At 6.30 put off to join the _Falcon_ again and sailed immediately for Amoy."

"And I suppose had the fate of Formosa settled."

"Oh, yes! Quite!"

"What is it?"

"The French will have the island in their possession in a month or six weeks at the outside. Their transports with large land forces and escorted by naval reinforcements have already passed the Suez. Before them the Chinese army will run like sheep, and the inhabitants will submit without a blow. Once the French flag is hoisted it will never be taken down. Formosa is lost to Britain through the stupidity of old Lord Littlengland, the Foreign Secretary. He refused to accept it when China actually offered to cede it to Britain to keep it out of the hands of the French, as he had absolute assurance from Li Hung-chang himself."

"Excellently done!" exclaimed Sinclair, laughing at her mimicry of the assurance of the expert. "Did he not call on Dr. MacKay?"

"No. I suggested that he should. He replied that he put no reliance on the opinions of missionaries. They were all narrow-minded fanatics, who couldn't take a broad, large-minded view of the situation."

"So he missed the one man who knows more of the probabilities of this war than all the rest of us taken together?"

"Yes, he missed him entirely. Said that he didn't care to meet him."

"That is it exactly. It is just such self-conceited experts, who know all about China when they have been ashore at half a dozen seaports during the hours of call of a passenger liner and who refuse to learn from those who do know, who have given our Western nations such an exaggerated idea of their own superiority and of China's inferiority."

"Then you think that the Chinese have been underestimated as soldiers," said Mr. MacAllister.