Part 19

"In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, the only King and Head of the Church, and by the authority He has given me when He committed to me the care of these His people, I invite you to take part of this ministry with me, and commit to your care these my children in the Lord."

Tears glistened on the faces of the natives. Sobs broke from many of them. But the sick man continued resolutely, now in English,

"Dr. Sinclair, I have written to the Foreign Mission Committee of our Church, asking them to appoint you a medical missionary in North Formosa. That is your desire?"

"It is."

"If they grant my request--I do not say that they will--but if they do, do you promise to stay with these people as long as you may find it possible so to do, to heal their souls as well as their bodies, and to give these native brethren your counsel, according as the Lord gives you wisdom?"

"I do."

"I am content."

With the benediction the Chinese softly withdrew. The sick man fell back exhausted on the pillows, soon to be tossing and raving in delirium again. But over in the little college building the native Christians, led by their two new-made pastors, bowed themselves continuously in prayer for the life which was more than any other life to them.

Was it in answer to those prayers that ice was unexpectedly brought into that port in that tropic clime? Who knows? So many things are veiled from our eyes! But certain it is that when the ice was heaped about his fevered head, MacKay fell into a sweet, childlike sleep, from which he did not awake for thirty-six hours. And when he awoke he was saved.

A few days later, under compulsion from the three doctors, he sailed on board the _Fokien_ to join his family in Hong-Kong and rest. The day afterwards the French admiral declared a blockade, and Formosa was sealed against the world.

*XXXIV*

*THE SOLDIER OF THE LEGION*

For the five months from October till March Dr. Sinclair and Sergeant Gorman were with the Chinese forces before Keelung. For those five months rain fell almost continuously. Clouds drifted in from the sea, trailed through the valleys, and crept up the mountain sides, discharging their burdens of water as they went. The earth was sodden under foot. Walls and roofs sweated moisture. Tents and clothing mildewed. Food moulded and rotted in the constant wet. Scarcely ever a gleam of sunshine broke through the leaden canopy of cloud to cleanse the reeking earth and atmosphere. For one period of forty-five days the rain never ceased for an hour.

All through the wretched winter French transports arrived bringing reinforcements, and left again carrying sick and wounded men. All through the winter a succession of petty conflicts took place, a series of harassing, ineffectual actions was fought. A French column would issue from Keelung, plunge through roads which were nought but channels of liquid mud, struggle up dripping heights, through the tall grasses and ferns and brush, exposed to the fire of concealed sharp-shooters, and drive the enemy from the top at the point of the bayonet, only to find that their labour and the price of blood paid was all in vain. In some cases the small forces they were able to spare could not hold the heights against the rallying Chinese. In others immediately behind they discovered higher and more strongly fortified posts dominating those that they had captured.

All the while the French cemetery on the east side of the harbour, which they had named La Galissoniere, was growing more and more populous at an alarming rate. Typhoid fever, malarial fever, cholera were far more dangerous than the bullets and knives of the Chinese. In spite of the numbers of sick and wounded men sent home to France, by the time the winter had passed into summer seven hundred of the small force employed had been laid away in the rain-soaked, wave-beaten beach at Keelung.

Meanwhile still heavier losses were suffered by the Chinese. The superior discipline and arms of the French more than compensated for their inferiority in numbers, and enabled them to work havoc in the close-set ranks of the Chinese. The little hospital at Loan-Loan was always filled with wounded. Sometimes they overflowed into the neighbouring houses requisitioned by the military authorities for the purpose.

Among these wounded men Sinclair and Gorman worked almost day and night. When a battle was in progress, one or other went out with the ambulance corps, gave the wounded first aid on the field, and forwarded them to the hospital for fuller treatment there. Under leaden skies and the incessant downpour of rain, with insufficient medicines and equipment, and subsisting on poor native food, they worked on week after week, month after month.

Perhaps what was hardest to bear was the fact that during all those months not a word reached them from the outside world. The blockade had effectually excluded all mails. Gorman heard nothing from his family in Amoy. Sinclair had never a line from Hong-Kong.

"Bedad," said Gorman one day, "this is a time when a man would be glad to be afther seein' the shape of a letter, even if it were only from his mother-in-law."

"Let me have a look at your tongue, and a feel of your pulse, Gorman!" exclaimed Sinclair, reaching for the sergeant's wrist. "I knew that you were in a bad way. But I had no idea that you were so far gone as that."

"Och, docther, but wudn't I show you the iligances of an Irish jig, if the ould lady wud only write to me that she was dead an' p'acefully departed. Then I cud go home to me wife an' childer."

It was a time when men were tested. Daily, hourly, Sinclair thought of the girl he loved, spending the winter in Hong-Kong, subject to the attentions and solicitations of the now titled Carteret, and the pressure brought to bear by her mother. His hands would clench and his jaws set hard. But he was sure that Jessie MacAllister would do her part. Over and over again her farewell words kept running through his mind, "I'll be thinking of you, Donald, and you'll be thinking of me."

The longest and dreariest months will always come to an end. When February had passed, the skies began to clear sometimes. The first week of March had some beautiful days.

With this came renewed activity on the part of the French. In a series of actions lasting five days, March 3d to 7th, they succeeded in capturing some of the strongest Chinese positions on the mountain-tops near Loan-Loan.

Sinclair had chosen for his field hospital and ambulance station a situation at the back of the post most strongly fortified by the Chinese. It was a mountain with a steep, almost perpendicular ascent, covered with grass and ferns and bamboos, on the side of the French attack. In this cover the Chinese irregulars were hidden. The crest of the hill was crowned by an interwoven fence of sharpened bamboos, a veritable chevaux-de-frise. Three other lines of entrenchments extended along the face of the hill, and had to be crossed by the assailants before the main position of the Chinese could be reached.

Behind the bamboo stockade, on the slope which led down towards the valley in which the river and the town lay, was a strong force of regular troops. Their right was commanded by the American, Silas Z. Leatherbottom; their left by a young Chinese officer, trained abroad. Gorman was with the right; Sinclair with the left.

It was the last day of the five. On an opposing hill which they had captured two days before, the French camp was plainly to be seen. Early in the morning the movement of troops began. A column moved off the open plateau and disappeared in the fog which hung in the valley, as if to attack the Chinese right. Before long heavy firing was heard in that direction, and Chinese troops were moved across from the left to strengthen the right under the American.

Unexpectedly rifle firing broke out under the curtain of mist in the valley directly in front. The French mountain guns on the opposite hill began to search the Chinese left. In an interval of the firing the order "_Baionnettcs au canon! En avant!_" floated up to where Sinclair stood with some Chinese officers on the crest. The loud "Hourras!" of the French soldiers mingled with the shrill yells of the Chinese, and the crackling of rifles. The French were charging the first line of entrenchments with the bayonet.

It was taken, and they pressed their retreating foes on to the second. It too was captured, and in the same way the third. All the while their progress could be judged only by the sounds which came up through the canopy of fog.

Now the helmets of the Europeans began to appear through the veil of mist. They were at the foot of the last steep ascent, with its bamboo palisade at the top. The Chinese defenders poured on them a perfect hail of bullets. The ascent was so steep, the storm of lead so terrible, that even those seasoned troops shrank from it. The foremost, a company of the Bataillon d'Afrique, swung off to the left in search of an easier ascent and less deadly fire. Another company of the same regiment dashed straight at the steep hill-side. But the deadly fire of the Chinese mowed the foremost of them down. A company in a different uniform, which had been held in reserve, two hundred strong, was ordered to their support. On they came with a rush, cheering each other in a perfect babel of tongues. The "En avant" of their officers was echoed in almost every language of Europe. It was a company of the famous _Legion Etrangere_, the Foreign Legion.

Their polyglot cries mingled with the French of the Bataillon d'Afrique, as in regimental rivalry they struggled up that terrible ascent. Bamboo scaling ladders were placed, only to be thrown down. Men climbed them, only to be crushed by the rocks which the Chinese hurled upon them in savage hand-to-hand warfare. But the assailants did not draw back. French, Austrians, Germans, Italians, Corsicans, Poles, men of Alsace-Lorraine, exiles from every land of Europe, they struggled desperately up. They fought their way to the palisade, hewed gaps in it, and formed on top.

The Chinese irregulars, driven in on their regular troops, threw the latter into confusion. In spite of the gallant efforts is of their young commander, most of them broke and fled. Not so their leader. Rallying a hundred or so of his broken army, he led them in a bayonet charge against their foes. A volley decimated their ranks. When the smoke cleared away, the young officer was seen leading those who remained to the attack. Another volley rang out, leaving him only a handful of men. But once more the gallant Chinese gathered the little group around him, and dashed at the invaders. When the smoke of a third volley cleared away there were none left to charge. The brave young pioneer of the new China which is to be, had died on the field he was determined to hold.

The American general, Leatherbottom, realized when it was too late that the French had deceived him by a false attack on the right, while their real objective was the weakened left, commanded by the young Chinese. He explained to Sinclair afterwards,

"'Thet's whar these 'ar Europeans get the start on me. When it comes t' fightin', I kin fight. Don't yew make enny mistake about thet. But when it's a question of military evolyewtions an' tictacs, thet's whar they've got me beat by a mile."

And certain it was that when the Chinese left position was captured, and the right was forced to retreat, the French were kept from coming to close quarters by the deadly shooting of one rifle in the Chinese rearguard. And that rifle was in the hands of the general of the retreating force, the long, slab-sided Vermonter, Silas Z. Leatherbottom.

Meanwhile Dr. Sinclair, realizing that the day was lost to the Chinese, was forwarding the wounded with all possible speed, down into the valley towards a place of safety. As the Chinese left was broken, he had come down with a long line of stretchers, bearing wounded who had been picked up under fire.

As he descended to the level of the ravine which encircled the mountain, he saw within a hundred yards of him a squad of the Foreign Legion, hurrying along the ravine, either seeking an easier ascent to the field of battle, or making an attempt to cut off the Chinese retreat.

Suddenly out of a dense grove of bamboos on the hill-side spirted streams of flame and smoke. The stout, fair-complexioned sub-lieutenant who was leading them, threw up his arms, staggered, caught the trunk of a tree-fern which saved him from falling.

"_Mein Gott im Himmel!_" he screamed. "_Je suis tue! En avant, mes camarades! Vorwaerts!_"

They were his last words. But they were typical of the character of the Legion.

A sergeant of almost gigantic size sprang forward.

"_Vers la gauche!_" he shouted. "_Charges a la baionnette! En avant!_"

"Good for you, sergeant!" yelled an exile of Ireland fighting under a foreign flag. "Give the yellow divils a taste of the steel. Hurroosh!"

They dashed at the bamboos. But the withering fire cut them down. Not a man reached the ambuscade but the big sergeant. A bullet hit him. He fell; rose to his feet, and made a couple of paces forward. Another hit him on the leg. He raised himself on a foot and a knee. A heavy stone thrown at a few yards struck him on the head. He went down silent and motionless.

With wild screams the Chinese irregulars burst from their cover, brandishing long knives and racing with each other to be first to reach their victims. It was not merely their lust for blood which clamoured to be satisfied. Still more was it their lust for gain. There was a price set upon French heads.

Anticipating the result, and knowing what would follow, Sinclair dashed down the steep, grass-covered side of the ravine at the top of his speed.

"Wait a little!" he yelled in his imperfect Chinese. "Stop that!"

But the irregulars were Hakka tribesmen from the savage border, speaking a different language from that he was learning. They probably did not understand him. If they did, they were not to be baulked of their rewards by the orders of the foreign doctor.

Already the bloody knives were at work. Several were quarrelling over the body of the lieutenant, for there was a higher price for the head of an officer. Two or three had thrown themselves upon the sergeant. This was the nearest body to Sinclair. One of the knives was lifted. At a dozen paces Sinclair's big revolver spoke. The Chinese flung backwards down the slope, throwing his glittering knife high in the air.

That was a language they all could understand. For a moment they seemed disposed to resist. But the big foreign doctor was already among them, his revolver barking with the rapidity of a machine gun, and at every spirt of flame a man went down. Behind him came a number of well-armed regulars, who had been detailed to convoy the ambulances. The irregulars broke and fled. But they carried away with them the head of every man of that little squad save the sergeant.

The broken leg with its great gaping wound was hastily bandaged and supported by splints. The torn shoulder and the cut head had the blood staunched. Then the unconscious man was placed on a stretcher and borne to camp to be cared for in the same hospital as the Chinese wounded.

As the line of stretchers moved down the ravine, the tri-colour could be seen floating over the crest of the mountain where the battle had been fought, and the French bugles could be heard sounding "_au drapeau_."

*XXXV*

*THE LANGUAGE OF PARADISE*

The war was practically over. The Chinese could not dislodge the French from Keelung. The French could not advance any farther into the country.

What had they gained for all their expenditure of blood and effort? They had not been able to make themselves masters of a single foot of ground at Tamsui. At Keelung they held the ruined town and the harbour, and some outposts two miles from where their warships lay. Beyond the range of their naval guns they could not go. For such barren results, all of which in three months' time they were to relinquish again, they had sacrificed fully one thousand lives of French soldiers and sailors, had disabled hundreds more through wounds and disease, and had killed an unknown number of Chinese, none of whom knew what the war was about.

It dragged on for another month and a half before the blockade was raised and hostilities ceased. Six weeks elapsed after that before Keelung was evacuated, and the French squadron and transports sailed away, leaving their silent city of the dead, their tale of killed and wounded and missing.

Through the month of March and half of April, Sinclair laboured on among the wounded of the Chinese army. He was their Life-Healer. By one of the strange ironies of life two of those Hakka tribesmen who had gone down before his revolver on the seventh of March, were brought to him for treatment, and he healed them. They looked with wonder, not unmixed with fear, at the big fair-haired foreigner, who had been so ferocious a day or two before. Now his touch was as gentle as it before had been terrible, and in his very word was healing. They did not understand. It was a part of the foreign devil's madness. It was a part of his magic.

But there was one over whom Sinclair spent more time than over any other. It was the big sergeant of the Foreign Legion. He was desperately wounded, and for a long time lay silently unconscious. From that stage he passed into one of delirium. Then he raved, sometimes in French, sometimes in German, sometimes in English, sometimes in a jumble of languages like the Babel of tongues in the famous corps to which he belonged. But there was one language which he used more than all the others, and when he used it, his voice was soft and his accents tender, like those of a child talking to his mother, or of a lover to his beloved. That language Sinclair did not understand.

Day after day, night after night, he sat by the wounded man's bed in the tent where he and Gorman had their quarters. Every moment he could get off duty among the Chinese he was at his post. There was something about this French sergeant which attracted him strangely. He was big and dark, with jet black hair and large, dark eyes. When he was wounded his face, save where it was covered by thick, black, stubbly whiskers, was tanned to a dark brown. But as the days and weeks of illness passed by, the sunburn faded from his face, and left his skin clear, almost to transparency. Then Gorman shaved him, "to make the poor craythur a little more comfortable loike." The fineness of the features at once struck Sinclair. Was it only fancy, or was it a fact that he had somewhere seen some one who resembled this man? He racked his brain to recall who it was, or where he had seen that expression and form of face.

"I can't think. But I know that I have seen that face or its counterpart somewhere."

The big dark eyes of the patient opened, and began to wander over every object in the tent. Then the wounded man began to talk. It was in the language Sinclair did not understand.

"I wonder would Gorman know anything of that," he said to himself. "He has a little bit of each of a score of tongues."

A native boy ran for the sergeant. He came quickly. The wounded soldier was silent when he entered, and Sinclair was afraid that he would not speak again. Presently his eyes began to rove around. Then he spoke in a low, soft voice, words of the unknown tongue. For a few moments Gorman stood silent with a puzzled look on his face, as if unable to get the sense of what was being said. Then with a sudden start he lifted his hands above his head.

"Be all the saints in glory, docther, do you not know that? It's what you'll have to speak whin you get to hiven. It's Gaelic. Not Irish, but Scotch! The man's a Highlander.... He's jist a bit of a gossoon ag'in, wid his mother croonin' over him and puttin' him to sleep, an' him not wantin' to go. Och, the poor bhoy! The poor bhoy! An' the divils had nearly cut off his head!"

Sinclair sprang to his feet, his face as pale as death, his whole frame trembling with excitement.

"Gorman," he said, with the slow emphasis of absolute conviction, "it's Miss MacAllister's brother."

"Be the love of God, docther, I believe that you are right."

"I know that I'm right, Gorman. It's Allister MacAllister. I was trying to place his resemblance to some one I knew. Now I know what that resemblance is. It is neither to Miss MacAllister nor her mother. It is something between the two. He has his mother's colour of hair and eyes, and form of face, with his sister's expression."

"Right you are, docther. An', docther, he mustn't die."

"He must live, if human power can save him, and God's mercy will spare him," was the solemn reply.

Half-an-hour later a speedy runner left for Tamsui, bearing a letter to Drs. Bergmann and Black, with an account of the case of the wounded Frenchman, a request for needed medicines, and the hope that one of them might be able to come over to the camp before Keelung for a consultation.

They both came. They held a consultation, spoke many kind words of what Sinclair had accomplished, and returned to Tamsui to tell of the most wonderful work they had ever seen accomplished by one doctor against such obstacles.

The day after they left, Sinclair sat by his patient in the tent by the river side. The spring sun was shining gloriously, drawing up the moisture from the saturated earth. The rippling of the river, the scent of the flowers, the song of the birds floated into the tent where the sick man lay. Sinclair had been looking out on the flowing water. Something drew his gaze towards the patient's cot. The large dark eyes were fixed on him, no longer wandering and restless, but intelligent, full of questioning and wonder.

"Where am I?" he asked in French.

"With friends," was the reply in the same language.

"How did I get here?"

"You were wounded, sergeant."

The last word seemed to help his memory.

"I remember. We had taken the fort on the Table, and were trying to capture Fort Bamboo, on the South Mountain."

"Yes, that's it."

"Did we capture it?"

"Yes."

"But some of us ran into an ambuscade in the bamboos."

"Yes, and you were wounded. I've been trying to fix you up again."

"Are you a doctor?"

"Yes."

"You are not one of the doctors of the Legion. I do not remember you. Do you belong to the Zephyrs or l'Infanterie de Marine?"

"To neither. I am a volunteer doctor. But you have talked enough. I do not want you to tire yourself. I want you to get better. You must go to sleep."

That afternoon General Liu Ming-chuan visited the hospital to personally announce that an armistice was likely to be arranged, to thank Dr. Sinclair for his invaluable services, and to tell him that both he and Sergeant Gorman were recommended for various buttons and rings of jade, daggers, and feathers of honour.

"Now," he concluded, "is there any request with which the honourable physician will deign to honour me, that I may have the pleasure of granting it?"

"There is, Your Excellency," replied Sinclair.

"Will the honourable physician name it?"

"That Your Excellency will graciously condescend to grant that the wounded French prisoner be handed over to me, that I may restore him to his aged father, of whom he is the only son."

"The honourable physician's request is granted; and may the young man comfort the heart of his father, and do honour to his ancestors."

A week later Sinclair and Gorman left the Chinese camp for Tamsui, carrying with them in a specially constructed litter the man whom they were convinced was the long-lost son and brother.