Chapter V: Part 5

These were the only signs of activity. The soldiers and cannon were the only indications of war. A great quiet rested over the beautiful landscape, a peace as cloudless as that summer sky.

Clang-clang! Clang-clang! Clang-clang! Clang-clang! Eight bells! Four o'clock! The brazen notes rang out from the _Hailoong_. Like an echo they were answered, only in silver tones as soft and sweet as those of a cathedral chime. Involuntarily one looked around for the church-spire and waited to hear the hymn tune come floating on the air. But there was no church, and there was no holy hymn. It was the bell of the trim little gunboat, _Locust_, resting out there on the bosom of the river striking the hour of four.

A group of white-clad figures appeared on the bright green of the consulate lawn. Other figures clad in white, men and women, were moving in ones and twos along the narrow road on the top of the hill or through the shrubbery of the consul's garden to join them. It might be a tropic land and a day of tropic sunshine. The natives of that land, all save those who were compelled to work, might be seeking shelter from the sun and waiting for the cool of the evening before again exposing themselves to its rays. But, like the sparrows from his home land, the Englishman could not rest. The sun had no terrors for him. If he had no work to do, he would have sport. The whole English-speaking population who could get away from their duties, whether residents or transients, were assembling for the afternoon game of tennis.

Yet they were not foolhardy in their exposure to the sun. They took precautions. Indeed, the striking thing about their sport was the trouble they had taken to make it comfortable and enjoyable.

The lawn, if it could not boast the carpet of green velvet which characterizes an English lawn, was well covered with close-set grass. In spite of the efforts of the great slugs to burrow it into holes and throw up pyramids of earth, daily rolling had kept it firm and smooth. A green wall of hedge, reenforced by wire netting, surrounded it. The big bulk of the old Dutch fort sheltered half of it from the rays of the declining sun. An oblong of sail-cloth, stretched between two tall masts, shaded the other half. The players had rarely ever occasion to be exposed to the sun. Chinese coolies, in the dark blue and red uniforms of the consul's service, two behind the players and two at the net, picked up the balls and handed them to the players. Long, comfortable settees and chairs, and a table laden with cool drinks, nestled against the hedge in the shadiest corner.

"Really, Mr. Beauchamp, this is the luxury of tennis. A canopy to shelter us! Coolies in livery to pick up the balls! I'm surprised that you do not have proxies to run for us, as they do in cricket when the veterans play. You really ought to have native boys to do the running."

"We're working on it, Miss MacAllister; we're working on it. Soon we'll be able to give it to the world. Brand new game! Tropical tennis! Latest thing in sport! Four players to a side! Two in the inner courts and two in the outer! Only two rackets to a side! Native boys in liveries of smiles and sunshine to carry rackets from back to forward players and vice versa, as occasion to meet the ball requires. Great discovery! Carteret and I are working on it."

"Magnificent, Mr. Beauchamp! Magnificent!" exclaimed Miss MacAllister amidst a burst of laughter. "You and Mr. Carteret will be catalogued with Columbus and Sir Isaac Newton among the great benefactors of the race. When will you be able to bestow it upon mankind? I do hope that it may be while I am here."

"It would have been before this, were it not that Carteret and I differ on a small point, a mere detail."

"And what is that?"

"I think it sufficient to provide the players with easy-chairs in which to rest between strokes. But Carteret wants them to be permanently suspended in hammocks, and that the balls must be so served as to enable the players to return them without arising from a reclining position."

There was a peal of laughter at the consul's little absurdity. Carteret joined in with the rest. But his pallid face flushed at the palpable thrust at his well-known indolence.

Commander Gardenier was unable to come. But his second in command, Lieutenant Lanyon, a young Irishman, was delighted to escape the routine of duty on board ship for a day ashore and the company of some attractive ladies. With the headlong courage of his race, whether in love or in war, he immediately asked Miss MacAllister to be his partner in the first set, without waiting to see if that were agreeable to his host, who was arranging the players. His frank, boyish, open-eyed admiration of his choice was so good to see that the consul, usually a bit of an autocrat in all such matters, laughingly accepted the situation.

"Carteret, will you take my wife as partner and defend the honour of the island? These two reckless young visitors have evidently taken it upon themselves to challenge the residents."

"Certainly, Mr. Beauchamp. I shall be delighted to have so skilful a partner as Mrs. Beauchamp. We shall endeavour to give a good account of ourselves. From their manner I should judge that our opponents are perfectly confident of winning."

He looked to where the young naval officer and Miss MacAllister were standing. They were already deep in conversation and apparently entirely oblivious to the rest of the company. He heard Lanyon say:

"By Jove! luck has come my way to-day. Little did I think when we were ordered to Tamsui that there would be such fortune before me as to meet any one like you. It does my heart good just to look at you."

Miss MacAllister laughed merrily.

"Do you always express yourself so frankly on so short acquaintance, Mr. Lanyon?" she asked. "I'm afraid that I cannot believe much of that. I think that you are Irish. You probably said the same thing to the last partner you had."

"By my soul, I did not. How could I? She was forty if she was a day, and ugly as sin."

His partner's laugh pealed out again. There was no resisting such an implication.

"Very nicely put, Mr. Lanyon. Now I know that you are Irish."

Just then Mrs. Beauchamp called to them:

"Come, come, Mr. Lanyon. I cannot allow this. You are monopolizing Miss MacAllister and delaying the play."

"By my faith," was the quick reply, "it's myself that would be mortial glad to monopolize her."

"Oh, Mr. Lanyon, this is shocking. On less than half an hour's acquaintance, too! If you say anything more like that I'll not be your partner."

"Then, if there's any danger of your leaving me, I'll take it all back with my mouth; but I'll think it in my heart just the same."

Carteret's pale face, a little paler to-day than usual, had the same expression of studied contempt as when he met Sinclair the evening before. His lips parted to utter some sarcastic remark when Mrs. Beauchamp interposed:

"It's your service, Miss MacAllister. Will you not begin?"

In a moment the lawn was animate with the quick-moving white figures of the players, and the blue and red of the attendant coolies. The contestants were all experts at the sport, and the set might have been prolonged indefinitely had it not been that Lanyon would not serve a fast ball to Mrs. Beauchamp. Again and again she assured him that she was quite capable of receiving a fast service and that he must not throw the game away. But the young lieutenant's Irish gallantry would not allow him to volley such balls at her as he drove at Carteret. On the other hand, the latter had no such scruples, but played to win. Consequently he and his partner did win rather handily.

When the set was over and others had taken their places, Carteret found an opportunity to engage Miss MacAllister in conversation as they were seated in the shade of the old fort.

"I was disappointed not to have the pleasure of being your partner," he said. "I had been looking forward to it all day."

Instantly there flashed into her mind the picture of him De Vaux had painted that morning at breakfast, and she could scarcely repress a laugh. She wondered to herself how much of the day he had been in a condition to think of her. But she answered readily:

"I should be very pleased to be your partner for a set, Mr. Carteret. There will probably be an opportunity later. You are an expert at tennis."

"We all ought to be experts in this place," he replied. "We get plenty of practice. Outside of office hours there are only two pastimes open to us--cards on wet days and tennis when the weather is fine."

"Why," she exclaimed, "I should not have thought that! From what I have seen of Tamsui, I think that it is quite lively. With dinners and tennis, with warships coming and going, with always the possibility of seeing a row among the Chinese or between them and somebody else, I think it must be really exciting living here. I should think that it would be great sport."

"You may think so, Miss MacAllister, from what you have seen of it. But the condition you have seen is quite abnormal. We do not have London merchants nor ladies from London drawing-rooms visiting us every week. Neither do we have the company of naval officers on ordinary occasions. Perhaps, if we had more ladies, we might have the attention and protection of our gallant seamen more frequently."

His voice had the sneering tone of the evening before. Miss MacAllister's eyes flashed ominously. He saw the danger signal and quickly changed the tone and the topic:

"Really, Miss MacAllister, as a general rule this place is beastly dull. There are so few to associate with. No matter how enjoyable their company may be at first, it simply becomes unbearable when you have no one else, don't you know?"

"Do you think that is a universal rule, Mr. Carteret?"

He saw that he had made a tactical blunder, beat a hasty retreat, and executed a flank attack:

"I assure you, Miss MacAllister, that I had reference only to those with whom one is forced to associate in the casual relations of life. We are not associated by choice, but by the caprice of fortune or by compulsion. And the realization of the compulsion makes the association the more unbearable. We get to hate the very sight of one another."

"I can quite understand that," she replied. "I learned that when I had to spend a year in a very select boarding-school, with a principal and teachers whom I hated, and not one girl of whom I could make a real friend. I was more alone than if I had been like Robinson Crusoe on his island."

He was quick to pursue the advantage:

"That is it exactly. I should be far less lonely if I were entirely alone or if I had only one companion, so long as that companion were congenial."

She looked sympathetically at him, but did not speak.

"That is the tragedy of life in the Far East," he continued. "That is why so many men take to drink."

She thought of the evening before and of what De Vaux had let out at breakfast. She said nothing; so he went on:

"That is why so many men become inveterate gamblers; why so many who came out with high hopes of accomplishing something end by committing suicide."

As he talked on in this strain, quietly, yet evidently with deep feeling, Miss MacAllister began to ask herself if she had not, in her own mind, judged this young aristocrat too harshly. Perhaps he was not so bad as she had thought him the evening before, when she had refused any longer to play his accompaniments. Perhaps there was some excuse for his being in the condition which De Vaux had blundered out to them that morning.

At any rate, he seemed to be revealing to her another side of his character. She had met him first as the graceful, polished man of the world, a little cynical perhaps, and yet so courteous in his manners towards her as to hide the unpleasant characteristics. She had noted his contemptuous attitude towards Sinclair, his look and tone of studied insult. She had caught a glimpse of the greedy, lustful expression in his eyes as he bent over her at the piano, and, before the evening was done, the leer of intoxication.

But here was another aspect which she had not looked for. Without appearing to seek sympathy, he was appealing to her feelings, and in spite of herself she responded:

"I had not thought of the life out here in that way," she said. "It had appeared quite fascinating to me."

"So it appears to nearly everybody at first. But after a while it palls upon them. At last it becomes unbearable."

"Then why do they not go home, or to Australia or America or somewhere else where they would be among their own people?"

"We are forgotten at home. We should be strangers there. And as for Australia or America, life out here unfits a man to succeed in lands where everybody must be his own servant and where there is no road to success but by hard work."

A little ray of comprehension shot into Miss MacAllister's mind. It was with a touch of impatience that she answered:

"But, Mr. Carteret, you do not mean to say that you have been long enough here to unfit you for work anywhere else. If you do not like the life, why do you stay here?"

"_Pro bono familiae_," he replied with a bitter laugh. "Because of the affection of my beloved elder brother."

"The consul tells me that he enjoys himself here," she said, avoiding any discussion of his family affairs. "He says that there is very good shooting and some of the best sea-bathing he has ever experienced."

"He is welcome to the shooting, tramping over the hills and through the rice fields in a climate like this. As for the bathing, any pleasure in it is spoiled by the walk home in the heat afterwards."

At that instant the consul, who was playing, returned a ball with such a screw on it that after falling in his opponent's court it bounded back over the net. His opponent, in a mad effort to return it, plunged headlong into the net and fell. In celebration of which achievement the consul threw his racket high in the air, turned a handspring, and ended up by reversing himself and walking across the court on his hands, with his feet in the air.

"Splendid, Mr. Beauchamp!" cried Miss MacAllister. "Brilliantly done! Especially the gymnastic performance!"

"Right-oh, Miss MacAllister!" exclaimed a deep voice behind her. "The consul is acrobat enough to make a shining success as a sailor man."

It was Captain Whiteley, come up to drink a cup of tea and say good-bye before casting off for Hong-Kong.

"Oh, Captain Whiteley, I'm so glad to see you before you go! But what is this I hear? You have let your doctor go off to Keelung to carve Chinese, and perhaps be carved himself. I am surprised at you."

"Not my fault, I assure you, Miss MacAllister. He was bound to go. He is of age. I could not restrain him."

"I think it is just splendid of him to go. That is the sort of thing I admire in a man. If I were a man, that is what I should like to do."

"I am awfully glad, Miss MacAllister, that Sinclair has at last done something which pleases you. I was beginning to be afraid that you were offended with him past the possibility of reconciliation."

She looked at him sharply. His face was lamblike in its innocence, but his eyes were twinkling.

"That will do, Captain Whiteley. You have said quite enough."

The telltale colour deepened in her face, and her mother, who was talking to Carteret nearby, heard and saw, closed her lips tightly, and sniffed.

The little party of white-clad players were still on the lawn when the _Hailoong_ moved down the river, zigzagged her way through the field of mines, and once well beyond the bar steamed straight out over the motionless sea in the path of red-gold light from the setting sun. It seemed the breaking of the one link between them and the outside world. In the soft stillness of that evening in the Orient, London with its mud and smoke, its roar of traffic, its drab colours and familiar, unromantic life, seemed so far away that it might have belonged to another world.

Strange to say, it was not of London that Miss MacAllister was thinking. Again and again she surprised herself thinking of the big, fair-haired Canadian doctor. She tried to picture to herself his surroundings amid the sick and suffering, the men torn with shot and shell. She could not help contrasting them with the peaceful environment of the consul's tennis party, where men had been enjoying themselves in the company of the ladies, and incidentally emptying long glasses of whiskey and soda or sipping tea.

She recalled the looks of the man himself, his clean-cut features, straightforward gaze, his good-humour even when she was badgering him, and the hearty, boyish laugh when he and McLeod were plotting some mischief together. Involuntarily she contrasted him with the cynical discontent, the weary air and self-pity of the man with whom she had talked that afternoon. If Sinclair could have known her conclusions, he would have been well content.

*XVI*

*SERGEANT WHATISNAME*

But Sinclair did not know. Perhaps at that moment he was not thinking much about her. He was just entering on his long night's work among the wounded. Every power of mind was concentrated on the problem of those pain-racked human beings and how to relieve their sufferings.

And yet ever and anon, when he had finished an operation and his mind relaxed as his hands almost mechanically followed the familiar process of bandaging, a picture floated before his eyes. It was only a transparency, through which he could see every line of the brown limb or body he was binding up with care But it was as clear to him as though it had been done on canvas by the brush of a painter. It was the picture of a proudly-carried head, with a crown of brown hair, a beautiful oval face with rich colour, dark violet eyes dancing with fun, and full red lips parted in a teasing laugh, which made the hot blood tingle in his face at the very memory of it.

As the days passed by he had more time to think of that face. The first strenuous days over, the pressure on his time and strength relaxed somewhat. A number of the greatest sufferers died. But in the majority of cases the singular toughness and marvellous recuperative power of the Chinese seconded his skilful surgery. Many a man who, if he had belonged to any Western nation, would have been invalided home, never to be able to rejoin the colours, in ten days or two weeks' time left the hospital and returned to his regiment. There were but few wounded being brought in. The French were unable to advance beyond the shore line. The Chinese were unable to dislodge the French from the foothold they had obtained. Consequently, for nearly a month after the bombardment there was little fighting.

The weather, though exceedingly hot, was not unhealthy. In any case, those who might be sick preferred to go to their own doctors for medical treatment. While they acknowledged the superiority of the foreigner in surgery, they unhesitatingly maintained that their own physicians were unequalled in their knowledge of medicine.

The most common disease was the ever-present malarial fever. It was caused by two devils--the negative devil who industriously fanned the victim to give him chills and the positive devil who worked a furnace overtime to give him his spells of fever. As the foreign surgeon was a stranger to the country and supposed to have little acquaintance with those diligent devils, the preference was given to the incantations of native priests or the indescribable decoctions of native doctors.

As a result, Sinclair's duties had grown lighter every day. The service, which at first had taxed to the utmost even his splendid strength and vigour, had become less and less arduous, until, except for the necessity of living on native food, he had come to look upon it as a sort of picnic. Most of the dressings and all the preliminary examinations of new cases he was able to leave to his assistants. Dr. MacKay had gone to visit his converts at various places where bands of freebooters, taking advantage of the disturbed state of the country, had thrown themselves upon the defenceless Christians, robbing, maltreating, torturing, and sometimes putting to death. But he left behind his student companions, whose knowledge of dressing wounds and giving simple treatments and acting the part of nurses, relieved the surgeon of much of his burden.

But it was principally on Sergeant Gorman that he had learned to rely. Every day revealed some new capability in that versatile Irishman. It was, however, in drilling and instructing an ambulance brigade that his capability was most evident. He was a master of the art of teaching men any form of military drill. But he was more than that. He was a born leader of men. Sinclair marvelled at the rapidity with which these uncouth, chattering Chinese peasants, who never by any accident had kept step for a dozen paces, and who never ceased their jabbering at any command given by their own officers, were reduced to silence and mastered squad and stretcher drill. They were raw material to begin with. Some of them were worse. The Chinese officers had drafted into this service some of the roughest characters in their regiments, to be rid of them. Yet these, who were accustomed to threaten to shoot their own officers when an unwelcome command was given, gave absolute and prompt obedience to this red-headed foreign devil, whom they had never seen till a few days before, who spoke their language imperfectly, and carried no weapon save a bit of a withe he had cut for a swagger-stick.

As Sinclair looked on he could not help but wonder at the shortsightedness and snobbery in the British army, which made officers of callow youths who knew nothing of war or leadership, and many of whom never would, and refused a commission to a man like this, whose mastery of men amounted to genius.

The middle of the month had passed. It was drawing towards sunset of a hot August day. The two men who had already grown into a fast friendship were out where the courtyard of their improvised hospital opened on the bank of the river. One of the wings and a clump of bamboos sheltered them from the still ardent rays of the sun. The evening breeze was just beginning to breathe along the river.

Dr. Sinclair was stretched on a long, bamboo reclining chair, which had been sent him from the headquarters of General Liu Ming-chuan. His hands were clasped behind his head. He was looking up at the sky, where an occasional fleck of cloud was changing from white to gold and crimson in the light of the sunset. In his white trousers, white canvas shoes, white negligee shirt, open at the neck, and with the shadow of a smile playing about his eyes and mouth, he looked the very personification of whole-hearted content. Sergeant Gorman was sitting opposite to him on a camp-chair of his own construction, smoking a short dudeen.

That afternoon General Liu Ming-chuan, accompanied by his staff, had paid a visit of inspection to their hospital. With a frankness and candour which could not be misunderstood, he had commended the work they had done, and on his own behalf and that of China had thanked them for their services. While his visit and appreciation were pleasant to them personally, it meant more than that. Henceforth there was to be no more of the open opposition they had experienced from the native doctors and priests, and even from some of the officers. It was no wonder that Sinclair was feeling well content.

"Do you know, Gorman, this job suits me fine. If I could get a permanent sit at something like this, with enough salary to live decently, I think I could be happy."

"An' if you do," replied Gorman, dropping back into the brogue as he always did when he was in good-humour, whether fighting or chatting with a friend--"an' if you do, wud you jist kape me in moind as your furst assistant?"

"That I would," replied Sinclair. "I do not know how I should get along without you."

"Begorra, an' it's glad I am to hear you say so; for it's more p'ace of moind I have here than iver I've had since the furst toime me mother-in-law came to bliss me home wid her prisince--since she furst beamed upon us like the sun thr'u' a gatherin' storm."

"The only thing which catches me here is the grub. I do not like this Chinese chow."

"Faith thin, it seems to like you."

"How's that?"

"You're gettin' fat on it."

"Do you really think so?"

"Bedad and I don't think so. I'm sure of it."

Sinclair solicited tested the tightness of his belt; lazily raised himself and examined it to find out at what hole it was buckled.

"Afraid you're wrong this time, Gorman. Not getting it round the waist anyway. Buckled in the same hole and not a bit tighter than before.

"Thin you're gettin' it round the jaws of you. Checks and double chin loike a howly father starvin' in Lent."

"Surely it's not so bad as that! I'll have to get more exercise. Nothing like training to keep down flesh. Run four or five miles of a morning. That's what will do it."

"Bedad thin, if that's thrue, that American gineral the Chinese have must have run all the way from Ameriky. Did iver you clap your two eyes on such a split-the-wind?"

"He sure is thin," replied Sinclair in the idiom of his native land. "As we used to say in Canada, he'd be handy to send on an errand down a pump."

"Faith," replied the Irishman, determined not to be beaten in exaggeration, "the pump would need to have a good valve or he'd leak out."

"You have it," laughed Sinclair. "I'll quit."

"Now, what do you make of him, anyway?"

"New England Yankee by his twang. Vermont by his build. Been in the South by his pronunciation of some words. But when he swears Montana is written all over him."

Now, if that isn't divilish cliver of you to spot him loike that! Now, isn't it? But did ever you hear such a name? Silas Z. Leatherbottom! Be the powers, if I had a name loike that, I'd change it or die in the attempt. Silas Z. Leatherbottom!"

"It would have been a mighty handy name to have had when you were under the Wallopin' Master," retorted Sinclair.

"Whisht now, docther dear. It's unfeelin' of you to call up painful memories. May the saints forgive me, but I cannot sit comfortable an' think of him."

Sinclair's boyish, care-free laugh rang out as Gorman left his camp-stool and began to pace restlessly up and down, making grimaces and gestures, half vengeful, half humorous.

"Be the powers of Knocktopher, but it wud be a pleasure jist to be twishtin' this bit of a shtick about the big body of him. The yells of him wud be the sw'atest music in me ears, barrin' always the lament at me mother-in-law's wake."

"Egskews me, gentlemen" (with a marked emphasis on the "me"). "Egskews me for intrewding on yewr private deliberations. But I had a leetle proposition to make to one of yew gentlemen, an' I reckoned thet yew wouldn't object to me droppin' in on yew t' talk it over."

"Certainly not, General Leatherbottom," replied Sinclair, rising to receive him. "We are delighted to have you call. Have a seat."

Sergeant Gorman had clapped his swagger-stick under his left arm, clicked his heels together, stood at attention, and saluted as if by instinct.

"Naow, by the Jumpin' Jemina, thet's what I call neatly done. Thet's whar yew Britishers get away on us. When it comes to fightin' we kin fight. Don't take no second place to ennybody I ever met, an' I've met some few in my time. But when it comes to takin' Indians or niggers or Chinks in hand lickin' them into shape, an' teachin' them haow to fight civilized thet's whar you've got us beat to a stand-still."

He was a tall man, a very tall man, two or three inches over six feet. But he was narrow-shouldered slab-sided, and marvellously thin. His small head seemed lost in a great cavern of a sun-helmet. A long, faded, yellow moustache drooped over the hollow cheeks and angular jaws. He sat down on the proffered camp-chair, hitching a holster containing a huge .44 Colt round a little more to one side, to allow him to sit back with comfort. His legs were so long that his knees stuck up at an acute angle. When he threw one over the other, they were so thin that they seemed to twine around each other in serpentine fashion.

He accepted a pipe, lighted it, leaned forward with one sharp elbow on a sharp knee, the hand helping to hold the pipe in his mouth as he talked. The other arm was across his knee and the long, bony hand hanging down.

"Ef yew gentlemen will egskews me, I'll make my proposition, an' we'll perceed to bizness. But fust I'd like t' give yew a leetle of my auttybiography, so's yew'll understand the sityewation."

With many quaint oaths and ingenious expletives, he told how he had served as a private in a Vermont infantry regiment in the Civil War, had been wounded and taken prisoner. After the war he had drifted into the cavalry and been engaged in Indian wars in the Dakotas and Montana. He was with Benteen's companies when Custer and his three hundred were massacred by the Sioux under Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. Then he had turned miner, and after much experience in the Black Hills, as well as in Montana and Idaho, had drifted to Formosa and had been engaged in developing gold workings but a little distance from where they sat when the war broke out.

"An' naow, gentlemen, I'm a general of brigade in the service of His Imperial Majesty of China, gettin' 's much dust in a month 's I could in a year of minin'. An' thet's why I am fur the time bein' a dewtiful subject of His Imperial Bigness.

"Mebbe yew'll b'lieve me, I hev seen sum fightin'. An' I ain't partiklar ef I see sum more. An' I hev idears whar t' plant an army, an' haow t' plan a defence or lay a trap. But this bizness of drillin' Chinks so's they'll walk t'gether, an' shoot t'gether, and dew what they're told without all talkin' at once like the sisters at a meetin'-house sewin'-bee, an' all gettin' tied up into a gol-durned tarnation tangle, thet's what knocks the spots off yewrs trewly.

"Naow, gentlemen, my proposition is thet the sergeant here jest step over with me to General Liew, an' take service with him till the end of the war. The general was mighty pleased with thet ar ambulance corpse of yourn. He'd make you a kurnel, second in command of a brigade. An' the spondoolix! Lots of it! Got it to burn! More'n a candidate for congress at election time! Money don't count with him no haow. Ef yew lick these ar Chinks into fightin' shape, I'll plan the campaign an' we'll whale those _parley-voos_ into the sea in no time. Then we'll get a concession an' the gold mine. Naow, what dew yew think of thet?"

"That sounds pretty good, sergeant," said Sinclair. "It looks like a chance for you.

"Thet's what I call a putty payin' proposition. Will yew take it?"

"Thank you, sir; I think not."

Leatherbottom opened his small, light-blue eyes as wide as the cavernous depths of their sockets would allow, removed the pipe from his mouth, and spat far out into the river:

"Naow will yew tell me haow it is thet yew will not take on a payin' proposition like thet? Dew yew forget the spondoolix?"

"I do not, sir."

"Then, will yew tell me why?"

"I have fought for twenty-four years under one flag. There is only one other that I would fight under."

"I presyewme thet is the stars and stripes, the flag of the Yew.S.A.?"

"It is not, sir."

"Then, will yew tell me what flag it is?" asked the general in evident surprise.

"The green flag with the golden harp, the flag of a self-governing Ireland!"

"But there ain't no army 'lowed to carry sech a flag."

"Then, till there is, I'll still fight under the old flag and the old queen I have served more than half my life."

"An' yew air an' Irishman?"

"Yes, sir."

"An' a Roman Catholic?"

"I am, sir."

"Wall--I'll--be--gol--durned!"

Sergeant Gorman's moustache and eyebrows fairly bristled. The little, shrewd blue eyes of the Indian fighter were quick to notice it:

"Egskews me, sergeant; I ain't meant no offence. 'Twas only thet I had been informed thet the Irish will hev a Fourth-of-July celebration the day the Yewnion Jack gits out of thet ar island fur good."

"Then you were misinformed, sir."

"Wall, I reckon it's a case of live an' l'arn. When I was t' hum I thought the Yew.S.A. were putty near the hull thing. When I came out here I putty soon found out they warn't. When I was in our country, a-listenin' to the politicians, I thought every Irishman was jest thirstin' fur the blood of the English. I came out here an' naow yew tell me they ain't. Will you egskews me? I hev sum things t' l'arn yet."

"Certainly, sir. We all make mistakes."

"Thank yew. But why yew'd refewse t' change yewr flag when yew knew thet the spondoolix was sure, thet beats me. Oh, wall, I reckon every man has his own way of lookin' at things. Say, doctor, whar's the elder?"

"Do you mean Dr. MacKay?';

"Sartin."

"Oh, he left several days ago to visit some of his converts. I guess the heathen have been roughing things a bit and making it hot for the Christians. He went to see if he could help them out."

"Do he carry weepons?"

"I believe not."

"Wall, thet beats all. I've seen some putty nervy things. I've seen whar Custer an' his three hundred rode slap-bang into Sittin' Bull an' his red devils on the Little Big Horn, an' got skulped, every man of them. But they hed guns an' hed a chance. But t' go out among these ar yellow heathen, when they're rampagin' fur the blood of furriners, without so much 's even a .32 t' put the fear of God into them thet's what I call temptin' Providence. It's givin' Providence a chance t' let them dew their durndest and save itself the trubble of interferin'."

The sun had gone down and the moon had taken its place riding in silver radiance across the cloudless sky. General Leatherbottom rose to go. Sinclair and Gorman accompanied him through the hospital to the street door. A squad of the sergeant's ambulance corps, who were on guard, presented arms with the precision and unity of European veterans.

With democratic freedom the general thrust his long, bony hand first into Sinclair's, then into Gorman's:

"Never seen the beat of thet ambulance corpse of yourn, fur the time yew've had 'em. But, by the Jumpin' Jemina, I'd like to hev seen yew lickin' the regiments of my brigade into shape."

*XVII*

*WOLVES AND THEIR PREY*

The end of August found the French and Chinese in the same state of impasse. As a consequence there was little bloodshed, and few wounded were being brought into the hospital. If it had not been for the shocking carelessness of the Chinese in handling firearms and explosives, there would have been almost none. Time began to hang somewhat heavy on the hands of Dr. Sinclair and his assistant.

"Getting mighty slow here," he remarked to Gorman one day.

"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."