Chapter IX: Part 9

"Oh, no, Donald, you mustn't!" she said, in a little alarm, as she felt the big muscles against which she leaned swell with sudden passion. "You mustn't. Leave it to me. Mother is determined. But I can be determined, too. And father will not let me be pushed too far."

"I'll do whatever you want.

"Thank you, Donald. If mother knew now that I had let you speak to me of love, she would never forgive me. But she will change. There is something coming which will change her. I do not know what it is. But I know that it is coming. We are Highland, you know. It is the second sight."

The lovers sat for a while longer. Then she looked at her watch:

"Oh, Donald! Do you know that we have been here nearly two hours?"

"It seemed to me like five minutes," was the reply.

She gave a merry laugh and said:

"If time always passes so quickly, we'll be old before we know."

"I wish that I could be sure that the days after you leave would only pass as quickly," he said, a trifle sadly.

"They'll pass, Donald. I'll be thinking of you, and you'll be thinking of me, and the days will go. But what will Mr. McLeod be thinking of us, that we have stayed here so long? And isn't it strange that none of the Chinese boys ever came into the saloon in those two hours?"

Sinclair laughed his happy, boyish laugh.

"Trust McLeod!" he said. "Probably he could explain the prolonged absence of the boys, as well as his own."

She looked at him archly.

"I am not sure now that I have done wisely in giving you my undivided love, Donald. I am afraid that I am not getting the same in return. I am really jealous of Mr. McLeod."

The method of his reply need not be described. She was satisfied with it. And when they stepped out and met McLeod on the deck he knew without being told.

*XXXI*

*ANCESTORS AND PEDIGREES*

The last night of the stay of the MacAllisters in Tamsui had come. They were to sail for Hong-Kong on the _Hailoong_ the next day. With them were going Mrs. Beauchamp and Constance, Mrs. MacKay and her children, Mr. and Mrs. Thomson, Carteret, Clark, and a number of others of the foreign community. The consul had ordered that all the foreign women and children should leave North Formosa. A number of the men who had no taste for the scenes and chances of war were going with them. Mr. MacAllister feared the possibility of a blockade and so chose to go to Hong-Kong, where he could freely prosecute his search.

As there had been on the evening after their arrival, so there was the evening before their departure a dinner at the consulate. This time the guests left early. Many of them were preparing for a hasty departure. They knew that their hostess had likewise much to occupy her time for the few remaining hours. Sinclair had gone on board the _Hailoong_ to have a farewell talk with McLeod. Sergeant Gorman, who had been dining with the second officer and the second engineer, joined them by their invitation. They were sitting on the after deck, sheltered from the raw wind of the northeast monsoon. The conversation drifted from point to point of recent events. McLeod and Sinclair led Gorman on to tell in his inimitable way incident after incident, while they laughed like a pair of schoolboys out on a frolic.

"You never told me, sergeant, how you got along with Miss MacAllister and Carteret the day you saw them safely home after the charge of the Tamsui Blues."

Gorman cocked an eye at Sinclair, with an expression which was irresistibly comical.

"I knew that it wud come," he said. "You did nobly, docther. You held your whisht for a full week. But I knew it wud come."

"That's all right, Gorman," replied Sinclair, laughing to hide a little confusion. "That's all right. But that's not the subject under discussion. You tell us how you enjoyed your walk."

"How did I enjoy it? How could I do anything else but enjoy it, wid the young lady talkin' to me, and askin' me questions about me experiences in the wars, an' about the camp and the hospital at Keelung; and the two bright eyes of her lookin' at me so friendly loike. Fwhat kind of a man wud I be that wudn't enjoy it?"

"So the young lady talked to you all the way home?" said McLeod.

"Yes," said Gorman with a wink at McLeod, which distorted all one side of his face, "she didn't know that I was a married man."

McLeod laughed gaily at Sinclair. The latter took Gorman's banter good-naturedly. He could afford to be indulgent.

"How did Carteret take your monopolizing her?" he asked.

"He tould me that it wud become me to have less to say in the prisince of me betters. 'Begorra,' sez I, 'barrin' her young ladyship here, there's none of them prisint that I can see,' sez I. 'An' whin it comes to savin' young ladies from General Soon's Tamsui Blues, be the powers I haven't been seein' me betters around here, exceptin' Docther Sinclair, may the angels make his bed in glory,' sez I. Wid that the young lady fires up and sez, 'The divil a bit of it,' sez she. 'We don't want the doctor to go to glory yet,' sez she."

"What! What! What's that, Gorman!" exclaimed McLeod, while Sinclair was fairly shrieking with laughter. "You don't mean to tell us that Miss MacAllister said that--'the divil a bit of it.' Did she say that?"

"Och, Mr. McLeod, now you're spoilin' me story. If she didn't say that in so manny wurrds, she thought it annyway. An' fwhat's the difference? But I'll take me affydavit on it that she did say that she didn't want the docther here to go to glory yet. An' I'm jist tellin' the docther for his comfort, for be that sign, they were very encouragin' wurrds."

"Did Carteret try to sit on you again?" inquired Sinclair when they ceased laughing.

"He did. 'Sergeant,' sez he, 'you're too free with your tongue. Your company is offensive,' sez he. 'You may consider your services dispensed with. And I shall consider it my duty to report you to the consul.' 'Bedad,' sez I, 'if you had been a little freer wid your courage, you wudn't have needed me company. As for me services,' sez I, 'I'm not under your orders. I was sint to see this young lady safely home,' sez I. 'An' I cudn't think of lavin' her in your care, for fear you might chanst to meet a fieldmouse by the way, an' you moight run, an' lave her to be devoured by the feroshus wild beast,' sez I.

"Wid that the young lady tuk to laughin' an' laughed so that I cudn't finish wid the spalpeen for sayin' that he'd report me to the consul. I was jist goin' to be afther tellin' him that afther a consultashun together wid the consul, I had decided to deport him from the island. But the young lady sez, sez she, 'Mr. Carteret, if I wish to talk to Sergeant Gorman, I do not see why you should object. I hope that you will not interfere with him again, and I'm sure that Sergeant Gorman will not say anything more to offend you.'"

"Then the rest of your walk was quite peaceful and agreeable," said Sinclair.

"It was," replied the sergeant. "You see the young lady and I talked all the rest of the way. An' that spalpeen of a Carteret was as paceful as you plase, walkin' on the other side of her, kind of sulky an' hang-dog loike, for niver another wurrd did she say to him."

"You must have enjoyed it, for I never before knew you to take so long a time on so short an expedition."

"Och, docther, I wudn't have thought it of you. But seein' that it's troublin' you, I'll just make your moind aisy by tellin' you that I wasn't wid the young lady all the toime. Part of it I was wid her mother."

"Did Carteret tell her mother what had really happened?" asked McLeod.

"I hadn't the honor of hearin' what he did tell her. But she wasn't jist taken wid it, for she asked me to wait, an' afther the spalpeen was gone, she tould me to step in, for she wanted to have some conversashun wid me. 'Wid pleasure, ma'm,' sez I. 'Sergeant,' sez she, 'are these water-buffaloes dangerous to people?' 'That all depinds on the people,' sez I. 'But are they not very ferocious beasts?' sez she. 'Ag'in that depinds,' sez I. 'If there's a bit of a shillelagh wid a man behind it, they're as p'aceful as lambs in spring-time. But if there's nothin' but a paint-brush, wid a good-for-nothin' omadhaun at the back of it,' sez I, 'thin they bate Bengal tigers.'

"Wid that she got very red. 'Mr. Carteret's a gentleman,' sez she. 'Maybe,' sez I. 'He's well-born,' sez she. 'The divil,' sez I."

"You would say that," interrupted McLeod.

"Och, Mr. McLeod, there you'd be afther spoilin' me story agin. An' now that you call it to me moind, I didn't say that nayther, seein' that it was a lady I was talkin' to. Fwhat I did say was this, that I didn't know that he was anny better born than the rest of us; an' though I did not remember much about the occasion, I always onderstood that me own mother, considerin' her opportunities, had brought me into the wurrld jist about as nately as a duchess could have done.

"Wid that she gave a bit of a laugh, an' sez, 'No doubt, Sergeant Gorman! But I didn't mean it just that way,' sez she. 'I meant that his ancestors have been men of rank and noble birth for generations.' 'As for that,' sez I, 'I don't take much stock in me pedigree,' sez I. 'A man don't go far wid his ancesthors till he foinds wan he'd loike to trade off for some wan else. But seein' that they are both dead an' done wid, he can't do it convaniently. To illustrate, I'll jist tell your ladyship how it happened to mesilf,' sez I.

"'Wanst whin I was in Indy, I tuk it into me moind to go home to Ireland an' hunt up me ancesthors. I came to me birthplace, Sleeahtballymackcurraghalicky in County Cork, an' tould the ouldest man in the place who I was an' what was me business. "Yis," sez he, "yis; I don't know you; but I've hard of you, an' I knowed your fader. Your name is John Gorman. Your fader's was Shon Jay Pay. His fader was Shon Mor. An' his fader was another Shon who was hanged by the English for bein' a Rory of the Hills." 'An', ma'am,' sez I, 'wud you believe me, I didn't pursue me ancesthors anny farder--shure as I'm a livin' man. I didn't pursue me dead an' gone ancesthors anny farder.'

'But,' sez she, wid a little laugh, 'Mr. Carteret's ancestors were not like that. They were noblemen. His father is an earl. His oldest brother is the heir. But his father is an old man, and cannot live long, and the heir has only one lung, and when he dies, Mr. Carteret will succeed to the title and the estates.' 'Well, ma'am,' sez I, 'if it's my opinion you want, it's this. The heir shud trade off his wan lung wid an auctioneer for his two, an' give him L100,000 to boot. For it's little honor will be done to the title, an' little profit to the estates, if that spalpeen of a Carteret gets thim,' sez I, 'beggin' your ladyship's pardon for talkin' so freely in your prisince.'

"Thin she got very red agin. Afther a bit she sez, 'Thank you, Sergeant Gorman, for your opinions,' sez she. 'Here's a guinea for you.' 'Thank you, ma'am,' sez I, 'but I'm nayther a lawyer to be sellin' me gab for money, nor a beggar to be takin' charity,' sez I. 'I'm the son of an Irish gentleman.' Wid that she looked at me kind of curious loike, an' sez, 'Pardon me, Mr. Gorman, for offering it to you. But just the same I want to thank you for your services to my daughter and to me,' an' she reached out her hand an' shook hands wid me rale friendly loike."

When Sinclair, McLeod, and Gorman separated that night, Sinclair saw before him the possibility of a change of attitude on the part of Mrs. MacAllister towards Carteret and himself.

*XXXII*

*A MAN AND A WOMAN.*

The day of departure had come. The _Hailoong_ was floating on a full tide, ready to cast off. Those who were remaining were down to bid farewell to those who were going. Impedimenta had been stored away, and all had gathered in two groups on the promenade deck. Dr. MacKay, his wife and children, Mr. and Mrs. Thomson, and a number of native students and preachers, formed one group. The Beauchamps, the MacAllisters, Commander Gardenier, Boville, Carteret (for the residents still called him by the name by which they had known him all along), and most of the young men of the customs and mercantile staffs, formed the other.

Dr. Sinclair, who had been busy helping in the hasty preparations for departure, walked forward along the side of the deck next the dock. Miss MacAllister disengaged herself from the little group and stepped to the rail, as though to watch the last incidents of the embarkation. They met on the very spot where they had stood that memorable evening on which the _Hailoong_ put out from Amoy to face the capricious seas of the Channel.

What a change had come in their relations! They knew that many eyes were watching them. Their words, if spoken above a whisper, would be audible. There could be no demonstration, scarcely even a sign of understanding or affection. Yet there was the attitude of perfect confidence. And when their eyes met, they spoke a language which both understood.

"This scene must have grown very familiar to you in the last two and a half months," he said.

"Yes," she replied. "For that reason one is apt to pass over many of the features of it without noting them. I want to impress on my memory every detail."

"Isn't it strange," he said in a very low tone, "that this little port in a strange land, should so quickly have become a sacred spot to us?"

"The most sacred spot in all the world," she replied softly.

Some one called to them, and they both turned at once, and stood side by side facing the company.

"What a magnificent-looking pair they make!" exclaimed Mrs. Thomson, in a sudden enthusiasm forgetting that the voice would carry to the ears of all present.

"Was that what you called us to hear?" Miss MacAllister flashed back. "It certainly was worth while. Do you not think so, Dr. Sinclair?" She laughed gaily, a little defiantly, for she had seen the expression on her mother's face.

"I certainly do. And I'm proud to shine with the reflected light of beauty," he replied.

"Oh, you! You are worse than they are."

She turned hastily to the rail again, to hide her blushes. Her mother set her lips very tightly together, lifted her head very high, and sniffed. She was more intent than ever on forcing her daughter to marry Carteret. Whatever doubts of his suitability to be a good husband she may have entertained, had vanished with his actual succession to the title. A peerage can cover a multitude of sins.

"All aboard!" rang out in English and Chinese. Men sprang to the hawsers to cast off. At that instant a sedan chair, with sweating bearers on the run, reached the dock and was dropped at the end of the gang plank. An unusually pretty Chinese girl of seventeen or eighteen years, richly dressed, and bearing in her arms a child of a few months old, stepped hastily out of it, and ran for the gangway as fast as her bound feet would carry her. One look at the child was enough to learn its story. Almost as dark as a Chinese in complexion, the features were distinctly European. It was a Eurasian, the child of a European father and an Asiatic mother.

At the sight of the sedan chair Carteret had turned abruptly from the group on deck, and had run down the ladder. The next instant his voice was heard by those who leaned on the rail, speaking, not loudly, but in tones of restrained fury.

"Put that woman off. Don't let her on board this boat," uttered to the accompaniment of savage oaths.

"Stand back, Mr. Carteret. It is not for you to say who will be a passenger on this boat. This woman has money to pay her passage, and she has the same rights as you have. Make way there."

It was McLeod's voice, clear and cold and hard as steel.

Sinclair and Miss MacAllister did not look at each other for some moments. The others on the deck heard only very imperfectly what was said below. Some of the men talked continuously and loudly, so that the women might not hear. When Miss MacAllister's eyes did meet Sinclair's, they had in them such a look of confidence and content that the memory of it never faded from his mind.

There was no opportunity for them to speak such farewells as their hearts craved. Once she had the chance to whisper,

"I'll be thinking of you, Donald, and you'll be thinking of me."

His answer was,

"And I'll come to you, Jessie, though all the world try to keep us apart."

As the general farewells were said, Constance Beauchamp shook hands with Sinclair gravely, sedately; stood for an instant irresolute, and then with a movement as light as that of a fawn, sprang into his arms, clasped hers around his neck and kissed him again and again, before them all. She had another parting boon to bestow.

"I am going away where I can't see you, Dr. Sinclair. You may get your hair cut whenever you wish. But keep one of the curls for me."

And Miss MacAllister looking on, felt no jealous pang.

Amidst waving hats and handkerchiefs, the _Hailoong_ swung out into the stream, and started on her voyage, with her strangely assorted freight of humanity, going to their various destinies. Among those surely none were more tragic than the destinies of a man, of a woman, and of their child. He was bound for an English earldom, and a seat in the House of Lords. She was to drift into a native brothel, frequented by the degraded of all nationalities, in the great cosmopolitan port of Hong-Kong. Their child was to grow up in the streets of that tropical city, a nameless, mongrel waif, never to know his father's face, till he should stand as his accuser before the judgment seat of God.

*XXXIII*

*MY CHILDREN IN THE LORD*

"Dr. MacKay, you are not well."

"I know that, Dr. Sinclair."

"You have a temperature, I'm sure. Have you taken it?"

"No."

"How's that? I thought that you were careful to watch your health. You told me that you could not afford to be sick."

"So I am, as a rule. But I could not take it this time till my wife left. She would not have gone if she had known."

"You should have gone yourself. The strain has been too much for you. Knowing the shape you are in, why didn't you take a trip to Hong-Kong, or at least to Amoy, and rest a while?"

"That would be to play the part of a hireling shepherd. 'He that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth, and the wolf catcheth them and scattereth the sheep. The hireling fleeth because he is an hireling and careth not for the sheep.'"

Sinclair was silent while he counted the pulse, and awaited the report of the thermometer. When he looked at it, his face was grave.

"What is it?" asked MacKay. "You need not hesitate to tell me. Is it high?"

"Too high for a man to have and be walking about. One hundred and three and four-fifths."

"If it were malaria, I should not mind. I have worked for days on the East Coast with an average of one hundred and three. But this is not malaria. I cannot be deceived in it. I know malaria too well."

"Where is the trouble?"

"In my head."

"So I thought. We must get you to bed. I'll send a chit to Bergmann. He is your doctor."

That was the beginning of the fight for life. MacKay was battling with all the determination of his nature against cerebral meningitis. The battle was not very long, but it was exceedingly sharp. By his bedside all the time sat one or other of the three doctors. This stern, reserved, intensely concentrated man had won their respect and admiration, and no effort was spared to save his life. Native students, trained in the elements of nursing, glided noiselessly in and out of the room. Over at the college, where the native preachers, elders, and students assembled, a continuous prayer-meeting was in progress, these yellow and brown-skinned men who "ain't got no souls," praying with the simple faith of little children that their beloved pastor might be restored to health.

On the white bed in the middle of the room, beneath its drapery of mosquito curtains, MacKay's burning head turned ceaselessly from side to side, day and night, day and night without sleep. And day and night, day and night he talked, talked, talked, sometimes in English, sometimes in Chinese, talked without pause or cessation about his converts, the church which he had brought into being.

"My people! ... My people! ... My children in the Lord! ... Who will take care of them? My sheep! ... My poor sheep! ... Left without a shepherd! ... Who will feed them! ... My little lambs! My little lambs! ... Who will protect them from the wolves? ... O God! I commend them to Thee! ... My children! My children in the Lord!"

One day the raving suddenly ceased. Sinclair, startled by the unwonted silence, stepped to his bedside and threw back the curtains. MacKay was sitting bolt upright in bed. The fire of the fever was still in his face and eye. But his voice was perfectly natural, his manner calm and collected.

"Dr. Sinclair, what shall I do for my people? If I die, there is no one to take care of them. Mr. Thomson is not able now--perhaps never will be able. No person could come from Canada for a year, and when one would come, he would need another year or two for the language. Some of the native preachers are able, but none of them have authority to take the lead of their fellows. What shall I do?"

"Do not worry about that now," replied Sinclair soothingly. "There is the Good Shepherd still to lead His sheep. Leave it to Him. It is for you now to recover your strength."

"I am resolved what to do," MacKay went on, as if without noticing Sinclair's reply. "I shall ordain A Hoa and Tan He,[#] the two ablest of the preachers. That will give them authority to lead their brethren. That will make them pastors, shepherds of the sheep. It's irregular, I know. A presbytery should ordain. I'm not a presbytery. It's unusual. But unusual circumstances demand unusual methods. If I live, the church lawyers at home will crucify me for it. If I die, they'll condone my action, praise me in public, and scarify me in private. But neither their praise nor their blame can touch me then."

[#] Pronounced, Hay.

"The church lawyers be hanged, hanged in their own red tape!" exclaimed Sinclair savagely. "They have never seen anything but their own little parishes, and they think their tuppenny parochial rules can be applied to the whole world."

"I know, Dr. Sinclair, I know. What saith the Scripture? 'Where there is no vision the people perish.' But I am resolved that my people shall not perish.... Leng-a," he said in Chinese to the student nurse, "call A Hoa and Tan He to come here. Call all the other preachers, the students and elders to come at once."

In a few minutes the room was full of native Christians, while others stood in the hall on one side, or out on the verandah on the other. Briefly and impressively MacKay explained to them the need and his resolve, charged the two preachers to accept the holy office, asked them the prescribed questions, and then, when they had knelt beside his bed, he laid a hand upon the head of each and reverently, solemnly said in Chinese,

"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.

Of their suspicions concerning him, the wounded man knew nothing. He indeed knew where he was and how he came to be there. He knew that he had been a prisoner in the Chinese camp. He knew that he had been cared for and his life saved by a Canadian missionary doctor and an Irish sergeant. He knew that instead of leaving him in the hands of the Chinese, they were taking him to the foreign settlement at Tamsui, until he should be strong enough to rejoin his regiment. But for any hint they gave or aught he suspected, he was nothing to them but Sergeant Alfred Melnotte, of the 3d Company, 4th Battalion of the Foreign Legion, reported by his company commander as "_disparu_," missing.

When he reached Tamsui and was installed in a large, airy room in Dr. MacKay's house, where the soft April winds blew in, where he lay and luxuriated in a great white bed, with its canopy of mosquito curtains, such luxury as he had not known for years, he wondered at the kindness of these strangers. But to them as to all the other residents of Tamsui, he was just "the French sergeant, Sergeant Melnotte."

*XXXVI*

*AN APPARITION*

In Hong-Kong the winter had passed in such a round of gaieties as the colony could afford. There were balls and dinner parties, state and private, afloat and ashore. There were cricket matches and military reviews in the city. There were races and golf, and more cricket matches and picnics at Happy Valley. A company of players of more or less excellence, going from Australia to England or America, from time to time came by way of Hong-Kong, and perhaps for a week drew astonishingly large houses, considering the smallness of the European population. There were excursions to Macao, and trips to Canton.

Mrs. MacAllister entered with the utmost zest into the social life of the great southern city. Although never at ease in society, always revealing to the practised eye that she had not been accustomed to it in her youth, the continual attendance at all manner of functions, the association with people supposed to be of social standing, had become her ideal of happiness. In the sumptuous apartments her husband had taken in the hotel, she entertained lavishly. Her wealth covered all defects of education and training. Perhaps the majority of those she met in the social life of the colony were not so much better bred than herself. And those who were, accepted her bountiful hospitality, and did not laugh at her till her back was turned.

Then she had far more compensating circumstances than most who have to depend on their wealth for admission into society. Her husband was keenly intelligent, well-informed, and perfectly at home anywhere. Her daughter was strikingly beautiful and accomplished. The accepted suitor for that daughter's hand was an earl. How could any colony be expected to resist such a combination as that? Hong-Kong simply surrendered at discretion.