Chapter IV: Australian Gold

Li Ku Yu, for his part, put on the Double-eyed Peacock’s Feather, with a Marquisate of the First Rank, and other honours; and his government began.

Those of his enemies who had been captured were set free unpunished; those who had fled in all directions one by one crept back, and, to their utter astonishment, were left unpunished—Li Ku Yu too big and busy to think of punishing them.

It is true that under his rule very many fell; but the lingering death and dismemberment fell into disuse.

The men upon whom he meditated with a malign and silent eye were men of the harmless “scholar” sort, who thought that they knew a lot, but knew nothing—the official who chanced to quote from Confucius, or Mencius, or Jesus, or Buddha, from the Philosopher Chu or Chou, from Wang Hou’s “Admonitions to his Sons,” or “The Book of Ceremonies” of the Chou Dynasty: sooner or later that scholar’s neck would skip off him beyond the city walls; flashing was the falchion that slashed him; crude and ruthless the dawn of the morning of his execution: that afternoon he quoted no more.

One other man, too, stood in more ticklish danger than ever—the millionaire, whose wealth, when his head fell, could be confiscated. From this source alone the Empress was said to have accumulated in two years eighty million taels in the vaults of the Palace of Celestial Purity, where she was accustomed to govern behind the curtain of yellow silk that veiled her and her chief eunuch from the view of men.

Meantime, the cargo of ordered cinematographs had arrived—Li Ku Yu’s first open act of war against the Christian races.

He himself was head-master of one of the schools which he instituted to teach the use of the machines; he himself invented many of the “plots”—“plots” which had only one subject in infinite variety—a combat between white men and yellow, white women and yellow. And ever the yellow ended best man, disembowelling the colourless mouse, cutting out his or her tongue, bamboozling him in business, hacking out his heart, dancing on his carcass.

These films went out to districts of China and Japan where it was not even known that there were such things as white men; and, the entrance fee being only a few _li_, they soon proved popular apostles of atrocity, became a dissipation, an all-day orgy of fun to hundreds of millions—for Li Ku Yu intimately knew the mood and instincts of his countryman.

When the Embassies protested against these shows, and against the multitude of new “Government Gazettes” which had begun to promulgate the same two gospels of greed and cruelty, Li Ku Yu constantly promised that “the evil should be checked”; and advised them, meantime, to get permission to increase the strength of the Legation Guards!

About this time, when Count Markino, the Japanese Ambassador, said to him: “China must wake from four thousand years of sleep, Your Excellency,” Li Ku Yu answered: “Different degrees of wakefulness! China is awake! You know what woke her.”

“Tell me again,” the Count said, smiling.

“It was the gonging of the English guns that captured the hill forts above Canton in 1841: she stretched then. They thought themselves very big and godlike, capturing the poor Tartar General—and they _were_ ‘catching a tartar,’ as they say. It was the gonging of the guns in 1857 when the French and British bombarded the south coast: she rubbed her eyes then. It was the gonging of the French guns which shelled the junks in the Min River in 1884, and of the guns of all the globe which bombarded Peking in 1900: _tra-lar!_ she stood up then, and looked around. Beware who touches her! She is the Dragon and grand Anti-Christ: she stands awake.”

“Dreadful: if only the dragon had teeth in her gums,” said the other.

“Wait four months,” muttered Li Ku Yu.

Within those four months a beginning of Conscription on the Swiss model was made throughout China—a thing at which imagination fails.

It chanced that just then Germany and England were at loggerheads over an African tract; also, just then, Persia was afresh in some trouble with Russia; and some Russian squadrons at Resht were afresh ready to rush upon Teheran.

Now, since the Russo-Japanese war, the Persian fancy had rather been aburn at Japan’s Pan-Asian dream; and several secret Persian (as well as Indian!) missions had gone in pious pilgrimage to Tokio and Peking.

So Persia, in her adversity, now turned to Japan: for England, with Germany on the nerves, had been flirting with Russia ever since the Convention of 1907, and afresh shirked meddling in the Persian mess. Persia turned to Japan, asking “How long?” and Li Ku Yu flew to Tokio.

He had now more than all the weight and authority that he needed; being recognised, even in Europe, as the very greatest force in the Orient.

He was “Adviser to the Throne”; Viceroy of the Metropolitan Province.

He had dared to display apricot yellow in the hangings of his palanquin—a piece of cheek that caused him to be the idol of all Southern China.

Indeed, he had already assumed not a few of the airs of Royalty. To the amazement of men his name had “double-elevation” in documents. He pompously accompanied the Empress to the Eastern and Western Tombs, and dared to take a principal part in her sacrifices to river, or ancestor, or deity.

Moreover, the man pretended to magic, the rapt eye, Divine inspiration, and gift of miracles—a pretence made pretty easy for him to maintain by his intimacy with scientific things.

The Chinese believe that a Divine Saviour periodically arises for China: Li Ku Yu said: “Look into my brazen eyes, and see Him.”

On reaching Tokio, he now afresh proposed his “secret treaty”; and he proposed, in addition, the following plot:

(1) That China should apply for a German loan, offering as security a protectorate of Shantung—this to electrify the Anglo-German atmosphere.

(2) That the Persian Megliss, meantime, should be urged to knuckle under to Russia; and the Persian incident be used to bring about a (sham) _rapprochement_ between Petersburg and Tokio.

(3) That Japan should now openly declare that she really no longer needed all her warships, now that she lay happy on the breast of the Bear.

And (4) that she should then secretly offer to sell to Germany—which should end in Anglo-German war.

But again the international juggler failed.

The Japs, indeed, now agreed to the secret treaty: but as regards the sweeter part of the intrigue, although they grinned with greedy interest, they shook sagacious heads. There were dangers—and no hurry. Some other time.

Li Ku Yu said: “Wise men think in the future, but fools live in it.” He was very bitter in those days; called the Japanese by his bitterest word—“pedants”; and prepared to return to Peking.

He had still one rendezvous at the Foreign Office to keep, when one evening there came to him at the Embassy a cypher-cable from London—from Oyone, his Irish-Japanese—which said: “England gone wild to-night. Wonderful discovery gold Australia.”

Li Ku Yu slapped his sleeve; and he cried: “_Tra-lar!_ the tricky are even luckier than they are tricky.”

He did not keep his rendezvous at the Foreign Office the next day—was “ailing”; and he ailed eight days, until the still-coming news of the new Eldorado had well saturated the Japanese head.

Gold in “back-of-beyond country” of North-Western Australia on No Man’s Land! And no grudging Palmer’s Diggings, apparently, or niggard Coolgardie, granting a wage to the digger’s sweat, but, by all accounts, a Golconda, grounds rugged with nuggets, crags of gold, a coast of gold, with glancing sands!

Already within eight days of the first bursting out of the tidings, the world’s eyes were turned that way, the world purchasing kit-bags for the journey....

And Japan was padlocked out: her nationals had to write fifty words of English dictation, nicely spelled, before landing; captains were fined a hundred pounds for allowing a yellow man to escape to land.

“The fate of men and nations who delay!” said Li Ku Yu: “God, Marquis, will pardon every sin, except the unpardonable sin—the waste of time. _Cluck!_ let a man be bold to-day, and to-night all the stars will clap their hands at him, calling to him: ‘_You are one of us!_’ Really, I can’t think of a reason why this field of riches is not in Japanese territory to-day.”

The Chinaman now had the negotiation all his own way, as if he was dealing with dazed men: for the gold-find in Australia appears to have deeply digged at the greed of the little people of Nippon.

Among the high there were searchings of heart; to delight the low the _Ju Ju_ newspaper used the withering word “_cranes_” against the governors of its country.

Li Ku Yu flew back to China, chin up, smiling at the horizon—with pledges in his portfolio.