Munroe Kirk
The Blue Dragon: A Tale of Recent Adventure in China
CHAPTER XXIX
JO HEAPS COALS OF FIRE
Turner, crack shot of the American marines and one of the best men in the corps, was buried. Rob laid a wreath of flowers, twined by Annabel Lorimer, on his coffin, and then went back to the wall, where he was on guard duty at the eastern barricade. A drizzle of rain had fallen since early morning. The Fourth of July of 1900, as celebrated by Americans in Pekin, had not been a particularly happy or enjoyable day.
When Rob relieved the man who had taken poor Turner's place on guard, the latter said:
"There's some chap down below there in the southern city who has bothered me a good deal. He keeps calling out, 'I-ho!' or something of that kind, every few minutes, and has been at it for more than an hour; but I can't get a sight of him or even locate him."
"Like this?" asked Rob, at the same time leaning over the parapet and uttering clear and loud the Hatton Academy call.
"Yes, that's exactly it," answered the marine. "How did you know? There he goes now – "
The answer had been prompt, but still no one likely to have given it could be discovered. While they watched and speculated a Chinese arrow came flying up from some unseen bow, and fell on the wall just within the barricades.
"It was only a trick to get a pot shot at us!" exclaimed the marine, disgustedly; but Rob picked up the arrow, wrapped around which he found a sheet of thin paper. It was, as he had hoped, a note from Jo, that read as follows:
"Dear Rob, – Don't worry. Everything will come out right side. You have plenty friend in Pekin, among them Prince Ching, who tells that the spirits of air are protect you, and orders them fired at. I have fire-gun at Ha-ta tower, but only blank cartridge. Make plenty noise, and all body is please. Many big gun cannot be use, for fear shoot over and kill Chinese on other side. Now say can starve you out. If you want send letter Tien-Tsin, drop it over wall same place to-morrow, sun dark, and I take it."
From the foregoing it will be seen that Jo's ability to write English was not equal to his conversational fluency in that same tongue; but his letter was readily understood, and gave great satisfaction to the few persons in authority among the defenders, who shortly afterwards were made acquainted with its contents.
Repeated efforts had been made to get news of their situation to the outside world, but thus far all the messengers had been captured or turned back. Now, with renewed hope a despatch, descriptive of the situation in Pekin, and imploring speedy relief, was prepared and given to Rob Hinckley for transmission.
At sunset he again stood at the appointed place on the parapet, and with the first gathering of dusk a low but distinct call of "Hi-ho!" came up to him from the dark shadows at the foot of the lofty wall. His tiny message, folded in oiled silk and weighted with a bit of brick, already was attached to a thread, by which it was promptly lowered. Then came a slight jerk on the thread, and he pulled up the broken end to satisfy himself that the little packet really had been taken.
After this incident the siege dragged wearily on, with frequent skirmishes and constant firing on both sides, but with no decisive advantage to either. The death-list received almost daily additions, and the hospitals became filled to overflowing. To the heats of the summer season were added flooding rains that necessitated a constant repairing of washed-down defences. Thus weary days lengthened into tedious weeks, and the weeks formed themselves into an unbroken month of siege, before anything hopeful happened. Then came a white flag from the Tsung Li Yamen, with a note signed "Prince Ching and others," asking for a cessation of firing that negotiations for the departure of the foreigners might be renewed.
This proposition being accepted, active hostilities on both sides were suspended for a period of three weeks. During this interval the inmates of the legations were as closely confined to their lines as ever, and hardly a day passed without more or less rifle-firing.
In all this time there was no word from Jo, nor any proof that the precious message intrusted to him ever had been delivered. There were rumors, filtering through Chinese sources, that Tien-Tsin had been captured, and that a great foreign army was marching towards Pekin; but these rumors could not be verified, and as firing on the legations, especially at night, was again begun, the situation appeared more hopeless than ever.
Shortly before daylight, on the 10th of August, a furious fire was directed against the legations, beginning at the southwest, or Russian corner, and rapidly extending around the entire circle. While it was in progress, Rob Hinckley, who again was stationed on the wall, thought he heard the signal cry of Hatton Academy coming from the direction of the Ha-ta watch-tower. The noise of the cannonade and the rattle of musketry were so tremendous that he could not be sure, but he ventured an answering cry, and then breathlessly listened. Yes, there it was again, not loud, but distinct, and apparently close at hand. Rifle-bullets from the Ha-ta tower were sweeping the wall and thudding against the tough bricks of the shelter behind which crouched the Americans.
"Don't shoot, men! I am going out!" cried our lad. As he spoke he leaped the low barricade and ran to the outer parapet, from which the call had seemed to come.
"Jo!" he shouted. "Jo! where are you?"
"Here I am, Rob," came in feeble tone, and in another moment the young American had found his friend crawling weakly in the partial shelter of the parapet, but at the very end of his strength.
Somehow Rob got him behind the barricade, where he lay panting.
"What is it, old man?" cried his friend, bending anxiously over the exhausted and pitiably emaciated figure. "Are you sick, or wounded, or what? Did you get through to Tien-Tsin? Are troops on the way?"
Jo's eyes were closed, and he barely breathed; but his lips moved, and Rob caught the whispered words:
"Army most here. Look, leg bandage, Rob, dear friend – "
That was all, and Chinese Jo never spoke again. The last great, self-imposed duty of his life had splendidly been performed, but at what expense of suffering never can be known, for in the turmoil of the days immediately following his heroic death he was forgotten. Afterwards General Gasalee, commanding the relieving army, could only say that he had given several despatches to as many messengers, with the hope that at least one of them might be got through. The one borne by Jo was found hidden in a blood-stained cloth bound around one of his legs. It was a brief note from the commanding general, stating that an allied force of twenty thousand men, British, American, Japanese, and Russian, were fighting their way towards Pekin, and making such steady progress that they expected to be at Tung Chou, only twelve miles away, on the 12th, and to reach the capital by the 13th or 14th.
This, the first reliable news received from the relieving army, was hailed with extravagant joy by the long-imprisoned inmates of the British Legation, and for hours the bulletin-board on which it was posted was surrounded by a dense throng of all nationalities, many of whom could not read English, while some could not read at all, but all anxious to see the blessed words that promised them speedy safety.
The story of Chinese Jo's bravery was told from mouth to mouth until all knew it; and when, that evening, his poor, emaciated body, covered with mute evidences of his sufferings in the form of livid scars and unhealed wounds, was laid to rest in the legation grounds, his funeral was the most largely attended of any during the siege. Although it was not a military funeral, the guns of his own countrymen, firing upon those he had given his life to save, thundered a requiem alike for him and for the dying era of Chinese national life that was about to close.
Again Rob Hinckley and Annabel Lorimer stood together at an open grave, and as they turned away at the conclusion of the simple but solemnly impressive ceremony of committal, the latter said, with tear-choked voice:
"I think he was the bravest boy I ever knew."
"He certainly was," replied Rob, "and also he was the best friend I ever had."
When Sir Claude Macdonald first read the welcome despatch from General Gasalee, and at the same time heard that its bearer was dead, he exclaimed: "What a pity he could not have lived to take back a plan of the city walls, showing the best place of entrance!"
A little later this regret became generally expressed, but it did not reach Rob Hinckley's ears until the day after Jo's funeral. Immediately upon hearing it, he went to the American minister and offered his own services as a messenger to convey any desired information to the approaching army.
At first the minister refused his consent. "The southern city, as well as the country between here and Tung Chou, is crowded with the enemy," he said, "and for a foreigner, or even for a native messenger, to attempt a passage through them would be to court an almost certain death."
"My friend gave his life for us," replied Rob, simply, "and he was a Chinese who had been badly treated by Americans. What he did any American ought to be willing to do. Besides, I believe I can get through. He taught me how to travel in China as a Chinese, and now, if ever, is my chance to profit by his lessons. Please let me go, sir. If I am killed, it will only be one life lost; if I get through, the information I can give about the water-gate may save thousands of lives."
That night a Chinese beggar, apparently old and on the verge of starvation, clad in the filthiest of rags, and with a scanty, unkempt queue coiled in slovenly manner about his half-shaven head, hobbled, by aid of a stick, towards the low water-gate, under the Tartar City wall, that carried off the surplus water of the imperial canal. This gate nominally was closed by iron bars, and in times of flood was impassable; but now there was little water flowing through it, and it was only choked with black mud. Above it was that section of the city wall held by American marines.
Fumbling in the darkness of this almost-forgotten water-gate, the beggar found a bar so rusted and worn by age that he could force a way through. When he emerged on the other side of the wall he was covered with black, vile-smelling mud. It rendered him so disgusting an object that even a Chinese could not tolerate his presence, and, whenever he approached one with a whining plea for alms, he was driven away with blows and curses. Thus he wandered on from group to group, through many streets, until he came to a gate in the eastern wall of the southern city that was guarded by a troop of Chinese cavalry. These amused themselves by teasing him, until, at length, one of them, tired of the sport, said:
"Oh! Put him outside, and let the old bag of bones go to the foreign devils. They will stuff him full of bullets and make him fat."
So the gate was opened a little way, and the beggar was thrust through it at the points of a dozen spears, some of which pricked him cruelly. Thus driven from the city, he continued his way, walking more strongly now than he had before, over the great stone road leading to Tung Chou.
With sunrise there was borne to his ears the startling sounds of heavy firing in the east, the boom of field-artillery, the rat-tat-tat of machine-guns, and the sharp, volleying crash of musketry. Then came the roar of a heavy explosion, and he felt the earth tremble as though from a distant earthquake. Fugitive Chinese soldiers, many of them wounded, began to appear and hurry past him. A little later, as they threatened to throng the highway, he withdrew to a cluster of ruined mud-huts marking the site of an abandoned village. Here, desperately weary, he flung himself on the ground, and almost instantly fell asleep. An hour or two afterwards he awoke and cautiously peered from his shelter. The highway was deserted, and, regaining it, he again pressed on towards Tung Chou.
At length, the city wall was so close at hand that he could hear bugle-calls sounding beyond it. As he eagerly listened to the familiar notes, a rifle-shot came, without warning, from a ruined village similar to that in which he had rested. The beggar was spun half-way round, and felt a stinging sensation in his right shoulder. A moment later half a dozen Japanese soldiers, forming a scouting party, sprang from the ruins and ran towards him, laughing at the sorry figure he cut. One of them drew a pistol and was about to put him out of the misery indicated by his appearance, when, to their amazement, he shouted to them in a language that they knew to be English:
"I am American! Take me to General Chaffee!"
After a parley he managed to make them understand, and shortly afterwards he stood in the presence of the stern-featured, keen-eyed American commander.
"Well, sir! Who are you? What do you want?" demanded the general.
"I have just come from Pekin with this plan of the walls, sent by the American minister, and my name is Robert Hinckley," was the reply.
The words were hardly uttered when an officer, who had been writing in another part of the room, sprang to his feet and confronted the disguised lad with incredulous eyes.
CHAPTER XXX
THE CAPTURE OF PEKIN
Captain John Astley, of Z Battery, Light Artillery, U.S.A., had thought often of the lad who had crossed the Pacific with him, and when he received the order to proceed with his battery to China he wondered if, by any chance, he should again meet his young friend. In the rush of events that followed Rob was quite forgotten, until a strange coincidence brought his name so prominently to the front that it was mentioned almost daily. Captain Astley even hoped to find the lad in Pekin, and had anticipated the joyful recognition that would accompany their meeting. Now, therefore, as he sat writing in General Chaffee's temporary headquarters, near the Tung Chou gateway, blown up by the Japanese that very morning, the name uttered by the Chinese beggar under examination instantly attracted his attention.
"I beg your pardon, general," he said, "but this person has just mentioned a name well known to me. Have I your permission to question him?"
"Yes; question all you please," replied General Chaffee, who already was absorbed in the plan of Pekin walls and the accompanying description of their weak points that had so opportunely come to him.
"Can you possibly be the Rob Hinckley who crossed the Pacific to Manila in the transport Logan last March?" asked the artillery officer, eagerly, of the wretched-looking figure that, trembling with weakness, stood before him.
"I am, sir; and you are Captain John Astley, of Battery Z," was the reply.
"Good Heavens, Rob! It seems impossible; and it is absolutely incredible that any human being could be so completely disguised and so utterly changed. How in the name of – ? But I won't ask a question, though I am nearly choked by a thousand that are clamorous for utterance. There is a dear friend of yours somewhere outside, and I must bring him in, so that all of us may hear your story together. General – "
Here the speaker said a few words to the commander in so low a tone that Rob could not catch them, and hastily left the room.
In less than a minute he returned, accompanied by an excited but puzzled-looking gentleman, clad in semi-military uniform, who, hastily saluting the general, turned immediately to where Rob still was standing.
"Here he is, my boy!" cried Captain Astley, exultingly. "Your own daddy! We found him in Shanghai fretting his life out over his lost family, and brought him along as battery surgeon. But, hello! What's the matter? Why don't you rush into each other's arms? Do you need an introduction?"
Father and son were staring curiously at each other.
"Is it possible that you are my own little Rob?" gasped the former.
"Are you really my father?" interrogated Rob, gazing doubtfully at the white-headed man who now was said to be the same young, dark-haired parent that had bidden him farewell in America years before.
"If you are Rob," continued Dr. Hinckley, huskily, "tell me what has become of my wife – your mother. Is she alive or dead?"
"She is alive and safe in Cheng-Ting-Fu."
"Thank God! Thank God!" cried the overjoyed man, with tears rolling down his cheeks. "But, Rob – Good Heavens!"
With this he sprang forward and caught the lad, who was tottering and evidently about to fall. Loss of blood from his wound, strain, excitement, and exhaustion – all had done their work – and everything swam before his failing sight as his surgeon-father gently laid him down.
The next day, when the relieving army, which had fought its way mile by mile from the distant sea, made its final dash for Pekin, Rob Hinckley followed it in an ambulance, tossing and muttering incoherently in the unconsciousness of a high fever.
Within the city the excitement on that memorable 13th of August was intense. Foreign guns thundered against its massive walls and stout gates from noon until dark, while from the lofty battlements swarms of Chinese sharp-shooters replied with so furious a rifle-fire that none dared cross the death-swept zone.
Inside the walls the bombardment of the legation defences was continuous all that day and all through the night that followed. Nor were the besieged foreigners silent; but through the long hours the baying of their Nordenfeldt gun, the vicious barking of their Colt's automatic, the growl of "Old Betsy," the Chinese six-pounder that they had found and converted to their own use, and the sharp yelping of their rifle-fire were heard unceasingly.
During the morning of the 14th the bombardment of the city was continued, the Japanese being held at bay outside a stoutly defended eastern gate, which they only succeeded in blowing up and carrying after dark that night. At the same time the Russians were caught in a death-trap at the next gateway on the south, where they easily had forced the outer gate, but could make no impression upon the inner. Here their chief of staff was killed, and many of their men, before they extricated themselves and retired to a safe distance.
After that the Americans tried the same entrance, stormed it, scaled the lofty wall, charged down the inner ramp, gained possession, opened the gate, and found themselves inside the southern city. From this point they fought their way through a net-work of alleys and streets, swarming with Chinese riflemen, to the water-gate beneath the Tartar wall, concerning which Rob Hinckley had furnished them with information.
In the mean time the British column, assigned to a gate still farther south, had the marvellous good-fortune to find it undefended. So they simply marched in, traversed the southern city, taking possession of the Temple of Heaven en route, made their way to Rob's water-gate, waded through its mud, and, to their own amazement as well as that of every one else, found themselves not only in the heart of Pekin almost without having fired a shot, but within the lines of legation defence as well.
The first officer of the relieving army to pass through the water-gate was Major Scott, of the 1st Sikhs, and with him were four of his men. Then came General Gasalee and his staff, followed by the Sikh regiment, the 1st Bengal Lancers, a detachment of Welsh fusileers, a field battery, the Hong-Kong regiment, and a detachment of Royal marines.
A few minutes later came the Americans, cheering their flag and their weary comrades, who for two months had held the wall. They also came through the famous water-gate that Chinese blindness had failed to obstruct. General Chaffee led the way, and he was followed by five hundred marines, the 14th and 9th regiments of infantry, two Hotchkiss guns, and Battery Z.
The siege of the legations was ended, the relieving army was in possession of Pekin, the Empress Dowager, together with the Emperor and the whole imperial court had fled, and the ill-advised, savagely brutal, but long-continued effort to drive foreigners from Chinese soil had come to an ignominious ending. Had China been united, the struggle might have been prolonged for years, though it never could have succeeded; but China was "a house divided against itself." Out of the eighteen provinces only three took part in the movement, the others being either opposed to it or indifferent as to its outcome.
The Empress Dowager, who hated the very idea of reforms based upon foreign models, was opposed by the Emperor, who desired them. The prime-minister, Prince Tuan, bitterly anti-foreign, found his schemes opposed by Prince Ching and the ever-politic Li Hung Chang. The bloody Kwang-su general, Tung-Fu-Hsang, who thirsted for the blood of foreigners, was thwarted in his plans for their destruction by the more wary General Jung Lu, who ordered his troops not to kill any more than they could help.
So Pekin fell, almost without a struggle, and for a year afterwards the city was misruled and looted by foreign soldiers, who destroyed many of its most beautiful structures and carried away its most precious works of art. From it also they ravaged the surrounding country, sending out punishment expeditions to kill, burn, and destroy in every direction.
In the mean time the American troops had been followed into the city by a train of the biggest army wagons ever seen in China, each drawn by six huge mules, and by a number of four-mule ambulances, one of which brought Rob Hinckley. From it he was transferred to a hospital, where he lay for weeks with no knowledge of his surroundings or of what was happening about him. Then one day he opened his eyes and looked into the face of his mother.
Of course he knew that this was a dream, for all things were but dreams with him now, so he wearily closed his unreliable eyes and went to sleep. The next time he opened them he again saw his mother's face, bending lovingly, but oh! so anxiously, over him. This time the dream lasted until she gently kissed his forehead, and he heard her say: "Please, dear God, don't take him from us!" Then he knew that he was awake and must make haste to get up, because it troubled his mother to have him lie there. Besides, it was very silly not to be able to raise his hands. A little later it occurred to him to wonder if he were in Cheng-Ting-Fu, or, if not, how it happened that his mother had come away from so safe a place into one so full of danger as Pekin.
By-and-by they told him all about the expedition that, accompanied by his father, had been sent down the road from Pekin, how terribly it had punished Pao-Ting-Fu for its murder of missionaries, and how it had gone on to Cheng-Ting-Fu to find all the foreigners who had taken refuge behind its brave walls safe and unharmed. He learned of his parents' joyful reunion, and how they had hastened back to Pekin and his bedside. Gradually, too, he was told the thrilling story of his father's escape from the dreadful city of Tai-Yuan, of his perilous wanderings through Shan-Si and Ho-nan, until finally he found himself on a branch of the Han River, down which he floated for many nights in a skiff to Hankow. From there he was taken on a United States gun-boat to Shanghai, where he met Mr. Bishop, the engineer, and learned that his boy had plunged into the very heart of the storm of wrath then centring about Pekin.
During his days of convalescence, while Rob was learning of all these things, he saw much of the Lorimers, who had refused to leave Pekin until assured that the lad, to whom they felt they were so largely indebted for their own safety, was himself out of danger.
Then the two families left the city in which they had suffered and endured so much, and travelled together over the reconstructed railway to Tien-Tsin, where they took steamer for Shanghai. There Rob found his trunk, together with the money due him for services rendered, that had been forwarded from Canton by Mr. Bishop. He also found several letters from the engineer, who had learned so highly to appreciate the lad's pluck, manliness, and ready resource during the long journey they had taken together that he now offered him a permanent and well-paid position on the proposed American railway.
About this same time Mr. Lorimer, who was president of a great American life insurance company, offered Dr. Hinckley the post of chief medical examiner in China for his company, which was about to extend its operations into that country.
It is almost needless to say that both these offers were promptly accepted, and before the Lorimers took steamer for America and the last stage of their eventful journey around the world, Dr. and Mrs. Hinckley were already settled in the Shanghai house that was to be their future home.
Rob left them there when he went to Canton to assume his new duties; but he rejoins them in July of each year, when father, mother, and son go together to Japan for a happy month among its life-giving mountains.
The strong friendship cemented between Annabel and Rob during those terrible Pekin days has since been maintained by means of frequent letters, and both await with eager anticipations the autumn of 1904, when the Hinckleys are to revisit their own country and join the Lorimers on a trip to the World's Fair at St. Louis.
In talking it all over, Mrs. Hinckley often exclaims: "How wonderful are the ways of Providence!" and whenever Rob hears her speak thus, he adds:
"Yes, mother, and how splendidly were the designs of Providence carried out by Chinese Jo!"
