Beleaguered in Pekin 3

Beleaguered in Pekin 3

Hu mildly endeavored to interrupt him several times by telling him that

the railways were all Chinese property, and the foreign employees were

their Empress’ own employees; but Chao drowned Hu’s every utterance so

that the old man, after several attempts, was, perforce, obliged to

keep quiet until the irate colonel had exhausted himself and sat down

blowing like a porpoise.

 

[Illustration: PAGODA NEAR PEKING

 

In and around Peking are to be seen many specimens of noble

architecture; among which is this beautiful Pagoda, built hundreds of

years ago. Such buildings are not erected now, and in some instances

they are found standing almost solitary and alone, miles from any great

city.]

 

I knew Hu was very unwilling that I should hear all of this speech,

which he realized I would perfectly understand, and I felt sure he

regretted having brought along a surgeon versed in Chinese.

 

To me it was a revelation. I had heard that the Mohammedan troops from

Kansu, under the famous general Tung Fu Hsiang, were ordered to Peking

immediately after the _coup d’état_ to support the Empress in her

anti-foreign policy. I had heard that they were fanatical, ignorant,

and intensely hostile to foreigners. But that they would dare to insult

the Empress, in the person of a special commissioner appointed by

imperial edict, and reveal the purpose of their general in such open

language, and that before a foreigner, I would scarcely have believed

short of the testimony of my own ears.

 

Hu realized that it was useless to attempt to argue with or conciliate

these men, and at once set about the object of his visit, as yet

unachieved, namely, to find out the condition of the wounded soldiers.

 

So, upon Colonel Chao’s finishing his diatribe, he politely turned to

General Chang, without further noticing the enraged colonel, and said:

 

“I have been told two of your men have been wounded by one of the

foreign engineers, and as I have a very skilful surgeon in my employ,

who attends to all the people who are injured on the railway, I have

brought him along to examine your men, and if you will permit him I am

sure he can heal them.”

 

He then introduced me as Man Tai Fu, my Chinese title. They sullenly

acknowledged my presence, for the first time, by a slight nod in my

direction, and General Chang asked Hu if he had an interpreter who

could converse with me.

 

“Oh, he doesn’t need an interpreter,” replied Hu; “he has lived in

China fifteen years, has sons and daughters born here, and speaks our

language like a native.”

 

Upon this, my nearest neighbor, Lieutenant-Colonel Wang, relaxed a

little, and observed that he had never talked with a foreigner, and

would be glad to make my acquaintance. I replied that it was a mutual

pleasure, and asked his age, province, and personal name, which pleased

him greatly.

 

As it was rapidly growing darker, however, and we had not yet seen

the wounded men, Hu cut short our budding conversation by requesting

General Chang to show them to me.

 

He curtly declared, “They are in camp half a mile away, and he can go

and see them if he wants to.”

 

“Will you go?” inquired Hu.

 

“Yes, if you will go with me,” I replied, not caring to venture alone

into the hostile camp, especially after what I had seen of the temper

of their leaders; but I added, “I think it would be much better to have

them brought here.”

 

“Yes, yes, that is better,” said Hu; but General Chang interrupted him

by saying:

 

“Impossible! they are too ill to be moved, and on this cold day would

surely take cold and die.”

 

“Have them well wrapped up and brought quickly,” said Hu, without

paying attention to the interruption, “for it is getting late, and

although I have ordered the city gates not to close until our return

to Peking, I am anxious to avoid keeping them open any later than

necessary.”

 

General Chang then strode across the room to the door opening into the

court, where upwards of three hundred of his men were standing packed

like sardines, listening to everything we had been saying, as Chinese

custom is, and shouted out:

 

“Bring the two wounded men in here.”

 

Now all of the men had seen Governor Hu snubbed, had heard Colonel Chao

revile him and his railroads, and had heard their general say the men

would die if brought out in the cold; so, supposing they were to act

in a similar way, they, upon receiving this order, held a confab, and

a very noisy confab, too, among themselves for a few moments before

replying.

 

As I watched Governor Hu’s face grow pale as the commotion increased,

I felt that we were in real danger right in the midst of the officers,

and that my previous view that I could insure my own safety by

threatening Hu’s life would avail nothing, as they hated him as much if

not more than myself. I could plainly see that I must change my man,

and make the general my target if the necessity arose.

 

Then a voice shouted out from the soldiers almost the exact words of

the general.

 

“They cannot be brought here; the exposure would kill them.”

 

Chang looked at Hu to see what effect this had upon him, but Hu was no

coward, and calmly replied:

 

“They must be brought if it kills them; by Her Majesty’s commission, I

demand it.”

 

The general was bluffing; he sullenly gave in.

 

“Bring those men at once, dead or alive, you scoundrels,” he shouted

stentoriously, “and in a hurry, too!”

 

“Aye, aye,” responded a hundred throats, and a number of men left the

courtyard at once.

 

The camp must have been some distance away, for it was over half an

hour and nearly candle-lighting time before the two men, each carried

on a litter on the shoulders of six men, were brought in.

 

The first man was covered up in blankets, and pretended to be

unconscious; but he proved to have no fever, had a slow pulse, and

absolutely no wound but a scratch at the lower end of his right

shoulder-blade, which might have been made by a finger-nail, or

possibly by a pistol-ball grazing the skin.

 

The hypocrite Chang bent over me as I was examining, and asked in a

voice of pretended sympathy:

 

“Is he badly hurt? Can he recover? And how long will he be ill?” to

which I replied:

 

“Not badly hurt; he will recover; and I will guarantee he is all

right day after to-morrow if you will send him at once to my railroad

hospital at Fengtai.”

 

I said this, thinking that the British minister in Peking, Sir

Claude MacDonald, might be glad to get hold of these men for proper

punishment, and that if they were in the hospital at Fengtai they could

easily be obtained; otherwise I would have ordered this man to be

dismissed at once as shamming.

 

The second man also pretended to be much worse off than he really was,

but he did in fact have a small bullet-wound in his shoulder, from

which I extracted with forceps a fragment of blue cotton cloth, and

then sent him also to the hospital, predicting his recovery within ten

days.

 

General Chang thanked me for my interest, and promised to reward me for

my services when the men recovered; then, nodding coolly to Governor

Hu, he and his staff marched out of the inn and left us, and allowed

a subordinate to escort us to the special train that brought us down,

which was as great a lack of courtesy and positive insult as he could

give to the Empress Dowager’s high commissioner.

 

Our return journey was without incident. The city gates were open

awaiting us, and were closed immediately upon our entrance. Governor

Hu immediately memorialized the throne, stating the result of his

inquiries, reported the impudence of Colonel Chao, and made the request

that he be turned over to the Board of Punishments for a penalty.

 

The Empress acknowledged the memorial, and she decided to deprive

Colonel Chao of one step in rank, degrading him to a major. This

appeared in an edict at once; at the same time she commended Hu for his

promptness and general ability.

 

But, alas for Governor Hu! General Tung Fu Hsiang, the man who

was to prove the curse of China, was unacquainted with all these

circumstances, and had yet to be heard from. This man had obtained

his reputation first as a brigand, and afterward as a leader of

Her Majesty’s army in putting down a rather formidable rebellion

of the Mohammedans in his own province of Kansu. Bold, cruel, and

unscrupulous, he had murdered his own provincials, who were but poorly

armed and without military discipline, in a most ruthless manner, and

had not only suppressed the uprising, but nearly exterminated the

rebels.

 

[Illustration: A temple in the Summer Palace grounds]

 

His fame spread far and wide as a wonderful general, so that when the

Empress again assumed power by forcibly seizing the throne from the

weak but good-intentioned Kuang Hsu, she decided at once to bring this

man Tung and his Kansu ruffians to Peking to assist her in maintaining

her authority against all comers. It was en route to Peking that his

advance corps, under General Chang, had the trouble at Lukouch’iao.

 

[Illustration: MEMORIAL ARCHES

 

It is doubtful if we should have been able to learn so much of the

“Forbidden City” and of the beautiful and remarkable things to be seen

in the Palace grounds had it not been for this Siege. These are most

beautiful from a Chinese point of view, the architecture dating back

for many ages. These arches are built of immense blocks of stone, beautifully fitted and arranged.]