To race into my cabin, seize the Adams, and ram handfuls of loose rounds into my pockets was the work of a few seconds; to guess what had happened took even less time. River bandits, or possibly Imp fugitives turned brigand, had somehow blocked the channel and were about to swarm aboard – that thump under the stern had been a raft or sampan, crowded with Chinese savages who would pour over us in a wild, slashing wave, slaughter and torture most hideously whoever survived the attack, loot and burn the steamer, and be off into the web of side-creeks before the nearest Imperial garrison was any the wiser. I’d seen it in Borneo, and knew precisely what to expect – which is why you now behold the unusual spectacle of Flashy making towards the scene of action, and not fleeing for cover – of which there wasn’t any.
For I knew that in this kind of ambush the first sixty seconds was the vital time. That wild volley, the ridiculous fire-crackers, the clashing gong and the howling chorus – these were the war-whoop, designed to freeze the victim in terror. Our attackers would have few fire-arms; they’d rely on cold steel – swords, knives, kampilans, axes, Aunt Jemima’s hatpin – to hack down opposition, and once they were on our decks in force we were done for. Catch ’em with a brisk fire before they could board, and we stood a fair chance of driving them off.
I pounded along the narrow promenade to the after rail and could have whooped with relief at the sight of two Sikh guards on the wide stern deck ten feet below me, blazing away at the devil’s crew who were tumbling over the quarter-rail. About half a dozen had reached the deck, horrible creatures in loin-cloths and pigtails, wielding swords, others in peasant dress with spears and knives, shrieking contorted yellow faces everywhere – and the two Sikhs with their Miniés calmly picked their men and tumbled ’em with well-placed shots.
“Reload! Reload!” I bawled, to let ’em know they were covered, for they’d been about to drop their empty pieces and draw their swords, which would have been suicide. One Sikh heard me, and as I opened fire with the Adams he and his mate were whipping in fresh charges. I knocked over two with five shots, and with four down they wavered at the rail. I was feverishly pushing in fresh loads when I heard another revolver, and there was Witherspoon beside the Sikhs, booming away across the smoke-filled deck.
I heard feet behind me, and there was Ward, pistol in hand. “Get forrard!” I yelled. “They’ll come at the bow, too!” He didn’t hesitate, but turned and went like a hare – you’ll go far if you live through this, thinks I, and in that moment I heard the screams and yells and clash of steel from the steerage forrard, and knew that they were into us with a vengeance. I turned to the rail again – and here was more bad news, for Witherspoon’s gun was empty, one of the Sikhs was down, and the other was laying about him with his rifle-butt. A dozen pirates were on the deck, and even as I let fly again I saw Witherspoon cut down by a gross yellow genie with a kampilan. I blazed away into the brown, and now the vicious horde had spotted me, yelling and pointing upwards. A shot whistled overhead and a spear clattered on the bulkhead behind me – and I thought, time to go, Flashy my son.
For it was all up. God knew what was happening at the bow, but the brutes were well established here, and in two minutes they’d be butchering the coolies and cutting down the remaining crew. My plan was already formed: time to reload, down to the saloon deck or even lower, and at the first sight of the enemy, over the side and swim for it. And after that the Lord would provide, God willing. Which reminded me of Prosser, but he was a certain goner, drunk and damned.
I came down the ladder at a race, reloading frantically, and reached the saloon deck. All hell was breaking loose on the steerage forrard; I heard the crash of the Miniés – Ward must have the remaining Sikhs at work. Then down to the main deck – I knew there was no way through from the stern; the pirates there would have to climb up to the saloon deck and come down as I had done. I slipped through the door to the open steerage, and it was like Dante’s Inferno.
A battle royal was raging round the deckhouse forrard, but nothing to be seen for smoke. Nearer me, coolies were going over the rail like lemmings, apart from a sizeable group over to starboard who were wailing fearfully and evidently trying to burrow through the deck. For twenty feet in front of me the port side of the deck was almost clear as a result of the coolie migration – by God, here were two of ’em coming back over the rail! And then I saw the glittering kampilans and the evil, screaming faces, and I shot the first of them as he touched the deck. The second, a burly thug in embroidered weskit and pantaloons, with an enormous top-knot on his bald skull, sprang down, waving an axe, and I was about to supply him with ballast when a fleeing coolie cannoned blindly into me, I went sprawling – and my Adams clattered away into the scuppers.
No one, not even Elspeth, ever believes this, but my first words were: “Why the hell don’t you look where you’re going?”, followed by a scream of terror as the bald bastard lunged for me, axe aloft. There wasn’t time to scramble or strike; I was down and helpless, he took just a split second to pick his target – and someone shouted, high and shrill: “Hiya, Shangi! Nay!” His head whipped round in astonishment, and so did mine. Fifteen feet away, just clear of the smoke obliterating the forward deck, stood the tall girl, looking like Medusa. Her kerchief and blouse were gone; there was blood on her breeches and on the chain collar, and in one hand she carried a bloody kampilan.
The old China Sea trick, in fact – half your pirates come aboard as passengers, and turn on the crew when the attack begins. She and those ugly rivermen … It was a fleeting thought, and of small interest just then, as Shangi of the axe held his hand in the act of disembowelling me, and responded with a huge beam:
“Hiya, Szu-Zhan!”
and having observed the courtesies, swung up his axe to cleave me. I heard her scream something, he shot her an angry look and a curse, took final aim at me, and swung. I shut my eyes, shrieking, there was the sound you hear in a butcher’s shop when the cleaver hits the joint, and I thought, how deuced odd, that was his axe in me – and I felt no pain at all. I looked again, and he was standing side-on, chin on breast, evidently meditating; then I saw the kampilan hilt protruding from his midriff, and eighteen inches of bloody blade standing out behind him, and he crashed forward on the deck, his axe dropping from his hand.
It had taken five seconds since the coolie barged into me – and now I was scrambling over the deck, grabbing the Adams, aware that she was still poised in the act of throwing – and as I came round, two more pirates were mounting the rail, seeing their fallen pal, and going for her with blood in their eye. I shot one in the back; she caught the second by his sword-arm, and I heard the bone snap. Something hit me a terrific clout on the head, and I was on my knees again, with the deck and the night and the hideous din of battle spinning round me; I tried to crawl, but couldn’t; the Adams was like lead in my fist, and I knew I was losing consciousness. A boot smashed into me, steel rang beside my head, voices were screaming and cursing, and suddenly I was whirled up, helpless; I was suspended, floating, and then I was flying, turning over and over for what seemed an age before plunging into warm, silent water, into which I sank down and down forever.
Nowadays, in the split second of uncertainty between sleeping and waking, I sometimes wonder: which is it going to be this time? Am I in the Jalallabad hospital or the Apache wickiup, the royal palace of Strackenz or the bottle dungeon under Gwalior, the down bed at Bent’s Fort or the mealie bags at Rorke’s Drift? Is this the morning I go before the San Serafino firing-squad, or have I only to roll over to be on top of Lola Montez? On the whole, it’s quite a relief to discover it’s Berkeley Square.
I mention this, because in all the unconscionable spots I’ve opened my eyes, I’ve known within seconds where I was and what was what. The Yangtse Valley, for some reason, was an exception; I lay for a good half hour without the least notion, despite the fact that I could overhear people talking about me, in a strange language which, nevertheless, I understood perfectly. That’s the oddest thing; they were talking in a Chinese river dialect (quite unlike Mandarin) which I haven’t learned yet – but in my awakening, it was as clear as English. Ain’t that odd?
One fellow was saying they should cut my throat; another says, no, no, this is an important fan-qui, I should be held for ransom. A third thought it was a damned shame that I’d been the cause of their falling out with the Triads, because those Provident Brave Butterflies were likely lads whom it was foolish to offend. A fourth said they could hold their wind, since she would do what she pleased – guess what? At which they all haw-hawed and fell suddenly silent, and a moment later a hand was raising my head, and strong spirit was being trickled between my lips, and I opened my eyes to see the lean handsome face over the steel chain collar.
Then it came rushing back – the boat, the pirates, that hellish mêlée in the steerage. I struggled up, with my head splitting, staring around – a camp-fire among bushes beside a sluggish stream, half a dozen Chinese thugs squatting in a half-circle, regarding me stonily … two of them I recognised as rivermen who’d been talking to the tall girl that first night. And herself, kneeling beside me with a flask in her hand, eyeing me gravely; she’d lost her kerchief, and her hair was coiled up most becomingly on top of her head, which must have made her about seven feet tall. For the rest, she wore a peasant shirt now, and the ragged knee-breeches, complete with blood-stain.
I demanded information, fairly hoarse, and she gave it. The Yangtse had been ambushed by members of the Provident Brave Butterfly Triad – once a perfectly respectable criminal fraternity which, in these troubled times, had abandoned its urban haunts and gone rogue in the countryside. She and her associates knew the Butterflies quite well; had, indeed, been on friendly terms –
“Until you had to put your knife through Shangi’s guts!” cries one of the lads. “What the hell for? Why?”
He and his friends had spoken their river dialect before; his question now was phrased in a dreadful mixture of bastard Pekinese and pigeon, which I could just make out. Why he used it, I couldn’t think, unless out of courtesy to me – which it probably was, in fact. They have the oddest notions of etiquette, and can show great consideration for strangers, even unwelcome prisoners, which I seemed to be.
Anyway, when he wondered why she’d corrected poor old Shangi’s exercises for him, she simply said: “Because it pleased me,” glanced at me, and then looked away with her lazy smile.
“It’ll please you, then, when the Butterflies make feud, and kill us all,” says he, or words to that effect. “You’ll see. What’s more, he –” flicking his finger at me “– shot Ta-lung-ki. We’ll get the blame for that, too.”
“It saved my life,” says she, and looked at him. “Are you complaining, you little —?”
He hurriedly said, no, of course not, and Shangi and Ta-lung-ki were admittedly a pair of prominent bastards … still, it was a pity to provoke the Triads … he merely mentioned it.
“Who are you?” I interrupted, and she looked slightly surprised.
“Bandits,” says she, as one might have said “Conservatives, of course”, and added with a lift of the splendid head: “I am Szu-Zhan.”
Plainly I was right to look impressed, although I’d never heard the name. I nodded solemnly and said: “I see. You work with the Triads?”
It appeared they didn’t; she and the boys were real bandits, not townee roughs. Sure enough, they’d been preparing to take the Yangtse farther up, but the Triads had got in first, and Szu-Zhan and her gang had been pursuing a neutral policy until (here she looked at me steadily) it had become necessary to intervene. After that, to avoid further embarrassment, they had left, and she’d been considerate enough to throw me over the side first.
“What happened to the others – the passengers and crew?”
“They will be in Kiangyin by now,” says she. “From the bank we saw them beat off the Triads; then they refloated the boat and went down-river.”
Ward, you son-of-a-bitch! I thought to myself. He’d absolutely fought his way clear – and thanks to the zeal of my protectress I was stuck in the wilderness. Not that I could complain – but for her I’d have been digesting Shangi’s axe by now. Which was highly flattering, although I’d known, of course, after our tussle behind the deckhouse, that she had worked up a ravenous appetite for me. It didn’t surprise me, for – I say this without conceit, since it ain’t my doing – while civilised women have been more than ordinarily partial to me, my most ardent admirers have been the savage females of the species. Take the captain of Gezo’s Amazons, for example, who’d ogled me so outrageously during the death-house feast; or Sonseearray the Apache (my fourth wife, in a manner of speaking); or Queen Ranavalona, who’d once confessed shyly that when I died she intended to have part of me pickled in a bottle, and worshipped; or Lady Caroline Lamb – the Dahomey slave, not the other one, who was before my time. Yes, I’ve done well among the barbarian ladies. Elspeth, of course, is Scottish.
And here now was Szu-Zhan of the glorious height and colossal thews – when I thought of the strength that could drive a kampilan through a stout human body from fifteen feet, I felt a trifle apprehensive. But at least I was safe with her, and would be most lovingly cared for, until … ? Aye, the sooner we took order, the better.
“Szu-Zhan,” says I gravely, “I am in your debt. I owe you my life. I’m your friend, now and hereafter.” I held out my hand, and after a moment she grasped it, giving me her pleased, insolent smile. It was like putting your hand in a mangle. “My name is Harry, I am English, and stand high in the British Army and Government.”
“Halli’,” says she, in that deep liquid voice – and d’ye know, it never sounded better.
“And I’m indebted to your friends also,” says I, and held out my hand again. The six proud walkers looked at each other, and frowned, and scratched, and scowled – and then one by one came forward, and each took my hand, and muttered “Hang” and “Tan-nang” and “Mao” and “Yei” as the case might be. Then they all sat down again and giggled at each other.
“I need to go back to Shanghai, quickly,” I went on. “The British Trade Superintendent will pay many taels for my safe return. In silver. I can promise –”
“Not to Shanghai,” says she. “Not even to Kiangyin. This is Triad country, so we go west, until we are strong again – thirty, forty swords. Then let the Butterflies feud!” And she sneered at Mao, the argumentative one.
“Then let me go,” says I. “I pledge two hundred taels, to be paid to you wherever you wish. I’ll make my own way back.”
She studied me, leaning back on her elbow – and if you don’t think that shirt, bloody breeches, and great clog sandals can look elegant, you’re mistaken. The long hungry face was smiling a little, as a cat might smile if it could. “No. You were going to Nanking. We can take you there … or farther.” And for the first time since I’d met her, she dropped her eyes.
“Hey!” cries Yei, who I learned was the gang idiot, and had just reached a conclusion the others had known long ago. “She wants him to——!” Obviously they’d all gone to the same elocution class. “That’s why she wants to keep him with us! To——!”
Her response might have been to blush and say, “Really, Yei!” – and perhaps, by Chinese bandit standards, it was. For she was on her feet like a panther, reached him in two great strides, plucked him up wriggling by the neck, and laid into him with a bamboo. He yelled and struggled while she lambasted him mercilessly at arm’s length until the stick broke, when she swung him aloft in both hands, dashed him down, and trampled on him.
He came to after about ten minutes, by which time I had lost any inclination to argue with the lady. “Nanking let it be,” says I. “As it happens, I have business with the Loyal Prince Lee.” That ought to impress even bandits. “You know the Taipings?”
“The Coolie Kings?” She shrugged. “We have marched with them against the Imps, now and then. What is your business with the Chung Wang?”
“Talk,” says I. “But first I shall ask him for two hundred taels in silver.”
We spent the night where we were, since the crack I’d taken on the head had left me feeling fairly seedy. Next morning I had nothing worse than a bad headache, and we set off north-west through the wooded flats and flood-lands that lie between the great river and the Tai Hu lake to the south. Nanking was about fifty miles ahead, but in the state of the country I reckoned it would take us a good four days, and wary travelling at that.
For we were marching into a battle-field – or rather, a killing-ground that stretched a hundred miles, where the remnants of the Imperial armies were fleeing before the Taipings, with both sides savaging the country as they went. I’ve seen slaughter and ruin in my time – Gettysburg, and Rio villages where the Mimbreno had passed through, the Ganges valley in the Mutiny time, and the pirate-pillaged coast of Sarawak – but those were single battle-grounds, or a few devastated villages at most. This was a whole country turned into a charnel-house: village after burned village, smoke on every horizon, corpses, many of them hideously mutilated, on every wrecked street and in every paddy and copse – I remember one small town, burning like a beacon, and a pile of bodies of every age and sex outside its shattered gate – that pile was eight feet high and as long as a cricket pitch; they had been herded together, doused with oil, and burned.
“Imps,” says Szu-Zhan, and I daresay she was right, for they were worse than the rebels. We saw scattered bands of them every hour, and had to lie up as they passed: mobs of Bannermen, in their half-armour and quilted jacks, Tiger soldiers like grotesque harlequins in their close-fitting suits of diagonal black and yellow, Tartar cavalry in fur-edged conical hats and gaudy coats, dragging wailing women behind their ponies. In one place we saw them driving a crowd of peasants – there must have been a couple of hundred – into an open field, and then they just charged among them, and butchered them with their swords and lances. And everywhere the dead, and the death-smell mingling with the acrid smoke of burning homes.
I don’t describe this to harrow you, but to give some notion of what China was like in that summer of ’60. And this was one small corner, you understand, after one battle, in a vast empire where rebellion had flamed for ten long years. No one can ever count the dead, or tally the destruction, or imagine the enormity of its blood-stained horror. This was the Taiping – the Kingdom of Heavenly Peace.
After the first day, though, I barely noticed it, any more than you notice fallen leaves in autumn. For one thing, my companions were indifferent to it – they’d lived in it for years. And I had my own skin to think about, which means after a little time that you feel a curious elation; you are alive, and walking free, in the Valley of the Shadow; your luck’s holding. And it’s easy to turn your thoughts to higher things, like journey’s end, and your continued survival, and the next meal, and the slim towering figure ahead, with those muscular buttocks and long legs straining the tight breeches.
The devil of it was, while we were sleeping out there was no privacy, with those six villains never more than a few yards away, and dossing down beside us at night. She was watching me, though, with that knowing smile getting less lazy, and her mouth tightening with growing impatience as the hours and miles passed. I was getting a mite feverish myself; perhaps it was the barbarous conditions, and the frustration of being so near, but I wanted that strapping body as I wanted salvation; once, when we lay up in a wood while a long convoy of Imp stragglers went by, we found ourselves lying flank to flank in long grass, with the others behind the bushes, and I began to play with her until she turned on me, her mouth shaking and searching for mine. We pawed and grappled, grunting like beasts, and I dare say would have done the trick if the clown Yei hadn’t come and trodden on us.
By the second afternoon we had struck a patch of country which the war seemed to have passed by; peasants were hard at it standing in the fields, and not far ahead there was a fortified hill-summit, betokening a safe village; we had picked up some baggage and side-arms on our journey, and even a cart to push them in, at which the bandits took complaining turns, and Szu-Zhan said we should stay that night at an inn, because camping out you never knew when you might be molested by prowlers. It’s a great thing, property-owning.
We were such an evil-looking gang – especially with myself, a big-nosed, fair-skinned barbarian, which is the height of ugliness to the Chinese – that I doubted if they’d let us through the gate, but there was a little temple just outside the wall, with a vulture-like priest ringing a hand-bell and demanding alms, and once Szu-Zhan had given him a handful of cash he croaked to the gate-keeper to admit us. It was a decent village, for China; the piled filth was below window-level, and the Inn of Mutual Prosperity had its own tea-shop and eating-house – quite the Savoy or Brown’s, if you like, a shilling a night, bring your own grub and bedding.
Indeed, I’ve fared worse at English posting-houses in my schooldays than I have in some rural Chink hotels. This one was walled all round, with a big archway into its central court, and we hadn’t stopped the cart before a fat little host was out with the inevitable tea-pot and cups. Szu-Zhan demanded two rooms – one on the side-wall for the six lads, and another de luxe apartment at the top of the yard, away from the street – those are the better, larger rooms, and cost three hundred cash, or eighteenpence. They’re big and airy – since the door don’t fit and the paper in the windows lets in fine draughts, but they’re dry and warm, with a big kong, or brick platform bed, taking up half the room. Under the bed there’s a flue, for dry grass or dung fuel, so you sleep most comfortably on top of a stove, with the smoke going up a vent in the wall – or rather, not going up, since the chimney’s blocked, and you go to bed in dense fog. Privacy is ensured by closing the door and getting mine host to jam your cart up against it.9
There wasn’t a “best” room available, until Szu-Zhan shrugged back the cloak she’d picked up, and rested her hand on her cleaver-hilt, at which mine host blenched and wondered if the Paddy-field Suite wasn’t vacant after all; he signified this by grovelling at our feet, beating his head on the ground in the kow-tow (“knocking head”, they call it), pleading with us to wait just a moment, and then scrambling up, grabbing a servant, and getting him to deputise as kow-tow-er while the host scurried off to eject a party who had just booked in. He fairly harried them out, screaming – and they went, too, dumb and docile – while the servant continued to bash his brains out before us, and then we were ushered in, another tea-pot was presented with fawning servility, and we were assured that dinner could be served in the apartment, or in the common-room, where a wide variety of the choicest dishes was available.
It was the usual vile assortment of slimy roots and gristle which the Chinese call food, but I had a whole chicken, roasted, to myself – and it was during the meal that I realised my companions were not “Chinese”, but Manchoos. The common Chinks eat out of a communal rice-bowl, but even the lowliest Manchoo will have his separate rice-dish, as Szu-Zhan and her companions did. (Better-class Manchoos, by the way, seldom eat rice at all.)
Other interesting native customs were to be observed after the meal, when the six, gorged to the point of mischief, announced that they were off to the brothel next door. I’ve never seen prostitution so blatant as in China, and this although it’s a hanging offence; all through our meal, shabby tarts with white-painted faces had been becking and giggling in the doorway, calling out and displaying the mutilated feet by which the Chinese set such store, and the lads had been eating faster and faster in anticipation. Now, with the samshu and tea going round, Szu-Zhan, who’d been leaning back against the wall, sipping and eyeing me restively, threw a bag of cash on the table and reminded them that we would be off at dawn. Put money in front of a Chinese, even if he’s starving, and he’ll gamble for it; they turned out the purse, yelping, and fell to choi-mooy, the finger game, in which you whip your hand from behind your back, holding up one or more fingers, and the others have to guess how many, double quick.
In two minutes they were briefly at blows, with the tarts hanging over the table, egging them on; then they settled down and the fingers shot out to a chorus of shouts, followed by groans or laughter, while Szu-Zhan and I sat apart, nibbling a fiery-tasting ginger root which she’d spoke for, and killing the taste with tea and samshu.
I watched her, strong teeth tearing at the ginger root, and saw she was breathing hard, and there was a trickle of sweat down the long jaw; she’s on a short fuse now, thinks I, so I took her hand firmly and led her out and quickly across to the room. I had her shirt and breeches away before the door closed, and was just seizing those wonders, yammering with lust, when she spun me round in an iron grip, face to the wall, and disrobed me in turn, with a great rending of linen and thunder of buttons. She held me there with one hand while with the other she drew a long, sharp finger-nail slowly down my back and up again, faster and faster, as she hissed at my ear, biting my neck, and finally slipped her hand round my hips, teasing. I tore free, fit to burst, but she turned, squirming her rump into me, seizing my wrists and forcing my fingers up into her chain collar, panting: “Now, Halli’, now – fight! Fight!” and twisting her head and shoulders frenziedly to tighten my grip.
Well, strangulation as an accompaniment to la galop was, I confess, new to me, but anything to oblige the weaker sex (my God!). Besides, the way she was thrashing about it was odds that if I didn’t incapacitate her somehow, she’d break my leg. So I hauled away like fury, and the more she choked the wilder she struggled, plunging about the room like a bronco with Flashy clinging on behind for his life, rolling on the floor – it was three falls to a finish, no error, and if I hadn’t secured a full nelson and got mounted in the same moment, she’d have done me a mischief. After that it was more tranquil, and we didn’t hit the wall above twice; I settled into my stride, which calmed her to a mere frenzy of passion, and by the time we reached the ecstatic finish she was as shuddering clay in my hands. As I lay there, most wonderfully played out, with her gasping exhausted beneath me, I remember thinking: Gad, suppose she and Ranavalona had been joint rulers of Madagascar.
The trouble was that, being so infernally strong, she recovered quickly from athletic exercise, and within the hour we were at it again. But now I insisted that I conduct the orchestra, and by giving of my artistic best, convinced her that grinding is even better fun when you don’t try to kill each other. At least she seemed to agree afterwards, when we lay in each other’s arms and she kissed me lingeringly, calling me fan-qui Halli’ and recalling our contortions in terms that made me blush. So I drifted into a blissful sleep, and about four o’clock she was there again, offering and demanding violence, and this time our exertions were such that we crashed through the top of the bed into the fireplace, and completed the capital act among the warm embers and billowing clouds of ash. Well, I reflected, that’s the first time you’ve done it in a Chinese oven. Semper aliquid novi.
A little touch of Flashy in the night goes a long way with some women; then again, there are those who can’t wait to play another fixture, and so ad infinitum. I suppose I should be grateful that Szu-Zhan the bandit was one of the latter, since this ensured my safety and also gave me some of the finest rough riding I remember; on the other hand, the way she spun out that journey to Nanking, over another three days and tempestuous nights, it looked long odds that I’d have to be carried the last few miles.
She gave me concern on another, more spiritual score, too. As you know, I’ve no false modesty about my ability to arouse base passion in the lewder sort of female (and some not so lewd, neither, until I taught ’em how), but I’ve never deluded myself that I’m the kind who inspires deep lasting affection – except in Elspeth, thank God, but she’s an emotional half-wit. Must be; she’s stuck by me for sixty years. However, there were one or two, like Duchess Irma and Susie, who truly loved me, and I was beginning to suspect that Szu-Zhan was one of those.
For one thing, she couldn’t get enough of my company and conversation on the march, plaguing me to tell her about myself, and England, and my time in the Army, and places I’d visited, and my likes and dislikes … and whether I had a wife at home. I hesitated at that, fearful that the truth might displease her, but decided it was best to let her know I was spoke for already. She didn’t seem to mind, but confessed that she had five husbands herself, somewhere or other – a happy, battered gang they must have been.
She would listen, intent, to all I said, those slant eyes fixed on my face, and the arch, satisfied smile breaking out whenever I paid her any marked attention. Then on the last lap into Nanking she fell thoughtful, and I knew the poor dear was brooding on journey’s end.
On the previous afternoon we had come into Taiping country proper, and I saw for the first time those red jackets and blue trousers, and the long hair coiled in plaits round the head that marked the famous Chang Maos, the Long-haired Devils, the Coolie Kings. What I’d heard was true: they were finer-featured than the ordinary Chinks, smarter, more disciplined even in their movements – aye, more austere is the word. Their guard-posts were well-manned, on the march they kept ranks, they were alert, and full of business, holding up their heads … and I began to wonder if perhaps Napoleon was right. The greatest rebellion ever known; the most terrible religious force since Islam.
Szu-Zhan proved to be well-known to them, by repute, and now I learned how many professional brigands had joined with the Taipings, out of no ideals, but just for the loot and conversation, only to fall away because they wouldn’t take the rigid discipline – quite trivial military crimes were punished by death or savage flogging, and apart from that there was all the rubbish of learning texts and the Heavenly King’s “thoughts” and keeping strictly the Sabbath (Saturday, to them, like the Hebrews). So Szu-Zhan took part with them only when she felt like it, which wasn’t often.10
They treated her with immense respect – mind you, he’d have been a damned odd man who didn’t. I’ve known a fair number of females who were leaders of men, and every time someone has thought fit to remark on the fact of their sex. Not with Szu-Zhan; her leadership was a matter of course, and not only because she was gigantic in stature and strength. She had a quality; put ’em on an outpost together and even Wellington wouldn’t have pressed his seniority.
But my own humble presence in the party helped to speed us on our way, too, for they were eager to welcome any outside Christians who might take word home of what splendid chaps they were; they knew, you see, that what their movement needed was the approval of the great Powers: Britain, France and America for preference, but Paraguay would do at a pinch. So we rode the last day, all eight of us, in our cart hauled by forty straining peasants in harness, with Taiping guards flogging ’em on; when one collapsed they kicked him into the ditch and whistled up another.
I’ll not forget that ride in a hurry, for it took us not into Nanking, but into the heart of the vast army of Golden Lions, commanded by General Lee Hsiu-chen, the Loyal Prince, and the man I had come to see. I had mixed feelings about meeting him; great men are chancy, and best viewed from a distance as the parade goes by.
And didn’t this one have a parade of his own, just! Mile after mile of outposts and lines and bivouacs, swarming with orderly mobs of red coats and white straw coolie hats; parks of artillery, laagers of store-wagons and equipment carts; great encampments for the separate corps – the Youths, the Earths, the Waters, the Women, who are respectively the light infantry and scout battalions, the sappers and builders, the river navy, and the female regiments, who alone were a hundred thousand strong. I looked on those anthills of disciplined humanity, covering the ground into the hazy distance, and thought: Palmerston, you should see this. God knows about their quality, although they look well, but for weight of numbers they’ll be bad to beat. Take on the Russians, or the Frogs, or the Yankees, if you like, but don’t tangle with this, because you’ll never come to the end of them.11
Well, I was wrong, as you know. A dreamy young Scot and a crazy American between them brought the Great Kingdom of Heavenly Peace down in bloody wreck in the end. But I wouldn’t have bet on it that day below Nanking. And this wasn’t the half of them; the rest were still out yonder, murdering Imps.
When we were clearly coming to the centre of the camp, I decided it was time to announce myself as an English gentleman seeking General Lee. That cleared our way to a cluster of head-quarter tents, where I made myself known to an officer outside the biggest marquee of all, with stalwart bowmen in fur caps and steel breastplates standing guard, a golden lion standard at its canopy, and yellow ribbons fluttering from its evaes. He told me to wait, and I turned to Szu-Zhan, asking her to act as my sponsor. She shook her head.
“No. Go in alone. He will not wish to see me.”
“He will when I tell him that it’s thanks to you I’m here,” says I. “Come on, tall girl! I need you to speak up for me.”
She shook her head again. “Better you speak to him alone. Don’t worry, he will understand what you say.” She glanced round at the six wise men, who were studying their orderly surroundings with contempt, and spitting over the edge of the cart. “You’ll get no credit from this company, fan-qui.”
Something in her voice made me look closer – she’d been calling me “Halli’”, not “fan-qui” for days now. Her eyes seemed bigger, and suddenly I realised, before she turned her head away sharply, it was because there were tears in them.
“For God’s sake!” says I, stepping up. “Here, come down this minute! Come down, I say!”
She slipped over the edge of the cart and leaned against it with that artless elegance that could make me come all over of a heat, and looked sullenly down at me. “What the devil’s the matter?” says I. “Why won’t you come in?”
“It is not fitting,” says she stubbornly, and brushed a hand over her eyes, the bangles tinkling.
“Not fitting? What stuff! Why … Here!” A thought struck me. “It’s not … anything you’ve done, is it? You’re not … wanted … for being a bandit, I mean?”
She stared, and then laughed her great deep laugh, with her head back, the steel collar shaking above her bosom. Gad, but she was fine to see – so tall and strong and beautiful. “No, Halli’, I am not … wanted.” She shrugged impatiently. “But I would rather stay here. I’ll wait.”
Well, the darlings have their own reasons, so when the officer returned I went in alone, and was conducted through a long canvas passage ending in a heavy cloth of gold curtain. He drew it back … and I stepped from the world into the Kingdom of Heavenly Peace.
It was downright eery. One moment the noise and bustle of the camp, and now the dead silence of a spacious tent that was walled and roofed and even carpeted in yellow silk; filtered light illuminated it in a golden haze; the furniture was gilt, and the young clerk writing at a gold table was all clad in yellow satin. He put down his brush and rose, addressing me in good Pekinese:
“Mr Fleming?” He called it Fremming. “The gentleman from the Missionaries of London?” I said I was, and that I wished to see General Lee Hsiu-chen (whom I was imagining as Timoor the Tartar, all bulk and belly in a fur cloak and huge moustachios).
He indicated a chair and slipped out, returning a moment later in a brilliant scarlet silk jacket – the effect of that glaring splash of colour in the soft golden radiance absolutely made me blink. I rose, waiting to be ushered.
“Please to sit,” says he. “This is not ceremonial dress.”
He sat down behind the table, folded his hands, and looked at me – and as I stared at the lean, youthful face with its tight lips and stretched skin, and met the gaze of the intent dark eyes, I realised with shock that this slim youngster (I could give him several years, easy) must be the famous Loyal Prince himself. I tried to conceal my astonishment, while he regarded me impassively.
“We are honoured,” says he. His voice was soft and high-pitched. “You were expected some days ago. Perhaps you have had a troublesome journey?”
Still taken aback, I told him about the river ambush, and how Szu-Zhan and her friends had brought me across country.
“You were fortunate,” says he coolly. “The tall woman and her brigands have been useful auxiliaries in the past, but they are pagans and we prefer not to rely on such people.”
Not encouraging, but I told him, slightly embarrassed, that I’d promised her two hundred taels, which I didn’t have, and he continued to regard me without expression.
“My treasurer will supply you,” says he, and at this point in our happy chat a servant entered with tea and tiny cups. Lee poured in ceremonious silence, and the trickle of the tea sounded like a thundering torrent. For no good reason, I was sweating; there was something not canny about this yellow silken cave with the scarlet-coated young deaths-head asking if I would care for distilled water on the side. Then we sat sipping in the stillness for about a week, and my belly gurgling like the town drains. At last he set down his cup and asked quietly:
“Will the Powers welcome our army at Shanghai?”
I damned near swallowed my cup. If he handled his army as briskly as his diplomacy, it was a wonder there was an Imp soldier left in China by now. He waited until I had done hawking and coughing, and fixed me with those cold dark eyes.
“It is essential that they should.” He spoke in the flat, dispassionate tone of a lecturer. “The war in China is foregone. The dragon will die, and we shall have killed it. The will of the people, inspired by God’s holy truth, must prevail, and in the place of the old, corrupt China, a new nation will be born – the Taiping. To achieve this, we do not need European help, but European compliance. The Powers in effect control the Treaty Ports; the use of one of them, Shanghai, will enable us to end the war so much the sooner.”
Well, that was what Bruce had said, and what we, in our neutrality, were reluctant to grant, because it would put a fire-cracker under Pekin’s backside and Grant would have to fight all the way to the capital against an Imperial Government who’d feel (rightly) that we’d betrayed ’em to the Taipings.
“We are aware,” he went on, “that Britain has a treaty with the Emperor and recognises his government, while not acknowledging even our existence. Perhaps she should recall the saying of an English poet, that treason cannot prosper because with prosperity it ceases to be treason. The Taiping is prospering, Mr Fleming. Is that not a sound reason why your country should look favourably on our request to come to Shanghai in peace and friendship?”
So much for Oriental diplomacy – long fingernails and long negotiations, my eye! There was his case, stated with veiled menaces, before I’d got a word in, let alone Bruce’s “tactful persuasions”. One thing was clear: this wasn’t the time, exactly, to tell him we didn’t want his long-haired gang anywhere near Shanghai.
“But there is more, much more, than mere practical interest to bind our countries.” He leaned forward slightly, and I realised that behind the impassive mask he was quivering like a greyhound. The dark eyes were suddenly alight. “We are Christian – as you are. We believe in progress, work, improvement – as you do. We believe in the sacred right of human liberty – as you do. In none of these things – none!” his voice rose suddenly “do the Manchoos believe! They respect no human values! Why, for example, do they shuffle and lie and evade, rather than permit your Ambassador to go to Pekin to sign the treaty to which they are pledged? Do you know?”
I supposed, vaguely, that they hoped we’d modify a few clauses here and there, if they put off long enough …
“No.” His voice was level again. “That is not why. They would sign today – at Canton, or Shanghai, even Hong Kong. But not at Pekin. Why? Because if the ceremony is there, in the Hall of Ceremonies in the Imperial City, with your Lord Elgin and the Emperor, the Son of Heaven, face to face …” he paused, for emphasis “… then all China, All Under the Skies, will see that the Big Barbarian does not go down on his knees before the Celestial Throne, does not beat his head on the ground before the Solitary Prince. That is why they delay; that is why General Grant must go up with an army – because Lord Elgin will not kow-tow. And that they cannot endure, because it would show the world that the Emperor is no more than any other ruler, like your Queen, or the American President. And that they will not admit, or even believe!”
“Touchy, eh?” says I. “Well, I dare say –”
“Is a government to be taken seriously, that would risk war – conquest, even – rather than forego the kow-tow to that debauched imbecile? Come to a Taiping prince, and he will take your Ambassador’s hand like a man. That is the difference between a power blinded by ignorance, pride, and brutality, stumbling to its ruin, and a power enlightened, democratic and benign. Allow me to pour you some more tea.”
Now you’ll have noticed that for all his cold, straight talk, he hadn’t said they were coming to Shanghai willy-nilly; he’d urged powerful reasons why we ought to invite them, with a strong hint of the consequences if we didn’t. Well, we’d have to wait and see, but it was plain I was going to have the deuce of a job fobbing him off for as long as Bruce wanted. This was the kind of steel-edged young fire-eater who’d want a straight answer, p.d.q., and wouldn’t wear any diplomatic nods and winks. By gad, he wasted no time; how long had I been with him – ten minutes? Long enough to feel the force that had brought him in ten years from apprentice charcoal-burner and private soldier to the third place in the Taiping hierarchy behind Hung Jen-kan and the Tien Wang himself. It was there, in the cold soft voice and hard unwinking eyes; he was a fanatic, of course, and a formidable one. I didn’t care for him one damned bit.
However, I had a part to play, even if we both knew it was a sham. So I thanked him for his illuminating remarks about his great movement, which I looked forward eagerly to studying while I was in Nanking. “I am only a traveller, as you know, but anxious to learn – and to pass on what I learn to my countrymen who are … ah, deeply interested in your splendid cause.”
“What you will learn, and pass on,” says he, “will include the elementary scientific fact that revolutions do not stand still. Tomorrow I shall conduct you personally to Nanking, where I hope you will do me the honour of being my personal guest for as long as it pleases you to stay.”
So that was that, and he must have slipped a quick word to his treasurer, for in the outer tent – and how free and airy it seemed after that golden bath – a little chap was waiting with a bag of silver and a scroll, which I was invited to sign with a paint-brush. When in Rome … I painted him a small cat sitting on a wall, he beamed, and I strode out to the cart … which wasn’t there.
I stopped dead, looking right and left, but there was no sign of it; nothing but the limitless lines of tents, with red-coats swarming everywhere. I turned in astonishment to the officer who had admitted me.
“The woman who was here, with the cart – the very tall woman … and six men –”
“They went away,” says he, “after you had gone in to the Chung Wang. The woman left that for you.”
He jerked his thumb at one of the little flagstaffs planted before the marquee; something was hanging on it, something shining. I went over and was reaching for it in bewilderment, when I made out what it was. Her steel-chain collar.
Wondering, I took it down, weighing it in my hands. Why the devil had she gone off – leaving this?
I stared at the officer. “She left this … for me? Did she say why?”
He shook his head, bored. “She told me to give it to the big fan-qui. Nothing more.”
“But she said she was going to wait!”
“Oh, aye.” He stopped in the act of lounging off. “She told me to say … that she would always be waiting.” He shrugged. “Whatever that may mean.”