The Blue Dragon: A Tale of Recent Adventure in China

Or he is conducted from room to room, lighted from interior courts and filled with the most exquisite specimens of human handiwork known to the world. Here are silk embroideries of a beauty, delicacy, and texture not found elsewhere, exquisitely carved ivories, startling designs, boldly executed in lacquer, gold, and silver, jade, crystal, and precious stones. Here are feather-work and brass-work, priceless porcelains and cloisonné, softest crêpes and gossamer linens, black wood furniture graved with the painstaking skill that workmen of the Western world bestow only upon precious metals. All these things, and an infinity of others equally desirable, are passed in slow succession by the deft-handed attendants before the fascinated gaze of the foreign visitor, until he longs for the wealth of a Cr[oe]sus, and is only withheld from purchasing to the full extent of his means by memory of the grim customs officials who so surely await his homecoming.

From these places where things are sold the sightseer in Canton is borne away to places where things are made, or to temples, pagodas, and execution grounds. Perhaps he is permitted to enter the yamen of some wealthy mandarin, and, merely by passing through an enclosing wall of buildings, finds himself transferred in a minute from the filth and squalor of the narrow street, with its swarms of jargon-yelling coolies and leprous beggars, dimly filtered light and overpowering smells, into a place of sunlight and clean air, a fairy-land of trees and flowers, of singing birds, shaded walks, and plashing waters, of quiet and coolness, strangely attractive architecture – a place of gratified senses and restful luxury.

But none of these things was for Rob Hinckley – at least, not on this occasion, for instead of being a sensation-seeking tourist he merely was a sorrow-stricken lad, friendless in a great, pitiless city, well-nigh penniless, and desperately uncertain which way to move. He turned sick with apprehension as he gazed from one side of the steamer to the bund, or landing-place, where gangs of half-naked coolies grunted and sweated under their burdens of freight, or from the other to the yelling sampan crews ready to fight for a cent's worth of patronage. To him they resembled the myriad occupants of a gigantic ant-hill, and appeared equally lacking in human sympathies.

Rob was faint from the exhaustion of his almost sleepless and supperless night, and at length realizing his most pressing need, he sought breakfast in the saloon. From this he returned to the deck a half-hour later, refreshed and strengthened, but still as uncertain as ever regarding his next move. Then all at once his uncertainty vanished, for the very first object that caught his eye as he stepped outside was that which is most dear and most beautiful to all Americans, especially when seen in a foreign land – the flag of the stars and stripes. It was at some distance up the river, blowing out strong and free, high above the only clump of trees in view, and besides it no other flag was visible.

In Canton, while most of the greater nations own their legation buildings, the United States is satisfied to lodge its representative in rented quarters. To offset this humiliation, so far as lay in his power, the American consul-general had raised a noble flag-staff, so much taller than those of his neighbors that the starry banner flown from its top was the most conspicuous flag in all Canton. Now it waved a friendly greeting to poor Rob, filling him with renewed hope, and bidding him come to it for aid in this time of trouble.

Nor did our lad hesitate to accept its invitation; but, noting the general direction to be taken, he ran down the gang-plank and plunged boldly into the seething mass of blue-clad humanity thronging the narrow thoroughfares of China's greatest city. A little later, guided by occasional glimpses of the flag as he went, he had gained a bridge spanning a canal that separates the city proper from the Shameen, a beautiful, tree-shaded island on which stand the foreign legations, dwellings, and business houses of Canton.

At the city end of this bridge was a barrier having two wrought-iron gates, one large and one very small. As the latter stood hospitably open, Rob was about to pass through it when the Chinese gatekeeper hurriedly flung open the other, at the same time respectfully informing him that it was reserved for Europeans (all white foreigners in China are known as Europeans), while the little gate was for the passage of such natives as are allowed on the Shameen.

The incident was trifling, but it wonderfully restored the self-confidence of our young American, and as he walked proudly through the big gate, which was closed with a slam behind him, he felt quite ready to face and defy the whole Chinese nation. Turning up a shaded and well-kept walk lined with substantial houses, each standing in its own grounds, he again sought for a glimpse of the flag, but in vain, for the foliage above which it waved was so thick as to hide it from below. In this dilemma Rob approached a gentleman who stood at a front gate, in company with a group of Chinese, with a view of inquiring his direction to the American consulate. As he drew near he overheard the gentleman, who looked like an American, say loudly, slowly, and very distinctly:

"I've told you over and over that I don't understand one word you say, and unless you can speak English there is no use of your trying to talk business with me. You wanchee catch one talkee man – sabe?"

"Perhaps I can help you, sir," said Rob, stepping up at that minute. "I understand and speak some Chinese."

"If you only can and will, I shall be ever so much obliged," replied the American, "for I am quite sure these fellows have something important to communicate. But I am a new-comer here, without a word of the lingo, and our interpreter has not yet put in an appearance this morning."

So Rob talked and interpreted with the result that a few minutes later the situation in question was fully understood by both parties, and the Chinese departed quite satisfied.

"If I only could talk it as you do!" said the gentleman, enviously. "Won't you step inside for a cup of tea?"

"No, I thank you," replied Rob. "I only stopped to inquire my way to the American consulate. I want to see the consul-general on most important business."

"Then I am very sorry to say that he has gone to Hong-Kong, and will not return for a week."

"Oh!" cried Rob; "what shall I do? Perhaps you can tell me something about a reported massacre of missionaries at Wu Hsing. Did it really occur?"

"I believe it did, though that was before I came out; but I hope you hadn't any friends there."

"My father and mother were there."

"You poor fellow! That, indeed, is a bitter blow. May I ask your name?"

"It is Hinckley."

"Not a son of Dr. Mason Hinckley?" inquired the other, eagerly.

"Yes."

"Then you needn't worry any more, for Dr. Hinckley and his wife left for America just before the outbreak, and are a long way towards the land of safety by this time."

CHAPTER XIV

A TURN OF FORTUNE'S TIDE

For a moment Rob's heart beat quick with joy and his face became radiant; then it clouded again as he said, quietly:

"I think you must be mistaken, sir; for I received a cablegram in America that my father was too ill to travel, and longed to see me before he died. That is the reason I am now here."

"No," asserted the stranger, whose name, as Rob afterwards learned, was Bishop, "I am confident there can be no mistake, for I saw Dr. and Mrs. Mason Hinckley in Hong-Kong. I was newly arrived, and had gone with an acquaintance to arrange for a lot of stuff to be taken aboard the Canton boat. While we were there, another boat of the same line came in from the upper Si Kiang. She had but two European passengers, a lady, and her husband who was so weak from illness that we assisted him to a carriage. My friend knew them slightly, and after they were gone he told me that they were a missionary doctor and his wife from Wu Hsing, that their name was Hinckley, that the doctor had been critically ill, but had most unexpectedly rallied, so that he was able to travel, and that they were to leave for the States on the China, which sailed that evening. All this was distinctly impressed on my mind by the news of the Wu Hsing outbreak, which came a week later, and I was glad to remember that two at least of the possible victims had escaped in time."

Rob listened breathlessly to these details, and, when Mr. Bishop finished speaking, he exclaimed: "They are alive, then, and safe! If I only had known, and stayed quietly where I was! Do you remember the date, sir, on which you saw them in Hong-Kong?"

"Yes, it was the 10th of last month."

"The very day on which I was to have sailed from Tacoma, and they must have sent another cable after I left Hatton. It's all right, though, and I am too glad to care about anything else."

"It is too bad that you have missed each other, and still are on opposite sides of the world; but I suppose you will follow them by the next homeward-bound steamer, and so rejoin them inside of another six weeks. I envy you, and only wish I had a prospect of again seeing the States within the same number of months."

"I expect your chance is several times better than mine," laughed Rob, who for the moment was too light-hearted to give a serious thought to his own awkward predicament. "I would go quick enough if I could, but I haven't the money even to pay my fare to Hong-Kong. So it looks as if I'd have to stay here until I can earn the price of a ticket back to where I have just come from. Do you happen to know of any one who could give me a job?"

"I can't say at this moment," replied Mr. Bishop, regarding the lad keenly as he spoke; "but I may think of some one. Where are you staying?"

"Nowhere. I only came on this morning's boat, and my baggage still is on board."

"Then suppose you get it up here and stay with me for a day or two while you look around. I've a big house, with plenty of room, and shall be glad of your company. Besides, I expect you can help me a good deal with my Chinese studies."

"All right, sir," assented Rob, promptly accepting this proposition, "and I'll be back inside of an hour."

With this our lad hurried away, saying to himself as he went: "I believe I must be one of the luckiest fellows in the world, and only a little while ago I thought I was one of the most miserable. My biggest bit of luck, though, was having Jo come to live at Hatton and teach me Chinese, for that seems about the most valuable accomplishment a fellow can have out here. I do wonder what became of him."

Rob crossed the canal bridge, went out through the big gate, that promptly was opened at his approach, and turned down Heavenly Clouds Street with the assured air of one who had resided in Canton all his life. Then he received a shock, and at the same time proved himself to be one of the very newest of new arrivals in that crafty city of poverty-sharpened wits. On a bit of straw matting, spread above the granite flagging of the narrow roadway, lay a child three or four years old, apparently in the very grasp of death. Its eyes were closed, its pale features were distorted as though by a spasm; it was gasping for breath, and its hands were tightly clinched, while its poor little body was only partially hidden beneath a bit of ragged, blue cloth. Beside the dying child knelt a mother, bending over it and rocking her body to and fro in an agony of grief, while tears streamed from her eyes. She, too, was clad in rags, and evidently was in the last extremity of poverty, since she had not even a kennel in which to conceal her dying child from the curious gaze of the swarming street. No one stopped to speak with her or to offer her the slightest aid in this time of her sore distress; and as Rob, with swelling heart, gazed on this pitiful picture, he said to himself that all Chinese were brutes and unworthy the name of human beings.

"Can't something be done for them?" he asked of a passer-by, and speaking in Chinese; but the man only laughed and hurried on without answering. Then Rob spoke to the woman herself, but her grief was too great to permit her to take heed, and she only stroked the face of her dying child with gestures of despair. At this, feeling powerless to aid her by any other means, Rob drew a silver dollar from his pocket and gently laid it on the mat beside the little sufferer. Then he hurried away.

While he was within sight the woman did not alter her position nor offer to pick up his gift. Only when he had disappeared, and the stealthy hand of a street urchin was about to close over the coveted coin, did she snatch it from the mat, spring to her feet, deal the would-be thief a stinging box on the ear, pick up her opium-drugged child, and serenely walk away, well satisfied with the success of her carefully planned tableau. When Rob returned that way he wondered what had become of the dying child who had so excited his sympathies, and it was only on the following day, when he again saw them at the same place, going through the same performance, that he realized how he had been duped.

On that first morning he transferred his belongings from the steamer to the house of his newly made friend, who told him that, as there was nothing in particular for him to do just then, he was free to go where he pleased. So he strolled to the riverfront of the Shameen, where from one of the tree-shaded benches, placed at intervals along its length, he watched the wonderful life of the river, with its swarming junks and sampans. After a while, attracted by a huge white-and-yellow nondescript-appearing craft, moored in the stream at some distance above where he sat, he walked in that direction for a closer view. He had proceeded but a few steps when he was more than ever puzzled to note that above the object of his curiosity floated an American flag, while he also could see the grim muzzles of enormous guns protruding from various parts of its superstructure. It evidently was a ship of some kind, and also a man-of-war; but to Rob's eyes it was of even stranger appearance than the closely packed acres of Chinese craft surrounding it. He finally decided that it must be a wreck, resting on the bottom of the river, since its deck appeared to be but a few inches above the turbid waters, and he wondered why its crew, sauntering back and forth beneath the awnings, did not exhibit more concern.

While Rob thus was puzzling, a young man, wearing the uniform of an American naval officer, walked briskly up to where he was standing, and signalled a sampan.

"Can you tell me, sir," asked our lad, addressing this officer, "what American ship that is out there, and how she got wrecked?"

"Wrecked!" repeated the other. "What do you mean by wrecked? She looks all right to me. Is anything the matter with the old packet?"

"Of course, I don't know much about wrecks," replied Rob, a little nettled by the officer's tone, "but if a ship sunk to the bottom of a Chinese river, nearly ten thousand miles from home, isn't wrecked, then the word must mean something different from what I think it does."

"But she isn't sunk. She's floating all right, and showing fully as much freeboard as she did when we brought her across the Pacific, nearly two years ago. Monitors always look that way, you know."

"Monitor! Is she a monitor?" cried Rob, who never before had seen one of this peculiarly American type of war-ship.

"To be sure. She is the United States monitor Monterey, one of the finest of her class, and, with the exception of her sister-ship, the Monadnock, now at Shanghai, the most powerful fighting-machine now afloat in Asiatic waters. Wouldn't you like to go aboard and take a look at her?"

Of course, Rob gladly accepted this invitation, and, entering the sampan with Lieutenant Hibbard, was sculled out to the floating fortress, which always lies off Canton, providing a safe-refuge for foreigners against a storm of wrath such as sometimes sweeps over that turbulent city. She is at the same time a most effective peace-keeper, since the Chinese know as well as any one that her powerful guns could within a few hours lay their metropolis in ruins.

The Monterey is famous as having been the first ship of her class to cross the Pacific to Manila, where she added such strength to Dewey's handful of war-ships as to render his position there impregnable.

On gaining her side Rob found the rail to be quite two feet above water, instead of only a few inches, as he had supposed. He also found her to be of great breadth of beam, with wide sweeps of unencumbered deck, both forward and aft. Safely below the water-line he found roomy, well-ventilated quarters for officers and crew, as well as ample engine, coal, and ammunition spaces. He marvelled at her huge guns, polished until they shone, mounted fore and aft in steel turrets of a strength and construction to defy the most powerful of modern missiles. At the same time, these could be revolved at will, by a mechanism so delicate as to be controlled by a finger. Rob took tiffin with the officers of the ward-room mess, whom he entertained with news from the States and from Manila, and when, late in the afternoon, he again was set on shore, he felt that his first day in Canton, in spite of its clouded beginning, had been one of the very happiest and most interesting of his life.

That evening Mr. Bishop, whom our lad regarded at once as friend and employer, found leisure for a long conversation with him, during which he said:

"As you probably know, one of the most valuable railway concessions in China, that for a line from this city to Hankow, on the Yang-tse-kiang, nearly a thousand miles due north from here, has been granted to an American syndicate. Another concession, for a line from Hankow to Pekin, was granted a year earlier to the Belgians. These two railways, meeting at the metropolis of Central China, will form a grand trunk-line, extending nearly two thousand miles north and south through the very heart of the empire. The Belgians already are at work on the construction of their line, while the Americans have made their surveys and are ready to begin construction. I am an American engineer, employed by the syndicate, and, as a preliminary step to my further work, I am about to undertake a journey of investigation from here to Hankow, and, possibly, on to Pekin. My plans for this journey are so nearly completed that I could start to-morrow; but I have not as yet secured a satisfactory interpreter. Will you accept the position? The trip will be long, and to a certain extent dangerous, but the pay will, I think, be sufficient to carry you from Shanghai to America after our journey is completed. What do you say? Are you ready to plunge into the heart of China, and bury yourself from the world for the next two or three months, or do you prefer to remain here and look for some easier job?"

CHAPTER XV

IN THE HEART OF UNKNOWN CHINA

That Rob accepted Mr. Bishop's proposition goes without saying, for he was an American boy, and, as such, was filled to the brim with a genuine love of the adventure and excitement attending explorations in strange countries. Thus, two days after the offer was made, he found himself a very important member of an expedition setting forth from the great southern city of Canton and bound for the far north. Two months later, a junk, flying the American flag and having on board our travellers, drifted with the tawny flood of the mighty Yang-tse-kiang (Son of the Sea River) along the crowded water-front of Hankow, a city of such commercial energy that it is known as the Chicago of China.

During the weeks that had elapsed since they left the last traces of Western civilization at Canton, they had seen no white man nor heard a word of English, except such as they spoke to each other. They had travelled by sampan up the North River and the Wu Shin, across the province of Kwang-tung, to the head of navigation at Ping-Shih. Here they had engaged coolies to transport their luggage, camp outfit, and provisions over the "carry," thirty miles long, across the Nan-Ling Mountains, to Chen-Chow, a quaint, old, walled town, marking the head of navigation on the Yu-tan River, a branch of the Sian Kiang, which in turn flows northward into the Yang-tse. There they had once more chartered a junk; and, always accompanied by a couple of slim, light-draught Chinese guard-boats, had sailed, poled, or drifted across the great inland province of Hu-nan, which is half again as large as the State of New York.

Although always using their boat as headquarters and for the transportation of supplies, the two Americans had travelled most of the way by land, on foot, on pony-back, or in sedan-chairs borne by coolies. They had slept in temples, examination-halls, tea hongs (warehouses), in official yamens, and occasionally, but never when they could help it, in crowded, vermin-infested taverns, always surrounded by throngs of excited spectators, who poked holes through the paper windows or widened cracks in the floors of overhead rooms to gratify their curiosity by peering at the ridiculous-looking barbarians.

While crossing the Nan-Ling Mountains they had traversed a portion of one of China's great national highways, constructed thousands of years ago, and apparently never since repaired. Originally fifteen feet of its width was paved with large, flat stones, four feet square, and from one foot to eighteen inches thick. Many of these stones had disappeared, no one could tell how, nor where to, leaving gaping and bottomless mud-holes to entrap the unwary. The remaining blocks were deeply hollowed by the bare feet of millions of burden-bearing coolies and scored with wheelbarrow grooves. This great highway was formerly lined along its hundreds of miles of length with temples, tea-houses, rest-houses, and shops; but such of these as have not disappeared are now in ruins, and serve only as haunts for highwaymen, lepers, and beggars.

In the remote past the several states or provinces of China were independent kingdoms, waging war upon one another; and even to this day the inhabitants of each province regard the people of those adjoining as "foreigners." So they fortified themselves against one another, and our explorers were so fortunate as to come across one of these fortifications. It was a high and very thick wall of masonry, having battlements and massive gateway, surmounted by a watch-tower, built on a boundary-line across the highway, where the latter occupied a narrow valley. The hills on either hand were low enough to be easy of ascent, but the impregnable wall reached only from side to side of the valley.

"What's the matter with walking around an end of it?" asked Rob, staring at this triumph of defensive architecture.

"Nothing at all, that I can see," replied the engineer. "Only, I suppose, no Chinese ever would think of doing so."

Again the road led over a high, arched bridge that once had crossed a stream; but the stream had altered its course and gone elsewhere, perhaps hundreds of years ago, since no trace even of its bed now remained. But because the road went over the bridge the cargo coolies, grunting beneath their burdens, continued to toil up the steep ascent and down the other side, without ever a thought of making a new path around it.

"I won't climb over it, at any rate," declared Rob. So he and the engineer walked around; their own coolies followed them like a flock of sheep, and those on the bridge stared in amazement at the barbarians who thus dared depart from established custom.

Although other American engineers had preceded our travellers through this country, the foreigner was still such a novelty that they were viewed by thousands of people who never before had seen one, and who crowded about them in embarrassing throngs. At the same time they never were ill-treated nor even molested; for the Chinese, unless roused to a blind fury by wrongs, real or fancied, are the most peaceable and courteous of people. To be sure, our friends nearly always were spoken of and addressed as "fan kwei" (foreign devils); but this was because the natives never had heard foreigners called anything else.

To Mr. Bishop's surprise he discovered, or rather Rob discovered for him, that many of the Hu-nan people, instead of being opposed to the construction of a railway through their country, were desirous for its coming. Not on account of the facilities it would offer for travel and the transportation of their products, but because it was rumored far and wide that it would pay liberally for such graves as must be removed from its right-of-way. Formerly, and even now in certain districts, the grave problem was, and is, one of the most serious encountered by the projectors of Chinese railways. Finally it was made a commercial proposition, and the railway companies agreed to pay for such graves as came within their lines at a rate of eight taels (about eleven dollars) apiece. Now, such of the Chinese as understand this arrangement are more than willing thus to turn their ancestors to profitable account.