Chapter 14: Arrest and Treachery

“When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, then Thou knewest my path.”
WE had scarcely settled down to the enjoyment of our quiet retreat, when our ears were greeted by the sounds of music proceeding from a temple not far off. Worship was evidently going on; and I was troubled to think that ere long the worshippers would be out, and doubtless some of them coming our way. Turning in the direction whence the sounds came, I noticed that a narrow roadway skirted the tiny graveyard, whence we could easily be sighted, lying as we were; so I advised a change of position. Too late!
As we were making the attempt, the first corners appeared from amongst the trees that hid the shrine from view and passed along the footpath. They hurried on, apparently without having seen us; and I was beginning to hope that after all we were better screened than I supposed. Then the boom of a gong announcing a procession; and a few moments later, the usual motley crew of yamen tatterdemalions, with their clown’s caps and sign boards, heralded the approach of an official.
It was idle to hope that we could escape detection now, though we lay close to the ground and absolutely still. Peeping from between closed eyelids, I saw one of the runners suddenly stop and look hard, then say something to those about him, who also stopped and stared. Then I caught the dreaded words, “Iang kuei-tsï!” — “The foreign devils!”; and I knew that we were again in the hands of our enemies.
As the mandarin’s chair came into view, he craned his neck to see what it might he that his minions were so curiously occupied with, and forthwith sent a runner to the spot, while he ordered the bearers to stand. Needless to say, the runner was joined in his errand by a score or more, until the cemetery was alive with clowns’ caps, sign boards and umbrellas. He needed to ask no questions—one look sufficed; and he returned to his lord to report that it was the “iang kuei-tsï” who were lying there. Whereupon the Hsien (for it proved to be none other than the Lu-an sub-Prefect) issued some order in peremptory tones, and the procession went on its way.
Almost before we had time to take in the change of situation, a yamen “chiao-ch’as” (or small covered cart) stood beside us. How it came there I have no conception. The thing was so sudden, it seemed as if it had shaped itself out of the invisible ether. A “small” official and two soldiers were in charge of it, the former of whom stepped forward and ordered us to get inside.
Meantime, poor Miss Gates had again relapsed into a prostrate condition. When I sought to rouse her, there was no response; and when at length, in the mercy of God, she rallied sufficiently to take in the position of affairs, it was only to say that she felt too ill to move. The official repeated the order to mount, adding that he had been sent by the sub-Prefect to take us on to the next magistracy at Kao-p’ing Hsien. The story seemed too good to be true; and believing it to be a Boxer ruse to have us quietly away and dispatch us at leisure, we refused to get up. However, the officer produced a document as like a bona-fide “uen-shu” as official style and seal could make it, and as a guarantee of good faith pointed to a bundle in the cart, which he said contained clothing for us from the Lao-ie, and a certain sum of money. He added that they had been searching for us the night through; but that having now abandoned all hope of finding us, they had given up the search, and were just returning to the city with the Hsien’s retinue.
How much of this we were to believe and how much to discredit we had no time to consider. Our incredulity must, I think, have been written in our faces as we looked at one another; for the official stamped his foot and ordered us again to “shang ch’as.” So I said to my wife and Miss Gates, “It may be that this is of the Lord for our salvation. Anyhow, one thing is certain: we cannot possibly live on as we are, tramping the road as beggars at the mercy of hostile crowds. If this is for life, then we shall live to praise our God; and if for death—well, we shall die anyway. Let us trust in the Lord and take the cart.”
The decision taken, we were not long in following it out. But a few moments sufficed to pack all five of us in, Miss Gates being lifted to her seat by one of the soldiers; and almost before we could realize the extraordinary turn of events, we were plashing through the water to the opposite side, and making for Uangfang, en route to Kao-p’ing.
Now for one moment let me pause to point the significance of the events as they occurred. The cart, I need hardly say, proved to be the means of our ultimate deliverance; though I may here forestall my narrative so far as to say that our surmise was not wholly incorrect—the intention was to carry us to execution. It was doubtless true that they had been searching for us all night: true also that they had now given us up, and were returning without us to the city. How marvelous, therefore, was the ordering of events whereby our arrival at the river synchronized with the mandarin’s return from worship. Twenty minutes later, and we should have been too late! The procession would have gone on and the cart with it; and we should have been left to the rabble Then it was that I understood the urgency of that Voice, “Up, get thee down and tarry not!” —and how truly it had been the voice of God. Then too it was that I realized how the strength to rise up and get down was given where, humanly speaking, it was an impossibility. And, once more, I saw how the wisdom of God had overruled Sheng-min’s non-appearance to our salvation; for, had he brought us water in the hill, we should not have felt it right to stir from our hiding place. As it was, however, we just had time enough given us to relieve the intense suffering of thirst and scorching heat before we were found. So graciously did our compassionate God go before to supply our need, and then make for us the way of escape.
As for our faithful Sheng-min, we never saw him again. It appears that, after leaving us, he made his way towards the river to the nearest village, where he sought an opportunity, as best he could without arousing suspicion, of getting some vessel in which to convey the water to us. The difficulty, of course, was that he was moneyless: indeed, his condition was little better than our own. It was not long before he was recognized. He had been seen, they said, with the foreign devils, and must therefore be a Roman Catholic. Upon his affirming that he was not, they decided to settle the truth of the matter by ordeal. It was commonly reported among them that by exposing the suspect to the full blaze of the sun, the sign of the cross would, if he were a Roman Catholic, come up in the forehead at noon; and his guilt would thereby be established beyond question. So they took him, bound him with ropes, and, planting his feet upon some mystic characters traced in the dust, compelled him to stand gazing up at the sun until noon—a period of upwards of two hours. The test, of course, failed: but for some hours afterward he was blind, nor was he released till the late afternoon. Then he returned to the hill, to find us gone; sought us in the hills and caves, and only gave up the search when he had exhausted every place in the neighborhood. The next day he returned with a heavy heart to the city, and informed the sub-Prefect of the condition in which he had left us. He was told that a cart had been sent to take us on, with clothes, ten ounces of silver and six thousand cash. The first part of the Hsien’s statement was true enough; the latter part may or may not have been so. I only know that the bait was put before our nose by the cart official; but so far as any personal benefit was concerned, clothes, silver and cash were a, myth.
Thus Sheng-min’s ministry of self-sacrificing love to us was finished. Both he and P’ao-rï had been given to us just so long as they were needful to us; and now in the new circumstances of our arrest, where they could no longer serve us, they were withdrawn by the same gracious Hand that had bestowed them on us.
As yet we knew nothing—indeed, could know nothing—of the purpose for which we had been picked up. It was only by sad experience, as events developed, that we gathered its true intent, namely that it was for death, not life. The fair-seeming “uen-shu” was not the usual official passport, which would secure us safe conduct from one magistracy to another, until we were out of danger. It was, at the most, a semiofficial paper written by the sub-prefect to his friend, the Kao-p’ing “Hsien,” stating that “we had made a disturbance in our district, and were to be taken out of Shansi, never to return.” Thus, being rather of a private than of an official character, it had no binding authority, and was practically valueless; and also it was so worded that a magistrate was free to read into it his own construction, whatever he might choose to make it. What this meant to us the narrative will reveal. The relief of finding ourselves under official surveillance, after being for nearly three days exposed to mob law, was greater than I can express, especially as the assurances given to us bore distinctly in the direction of hope. At such a time, when the heart was sinking in deep waters, it thankfully caught at the veriest fragment that came in the way wherewith to buoy itself up; and as we put one link with another in the chain of God’s leadings, the hope of the promise given at the outset breathed its life into us afresh; “I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord.” Thus the officer’s assurances, flimsy as they might be in themselves, yet taken in connection with what we knew to be the orderings of God, were invested with a new value, and became a real ground of comfort.
The mercy of a temporary shelter from the heat under the “p’eng” of the cart, and the knowledge that we were speeding in the right direction, contributed not a little to raise our spirits—so great was the contrast to what, but an hour before, had been the only prospect before us. As I sat in my beggar’s rags on the shaft, with my dear ones just behind me, little did I care for the astonished looks of the passers-by. Few were about at this hot period of the day, and our arrest was not generally known; so that, until we reached Uang-fang (about 1:30 p.m.) we had nothing to trouble us in the way of crowds. The officer in charge rock immediately behind on horseback, while the soldiers urged the mule to a half trot—an unusually quick pace for China. Seated as they were on the bare boards of the springless cart, with nothing to break the concussion of tracks that can only be called “roads” by courtesy, my dear wife and Miss Gates in their exhausted state suffered severely. However, in about half an hour’s time we entered the little village of Uang-fang, and were halted at the food shop which did duty for an inn. Here we were ordered to dismount, and told to go inside, the option being given us of staying in the food shop on the street, or of going to the more private quarters at the back. There seemed to be no question that the latter would be the wiser choice from several points of view, and we elected accordingly, to the evident satisfaction of the escort. How wonderfully God was in the decision, though apparently a wrong one in the issue, will appear from what follows.
Passing to the rear of the shop, we were taken across a small courtyard to the opposite side and shown into a narrow, dingy room, thick with usual dust and more than usual dirt. But it was shelter from the heat, and its comparative privacy would, we hoped, afford us an asylum from the dreaded crowds. There was a mud k’ang, too, inviting rest despite its filth, whereto we thankfully betook our stiff and weary limbs. That room, so soon to be dark with the shadow of death!—I can never think of it without shuddering. By the officer’s orders our wants were well supplied. Hot water was brought us to drink; and shall I ever forget the fragrance of the savory “pien-shïh,” or pork dumplings, that were set hot before us! The sight of food—and such food!—was quite overcoming: and we thanked our God for inclining the officer’s heart towards us in this unexpected way. We ate it with a ravenous relish begotten of a fifty hours’ fast; for save the mouthful of grass plucked on the mountain top at sunrise that day, we had tasted nothing since Friday at noon.
The kindness thus shown tended to confirm our hopes that, after all, we had fallen into good hands.
It was evidently designed, however, to be nothing more than a blind—the apparent justification of the fair words by which we had been induced to enter the cart. Meantime, the news of our arrival had spread, and the space before the food shop was soon thronged.
Then they began to filter through into the courtyard, and once more we were under the stolid gaze of countless eyes, and the restlessness of a never-ceasing stream of corners and goers.
I was concerned to find, as time wore on, that our escort failed to show themselves, and that the usual limit of a midday halt was overpast. On the other hand, an activity painfully suggestive of the Han-tien experience was going on outside the room; and the significant looks and low-toned asides of the onlookers in the room increased the suspicion that all was not quite as it should be. This was the more confirmed, however, when the Boxer badge, now once more in evidence, revealed how large a proportion of the ever-shifting crowd belonged to the Ta Tao Huei. In due course, the door of our room was shut from outside, and a Boxer sentry set to guard it.
It now became certain that, unless our escort soon called for us, we should find ourselves in dire straits. The haunting dread, that had not been wholly laid to rest by the production of the “uen-shu,” came back in force that this was none other than a Boxer ruse, and that we had again been betrayed. Was it possible that the escort had decamped, cart and all, leaving us to die where we were? I opened the door and looked out across the courtyard. Yes, there was our “seng-k’eo,” feeding quietly at the trough. Providentially it had been brought inside, and tethered in a corner well within view; and as I caught sight of it, I thanked God for the hope inspired thereby that we were still safe. At the same time, I was wholly at a loss to understand the escort’s long delay. The door was slammed to by the sentry upon my withdrawal, with a significance I refused to notice beyond reminding him that we were there as guests, with the Lao-ie’s uen-shu, and that such discourtesy was unknown to Chinese etiquette. To save his face, he allowed us to open the door and take an occasional look out—a privilege I was not slow to avail myself of.
As the afternoon wore on, the suspicion of foul play increased. I will not attempt to record the inward conflict of those hours of alternating hope and despair, of fear and strong crying to God. I reproached myself with having fallen so easily into the trap, first of taking the cart at all, and then of choosing the inner room, where we could be so easily cut off from escape. I began to doubt whether the mule was really our “seng-k’eo” after all; and even if it was, might they not have left it as a blind and gone off with another? And yet, all the while, these very things that I was deploring as mistakes were designed of God to be the ultimate means of our deliverance, as the sequel will show. How often in a time of perplexity do we take a step in entire dependence on God, after definite prayer for guidance according to His will; and then, when it seems to land us in situations that run counter to our expectations, mourn the “guidance” as “our mistake”! So strong in us is the Egyptian sin of unbelief, and its consequent—the sin of murmuring against God in the desert, whither He Himself has led us in the wisdom which we profess to have trusted.
There was a passage at one side of the room, leading to a space at the back; and hither the crowds kept streaming to and fro, in a way ominously suggestive of preparations which to my mind boded death. I could only suppose that they were making ready to hang us at the rear of the building.
I have already mentioned that Uang-fang (the village where we now were) had from time to time been visited by us in past happy days, and that the people were by no means ignorant of the Gospel message. It was to the house of our evangelist Chin Iohhan that our thoughts had turned when we sought a hiding place; and now our hearts longed to see his wife, who was alone at this time of need, and to strengthen her hands in God. As yet, of course, we knew nothing of her idolatrous compromise and denial of her Lord through fear of persecution.
Those who came into the courtyard seemed to be too intent on what was going on to remain staring at us, and so we were left more or less free of their company. A good many women had come in at one time and another; and now, towards the late afternoon, the door opened, and a little woman hobbled across to the k’ang and got up beside my wife and Miss Gates. They recognized in her one whom they had often seen in Chin ta-sao’s house, and to whom they had spoken the Word of Life, being, in fact, none other than her next door neighbor. With scared expression and in scarcely audible tones, she told them that the Boxers had been all night searching for us, and had ransacked Chin ta-sao’s house in the belief that we were hidden there. Disappointed in their hope of finding us, they had then seized everything she possessed. “And,” she added, “I have come to tell you that, now they have caught you, they are going to kill you here. You are all to be burned to death in this room, and Chin ta-sao is to die with you. They are even now piling the wood to fire the building; and when all is ready, my neighbor will be brought across.” And with a “k’o-lien, k’o-lien” (“I feel so sorry for you”) she slipped off the k’ang and hobbled quickly away.
So then it was to be burning, not hanging. Once again we were face to face with the king of terrors; and once again we cried out of the depths to Him that is King even of that king, “mighty to save.” The situation was as desperate and the outlook as hopeless as ever it had been at I-ch’eng, at Han-tien, at Sha he-k’eo, or at the torrent bed. But it was not too desperate for Him Who had lifted us up from the gates of death not once nor twice. Nay, had He not, only just this very moment, brought us a fresh assurance of His protecting care in the knowledge that, when we sought asylum with Chin ta-sao, He had turned our steps into another path, so saving us from the Boxer search party? The same God Who had wrought for us hitherto, was with us still— “Emmanuel, God with us,” “the Same yesterday and to-day and forever.” And the same throne of grace was accessible to us still, where we might “obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Yet surely if ever there was a time of need, it was now, when the preparations for burning us alive were being made before our eyes.
If any loophole for doubting the truth of the good woman’s words were left, it was blocked by the entrance of the innkeeper and his servant, who began hastily to clear the room of every vestige of furniture, even to the straw mats from under the ladies on the k’ang. Then, when they had gone out, the door was shut, the sentry mounted guard, and we were alone in the despoiled room; for all fled from us now, as from those “appointed to be slain.”
Through a paperless square in the window frame I found I could still keep my eye on the mule without provoking either the wrath or suspicion of the sentry by continually opening the door. Idle as it seemed to suppose that the escort were still on the spot, I clung to the hope fostered by the animal’s presence as a drowning man clings to a chip. With what intensity I peered through the tiny square! How I watched every movement, for fear of being outwitted by its sudden removal! I believed the hope was given me of God; and in the strength of that belief, I was enabled to impart a measure of reassurance to my dear wife and Miss Gates.
At length I heard the back gate, close to which he was tied up, open, and a man slipped in and quickly loosed the halter. “Now or never: come instantly,” I said. Snatching up the children, we quietly opened the door, turned sharp to the right behind the sentry, and walked swiftly out through the courtyard gate before they had time to shut it. There they were—our miserable escort, hurriedly preparing to put the mule into the shafts, all eagerness to bolt without us. Our unexpected appearance on the scene took thorn completely aback, and for a moment they seemed dumbfounded. It was impossible for them to say that they were not going on, for we had caught them in the very act; and as they knew they were bound by their orders to take us on to Kao-p’ing, they could not refuse to carry us without “losing face.”
We were now hemmed in—escort, cart and all—by an immense crowd. At sight of us the people had given a shout, but not a soul attempted to touch us. It was evident that they were nonplussed by this sudden counterstroke; for the back gate was the last place they expected to see us come out at. Indeed, they supposed we were nicely housed and a prey ready to their hand. From the conversation that passed between the escort and those about them, Miss Gates was enabled exactly to gauge the situation; for they talked freely among themselves, never dreaming that any one of us was able to follow the drift of what they were saying. There was no room for doubt that our professed friends were in collusion with the local Boxers, and had agreed to leave us in their hands, to be dispatched as soon as they themselves were clear of the place. The program having been abruptly interfered with in this inconvenient way, they were now discussing how it could be remedied. It was decided, on putting the animal in, to work him up to a restive state while we were attempting to mount, and then, on the plea that they were unable to hold him in, make off before our attempts had succeeded. Thus they would both secure their end and “save their face.”
Little did they suppose their plot was known. As they whipped the seng-k’eo into the shafts, Miss Gates said to me, “They are planning to make off before we have time to mount. Our only chance is to get in now, before the mule is harnessed to the cart.” No sooner said than done. To the dismay of the escort and the amazement of all, first Miss Gates, and then my wife fairly leapt in; while I handed up the children, and in a trice had seated myself beside them on the shaft. The officer’s bewilderment turned to fury as, with the soldiers, he cursed us and ordered us to dismount. Quietly Miss Gates told him that we knew all their plans, and that, since there had been a “uenshu” issued for our safe delivery at Kao-p’ing, we were not going to leave the cart until we arrived there.
Upon this refusal they once more debated what they should do, and it was proposed to fire the cart and roast us to death where we were. The escort, however, were unwilling to take the responsibility of a step so directly involving themselves and the property of the yamen; and the proposal was vetoed, under cover of the excuse that “there were Boxers farther on who would save them the trouble.” To cover their discomfiture with us they said that the reason they wanted us to dismount was that they might be able to get at their money and coats, which were stowed away inside. To hand out the articles required was a very simple matter; and the chagrin of the men found vent in dark scowls and mutterings. When they saw that we were not to be moved by fair means or foul, the officer mounted his horse, the soldiers tore at the mule’s mouth, and off we dashed, amid the curses, hoots and yells of the mob.
As I look back upon it all, I marvel at the deliverance God wrought for us. Not merely at the way in which He led us out of that sentry-guarded room, no man withstanding us; nor only at the way in which He confounded the devices of our enemies at every point; but (what amazes me almost beyond these) at the way in which He restrained them now from falling on us in their great wrath. As we drove through the street, the cart was pursued by hundreds of local Boxers, armed with bludgeons and gnashing on us with their teeth, as they cried after us and on every side of us, within easy striking distance, “Death to the foreign devils! They think they have escaped us. Wait till they get to Yin-ch’eng, and then see what will become of them!”