Held by Chinese Brigands

by Charles Gilson

The man did not hesitate. He supplied the boy with a long robe, a pair of white trousers and a pair of felt-soled shoes. Thus attired, Frank Armitage bade his host adieu and crossed the tea-garden late that night, when the moon, which had guided him throughout the past three or four days, was rising in the east.

The tea-grower seemed to have taken a fancy to the boy, for he accompanied Frank almost a mile upon his journey, putting him upon the road which led to the village in which the majority of his coolies, or workpeople, lived. In bidding good-bye to him, Frank thanked the man from his heart for all his hospitality and kindness. He shook hands with himself in the approved Chinese fashion, and bowed so low that his nose almost touched his knees. Then he was about to set forward alone when the tea-grower cried out to him, asking him if he had any money.

Frank replied that he was without a cent in the world, telling the truth--that he had been robbed of all he possessed in the mountains. Whereupon the tea-grower took from his neck a long string of copper cash. These he threw over the boy's head, at the same time quoting Confucius: "Be charitable to the stranger from a far country! so that, when thou thyself art a stranger, doors may be opened to thy knock."

[CHAPTER X--HOW FRANK WAS IN LUCK'S WAY]

Frank found the village without any difficulty. Although it was then almost midnight, there were lights in the majority of houses, and several shops were open. The Chinese are a singular race. One of the first things that strikes a visitor to that remarkable country is the fact that the inhabitants never appear to go to bed. No people in the world work harder by day, and no people in the world are more inclined to talk, laugh, quarrel and gamble throughout the night, into the small hours of the morning.

Frank marched boldly into a barber's shop, where he expressed a desire to have the forepart of his head shaven. The barber could scarce contain his astonishment when he observed that his patron had no pigtail. He was vastly curious with regard to the matter, asking several questions as he sharpened his big Chinese razor--which was something after the shape and about the size of the business-end of a Dutch hoe. Frank informed the man that he had been robbed, and no doubt the fellow presumed that the robbers had cut off their victim's queue.

The boy rightly supposed that he could talk quite frankly about his own affairs in a village which was populated almost exclusively by honest men who worked in the tea-gardens. But what most surprised him, and at the same time afforded him the greatest possible satisfaction, was that no one in the barber's shop appeared to notice the fact that he was a European.

Now a Chinaman can suffer no greater disgrace than the loss of his pigtail. Viewed historically, this is a strange circumstance. The mediæval Chinese did not wear pigtails. It was the Manchu race, who conquered the Chinese in the fifteenth century, who grew their hair long and plaited it in the well-known manner. The Manchus were horsemen of whom it might be said that they almost worshipped their horses, and the queue was originally grown in imitation of a horse's tail. For the same reason the Manchu warriors adopted those wide coat-sleeves, which even to this day are called "horseshoe sleeves." It was mainly by means of their excellent cavalry that the Tartar warriors were able to overcome the Chinese foot-soldiers.

A conquering race invariably enforces certain obligations and restrictions upon the vanquished, and one of the first Manchurian imperial edicts issued was to the effect that all Chinese should adopt the pigtail as a symbol of their submission to the dominant people. In the course of a few centuries what was originally a token of defeat became a source of national prejudice and pride. The Chinaman of the nineteenth century was as loth to part with his pigtail as his forefather had been to adopt it.

The barber sympathised with Frank. Moreover, his sympathy took a practical turn. He undertook for a few copper cash to supply the boy with a new pigtail, and also to attach it to his head in such a manner as would make it appear to be natural. All this, however, took time, and it was past one o'clock in the morning when Frank Armitage left the village and continued on his way, downhill, through tea-gardens and the ricefields, following the narrow path which, he had been told, would conduct him to the river.