At last, after shivering in the cold about an hour, we succeeded in getting into a sort of shanty, which, however, afforded but very poor comfort. There was a heated kang in it, and the ladies managed to warm their feet on this. When it began to get light Mr. Riddle and Mr. Wilson started to Chefoo, thinking the city was only half a mile distant. This was what Mrs. Williamson understood the natives to say. Some time after Mr. McClatchie started, supposing it was three miles. We made breakfast on boiled rice and sweet potatoes which the people brought us.
I started back to see what had become of the ship, and to look after our things. I found the vessel all sound and everything safe. I succeeded in getting several trunks of mine and Mr. Williamson’s landed on the beach, and got some of them started up to the village, which was at least two miles from the ship. Mr. Williamson then went down and succeeded in getting a variety of other things brought off and carried up to the village. It was a beautiful calm day, but we feared that a gale might spring up, as gales were frequent in this region at that time of year. In such a case the vessel must quickly be broken in pieces, and everything destroyed.
We now began to look around for the night, and it was not a very comfortable prospect. Some English people came from Yentai (just across the bay from Chefoo) to survey the wreck of a vessel that had been cast away some time before at the same place, and they very kindly sent us some supper—their own, in fact—and also brought us a supply of furs and blankets. We had one large kang heated, and on this five stowed themselves, covering themselves with the blankets, while I made a bed and slept on the ground. The rest of the little room was filled with trunks and Chinese rubbish of various kinds. We slept very comfortably, however, and as we were very tired and had not slept a wink the night before, our sleep was sweet and refreshing to us. We had great cause to be thankful for even such accommodations in the circumstances.
We made our breakfast on two dozen boiled eggs and some bread which the Englishmen had left us. I started immediately to the ship, intending, as the day was fine, to try and get as much as possible of the goods belonging to us off the ship, and to store them there until they could be taken to Yentai. As I came over the top of the hill and looked out on the sea, I saw a steamer coming which I knew was the English gunboat from Chefoo. My heart bounded with joy at the sight. At last we were to get help, and to reach Yentai without going overland. All our goods also would no doubt be saved.
By land it was twenty-eight miles to Chefoo, instead of the short distance supposed by the men who started to walk, but they had persisted; and at their instigation the gunboat had come to relieve the party left behind. After some failures the gunboat succeeded in pulling the “Swatow” into water where she again floated safely. The party out at the village returned, and the goods were brought back and put on board the gunboat, Mateer remaining over night with the steamer and coming up the next day to Chefoo. He notices in his Journal that although Corbett was in a very weak state, he seemed to suffer little or no bad effects from the first terrible night on shore; nor were the ladies apparently any the worse for their exposure. He mentions also that while some of the natives at the village were disposed to annoy them as much as possible, others of them were very kind, and he adds, “Never before did I feel my helpless condition so much as among those natives, with whom I could not speak a single word.”
Of course, they received a hearty welcome from the missionaries at Chefoo. On the following Wednesday they started for Tengchow, fifty-five miles away, traveling by shentza—a mode of travel peculiar to China, and developed largely because of the almost complete absence of anything like good wagon roads. It is simply a sort of covered litter, sustained between two mules, one in advance of the other; in it one reclines, and is jolted up and down by the motion of the animals, each going after his own fashion over rough paths which lead without plan across the plains and hills. Mateer’s Journal says of that trip:
We rode about fifteen miles and stopped for the night at a Chinese inn. We had brought our eatables along, and, having got some tea, we made a very good supper, and we went to bed all together on a Chinese kang heated up to keep us warm. Next morning it was bitter cold, and we did not get started until about ten o’clock. I made them turn my shentza and Julia’s around [that is, with the open front away from the wind] or I do not know what we should have done. About five o’clock our cavalcade turned into an inn, and we soon found to our chagrin and vexation that we were doomed to spend another night in a Chinese inn; which, by the way, is anything but a comfortable place on a cold night. We made the best of it, however, and the next morning we were off again for Tengchow, where we arrived safely about two o’clock. At last our journeying was over,—set down on the field of our labor.
They had reached the front. This was early in January, 1864.