A well-built fellow, some five feet six or seven, with hard, determined mouth, and a chin of iron, was Chang Piao; his jet-black eyes looked suspiciously out at us. By the side of the General as he sat, one leg up under him in real Chinese fashion, stood a guard of soldiers with loaded pieces; in front of us as we talked were seated the dishevelled officers and staff of the General, some on upturned boxes, some on the settee (which had been the General's resting-place), some on the floor, all busy with their rice-bowls and chopsticks.
At first Chang looked at me in apparent unconcern. Then—
"Where do you come from? What do you want? What nationality are you?" These questions came from him as quickly as he could put them.
"I shall not do any fighting at all to-day," he said. "My scouts are all around the country-side, and my troops, some three thousand of them—and all good men, far better than the rebels—are lying in ambush away at Niekow. I shall wait for the arrival of Yin Chang,[[1]] who is coming with twenty thousand troops, and Admiral Sah, who is waiting for more ammunition."
Chang Piao made no reference to his adversary, General Li Yuan Hung, and did not seem inclined to encourage talk about the opposing side. Later, however, in the midst of the small talk, he referred very sympathetically to the Revolutionists, and was confident that they would rue the day when they broke out into rebellion. He continued: "It will not be long before we shall be able to win. There will, at any rate, not be any serious fighting for four days, but when Sah has his big guns' ammunition sent to him, and we have ours and our twenty thousand drilled troops, the position will change speedily."
Imperial troops now began to pour down from the north. Their headquarters were made at a place called Niekow, a small village, situated at the end of a big S bend in the railway leading out from Kilometre Ten, and about six miles away. Their first attack was made on the morning of October 25th, the Revolutionists taking up their position at the Government Paper Mill, situated below the Kilometre Ten Station, and near the Seven Mile Creek. People would point away in a northerly direction and tell you that over there were the Loyalists—twelve thousand, fifteen thousand, seventeen thousand, twenty thousand of them, mobilised for action. But no one actually knew; every one merely guessed. True it was that on the previous day several hair-brained adventurers went so far forward as to tempt the Loyalist outposts into shooting at them, and then set the Concessions talking about their internationality and how the Loyalists were bent on shooting every foreigner they could catch.
THE RAW MATERIAL OF THE REVOLUTIONARY ARMY.
"Enlisted on Tuesday, drilled on Wednesday, shot on Thursday,"
was often the record of a revolutionary recruit.
It was some days previous that my launchman had refused point blank to convey me near the scene of action. Therefore was it that at dawn I was astir by the riverside at Hankow hailing a sampan, the men who were willing to go down-river demanding, in hoarse voices, exorbitant charges to get me near the fight if there was to be one. Having sufficiently argued the point and boarded a boat, however, we soon came to the firing-line, to the Revolutionary base, having been questioned by the sentries along the riverside as to who we were and what our business was. We rowed down to the Government Paper Mill, up a tributary to the main river, and landed. But no one was to be seen as we walked haphazardly onwards for some minutes, our only obstacle being a poor, one-eyed wretch trying to sell us some of the Loyalist ammunition and empty shells, at ridiculous prices as curios go.