"The only problem we had to solve in order to completely succeed was how to control the people, to make order a certainty, simultaneously with the establishment of a form of government, and how to check the excitement and outrages of the inhabitants while they were being taught to realise the fact that the long-endured tyranny was overcome. For months we worked hard completing our plans to this end, and things had reached that condition that each of the thirty odd leaders had an armed bodyguard of one hundred men. This gave us three thousand armed men on the spot. Another three thousand were to join us from another province on a given date. With this body of men, armed, not to attack any officials, but to control the masses of people and make them obey our constitutional laws, we should have in a few hours reached the dynasty of impotence.
"Unhappily, we had to contend with the possibilities of disloyalty among our own followers. So great is the fear of the torture-chamber. Into so many tributaries does the main stream of corruption flow. However, all was prepared. A date was fixed—one day in October, 1895. We leaders met to receive a telegram from our agent in Hongkong, who was to inform us that all was right the moment he knew the three thousand men had set out to our assistance. At the same time, he was to dispatch a chartered steamer up the Canton River, laden with arms for the three thousand men who were to control the people and keep order, and bringing seven hundred coolies to do the fetching and carrying, the labourer's work needful to carry out the scheme of establishing our Government. We met at the rendezvous at Canton, runners and every one at hand. The message arrived to say that all was right. We dispatched our runners to let every one be prepared at every centre, burned our papers, and proceeded to disband ourselves into units, each to carry out his own allotted portion of revolution. The moment before we disbanded a second message arrived saying, 'Something has happened, the three thousand men cannot come.' Our runners were out, and could not be overtaken and recalled. We had to trust to the discretion of the centres to await the men. The only thing we could do, for the time being, to divert suspicion, was to wire our Hongkong agent to keep back the coolies. He misunderstood. The coolies arrived. No one received them. They wandered about, not knowing what they were in Canton for.
"So the conspiracy was thwarted. The runners had accused the people, and set tongues wagging. The Viceroy had been told, 'Something is going to happen.' He would not believe his informant, and all might have become quiet, but the arrival of the coolies confirmed the information. The Government did not start. The unhappy coolies were hunted by the Imperial Commissioner and his staff, and many of them beheaded. We leaders dispersed; many fled into the interior. The Commissioner and Imperial Guard sought the leaders. They seized and beheaded sixteen persons, only seven of whom had anything to do with the movement. The remainder were occupants of houses where it was supposed some of us had met. The leaders all got away. I went on board my own steam-launch and sailed down to Hongkong, where I stayed a week. The Imperial officers were seeking me, and I passed them several times in the street without their recognising me. At the end of the week, during which I had made arrangements for my family, my wife and children and my mother, to follow me, I stepped on board a steamer under the eyes of my stupid pursuers without their noticing me. When I arrived in London, I was captured for the first time, after having been pursued around the world for one year. But the fault was not that of the English people. Indeed, the noble-hearted way in which the English people came to my assistance, and rescued me from the death for which I was assuredly destined, make us shed tears of gratitude.
"In saving my life the English people have earned the love of every one of our millions of cruelly ill-used people, and strengthened our hope of one day soon enjoying the blessing of a just government, such as that which has made your mighty nation so great and so good."
English friends on this occasion had warned him to steer a wide course away from the Chinese Legation, for there he would technically be on Chinese soil and could be arrested, but these friends either neglected to tell Dr. Sun where the Legation was or he forgot the directions they gave him. At any rate, one day as he was walking through a certain street two Chinese accosted him. They asked him to go with them to their lodging, where they could discuss the Revolution at home. When he demurred they seized him and pushed him through the door of a nearby house. It was the Chinese Legation.
A white man, who was Sir Halliday Macartney, English Secretary of the Legation, told Sun that he was under arrest and that he would be secretly taken out of London and back to Canton. The prisoner was locked in a room on the top floor of the Legation until arrangements could be made for the official kidnapping. Dr. Sun tried throwing messages out of the window weighted with coins, but one of them was picked up by one of the Legation servants and shown to the Minister, and the windows were nailed up.
In his desperation Sun managed to bribe an English servant to carry a message, telling of his plight, to a Dr. Cantlie, one of his friends. Dr. Cantlie laid the matter before the Government, which took immediate action. The building was hedged about by detectives and policemen so closely that the prisoner could not be smuggled out to a steamer. Finally, seeing the futility of longer holding him, the Chinese Minister turned Sun loose.
The nervy little doctor went right back to the Far East and began to hatch another Revolution against his enemies.
This time it was from Japan that he operated. But because he was not thoroughly wise in the matter of some Japanese business policies he was swindled out of all the funds he had raised to buy arms by one Nakimura.
He left Japan and went to live in Singapore. He slipped into China again and started another uprising. This, too, was ill-timed, and many patriots lost their heads under the executioner's heavy blade.