Under the dragon flag

by James Allan

I was now to have a close shave. I came suddenly and unawares upon a party engaged in slaughtering some shrieking wretches—women and children amongst them—and being perceived was shot at by one of the soldiers. I rapidly retreated, but he detached himself in pursuit. I entered a house; he followed, but I had the start of him, and for a while evaded him. I got into what looked like a kitchen or scullery, and amongst some other utensils I came upon a curiously shaped hatchet, very heavy and sharp. I waited for about a quarter of an hour, and then, judging that the Jap must have left when unable to find me, I prepared to sally forth again, as it was rather more dangerous to be in the houses than in the streets, the soldiers entering and pillaging them one by one, and of course slaughtering anybody they found within. No sooner, however, had I got to the front, than I unexpectedly encountered the very man who had driven me in, retiring laden with booty. He dropped his plunder at once upon seeing me, and handled his bayonet to run me through. We were in a little low room, with a door in a corner opening on the street. He made a furious thrust at me; by a quick movement I evaded it. The steel grazed my left side, and crashed through the wall behind me, to which I was pinned by the clothes, and as he tried to withdraw his weapon, I had a fair stroke at him in return. The axe was very sharp; rage and despair seemed to have doubled my strength, and I split his skull half-way down to the jaw. Brains and blood were scattered over me, as he sank dead at my feet.

I felt no inclination to stay any longer, and was about to take my departure, when it struck me that I might as well arm myself with my defunct antagonist's rifle and cartridge-pouch. This led immediately to a better idea. The Jap was a man of nearly my own stature; why not put on his clothes? It was fast darkening, and aided in the deception by the obscurity, my chance of escape would be greatly increased, though I began to have an uneasy feeling that it would be a miracle if I escaped destruction anyhow. I immediately acted on the inspiration. The soldier, I have said, was nearly of my own height (5 ft. 6 in.), but I was a good deal broader across the shoulders, and I made an extensive split up the back of his tunic in struggling into it. That, however, was no great matter, and I was soon equipped in all his outer casement, except his cap, which had been bisected along with his head. There was a little keen dagger in his belt, and with it I cut off my moustache as close as I could, as the Japanese seldom have much hair on their faces. Then, not forgetting his rifle, a beautiful Lee-Metford, I sallied forth, carrying my discarded clothes over my arm, a circumstance not at all likely to attract attention, as they were all loading themselves with booty.

I was undecided enough how to proceed. I might pass out into the open country north of the town, but if I did so I should probably either die of starvation or get killed as a Japanese straggler. I began to think my best course would be to return to the port, and take my chance of getting away in some small vessel. First of all, however, I resolved to complete my intention of seeing what was going on at the inn, to which I was now quite close. I kept boldly on, and my disguise answered admirably, not one of the soldiers seeming to suspect that I was anything but a comrade. Now and then I would be greeted by wild cries in their high, shrill voices, or one, waving his rifle, would shout something as he passed. I returned the greetings in dumb show, and hurried on. I do not know how it would have fared with me in broad daylight; probably not nearly so well; but it was now nearly dark. Most of the soldiers had provided themselves, to light the work of slaughter and pillage, with one of those coloured lanterns which are to be found in such profusion in Chinese towns, and their demoniac aspect was greatly heightened by the illuminations they carried as they flitted to and fro. The butchery was proceeding without the least sign of abatement; shots, shouts, shrieks, and groans resounded on every side; the streets presented a fearful spectacle; the ground was saturated with blood, and everywhere strewn with horribly mutilated corpses; some of the narrower avenues were positively choked with carnage. The dead were mostly the townspeople; their valiant defenders seemed to have been able to make themselves scarce; where they all got to is a mystery to me; perhaps owing to the fact that they got rid of their uniforms early in the proceedings in order not to be identified as combatants, a dodge that must have served them very little, as the conquerors killed every one they came across.

At length I reached Sen's house, only to find that the destroyer had been there. The place was in darkness; I took down the lantern from over the outer gate, with the name of the inn and its proprietor's written on it in the Chinese character, lit it, and began an inspection. The first thing I saw was the corpse of my landlord himself, lying in the covered court. His head was almost severed, and he had been disembowelled. Most of the lower storey rooms had doors opening into this court; across the threshold of one lay the corpse of a female servant, mutilated in an unspeakable manner. The household establishment consisted in all of some ten or twelve persons, and eight of them I found lying murdered in different parts of the premises. There was no sign of living presence anywhere. The place had been thoroughly ransacked, and everything worth having carried off. My blood boiled as I surveyed the scene of desolation and massacre, where lately I had witnessed happiness and cheerful industry, and I felt that I could willingly have died myself on the spot to obtain vengeance on the murderers.

In one of the upper rooms there was a bamboo ladder and trap leading on the roof, which was flat, and it occurred to me to ascend and look round. It was quite dark, and there was little to be seen beyond the limits of the street. Distant illuminations marked the positions of the forts on the surrounding heights. The seaward ones were still in possession of the Chinese. They fell easily on the following day, and had been practically abandoned. I noticed that the sounds of violence in the town were rapidly decreasing. As I walked slowly round, the dim light of my lantern fell on two figures skulking in the shadow. They retreated as I advanced, until they could back no further, and then one of them fell on his knees before me, bowing his forehead on the roof with abject cries. I held the lantern towards him, and to my astonishment recognized Chung. He evidently did not know me, and no wonder, considering the manner in which I had rigged myself out. He seemed half out of his wits with fear, and I had some difficulty in forcing the fact of my identity upon his conviction. Then his delight was as great as his previous terror. His companion was a stranger to him—a man of exceedingly gentlemanly and prepossessing appearance, and clearly a person of condition, being, in fact, as I afterwards found, a mandarin. His own residence had been sacked and his family murdered. He and a brother had escaped into the street, were pursued, and his relative shot in running away. Though with his left arm broken by a bullet, he had run into the inn. When the soldiers entered it he and Chung got on to the roof, where none of the Japanese thought of looking for victims. His broken arm was causing him considerable suffering, and having acquired during my knock-about life some rude knowledge of surgery, I put the fracture together, and made a sling with my neck-tie.

I explained my situation to Chung as well as I was able; he translated to his countryman, who knew no English, and we held a council as to future proceedings. The work of slaughter had apparently been suspended; either the soldiers were tired of it or had been recalled. The Japanese forces exceeded 20,000, and of these I do not think that more than one half, perhaps not one third, were engaged in this first evening's work, which was only the opening scene of the massacre. Masses of the troops had been placed to occupy the forts, and otherwise secure the conquest. We thought it likely, as indeed was the case, that they would all withdraw to the camps outside as the night advanced, and we resolved to attempt to gain the water-side, and seek a last chance of escape, under cover of darkness. We searched the place for food, but all we could find was a little bread, and a few prepared sweetmeat cakes.

An awful stillness, broken at times by ominous sounds, came over the town. Lights flitted at times through its dark labyrinths, by whom borne it was impossible to perceive. The presence of death, in its most fearful shapes, seemed palpable to the senses, and we, crouching in the gloom on the roof, to which as the safest place we had returned, had before our mental vision the mutilated bodies in the rooms close below us, with the ghastly probability, almost the certainty, that another hour or two would join us in their horrid fate. To myself, the reckless, wasted past presented itself, in that situation of appalling terrors, in all its enormity. There was I, after throwing away the high advantages of fortune and prosperity, a ruined and degraded man, about to meet an appropriate ending to such a career by a bloody death at the hands of some brutal soldier, in an unknown land, at the ends of the earth, where scarcely a human being knew a word of my native tongue. If these pages should be read by any young man embarking without a thought of the future, in the flush of high spirits and inexperience, upon courses similar to mine, I hope he will take warning, and stop in time.

It was, I should judge, about ten o'clock when at last we descended to the street. There had been no firing for about two hours. The lantern was re-lit, and Chung, who knew the way best, took it and went ahead. I still wore the soldier's dress; if met and challenged, I proposed to make it appear, as best I could, that I was making the Chinamen conduct me to one of the camps, or if I failed in this to sell my life dearly with the rifle.

Our path lay right across the town, and the dead lay thickly in nearly every street in the quarters we traversed, where, of every age, sex, and condition, they had been promiscuously butchered by the hundred. Here and there the miserable survivors—survivors only for the present—were searching, with low wailings and lamentations, for those they had lost, with the aid of their coloured lanterns, which gave a look of indescribable ghastliness to the mutilated forms they bent over to examine. To my last day I shall remember, with unfading horror, the aspect of those remnants of mortality, in all the hideousness stamped upon them by the unnamable atrocities practised during that diabolical orgy of murder and mutilation, rape, lust, and rapine. This is war! Away, in the splendid pavilion of the vanquished, the conquering marshal, surrounded by his generals and officers, was installed in triumph, secure of his country's applause and his emperor's favour; but here, amid these desolated homes, these mutilated heaps of death, was the night side, the shadow, of their glory. And this was but the first day of four! It must be admitted that the Chinese drew it upon themselves, that everywhere else the Japanese behaved with admirable clemency and moderation; but after making every allowance, their conduct in this instance, and particularly that of the high commanding chiefs in never seeking to put a stop to the devilish excesses perpetrated before their eyes on unoffending non-combatants, is richly deserving of everlasting infamy.

Many of the poor wretches thus cowering about ran away upon perceiving, as they thought, an armed Japanese soldier, but in one instance I had reason to be thankful that I was not alone. A middle-aged man and two younger ones were carrying away, in one of the streets we traversed, the half-naked body of a woman, which had been split open from the abdomen to the chest. The elder man glared upon me, in the dim light, with the expression of a tiger, and drawing a long curved knife from his breast, and pointing at me, shouted something to his companions, who perhaps were his sons. Chung at once interposed, and talked with them rapidly for a few moments, and naturally his explanation sufficed and we proceeded. I asked Chung what the man had said:—"There is one of the Japanese devils; let us rip him up."