The water is softly blue in the autumn sunshine, which is always bright in this part of the world. To-day, by chance, the wind and the waves seem to sleep. As far as one can see, great warships succeed one another, motionless and menacing. As far as the horizon there are the turrets, the masts, the smoke of the astonishing international squadron with all its train of satellites, torpedo boats, transports, and a legion of packet-boats.
The Bengali, upon which I am about to embark for a day, is one of the little French ships carrying troops and war supplies, which for a month past has been painfully and wearisomely going and coming between the transports or freighters arriving from France, and the port of Taku beyond the Pei-Ho bar.
To-day it is full of Zouaves,—brave Zouaves who arrived yesterday from Tunis, careless and happy, bound for this ominous Chinese land. They are crowded on the bridge, packed together, their faces gay and their eyes wide open for a glimpse of China, which has filled their thoughts for weeks and which is now near at hand, just over the horizon.
According to ceremonial custom, the Bengali, when it appears, must pass the stern of the Redoutable to salute the admiral. The music waits behind the armor, ready to play one of those marches so intoxicating to the sailor. And when we come up close to the big ship, almost under its shadow, all the Zouaves—those destined to return as well as those who must perish—wave their red caps to the sound of the bugle, with hurrahs for the ship, which here represents France to their eyes, and for the admiral, who from the bridge raises his cap in their honor.
At the end of half an hour China appears.
Never has an uglier and more forbidding shore surprised and congealed poor newly arrived soldiers. A low shore, a gray barren land without tree or grass. Everywhere there are forts of colossal size of the same gray as the earth, masses of geometrical outline pierced by embrasures for guns. Never has the approach to a country presented a more extensive or aggressive military array; on both sides of the horrible stream with its muddy waters loom similar forts, giving the impression of a place both terrible and impregnable, giving the impression also that this harbor, in spite of its wretched surroundings, is of the first order of importance, is the key to a great country, and gives access to a city large, rich, and powerful—as Pekin must have been. From a nearer view the walls of the first two forts, stained, full of holes, and ravaged by cannon-balls, bear witness to furious and recent battles.
We know how, on the day Taku was taken, they exhausted their strength on one another. By a miracle, a French shell from the Lion fell right into one of them, causing the explosion of its enormous powder magazine so that the yellow gunners lost their heads. The Japanese then seized this fort and opened an unexpected fire on the one opposite, and immediately the overthrow of the Chinese began. Had it not been for this chance, for this shell, and for this panic, all the European gunners anchored in the Pei-Ho would inevitably have been lost; the landing of the Allies would have been impossible or problematical, and the whole face of the war changed.
Transports on the Pei-ho