The speaker was Li Hsien.
Slowly the magistrate and the missionary made their way toward the stage.
At first the crowd, at sight of the magistrate's button and embroidered insignia, made way as well as they could. But as the impassioned phrases of Li Hsien sank into their minds resistance developed. From here and there in the crowd came phrases expressing a vile contempt for foreigners such as Doane had not heard for years.
Li was lashing himself up, crying out more and more vigorously against the Ho Shan Company, the barbarous white governments from which it derived force, foreign pigs everywhere. The crowds closed, solidly, before the two advancing men.
The magistrate waved his arms; shouted a command that Li leave the platform. Li, hearing only a voice of opposition in the crowd, poured out voluble scorn on his head. The crowd jostled Duane. A stick struck his cheek. He whirled and caught the stick, but the wielder of it escaped in the crowd.
Chang tried to reason, then, with the few hundred within ear-shot.
The sense of violence seemed to be increasing. A few of the magistrate's escort were struggling through. These formed a circle about him and Doane.
Li shouted out charge after charge against the company. He begged his hearers to be brave, as he was brave; to destroy all the works of the company with dynamite; to wreck all the grounds of the foreign engineer at Ping Yang and kill all the occupants; to kill foreigners everywhere and assert the ancient integrity and superiority of China. “Be brave!” he cried again. “See, I am brave. I die for Hansi. Can not you, too, die for Hansi? Can not you think of me, of how I died for our cause, and yourself, in memory of my act, fight for your beloved country, that it may again be the proud queen of the earth?”
He drew a revolver from his sleeve; shot twice; fell to the stage in a widening pool of blood.
At once the vast crowd went wild. Those near the white man turned on him as if to kill him. His clothes were torn, his head cut. Man after man he knocked down with his powerful fists. Before many moments he was exulting in the struggle, in his strength and the full use of it.