The mission station was situated in the northern suburbs of So T'ung-fu, outside the wall. Duane went directly there.
The mission compound lay a smoking ruin. Not a building of the five or six that had stood in the walled acre, was now more than a heap of bricks, with a Ft of wall or a chimney standing. The compound wall had been battered down at a number of points, apparently with a heavy timber that now lay outside one of the breaches. There was no sign of life.
He walked in among the ruins. They were still too hot for close examination. But he found the body of a white man lying in an open space, clad in flannel shirt and riding breeches, with knee-high laced boots of the sort commonly worn by engineers. The face was unrecognizable. The top of the head, too, had been beaten in. But on the back of the head grew' curly yellow' hair. From the figure evidently a young man; one of Pourmont's adventurous crew; probably one of the Australians or New Zealanders. A revolver lay near the outstretched hand. Doane picked it up and examined it. Every chamber was empty. And here and there along the path were empty cartridges; as if he had retreated stubbornly, loading and firing as he could. Not far off lay an empty cartridge box. That would be where he had filled for the last time. He must have sent some of the bullets home; but the attackers had removed their dead. Yes, closer scrutiny discovered a number of blood-soaked areas along the path.
A young Chinese joined him, announcing himself as a helper at the station. Jen Ling Pu had sent him out over the rear wall, he said, with the telegram to Mr. Doa ne.
Together they carried the body of the white man to a clear space near the wall and buried him in a shallow grave. Duane repeated the burial service in brief form.
The boy, whose name was Wen, explained that on his return from the telegraph station he had found it impossible to get into the compound, as it was then surrounded, and accordingly hid in the neighborhood. By that time, he said, Jen, with the three or four helpers and servants who had not perished in the other buildings, one or two native Bible-women, a few children of native Christians and the white man were all in the main house, and were firing through the windows. They had all undoubtedly been burned to death, as only the white man had come out. He himself could not get close enough to see much of what happened, though he slipped in among the curious crowd outside and picked up what information he could. The attacking parlies were by no means of one mind or of settled purpose. The Lookers among them were for a quick and complete massacre, as were the young rowdies who had joined in the attack for the fun of it. But there were more moderate councils. And so many were injured or killed by the accurate marksmanship of the young foreign devil, that for a time they all seemed to lose heart. The Lookers were subjected to ridicule by the crowd because by their incantations they were supposed to render themselves invisible to foreign eyes, and it was difficult to explain the high percentage of casualties among them on the grounds of accidental contact with flying bullets. Finally a ruse was decided on. The white man was to come out for a parley. A student, recently attached to the yamen of the local magistrate as an interpreter volunteered—in good faith, Wen believed—to act in that capacity on this occasion.
The meeting took place by one of the breaches in the wall. The engineer demanded that the three principal leaders of the Lookers Le surrendered to him on the spot, and held until the arrival of troops from T'ainan. While they were pretending to listen, a party crept around behind the wall. He heard them, stepped back in time to avoid being clubbed to death, in a moment shot two of them dead, and shot also the captain of the Lookers, who had been conducting the parley. Then, evidently, he had backed tow ard the main house and had nearly reached it when his cartridges gave out.
Doane was busy, what with the improvised burial and with noting down Wen's narrative, until nearly noon. By this time he was very sleepy. There was nothing more he could do. The ruins of the main house would not be cool before morning. Nor would the soldiers arrive. He decided to call at once on the magistrate and arrange for a guard to be left in charge of the compound; then to set up his cot in a cell in one of the local caravansaries. He had brought a little food, and the magistrate would give him what else he needed. The innkeeper would brew him tea.... Before two o'clock he was asleep.
3
He was awakened by a persistent light tapping at the door. Lying there in the dusky room, fully clad, gazing out under heavy lids at the dingy wall with its dingier banners hung about lettered with the Chinese characters for happiness and prosperity, and at the tattered gray paper squares through which came soft evening sounds of mules and asses munching their fodder at the long open manger, of children talking, of a carter singing to himself in quavering falsetto, it seemed to him that the knocking had been going on for a very long time. His thoughts, slowly coming awake, were of tragic stuff. Death stalked again the hills of Hansi. Friends had been butchered. The blood of his race had been spilled again. Life was a grim thing....