"Faith, an' I'm wid you. But, begorra, we had better see to it that each of us has a bit of a shtick an' a gun handy. I hear that there are disturbances iverywhere, an' it's little manners the haythen are showin' to Europeans since the Frinch shtarted to mix it up wid thim."
"The last time he passed, Dr. MacKay told me that there was a good deal of rioting and some murdering. But he seemed to go about his work as if it were perfectly safe. And, so far as I could find out, he never carries any weapons."
"May the saints preserve him, that is a man! I was born a Roman Catholic, an' I intind to die a Roman Catholic. But, if it was advice about me sowl's salvation I was wantin'—and betune you an' me I'm needin' it badly enough—it's to him I'd go rather than to a church full of the priests that are feedin' fat on me paternal estate."
Their arrangements were soon made, and they were off. Even on the much-travelled way between the camp before Keelung and the capital there were evidences of disorder and lawlessness. Bands of marauders were out. Many of them were well armed, as they included numbers of irregular levies who had deserted with the arms and ammunition with which they had been supplied when they enlisted. Wayfarers had been robbed, and some who resisted had been murdered. Lonely farmhouses were looted and burned. In some cases the men were killed and the women foully abused. Some considerable towns had been attacked and terrorized into paying tribute.
But it was on the native Christians that the heaviest blow fell. Nearly everywhere they were hounded down, their little churches were destroyed, their houses were ransacked, their goods pillaged, and themselves cruelly beaten and tortured. Even when they succeeded in reaching hiding-places, they were often betrayed by their own relatives and given over to the inhuman cruelties of the heathen.
So serious was the danger that the consul issued a warning to his nationals and those of other nations for whom he acted not to venture beyond the limits of the port, where they could be under the protection of the gunboat, as well as of the Chinese garrison. At that moment Dr. MacKay, Sinclair, and Gorman were the only white men who were outside of the protection of large forces of disciplined soldiers.
Several times on their way Sinclair and his companion were faced by armed men. But they moved resolutely forward. As the marauders opened up to let them pass Sinclair caught the word "I-seng" (the life-healer), while Gorman laughed to hear himself described as "Añg-mñg-kui (the red-haired devil). Their reputations had preceded them and stood them in good stead.
Elsewhere tragedies were being enacted. Five or six miles south of the road which they were travelling, nestling in among the foothills of the great mountain-chain which occupied all the centre of the island, was the prosperous town of Sin-tiam. There the missionary had gathered together a congregation of worshippers and built a church of unplastered stone.
With the eye for beauty in nature which characterized him, he had chosen a site at one end of the town, where a little dell smiled between some verdured hills and the river. In front of the church door lay a beach of shingle, round which curved the swift, clear green waters of the Sin-tiam River. Its farther bank rose steeply from the water's edge, a hillside luxuriant with trees and vines, ferns and grasses, their vivid green all starred with roses and morning-glories, or the massed beauties of myrtle-trees and honeysuckle. Behind the first abrupt hill rose higher hills, and beyond these mountains, in whose impenetrable jungles and savage retreats the wild headhunters had their home. Behind these again giant peaks towered into the heavens.
Into this paradise of beauty, bloodthirsty, heathen men burst and their rage turned it into a perdition. Early one fair summer morning the black flags of a party of marauders were seen approaching the town. The respectable citizens, whether heathen or Christian, hurriedly closed and barricaded their shops and houses. The worst element of the population rushed out to join the freebooters.