"Wait a little!" he yelled in his imperfect Chinese. "Stop that!"
But the irregulars were Hakka tribesmen from the savage border, speaking a different language from that he was learning. They probably did not understand him. If they did, they were not to be baulked of their rewards by the orders of the foreign doctor.
Already the bloody knives were at work. Several were quarrelling over the body of the lieutenant, for there was a higher price for the head of an officer. Two or three had thrown themselves upon the sergeant. This was the nearest body to Sinclair. One of the knives was lifted. At a dozen paces Sinclair's big revolver spoke. The Chinese flung backwards down the slope, throwing his glittering knife high in the air.
That was a language they all could understand. For a moment they seemed disposed to resist. But the big foreign doctor was already among them, his revolver barking with the rapidity of a machine gun, and at every spirt of flame a man went down. Behind him came a number of well-armed regulars, who had been detailed to convoy the ambulances. The irregulars broke and fled. But they carried away with them the head of every man of that little squad save the sergeant.
The broken leg with its great gaping wound was hastily bandaged and supported by splints. The torn shoulder and the cut head had the blood staunched. Then the unconscious man was placed on a stretcher and borne to camp to be cared for in the same hospital as the Chinese wounded.
As the line of stretchers moved down the ravine, the tri-colour could be seen floating over the crest of the mountain where the battle had been fought, and the French bugles could be heard sounding "au drapeau."
XXXV
THE LANGUAGE OF PARADISE
The war was practically over. The Chinese could not dislodge the French from Keelung. The French could not advance any farther into the country.
What had they gained for all their expenditure of blood and effort? They had not been able to make themselves masters of a single foot of ground at Tamsui. At Keelung they held the ruined town and the harbour, and some outposts two miles from where their warships lay. Beyond the range of their naval guns they could not go. For such barren results, all of which in three months' time they were to relinquish again, they had sacrificed fully one thousand lives of French soldiers and sailors, had disabled hundreds more through wounds and disease, and had killed an unknown number of Chinese, none of whom knew what the war was about.