  Produced by Al Haines. [image] Cover art [image] They came over the last bluff (See page THE A ROMANCE OF FAR FORMOSA BY THURLOW FRASER Illustrated TORONTO Copyright, 1914, by To FOREWORD In every port of the Orient the outposts of the restless, aggressive West touch the lines of the impassive East. Consuls, military and naval officers, merchants, missionaries force the ideas and ideals of the West upon the reluctant East. Many of these representatives of western civilization are true to the high standards of the nations and religions from which they come. Many others fall to the level, and below the level, of those they live among. This story is an attempt to picture this life where the East meets the West, in one small port and for the one short period covered by the Franco-Chinese War of 1884-85. Of the characters one, Dr. MacKay, is unhesitatingly called by his own name. Sergeant Gorman and one or two others of the subordinate figures are drawn from life. The rest, including the principal actors, are purely imaginary. T. F. CONTENTS
ILLUSTRATIONS I STORM SIGNALS "Pardon me, Miss MacAllister! Is there any way in which I can be of service to you?" The young lady addressed turned quickly from the deck-rail on which she had been leaning, and with a defiant toss of her head faced her questioner. A hot flush of resentment chased from her face the undeniable pallor of a moment before. "In what way do you think you can be of service to me, Mr. Sinclair?" she demanded sharply. "I thought that you were ill, and——" "And is it so uncommon to be sea-sick, or is it such a dangerous ailment, that at the first symptom the patient must be cared for as if she had the plague?" "Perhaps not! But I am told that it is uncomfortable." There was a humorous twinkle in his eyes. At the sight of it hers flashed, and the flame of her anger rose higher. "From that I am to understand, Mr. Sinclair, that you are one of those superior beings who never suffer from sea-sickness." "I must confess to belonging to that class," he replied good-humouredly. "I have never experienced its qualms." "Then I abominate such people. They call themselves 'good sailors.' They offer sympathy to others, and all the while are laughing in their sleeves. They are insufferable prigs. I want none of their sympathy." "But, Miss MacAllister, you misunderstand me. I am not offering you empty sympathy. I am a medical doctor, and for the present am in charge of the health of the passengers on this ship." "Then, Dr. Sinclair, I am not in need of your care. I never yet saw a doctor who could do anything for sea-sickness. Their treatment is all make-believe. They know no more about it than any one else. I do not propose to be the subject of experiments. Good-evening." She was again leaning on the rail, in an attitude which belied her defiant words. "Good-evening," replied the young doctor, as he turned away with a scarcely perceptible shrug of his shoulders, and with an expression of mingled amusement and annoyance on his face. A low chuckle of laughter caught his ear. He was passing the cabin of the chief officer, and the door stood open. "What is the matter with you, Mr. McLeod?" he asked, the shade of annoyance passing from his face, and a good-humoured laugh taking its place. "Come in and close the door." "You heard what she said?" "Yes. How do you feel after that, doctor?" "Withered; ready to blow away like a dry leaf in autumn!" "You look it," laughed the mate, as he glanced admiringly at the big, handsome man who seemed to take up all the available space in the little cabin, and who was laughing as heartily as if some one else had suffered instead of himself. "Isn't she a haughty one?" continued the chief. "Who is she, anyway? The captain made us acquainted. But you know he doesn't go into particulars. She was Miss MacAllister. I was Sinclair. That was our first encounter. You witnessed the second." "Her father is senior member of the big London firm of 'MacAllister, Munro Co., China Merchants.' They have hongs at every open port on the China Coast. He is making an inspection of all their agencies and has brought his wife and daughter along for company. Being a Scot, he likes to keep on good terms with the Lord, who is the giver of all good gifts. So he is mixing religion with business. In the intervals between examining accounts and sizing up the stock in their godowns, he is visiting missions, seeing that the missionaries are up to their pidgin, and preaching to the natives through interpreters." "Easy seeing, McLeod, that you're a Scot yourself, or the son of a Scot, from your faculty of acquiring things. Where did you get all this about the MacAllisters? They joined us only this afternoon at Amoy." "Oh, yes! But they were with us from Hong-Kong to Swatow last trip. You missed that, doctor, by going over to Canton. Miss MacAllister and I got quite chummy. Bright moonlight; dead calm; too hot to turn in and sleep! So we just sat out or strolled up and down nearly all night. If you had been there, I should have had no show. See what you missed." "If what I got to-day be a fair sample of what I missed last trip, you're welcome to it." The mate laid back his head and laughed with boyish glee at the rueful look which came over his friend's countenance, at the mere memory of the stinging rebuff he had suffered. "Do not imagine that your lady friend is always in the humour she showed to-day, doctor. She is pretty sick, and for the first time, too. She told me before what a good sailor she was. Never missed a meal at sea! Never had an inclination to turn over!" "Did she say that, McLeod? That she was a 'good sailor'?" "Yes." "The vixen! And then you heard the way she has just soaked it to me for being a 'good sailor.'" McLeod shook with laughter. "Don't be too hard on her, doctor. She has got it good and plenty this time, and she's disgusted with herself, disgusted with the sea, the boat, and everything and everybody connected with them." "She doesn't hesitate to express her disgust," replied the doctor. "I blundered upon her at an unlucky moment and received the full contents of the vials of her wrath." "Never mind; she will soon get over this. Then she will be quite angelic." "I guess she got some Chinese chow at Amoy, which didn't agree with her." "Perhaps! But it doesn't need any chow to turn over even good sailors on a sea like this. The Channel can be dirty when it likes. This is one of the times it has chosen to be dirtier than usual." The two young men had stepped out of the mate's cabin and were leaning on the rail looking at the turbulent sea through which they were steaming. The coast-line had already faded out of sight in the gathering gloom, but away to the northwest a great, white light winked at slow intervals of a minute. The tide was setting strongly in a southerly direction, and the ship was breasting almost directly against it. The southwest monsoon meeting the tidal current, and perhaps several other wayward and variable ocean streams which whisk and swirl through that vexed channel, was kicking up a perfect chaos of broken waves. Through this choppy turmoil the Hailoong ploughed her way, all the while pitching and rolling in an exasperating fashion, no two successive motions of the ship being alike. None but seasoned sailors could escape the qualms of sickness in such a sea. "It certainly is nasty enough," said the doctor; "and the appearance of the weather does not promise much improvement." "The storm signals were hoisted as we weighed anchor," replied McLeod. "They indicated a typhoon near the Philippines, but travelling this way. The captain thought that we could make the run across before it caught us. But if we don't see some weather before we cross Tamsui bar, I'm no prophet." "Seven bells! Guess I had better polish up a bit for dinner." "Don't throw away too much labour on yourself, Sinclair. She'll not appear at table this evening." "She must have made considerable impression on you, Mac, from the frequency with which your mind recurs to her," retorted Sinclair, as the two separated to make hasty preparations for dinner. II A LULL There were not many at dinner that evening. The Hailoong never had a very heavy passenger list. Her cabin accommodation was limited. On this trip half of the small number of passengers were in no humour for dinner. When Dr. Sinclair entered the saloon, the chief officer, McLeod, was already at the table. His watch was nearly due, and he did not stand upon ceremony. Presently Captain Whiteley came in, and with him a tall, broad-shouldered man of past middle age. Sinclair had barely time to note the high, broad forehead, and the square jaw, clean shaven except for a fringe of side-whiskers, trimmed in old-fashioned style, and meeting under the chin, before the captain introduced him. "Mr. MacAllister, this is Dr. Sinclair, a Canadian medical man, spying out the Far East, and incidentally acting as our ship's doctor." "I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Dr. Sinclair. I have been in your country, and have a great respect for the energy and progressiveness of your countrymen." "I am glad to know that you have visited Canada, Mr. MacAllister. It seems to me that most British business men and British public men are lamentably ignorant of Britain's dominions beyond the seas. It's refreshing to meet one who has visited these new lands and knows something of their possibilities." "It must be acknowledged that too many of us in the British Isles are insular and conservative in our ideas. But I have always felt that even in the matter of trade we cannot make a success, unless we know the people and the wants of the people with whom we do business. Our firm's largest foreign trade is with China, and this is my fourth visit to the China Coast. But we have interests in Canada also, and in connection with them I have spent some months in the Dominion." "I am quite sure that your interests there will grow. It is a great country. There is practically no limit to its possibilities. Even the Canadians themselves are only now discovering that." "With such a country, and with such possibilities in it for a young man, I am surprised, Dr. Sinclair, that you have forsaken it to seek your fortune on the China Coast." "Seeking one's fortune, in the ordinary meaning of that phrase, is not the only thing worth living for, Mr. MacAllister. If that were the main object in life, I should have remained in Canada." The keen grey eyes of the successful business man searched the young doctor's face, as if they would read his very thoughts. But Dr. Sinclair did not answer their questioning gaze, nor volunteer any explanation of his statement. "Dr. Sinclair thinks with you," broke in Captain Whiteley, "that a man is better of seeing life in different parts of the world, even though he may end up by finding a snug harbour in some out-of-the-way corner." "Yes," replied the merchant, "that is wise, if he can make any use of the experience gained." "And I think that the doctor is nearly as much interested in missions as you are, Mr. MacAllister, judging from the way he visits them and studies them at every port." "Is that so, Dr. Sinclair?" The keen eyes were again reading his face. "I am interested in anything which proposes to make this old world better, and to help the men who are in it. That's why I chose medicine as a profession. I like to see things for myself. That's why I visit missions." "And what are your conclusions?" "I have hardly come to any conclusions yet. I have been only a few months on the Coast. Tourists and newspaper correspondents know all about the Far East after spending ten or twelve hours at each of the ports touched by the big liners. I am not a genius. I cannot form conclusions so rapidly. But here is a fellow-countryman of mine who knows more of missions now than, in all probability, I ever shall know." As he was speaking a man had entered the dining saloon who would have attracted attention anywhere. It was not his dress or his stature which would have caused him to be noticed. Like the rest he wore a close-fitting suit of white drill. He was of barely middle height, though well-knit, wiry and erect. But the quick, nervous movements, the piercing dark eyes, which seemed to take in with one swift glance everything and everybody in the room, betokened the fiery energy of the soul which burned within. The high forehead, a trifle narrow perhaps, and the straight line of the mouth, with its firmly-closed lips, indicated intensity of purpose and determination. A long black beard flowed down on his chest, contrasting sharply with the spotless white of his clothing. "Mr. MacAllister, have you met Dr. MacKay?" "I have not had that pleasure. Is this MacKay of Formosa?" "I am MacKay." "It is a great pleasure to me to meet you. I have heard so much of your work." "I hope it may have been good." "What else could it be? I am told that it is marvellous what you have accomplished in so short a time and almost alone." "All have not that opinion of my work." "All who spoke of it to me had that opinion. If what they told me is true, as I believe it is, how could they think otherwise?" "Different men have different methods. So have different missions. Some can see no good in any but their own. My methods differ from those of others. They have not approved themselves to many of my seniors in the mission fields of China." "I shall be glad to study your methods and see your results for myself." "You shall have the opportunity." The little group of officers and passengers were ere this seated at the table. In addition to those already mentioned there was the chief engineer, Watson, a Scot from the Clyde. There was also a passenger, a tea-buyer from New York. The latter sat opposite Dr. MacKay at the mate's left. He had been listening to the conversation with a look of amused contempt on his flabby face. At the head of the table the captain, the engineer, Sinclair, and MacAllister formed one group, who were soon deep in conversation. The tea-buyer took advantage of their preoccupation to address his neighbour across the table: "So you are one of those missionaries." "I am." "Been gettin' a pretty fine collection of souls saved." "I never saved a soul. Never expect to." The mate chuckled to himself. But the point was lost on the tea-buyer. He thought that he had scored. "Glad to see that you have come round to my point of view," he said; "and that there is one missionary honest enough to acknowledge it." "And what is your point of view?" "My point of view is that the red-skins and the black-skins and the brown-skins and the yaller-skins ain't got any souls, any more than a dog has." "I do not know of any reason why the colour of a man's skin should affect his possession of a soul." MacKay spoke very quietly. The tea-buyer began to bluster. "Reason or no reason, no man is going to make me believe that any of the niggers or Chinees or any of the rest of them have souls. Christian or no Christian, a nigger is a nigger, a Chinee is a Chinee, a Dago is a Dago, and a Sheeny is a Sheeny from first to last. All the missionary talk and missionary money-getting is nothing but damned graft, and the missionaries know it. Boy! One piecee whiskey-soda! Chop-chop!" "All lite! Have got." And the "boy," a Chinese waiter perhaps sixty or seventy years old, quickly and noiselessly brought the bottles. "I suppose you have had abundance of opportunity to see and judge for yourself before you came to those conclusions, Mr. Clark," said MacKay. There was that in his tone which would have made most men careful in their reply. But Clark was too self-confident to be wary, and repeated whiskeys and sodas had made him still less cautious. "You may bet your bottom dollar I have," he replied. "I have known niggers and Dagos since I was knee-high to a grasshopper; and I have spent every season on the China Coast for the last five or six years. Oh, yes! I know what I'm talking about. I know them from the ground up." "Doubtless you have visited many of the churches and chapels at the different ports where you have done business, and have for yourself seen the natives at worship." "Me visit their churches! Not on your life! What do you take me for? I take no stock in any of their joss pidgin. I'd sooner go to a native temple than to a native church. But I've never been in either." "Then I am afraid that I must assist your memory, Mr. Clark. You were in a native church." "Me? Never!" "If I am not mistaken, Mr. Clark, you were a passenger on the American bark Betsy, when she was wrecked on South Point, just outside of Saw Bay, a year ago last November." "I was. But I don't see what that has to do with the subject we were discussing." "The Betsy's boats were all smashed as soon as they touched water." MacKay was speaking in the dead level tones of suppressed emotion. But there was something so penetrating in his voice that the conversation at the other end of the table ceased, and all were listening. "The Pe-po-hoan or Malay natives there went out through the surf in their fishing-boats and took every man off safely." "Yes," replied Clark uneasily, "that's all right enough. But I reckon we could have made the shore ourselves." "They took you to their village, called Lam-hong-o: they opened their church: the preacher gave up his own house to you: they made beds for you there and fed you." "Damned poor accommodation, and damned poor grub! Boy! One piecee whiskey! Be quick about it!" "All lite! No wanchee soda? My can catchee." "No! Damn the soda!" "All lite! All lite! Dammee soda!" "I shall not say anything, Mr. Clark, of the return those white men with souls made to those brown men without souls who saved them. But I shall tell you what would have happened if the missionaries had not gone to Lam-hong-o; if there had not been a chapel there; if those brown-skins had not been Christians. Your ship would have been pillaged. Your heads would have been cut off. Your carcasses would have been fed to the sharks. But they were Christians. So they saved you. They fed you. They clothed you. They sent you home with all your belongings that they were able to save from the sea." "Right you are, MacKay!" exclaimed Captain Whiteley, bringing his fist down on the table with a thump which threatened to throw on the floor the few dishes which the motion of the ship had not already dashed out of the retaining frames. "Right you are! Nearly thirty years ago I was on the Teucer, Captain Gibson, as senior apprentice with rank of fourth mate. We were bound from Liverpool to Shanghai, but ran on the rocks a little farther down the East Coast than the Betsy did. There were thirty-one of us all told. We got ashore without the loss of a man. But when those devils of natives were done with us, there were only three of us left alive—the carpenter, an A.B., and myself. And we wished that we were dead. We would have been dead, too, before long. But after being worked as slaves for nine months, a Chinaman, who had been with the missionaries on the mainland, bought us from the Malays, and rowed us out to the first foreign ship he saw, the old Spindrift. She took us to Shanghai." As the captain finished speaking MacKay rose and left the table. As was his wont, he had eaten sparingly and quickly. MacAllister was pressing Captain Whiteley for more details of his captivity among the head-hunters. McLeod was on the point of going out to his watch. "That was score one on you, Clark," he said to his neighbour. "It doesn't pay to get too fresh even with a parson." "I don't see that it's any of your pidgin to stick up for those fakirs," retorted the tea-buyer angrily. "And I don't make it my pidgin," replied McLeod, "but it wasn't up to you to butt in on a man like MacKay the way you did. He gave you what you deserved." "He needn't have flared up so and brought in all those mock-heroics about what those niggers of his did. I was only jollying him. He made things a great deal worse than they were." "He didn't make things half as bad as they were, Clark. What about the way the native preacher's daughter was used by the men to whom the preacher gave up his house and his church? Those brown-skins may have no souls. But MacKay believes they have. To my thinking they have a good deal more soul than the white-skins who did what was done there. You fellows went the limit. I wonder that MacKay let you off so easy." "Oh!—Say!—Damn it, McLeod, that's going too far.—I'll not stand for that.—Say!—Here!—McLeod!—Wait and we'll break a bottle of champagne.—Here!—Boy! One piecee champagne!" "No, thank you, Clark! It's my watch." At the door the chief officer paused and called back: "Say, Doc, when you are done feeding that big body of yours, come up on the bridge." "All right, Mac. I'll be with you." III THE TYPHOON When Dr. Sinclair joined his friend on the bridge, a very marked change had come over the weather. It was intensely hot and sultry even where the circulation of air was freest. The wind was no longer blowing steadily from the south-west. It came in short puffs, dying away entirely between them, and veering around quarter of a circle. The short, broken waves of earlier in the evening were giving place to a long swell, coming up from the south. The movement of the ship was much easier. One or two passengers who had been unable to appear at dinner had recovered sufficiently to come on deck and escape the unbearable sultriness and stuffiness of the cabins. "It's coming all right, doctor. Going to catch us sure. I don't care so much if it will only wait till daylight. I have no ambition to be floundering around this channel in a typhoon in the dark." "How's the glass?" "Away down, and still going. Haven't seen it so low since the big typhoon that cleaned up Hong-Kong Harbour a couple of years ago." "What prospect is there that the big blow will hold off till morning?" "Oh, pretty fair! The rain hasn't started yet, and on this coast we generally get splashes of rain for quite a few hours before the real thing begins. The sea is rising, but not very fast yet. I don't think we'll see very bad weather till to-morrow." Just then a merry ripple of woman's laughter sounded from away aft. "Listen to that, Sinclair," said the mate. "That 'sweet Highland girl' of yours has evidently recovered sufficiently to come on deck. She's back there talking to the captain. I hope he may be as gallant as he sometimes is with our rare lady passengers, and may bring her up here to view the scenery. I should just like to see how you and she would act at your first meeting after the little tiff you had to-day. I'm interested in this case, doctor." "What the deuce is the matter with you anyway, McLeod? You are talking a lot of rot to me about a young woman I have never seen before. Surely our experiences so far have been unpropitious enough. If it were not that I know about a little girl away back on your own Island, I should say that those moonlight promenades between Hong-Kong and Swatow had turned your head." "Never mind, Doc. You know that a bad beginning makes a good ending. We people of Highland blood have a sort of second sight. We can see a bit into the future. I give you fair warning——" There was another ripple of laughter, this time from forward, almost under the bridge. Then a woman's voice said: "Oh, Captain Whiteley, I behaved myself most shockingly to-day." "Surely not, Miss MacAllister. I couldn't conceive of your doing anything which wasn't charming." "You told me that you were a Yorkshireman, Captain Whiteley. After such a speech as that I believe that you must have been born near Blarney Castle. But I really did behave shamefully." "How?" "I said just awful things to your doctor." "And what ever did Dr. Sinclair do to deserve those 'awful things'?" "It was all your fault, Captain Whiteley. When you introduced him, you did not tell me that he was a doctor. I was sea-sick, and—and in just dreadful humour. He offered assistance. I did not know that he was a medical doctor, sauced him, and sent him about his business. And now what shall I do to make amends? It was all your fault——" Anything more was lost to the ears of the two young men on the bridge, as she and the captain strolled slowly aft. But the rippling laughter reached their ears from time to time. "Not very penitent, that!" laughed McLeod. "Did you catch on to the reason she gave for saucing me, because she didn't know that I was a medical doctor? It was just when she found out that I was a doctor that she gave me the worst. Doesn't that beat the Dutch?"
quoted McLeod. In the light of the binnacle lamp the two friends looked into each other's eyes and laughed heartily. There was no cynicism, no cheap scoff at a woman's variableness. Instead there was that manly healthy-mindedness which can afford to laugh at her inexplicable ways, and honour and admire her still. "By the way, McLeod, Dr. MacKay put it all over Clark this evening, didn't he? I couldn't hear it all. Caught just the last few sentences. But I thought, from what I heard, that he was giving that old Mormon some knockout blows." "You're right he was. But not half as much as he deserved. There are some white men who come out here who wouldn't be decent company for pigs. Clark is one of them. I'm no paragon of virtue, and I don't set up to preach to others. But there are a lot of us on the China Coast who try to keep decent enough not to be ashamed to go home once in a while and look our mothers and sisters in the face. There are a number of others who are simply rotten. They give us all a bad name. Mormon! Yes, worse than that! He could give points to old Abdul Hamid of Turkey." A dash of warm rain driving before a sharp squall of wind struck them. The Hailoong was rising and falling with the mighty heave of the great swells which were following each other in regular succession from the south, each apparently bigger than the last. Captain Whiteley climbed the ladder to the bridge. "Looks as if we were in for a bad night, Mr. McLeod." "Yes, sir; and a worse day to follow." "From the way the sea is rising, I'm afraid we cannot make Tamsui before it breaks." "I am sure we cannot. I'll be satisfied if it only waits till daylight. We may have our hands full even with the light." "I see that you have been making things snug. That's right. I'll have a look at everything before eight bells." The captain went down to see that every preparation was made. McLeod spoke to his companion. "You had better turn in, Sinclair," he said. "Get a bit of rest. You may be needed to-morrow. Good-night." "Good-night, Mac." |
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