“Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you that God should raise the dead?”
“God is able to raise up even from the dead.”
AND now we were drawing near the confines. But a little more, and we should be over the border and out of Shan-si, a thought that made the heart beat faster with a glad impatience; for, so far as we knew, the Boxer movement had not spread to Ho-nan, and every step southward increased the hope of final deliverance. I well remember the unutterable longing that possessed me to be clear of the province whose very name was now a synonym for terror.
We had not taken the road more than a couple of hours, and the sun was still hot, when we arrived at a large town on the frontier called Lan-chen Cheo, high in the hills. What was my surprise and concern to find that, instead of pressing on towards our destination (Huai-k’ing Fu), we were halted, the litter set down in the street, and its occupants turned out. From the house immediately opposite, which proved to be the “li-kin yamen” (or customs barrier), two men came out and officiously examined the papers which were handed over by the Tseh-cheo underling.
“Ai-is! What’s this? They are irregular,” we heard them say, as they took them inside for more careful scrutiny; “there is no ‘uen-shu.’”
The purport of the discussion that ensued upon this discovery could to some extent be gauged by the voices, looks and gestures of the men within the open door. It meant detention, to say the least; and to me, with the prospect of being over the border and out of Shan-si so near realization, the thought of delay was intolerable. I was hardly prepared, however, for the actual issue. We were ordered into the room and on to the k’ang, whence, to our dismay, we saw the escort, whose duty it was to safeguard us to Huai-k’ing Fu, calmly lead out our animals, and take the road back to Tseh-cheo!
Never shall I forget the despair of that dark hour. Abandoned!—and still in Shan-si! Should we even now get out alive? Nay, how could we, with our only source of escape cut off, our papers worthless, our escort gone? Not only so, but the manner of the men who held us quickly confirmed our suspicions that we were their prisoners. Five men mounted guard over us, and all our movements were narrowly watched.
Meantime, our arrival had created the usual stir, and the inevitable crowds were soon coming about the door. To allay the excitement—with perhaps a more sinister motive behind it—our guards ordered is outside; and for some considerable time we sat on the doorstep, not knowing what the next moment might bring forth. Under pretext of putting the children to bed, my dear wife was at length enabled to withdraw, while Miss Gates and I remained to keep the mob at bay. When darkness fell, we were called inside and locked in, with a roomful of men about us.
From the noise without it was evident that the excitement was growing in intensity. The sound of blows soon mingled with the indescribable hubbub, followed by the shrieks and cries of women. These were quickly succeeded by a simultaneous yell, “Shah long kuei-tsï! Shah, shah!” and battering at the door. The situation was now so critical that a council was held in the room as to what should be done with us. Strengthened by the irregularity of our papers, the verdict went against us by a large majority; and on the popular plea that “no rain could fall till foreign blood had been spilled,” they separated with the decision that we were to die there.
Nothing could exceed the desperateness of the situation. All semblance of official protection removed; all means of escape taken away; the people howling for our blood on the street, and the sentence of death already gone forth from those with whom the shadowy burden of official responsibility was now supposed, to rest! I can only describe our affliction which befell us in Lan-chen Cheo, on the Ho-nan border of Shansi, in the words of St. Paul: “We were weighed down exceedingly beyond our power, insomuch that we despaired even of life: yea, we ourselves had the answer of death within ourselves.” Look which way we would, nothing, nothing but death confronted us. All room for trust in ourselves, or in any human soul, was cut clean away from under us: nothing, absolutely nothing, was left us but the cry, “Save me, O God, for the waters are come in unto my soul; I am come into deep waters where the floods overflow me.” Already delivered unto death, we were as good as dead. Our deliverance, if it came at all, could only come from one source— “God, which raiseth the dead.”
It was an intensely hot midsummer night. The room, in size about twenty feet by twelve, was very low and very filthy. Ventilation there was none (unless an occasional puncture, finger-made, in the papered squares of the tiny window frame could be dignified by the name); for the door, the only real avenue by which air could reach us, was now fast barred and locked. The fire, which had been in use all day for cooking, was kept in all night; and ten persons withal in the room! Moreover, the atmosphere reeked with the sickly fumes of opium and tobacco, blown from the pipes of the five jailers, whose forms were revealed by the opium lamp, lying stark naked around us. To add to these miseries, the k’and was infested with vermin, whose depredations were reinforced by the attacks of mosquitoes.
Our lying down was not to sleep, but to watch and pray. At any moment the death summons might come; and we must be prepared. Now and again during the night the guards would exchange a few words; but beyond this, and an occasional looking over at us to make sure that all was right, nothing took place. The long weary hours were spent in the light of God’s countenance; and in the multitude of our thoughts within us, Thy comforts refreshed our souls.
At daybreak the crowds began to reassemble. The decision of the council that we were to die had doubtless exercised a quieting effect upon them the previous night, and induced them to withdraw until the morning. Now, however, they would demand the carrying out of the sentence to the letter; and ere the sun was up, the terrible cry rang out upon the air once more, “Shah! Shah! Shah!” We knew well that the crisis had come, and that nothing but the direct and immediate intervention of God Himself could deliver us out of their hands.
At this moment the promise was borne in powerfully upon my heart, “Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me.” My faith was strengthened to take hold of it, and to plead it with God as a promise, to which He had pledged His Name, for the present hour of our trouble. Our part was to “call upon Him”; and realizing as we did that the assigned cause of their rage against us was the long continued drought, we were moved, under the impulse of the promise, to make a united cry to God to interfere for His great Name’s sake on our behalf, by sending rain enough to satisfy the need of these poor sufferers, and because of our extremity to send it now. Accordingly, kneeling up upon the k’ang, we poured out our hearts before Him in Chinese, that the jailers might know exactly what we were doing, and what we were asking.
Fools!—to suppose that out of a cloudless sky, as brazen as ever before, with every prospect of another day of devouring heat, rain could fall, and fall at once! Had not the guards already caught up the cry without and warned us that our hour was come—that there was not the faintest indication of rain, nor would there be until our blood had been shed? The contemptuous incredulity with which they listened showed what was in their heart.
How long we continued in prayer, I cannot tell. I only know that scarcely had we risen from our knees, when the windows of heaven were opened, and down upon the howling mob swept the sudden fury of a torrential flood of waters. In a few seconds the street was empty, and not a sound was to be heard but the swish of the rushing rain.
Oh, I can tell you, dear reader, the words “God is a very present help in trouble” became a living, great reality to us in that moment of doom. In so marvelous a manifestation of His love, we found a true manifestation of Himself. His “very presence” could not have been more real to us in the prison room if we had seen Him with our eyes. The throb of the heavy plash, plash of the waters without was the echo in our ears of His own Voice—a music of God’s own setting to the new song which He now put in our mouth. From that vile den went up the song of Moses and the song of the Lamb, “Great and marvelous are Thy works, Lord God Almighty: just and true are thy ways, Thou King of saints.” The prayer of the poor destitute was once more turned into praise, and the prison of our sighs into the temple of His song, who alone giveth songs in the night, even thanksgiving to our God.
The effect upon our jailers appeared in more ways than one. Something akin to awe took the place of their hard incredulity; and though they still affected a rough indifference towards us, they relaxed a good, deal from the cruel severity of the previous day. Then we had had the greatest possible difficulty in getting them to give us food at all, even at their own price; now we were supplied with a fair liberality, though never to the point of satisfaction. The door, too, was thrown open, and we were allowed to stand at the threshold and drink in the sweetness of the outer air.
One little incident will suffice to show how really impressed they had been, and how literally they had connected the double circumstance of the prayer and the rain as cause and effect. I was standing in the doorway with the two little ones, watching the swift rush of water as it hurried by at our feet down. the long incline of the narrow street—a veritable river where, but a few hours before, it had been the hard, dry road beneath some inches of powdery dust. As we watched, we sang, giving glory to God in the words of some of their own childish hymns. One chorus especially they delighted to sing in Chinese: Tsan-mei, tsan-mei Chu Je-su, T’i shi ern shae ming tih, Ts’ong al li fuh huo tih, Tsan-mei Je-su ngen Chu.
As we sang, the talk within subsided. Our keepers were listening intently over their pipes, and presently one was heard saying to the rest: “They are praying to their God ‘Je-su’ to send the rain faster; and just look!—it actually is coming down faster.”
Faster? Yes. It fell in solid sheets, as though some mighty reservoir had suddenly burst overhead and dropped its contents in bulk. Never in my life have I seen such rain. All that day, and far into the following night it poured, poured, poured with a greater or less degree of intensity, and never ceased. Blessed be God!
Two gracious results followed closely upon this miraculous visitation. The first was that every mouth was stopped against us. The pretext that had been given for putting us to death was thereby taken away; and the superstitious notion that our presence and prayers were enough in any locality to keep off the rain was unanswerably refuted. Notwithstanding, the jailers took care to drill it into us that there was no hope for our lives unless the fall was in sufficient quantity to soak the thirsty soil through and through; and when, at certain intervals, we inquired: “Surely it is hsia t’eo loh’ now?” the suggestion was first derided, then evaded where derision was no longer possible, until the fact was too obvious even for evasion; and the resolve to put us to death was revealed as a thing determined in any case, quite apart from the professed reason.
The second effect was to secure to us a day of quietness and comparative privacy. No words can express what this meant. True, the shadow of death was not removed; but the substance of the shadow (as I may well call it)—the fiendish, yelling mob, athirst for our blood—we were delivered from the consciousness of that, thank God! compared with which the other was as nothing.
The grateful monotony of an undisturbed morning was broken in upon at last by the arrival of a courier from the Tseh-cheo yamen. Greeting him in the usual native way, we asked him what the business might be that brought him there. I need hardly say that our impertinent politeness was treated with the disdain it deserved. From the way, however, in which he made his short communication to the jailers, it was not difficult to infer the gist of it. The colloquy ended, he left as hurriedly as he came.
It was drawing towards dusk when two men arrived, whose bearing, in spite of their bedraggled garments and generally woebegone appearance, bespoke them gentlemen of the yamen, and officials. They were evidently expected, and were soon deeply engaged in conversation with the officer in charge. Meantime, two soldiers of their retinue, each bearing a stack of three guns, took up a station under cover on the opposite side of the street.
If any hope of ultimate escape from Shansi had been fanned back into life by the timely interposition of the rain, it was absolutely quenched now. The three officers freely and openly discussed our death, and the mode of it.
“We can no longer make the plea of ‘no rain’ the incriminating charge against them. But what of that? Enough for us that they are ignorant foreign devils, who know nothing of Chinese and are the curse of China. Why should they be allowed to live? Nay, look at their papers. The instructions passed on to us from Kao-p’ing are that ‘they be taken out of Shansi, never to return!’ What is the meaning of this ‘never to return’ but that they are to be put to death! Ai-is! we will take good care that ‘they are both taken out of Shansi’ and that they ‘never return.’ See, we have guns with us; and tomorrow morning we will have them away yonder and shot outside the gate.”
When matters had come to such a pass as this, it was clear that nothing would be gained by silence. So I said to Miss Gates, who had interpreted to me the substance of their talk: “If they suppose that they can put us to death with impunity simply on hearsay charges, it is time we disabused them of the idea. They think we are ignorant foreigners who know nothing of Chinese let them know we understand more than they bargain for.”
With admirable courage she left the k’ang, and, facing the chief official with calm dignity, said quietly and courteously: “Your Excellency is talking of putting us to death, and upon no certain charge. You ought to know that this is contrary to the law and custom of your honorable country. You ought also to know that, as foreigners coming from Great England, you are bound to protect us. If we have done anything wrong against the law of the land, your duty is to bring us before the proper authorities for trial; and if it can there be shown that we have committed crimes worthy of death, we refuse not to die. But Our guilt must first be lawfully established before a regular tribunal, or a terrible retribution will befall both yourself and your country.”
The effect of these fearless words was extraordinary. Coming as they did from the “ignorant foreigners” in terms that turned the tables on themselves, they reduced the two officials from an attitude of contemptuous indifference to one of obsequious politeness. The “li” (or right of the matter) was so obviously on our side that, to save their face, they were driven to deny that they were intending any harm towards us at all. Bowing low to Miss Gates, to cover their confusion, they added: “We assure you, you have nothing whatever to fear from us;” and went out into darkness and driving rain.
Thankful as we were to be rid of their presence, we yet knew that their assurances were pure “hsü-kia” “hollow and false” as their own hearts. It was not for a moment to be expected that they would go back upon their intention after such an open avowal of it, especially as they had gone the length of bringing the very weapons of death with them into the place. So we could only look upon their words as a blind, and set ourselves to face the certain issue—death; death by bullet, on the morrow at latest.
We retired to the seclusion of the k’ang to face it, as so often before, in the presence of God. With the same calmness and composure as though in her own home, and with the same careful thoroughness, my precious wife prepared the dear children for bed. Then laying them down, we sang with them, as always after prayer, their evening hymn—
“Sun of my soul, Thou Saviour dear!
It is not night, if Thou be near.
Oh, may no earthborn cloud arise
To hide Thee from Thy servant’s eyes.
“Be near to bless us when we wake,
Ere through the world our way we take;
Till, in the ocean of Thy love,
We lose ourselves in heaven above.”
It was specially moving to hear their little voices in the words: Be near to bless us when we wake, and to know, as they did not, what the waking would be to. One thing, however, they knew as well as we, that whether it were to life or death, He would, as we had prayed, “be near to bless us.” And in that sweet confidence, notwithstanding the pain of their open sores, they fell asleep.
When darkness set in, the door was barred and locked as before. The night air, charged with moisture, was heavy with a steamy heat; and shut in as we were under precisely the same foul conditions as had prevailed the night before, the atmosphere of the room quickly became insufferable. Somehow one seemed to feel it more on this second occasion than on the first. What with the nauseating fumes of opium. the stench of tobacco, the “ch’i” (or gaseous exhalations) emitted from the “mei” with which the fire in the brick stove had been made up for the night, and ten pairs of lungs at work upon the few cubic feet of oxygen originally available—the reader can imagine the condition to which we were reduced. All this, however, was as nothing compared with the outrage upon the feelings inflicted by the shameless indecency of the men around us.
In the midst of all these discomforts we set ourselves to watch and pray as aforetime. “Offer to Me the sacrifice of thanksgiving... and call upon Me.” As we reviewed the marvelous lovingkindness of that wonderful day, our hearts were drawn out in extolling the God of our salvation and giving glory to the Lamb, the Overcomer, in the midst of the Throne. Sweet indeed were the moments, rich in blessing, which before the Cross we spent that night, on the eve of execution. Their fragrance has not departed yet: it is as fresh to me now in the memory of them, as it was then. A wonderful peace was borne in upon our hearts; and more than that—a sense of triumph in our God, “Who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all we ask or think,” so full and assuring, that again our trembling faith was quickened to lay hold of Him as “able to raise up, even from the dead,” and to “deliver out of the mouth of the lion.” Accordingly we agreed again to pray before our jailers, in their own tongue, for the direct intervention of God for our deliverance from the death immediately before us; and kneeling up once more on the k’ang, we called upon Him in Chinese as “the Mighty to save.” The definite terms of our petition were that for the glory of His great Name He would not permit the officials from Tseh-cheo, or our captors in the room, to touch a hair of our head, and that no power might be given them against us. To this we added earnest petitions for these our enemies, persecutors and slanderers, that God would be pleased, for His beloved Son’s sake, to forgive them and to turn their hearts.
There was dead silence as the prayer went up. By the dull light of an opium lamp, we could discern the forms of the five men lying or sitting in different postures about the room; but it was not sufficient to reveal the expression of their faces. Presently, however, the silence was broken, and out of the semi-darkness came the words: “They have been praying to their God to deliver them. Ai-is! deliver them indeed! Too late for that now. What is the use of praying when everything is fixed?”
The atmosphere of the room had now become so intensely oppressive that we scarcely knew how to breathe. My dear wife’s strength was ebbing perceptibly; for, besides the fact that this was the seventh day of extraordinary privations and buffetings (Thursday, July 12), the dysentery had increased upon her. Could it be otherwise, with no means of protection from the rain when forced to go out, no way of drying her clothes when wet to the skin, and no food obtainable but that of the coarsest! And now, under the oppression of the heated and poisonous atmosphere, her exhaustion was extreme. It was only by my keeping the fan incessantly going that any relief at all was afforded. Her condition was such as to call for special prayer, in a definite committal of her body to the healing and strengthening hand of God.
It must have been shortly after midnight, as nearly as we could judge, when a stealthy knock was heard at the door, and a voice demanding admittance. The bolt was thrust from the lock, the bar drawn, and the form of the Tseh-cheo Lao-ie showed big in the doorway.
“Up, up!” he said, “up and be doing! Now’s your time. These foreign devils are under your hand and in your power; and you must put them to death. Do it in any way you choose; but do it you must, and do it now. Kill them at once, and don’t be afraid. Poison them with opium, if you will; and to prevent trouble, stupefy them first by burning such and such a narcotic. Do as I counsel you, and never fear.”
And with that he passed out into the darkness. The burden of this terrible communication was interpreted to me by Miss Gates in the whispered words: “The end has come. The Lao-ie has instructed them to kill us now.”
Without giving the jailers the slightest intimation that we had understood what had passed, we made our prayer to our God, and set a watch against them. Meantime, the door was once more secured, and a short consultation held; after which the men lay down as before. In a little while they were, to all appearance, asleep.
Time went on, and we saw no indication that foul play was intended. Miss Gates was reclining in a half-sitting posture towards the back of the k’ang veiled in shadow, which the yellow glimmer of the opium lamp failed to penetrate; while my wife and children were covered by my kneeling form as I swept the fan above them.
At length one of the men got up and busied himself with preparing some stuff in a vessel. When ready, he put a light to it, and returned to his place.
Why did my arm move so heavily? and whence this overpowering sense of weariness? I changed my position, and stood up on the k’ang, to rouse myself; for at all costs the fan must be kept going in such a stifling atmosphere. Again I knelt, and then again stood up.
It was a hard fight, but the battle, I felt, was against me. An unconquerable drowsiness held my eyes; I swayed to and fro; and a stupor, from which I strove in vain to shake myself free, clouded my faculties. The movement of the arm as I fanned became indolently mechanical; then spasmodic; and then the fan dropped to the k’ang, and I helplessly after it. It was no use. Sleep I must, whether they killed us or not. And dazed to “don’t care” pitch, I passed into unconsciousness.
The noxious fumes of the burning drug were doing their work entirely to the satisfaction of the watching jailer. The utter stillness that pervaded the k’ang proved it to demonstration; and leaving his resting board, he brought the lamp across to scrutinize his victims before giving the coup de grâce. What was his amazement to find, as he held the light to Miss Gates’ face, that she was wide awake, and that upon one of the “kuei-tsï” at least the narcotic had had no power! A quick movement, designed to let him know that she was fully alive to all that was going on, so took him aback that he could only blurt out a disconcerted, “Ai-ia! not asleep yet? The bugs are too lively for you tonight, eh?” and withdraw to his plank and his pipe. In the strength of God and the patience of Christ, our dear sister continued the lonely vigil of self-denying love and unceasing prayer, to which undoubtedly we owed the preservation of our lives.
It was still dark when I was startled out of my heavy torpor by cries and groans close beside me. I sprang up to find my beloved Flora lying up in Miss Gates’ arms, in the throes of asphyxiation. She was gasping, panting, struggling for breath, and moaning for “air, air!” I turned to the jailers and besought them.
“My wife is dying—can’t you see it? Open the door, I entreat you, and give her air. Have pity upon her, oh, have pity, and open the door, if only for one minute.”
Alas for the heathen heart of man, so far past feeling as to turn from such an appeal with callous indifference and contempt! It was refused with a curse. Yet, indeed, what else could I expect, when her death was the very thing they were aiming at?
Praying God to forgive them, I seized two of our tiny rush fans—all that I had at my disposal—and plied them, one in either hand, with all I knew of vigor. The remarkable thing was that, during sleep, not only had I thrown off the effects of the narcotic, but had even in some measure renewed my strength. So far, therefore, I was, by the sustaining mercy of God, equal to the emergency. But oh, the distress of my precious wife’s suffering, and no alleviation possible! And then came the word of the promise to my remembrance, given her at the outset of the flight, “I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord.” So I worked the fans and pleaded the promise, Miss Gates uniting with me; and as the morning broke we had the unspeakable joy of seeing her breathing naturally and quietly again—prostrate in body, but rejoicing in spirit, giving glory to God.
The night was past, and the dark deed of death was not done. There was yet time for the men to do it before the world was astir, if they were so minded; and we dared not relax the watch of prayer. In any case, the breaking dawn reminded us that the hour of our execution was at hand, when we were to be shot outside the gate; and the call was still to readiness, that Christ might be magnified in our body by either mode of death, whether this or that.
Two anxious hours, and the men make no move. The sun is up, and the early clatter of hoofs tells that the busy day of traffic has begun; and we are still alive. The keepers shake themselves from their uneasy slumber, and as they don their clothing, we hear them discussing the events of the night, and the answer they shall make to the remonstrance of the Lao-ie; and it is this: “These people have been praying to Shang-ti Ie-hohua (Jehovah God); and we could do nothing against their prayers.”
Such was the testimony of the heathen around us—of the same men who but a few hours before, had mocked at the futility of prayer, and scoffed at the idea of a God that could deliver out of their hands.
~~~
In due course the door was unlocked and thrown wide open; and into the noisome prison room streamed the blessed light and air of heaven. Its entrance seemed like another visitation of the personal presence of our God, to revive our spirit and to change our strength. As it poured in irresistibly, scattering the darkness and its terrors so long upon us, and driving before it the foul atmosphere that had poisoned the very springs of life, it spoke to our heart of a Power that was for us, against Whom no weapon that was formed could prosper; and the word came to me triumphantly, “He shall deliver thee in six troubles; yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee.” At the quickening Voice, hope sprang again into being—not the sickly uncertainty begotten of sentiment, but the strong consolation born of a living faith in the Word of the living God, which works effectually in those who believe; a settled conviction that what He had promised in the word whereon He had caused me to hope, He was both able and faithful to perform. Twice already since our imprisonment here God had wrought miraculously for our deliverance: might we not take it as a guarantee that His determination was to bring us over the border to Huai-k’ing Fu after all? But how? The people were expecting our execution; and even apart from that, we had no “uen-shu” to pass us through, no animals to carry us, no officials to escort us.
“Look not around; for I am thy God.” If the situation was, to all outward appearance, as hopeless as ever, it was so only that He might prove us; for He Himself knew what He would do.
Wonderful to say, no exception was taken to our standing or even sitting in the doorway—a mercy for which we could not sufficiently thank God, as the sweet freshness of the early morning was life to my wife in her exhausted state. The rain had ceased before daybreak; and now there was a crisp, delicious coolness in the air which revived her like a strong tonic. The sun was brilliant, and the sky cloudless again, giving promise of heat. But the rain had done its beneficent work. The parched ground had become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water; rivers were running in the dry places, and streams in the deserts. The blessed effect of this, so far as it immediately concerned ourselves, was that, in their joy and satisfaction, the people had for the time being forgotten their enmity against us, and in their anxiety to improve the opportunity had scattered to the fields.
But what of the two officials from Tseh-cheo Fu? What indeed! I have not the faintest idea. Whether they went off in the night, after leaving instructions with the li-kin officer to have us privately destroyed, we never knew. Certain it is, they did not put in an appearance at the li-kin office, nor did we set eyes on them again. I cannot but think that God used Miss Gates’ warning, as to their responsibility in having us informally executed, to work upon their fears; and that for this reason they first crept round in the dead of the night to incite others to do the deed they dared not do, and then slunk home, to be out of the way while it was in doing. Thus God removed these two officials from us. As we had prayed, so it proved. They were not permitted to touch a hair of our head, nor was any power given them against us.
Meantime, of course, we had no idea but that they were still on the spot, and that the possibility of our being carried out to be shot might be realized any moment/ It was not our wisdom, however, to betray our thoughts by word or look, but rather to assume that our captors fully intended to discharge their obligations and send us on at once. When, the previous day, we had urged it upon them, the heavy downpour was made the reasonable excuse for detention. We were therefore bold to press the matter, and to demand that, as the only obstacle to our going forward was now removed, we should be taken on without further delay, according to the intention of the Tseh-cheo prefect.
For some considerable time we were kept in suspense. A long and excited discussion ensued, in the course of which it was evident that the council was divided. In all probability the lack of unanimity was due to their calculations having been upset by the perplexing disappearance of the two yamen officials. Some were for detaining us and putting us to death in the place; others for sending us forward and shifting the responsibility of the crime on to the shoulders of the next prefect. At length the question was settled out of hand in a most unexpected way. Who should appear on the scene but the muleteer that accompanied us two days before, and who we supposed had returned with the traitorous escort! Brutal as he had been towards us then, marvel of marvels! he now espoused our cause, if not in the sense of friendly advocacy, at least in the way of furthering the desired end. Standing out amongst them all, with that reckless air and defiant look of his, he said: “I care not a straw for all your talk. My orders are to carry the foreign devils to Huai-k’ing Fu, and to Huai-k’ing Fu I carry them. Put them to death here? You would only be fools for your pains. Don’t you know that, even if they get as far as the Yellow River, they will get no farther; for all the fords are held by the Ta Tao Huei. But, for that matter, there’s a band of them not far off. They’ll make short work of the ‘kuei-tsï,’ and save you a deal of trouble.”
Upon this he walked over to the other side of the road, and dragged from a shed the framework of the litter. Oh, the sight of it, as he laid it in the street before us and set to work upon the lashings 1 It is impossible for the reader to imagine what one felt. The Lord was turning our captivity; and I can only express it in the words, “we were like them that dream.” From that moment everything was done that could be done, in the leisurely haste of the Celestial, to hasten our departure. Three of the men from the li-kin yamen were deputed to accompany us—there was our escort. Our papers, such as they were, were endorsed and given into the hands of the officer in charge, whose presence with us would of itself be sufficient to carry us over the boundary—there was the adjustment of the “uen-shu” difficulty. And as to means of conveyance, two pack mules and a donkey, selected from a long string of coal-laden “seng-k’eo” passing through, were seized and calmly commandeered “for yamen use” —there were our animals! As I watched the men hoist the litter with its precious freight to the mules’ backs, I almost wondered whether I was in the body or out of the body. No crowds followed us—they were busy in the fields; no insults were shouted after us by those we left behind. Instead of being carried out tumultuously to die outside the gate, we were journeying quietly to our destination, set forward on our way by the very men who sought our lives.
Lan-chen Cheo behind us? What had God wrought! Three times miraculously delivered from death—at the hands of the people, at the hands of the jailers, at the hands of the Tseh-oheo officials. Signal answers to prayer, how many! together with the miraculous removal of the mountain of difficulties that stood in the way of our escape from the place.
The memory of Lan-chen Cheo will never be anything else to me than an agony. “Abba Father! if it be possible,” seemed the only language in which the heart could utter itself. And yet over all was the covering Presence; and the memory of that can never be anything else than joy unspeakable and full of glory.
“Therefore with Angels and Archangels and with all the Company of heaven we laud and magnify Thy glorious Name, evermore praising Thee and saying:
Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts!
Heaven and earth are full of Thy glory.
Glory be to Thee, O Lord most high!