The Yellow Danger 
 
 ASIA 
 
 M.P.Shiel 
 

 OlacttEll Hntucrattg SItbrarg 
 
 Jltl;ara, Ntm fork 
 
 CHARLES WILLIAM WASON 
 
 COLLECTION 
 
 CHINA AND THE CHINESE 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 CHARLES WILLrAM WASON 
 CLASS OF 1876 
 1918 
 

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 The yellow danger :the story of the worl 
 
 3 1924 023 399 854 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924023399854 
 
THE 
 
 YELLOW DANGER 
 
 THE STORY OF THE WORLD'S 
 GREATEST WAR 
 
 BY 
 
 M. P. SHIEL 
 
 AUTHOR OP "the MAN-STEALERS," *' PRINCE ZALESKI,** STC, 
 
 BRFVI5 ESSE LABORO ! 
 
 Messrs. Horace and Gibbon, 
 
 R. F. FENNO & COMPANY, 9 AND 11 EAST 
 
 SIXTEENTH STREET : NEW YORK CITY 
 
 LONDON — GRANT RICHARDS 
 
 1899 
 
PR ^(357 
 
 Copyrigbt, 1899 
 
 BY 
 
 K. F. FBNNO & COMPAN* 
 
 >>«■ yrftow Danger 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE NATIONS AND A MAN 
 
 As all the world knows, the Children's Ball of the 
 Lady Mayoress takes place yearly on the night of 
 " Twelfth Day," 6th January. In the year '98 the 
 function was even more successful than usual, owing 
 to Sir Henry Burdett's fine idea that the children 
 should be photographed in support of the Prince of 
 Wales' Hospital Fund. The little Walter Ealeighs, 
 Amy Eobsarts, flocked in throngs to the photographer's 
 studio adjoining the grand salo7i of the Mansion House ; 
 while all that space outside between the Mansion 
 House, the Bank, and the Stock Exchange was a mere 
 mass of waiting, arriving, and departing vehicles. 
 
 If anything tended to take a little of their exuber- 
 ance from this and other New Year jubilations, it was 
 a certain cloudiness in the political sky ; nothing very 
 terrifying ; yet something so real, that nearly every 
 one felt it with disquiet. An Irish member, celebrated 
 for his " bulls," was heard to say : " Take my word for 
 it, there's going to be a sunset in the East." Men 
 strolled into their clubs, and, with or without a yawn, 
 said : " Is there going to be a row, then ? " Some one 
 might answer : " Not a bit of it ; it'll pass off pres- 
 ently, you'll see." But another would be sure to add : 
 " Things are looking black enough, all the same." 
 
 It was just as when, on a clear day at sea, low and 
 jagged edges of disconnected clouds appear inkily on 
 the horizon-edge, and no one is quite certain whether 
 or not they will meet, and whelm the sky, and sink 
 the ship. 
 
 But the horizon had hardly darkened, when again, it 
 cleared. The principal cause of fear had been what 
 
 7 
 
8 The Yellow Danger 
 
 had looked uncommonly like a conspiracy of the three 
 great Continental Powers to oust England from pre- 
 dominance in the East. First there was the seizure of 
 Kiao-Chau, the bomhastic farewells of the German 
 Eoyal brothers ; then immediately, the aggressive at- 
 titude of Eussia at Port Arthur ; then immediately 
 the rumor that France had seized Hainan, was send- 
 ing an expedition to Yun-nan, and had ships in Hoi- 
 How harbor. 
 
 All this had the look of concert ; for within the last 
 few years it had got to be more and more recognized by 
 the British public that centuries of neighborhood had 
 fostered among the Continental nations a certain spirit 
 of kinship, in which the Island-Kingdom was no sharer. 
 
 In the course of years the Straits of Dover had 
 widened into an ocean. Europe had receded from 
 Britain, and Britain, in her pride, had drawn back 
 from Europe. From the curl of the mustache, to the 
 color and cut of the evening-dress, to the manner in 
 which women held up their skirts, there was similarity 
 between French and German, between German and 
 Eussian and Austrian, and dissimilarity between all 
 these and English. 
 
 It is true that the Eussian hated the German, and 
 the German the Eussian and the French ; but their 
 hatred was the hatred of brothers, always ready to 
 combine against the outsider. This had been begun 
 to be suspected, then recognized, by the British nation. 
 Alone and friendless must England tread the wine- 
 press of modern history, solitary in her majesty ; and 
 if ever an attempt were made to stop her stately 
 progress, she was prepared to find that her foe was the 
 rest of Europe. 
 
 But very soon after the unrest had arisen, it began 
 to subside. France denied the annexation of Hainan ; 
 the semi-ofiicial Nord-deutsche AUgemeine Zeitung, in- 
 spired by Wilhelm, painted Germany as the patron of 
 commerce, with an amiable weakness for theatrical dis- 
 plays ; Eussia was defeated in the matter of the re- 
 moval of Mr. MacLeavy Brown, and seemed sufficiently 
 limp after it ; while spirits were raised by the probable 
 
The Nations and a Man 9 
 
 guarantee of a Chinese loan by the British Govern- 
 ment. 
 
 But meanwhile, at the children's ball at the Mansion 
 House, events were working in a quite different 
 direction from that of peaceful settlement. 
 
 Ada Seward was the presiding deity in the nursery 
 of Mrs. Pattison of Fulham. On the night of the 6th, 
 Dr. and Mrs. Pattison had to be present at a ball in 
 the West End, and Ada on that night was busy ; for it 
 was necessary for her, first of all, to convey Master 
 Johnnie Pattison, costumed as Francis I., to the Man- 
 sion. House ; and then to hurry homeward again to 
 take Miss iN'ellie Pattison to a children's evening 
 with charades in South Kensington. 
 
 The fact that it was wet when she reached the Man- 
 sion House may have had something to do with her 
 troubles. The landing-place was occupied by some 
 other carriages, and dismounting with her charge, an 
 umbrella over him, she cried to the coachman in a 
 hurried manner through the drizzle : 
 
 "Wait till I come back." 
 
 The man afterwards declared that he understood her 
 to say : 
 
 " Go away, and come back." 
 
 At any rate, when Ada again came forth into the 
 crush to look for the Pattison brougham, it was no- 
 where to be found. 
 
 And now her lips went up in a pout of vexation. 
 "What on earth is any one to do now ?" she said. 
 She was pressed for time, and yet at a loss. 
 
 The throng of private carriages seemed to have 
 banished all cabs from the region of the Mansion 
 House. She looked and saw none ; then into her 
 pocket, and found only sixpence. These two circum- 
 stances decided her against the cab. Instead, she ran 
 a few yards, dodging among the carriages, and at the 
 entrance to Poultry, skipped into a moving 'bus. 
 
 She sat in a corner for five minutes, with agonized 
 glances out of the door at the slowly receding clocks. 
 Then some one — a man sitting nearly opposite, whom 
 she had not noticed — addressed her : 
 
10 The Yellow Danger 
 
 " Why, Miss Ada, is that you ?" 
 
 " Oh ! " she cried, " Mr. Brabant, is that you ? It's 
 a long time since — how are you ? " 
 
 " Well, I'm pretty fair. Miss Ada, as times go, yot 
 know. Hope you are the same." 
 
 " Still in the army ? " 
 
 " Oh yes — the Duke of Cambridge's Own, you know. 
 You living in London now ? " 
 
 "Yes-atFulham." 
 
 Here conversation flagged ; and in that minute's in- 
 terval, Brabant, with a sudden half-turn to his left, 
 said : 
 
 " Just allow me to introduce you to my friend here 
 — Miss Seward — Dr. Yen How." 
 
 In the light of the 'bus lamp Ada Seward saw a very 
 small man, dressed in European clothes, yet a man 
 whom she at once took to be Chinese. With a 
 wrinkled grin, he put out his hand and shook hers. 
 
 He was a man of remarkable visage. When his hat 
 was ofE, one saw that he was nearly bald, and that his 
 expanse of brow was majestic. There was something 
 brooding, meditative, in the meaning of his long eyes ; 
 and there was a brown, and dark, and specially dirty 
 shade in the yellow tan of his skin. 
 
 He was not really a Chinaman — or rather, he was 
 that, and more. He was the son of a Japanese father 
 by a Chinese woman. He combined these antagonistic 
 races in one man. In Dr. Yen How was the East. 
 
 He was of noble feudal descent, and at Tokio, but 
 for his Chinese blood, would have been styled Count. 
 Not that the admixture of blood was very visible in his 
 appearance ; in China he passed for a Chinese, and in 
 Japan for a Jap. 
 
 If ever man was cosmopolitan, that man was Dr. Yen 
 How. !Jfo European could be more familiar with the 
 minutise of Western civilization. His degree of doctor 
 he had obtained at the University of Heidelberg ; for 
 years he had practised as a specialist in the diseases of 
 women and children at San Francisco. 
 
 He possessed an income of a thousand tael (about 
 jESOO) from a tea-farm ; but his life had been passed in 
 
The Nations and a Man ii 
 
 the practise of the grinding industry of a slave. 
 Nothing equaled his assiduity, his minuteness, his at- 
 tention to detail. He had once written to the Eoyal 
 Observatory at the Cape pointing out a trifling error in 
 a long logarithmic calculation of the declension of one 
 of the moons of Jupiter, originating from the observa- 
 tory. 
 
 In the East he could have climbed at once to the 
 very top of the tree — Even in the West, had he chosen. 
 But he chose to lie low, remaining unnoticed, studying, 
 observing, making of himself an epitome of the West, 
 as he was an embodiment of the East. 
 
 In whatever country he happened to be — and he was 
 never for many years in any one — he was most often to 
 be found in the company of people of the lower classes ; 
 and of these he had a very intimate knowledge. So 
 great was his mental breadth, that he was unable to 
 sympathize with either Eastern or Western distinctions 
 of class and rank. He often struck up chance friend- 
 ships with soldiers and sailors about the capitals of 
 Europe ; and these patronized and exhibited him here 
 and there. 
 
 Yen How knew that he was being patronized, and 
 submitted to it — and smiled meekly. In reality, he 
 cherished a secret and bitter aversion to the white race. 
 
 He had two defects — his shortness of sight, which 
 caused him to wear spectacles ; and his inability, in 
 speaking without effort, to pronounce the word " little." 
 He still called it "lillee." 
 
 On that date of 6th January, when he drove westward 
 with Brabant and Ada Seward, he was perhaps forty 
 years of age, but seemed anything between sixteen and 
 sixty ; a hard, omniscient, cosmopolitan little man, 
 tough as oak, dry as chips. 
 
 Yet in that head were leavening some big thoughts ; 
 and his heart was capable of tremendous passions. 
 
 In reality, could one have known it, as he fared on- 
 ward through the drizzle in the trundling 'bus, smiling 
 behind his spectacles, he was the most important per- 
 sonage in London, or perhaps in the world. 
 
 Dr. Yen How was capable of anything. In him was 
 
12 The Yellow Danger 
 
 the Stoic, and the cynic, and the tiger ; with a turn of 
 the mind he could become a savant, or a statesman, or 
 a crossing-sweeper, or a general. He possessed this 
 excellence : a clear brain. 
 
 By one of those extraordinary freaks of nature for 
 which there is no accounting, this man wanted to see Ada 
 Seward a second time after parting with her that night. 
 
 Brabant, who had known her in her native town of 
 Cheltenham, accompanied her to the gate of the Pat- 
 tison villa, Yen How. with them. 
 
 As he was leaving her, the little doctor put his mouth 
 to her ear, and whispered hurriedly : 
 
 " I will wait here to-morrow night at eight for one 
 lillee kiss." 
 
 The girl was astounded. 
 
 "Well, the idea! " she just gasped. 
 
 Before she could proclaim her indignation, the two 
 men turned ofE. 
 
 Till he reached his home in Portland Street, Yen 
 How was engaged in one long, continuous, secret smile 
 — a smile at his own expense. This outburst of his in 
 the r61e of lover was new to him, absolutely. His re- 
 lations with women hitherto had consisted in the busi- 
 ness of curing their sicknesses. By what subtle physi- 
 ological or psychological affinity this one particular Eng- 
 lish girl had been able to evoke from this particular dry 
 Chino-Japanese a request for " one lillee kiss," he was 
 unable to divine. Such an nffinity there undoubtedly 
 was ; but its origin lay among reasons far too abstruse 
 for the unraveling of Yen. 
 
 Yen How smiled that first night, but he presently 
 found that this was no smiling matter. 
 
 At eight the next evening he was duly at the Pat- 
 tison gate ; but, alas, no Ada was to be seen. Ada, 
 however, was there, though invisible. She, with the 
 Pattison cook, whom she had brought out to enjoy the 
 fun, was hiding behind a shrubbery, and peering 
 through, shaking with laughter at the futile waiting 
 of the little doctor. 
 
 And now Yen How, for the first time in his life, be- 
 gan to sufEer on account of a woman. 
 
The Nations and a Man 13 
 
 He loved ; and in his love was the concentrated 
 passion of many other men. Melted rock is lava — and 
 he suffered. 
 
 He used at night to hang about the house, which 
 was lonely at that hour, waiting. To his patience 
 there was no end — to his resolution to possess her, by 
 fair means or foul, no end. 
 
 Even in the matter of love the Eastern is essentially 
 different from the "Western. It is impossible for us, in 
 anything, to understand them, so foreign are they. 
 With us love is frequent, a powerful mood ; with them 
 the whole man is involved, and love becomes a passion 
 having all the characteristics of ordinary flame. 
 
 One night, as he lurked about, he met her returning 
 from some shopping. By this time Yen How had be- 
 come a standing joke for Ada in the kitchen and the 
 servants' bedroom. He walked to her. 
 
 " Ah," he said with sideward head, and a cajoling 
 smile, " you are here, then ? You will give poor Yen 
 How one lillee kiss ? " 
 
 The whole idea of courtship possessed by this clown- 
 ish and unpractised lover consisted in asking for one 
 little kiss. Ada Seward's views of the matter were 
 more elaborate. She despised his strong simplicity. 
 
 " Perhaps you are not aware whom it is you are talk- 
 ing to," she said. 
 
 Yen was aware ; he could have shut his eyes and 
 drawn an exact picture of her face. 
 
 "Ah," he said, "not even one lillee " 
 
 "I'll give you one lillee box of soap to wash youi 
 face, if you like ! " she cried, running and looking back. 
 The house was near ; he could not overtake her. 
 
 Perhaps it would have been impossible for Miss 
 Seward to utter words more calculated to drive Yen to 
 madness than this reference to "soap." If his suit 
 was hopeless, it was now borne in upon him that it was 
 hopeless on account of his race. The girl did not listen 
 to him, and reject him ; she rejected him without tak- 
 ing him into consideration at all. It was as though a 
 mule, or a cat, had asked her to be his. 
 
 But his persistence did not fail. He flung his other 
 
14 The Yellow Danger 
 
 pursuits to the wind, and the Pattison villa became foi 
 him the center of the world. Sometimes he caught 
 bright glimpses of her. Once again he met her in the 
 street, and once again she overwhelmed him with jeers. 
 So passed January, February, and March. 
 
 To Yen How, the bourgeois, the thought never at all 
 occurred that the girl was below iourgeois class. He 
 was a great man, and merely saw in Ada the eternal 
 woman. Dukes marry duchesses ; but the Goethes, the 
 Mahomets, wed cooks and water-carriers. On that 
 very plan was built Yen How. 
 
 At the beginning of April he stood one night outside 
 the Pattison gate, when he saw her. It was eleven 
 o'clock ; she was coming from the theater, leaning on 
 the arm of Private Brabant. Brabant, since their 
 meeting in the 'bus, had several times been "out" 
 with her. 
 
 As the two approached, Ada saw the little doctor. 
 
 "There's that little Chinaman again, John," she 
 said, pressing Brabant's arm. " It's getting too much 
 of a good thing now, isn't it ? " 
 
 " Confound the little rat," said Brabant ; "he wants 
 his nut cracked, I should think, doesn't he ? " 
 
 The doctor tripped up to them, smiling nervously. 
 Before he could speak, Brabant, who had had a glass, 
 said: 
 
 " Come, come, Mr. Yen How, get out of this. Can't 
 you see the young lady doesn't want you fooling round 
 her?" 
 
 "Well — but — my soldier friend," said Yen, "there 
 is no harm done " 
 
 " Come, get out of it ! " said Brabant more roughly. 
 
 "No, no, you go too fast, you see," began Yen 
 apologetically. 
 
 " Are you going — ^yes or no ! " said Brabrant, now 
 flushing angrily. 
 
 " Go away, why don't you ? " put in Ada. 
 
 " Ah ! I — I am here to see my lillee girl," hazarded 
 Yen. 
 
 " Oh, don't be a stupid little goose of a Chinaman ! 
 Just fancy ! " she said. 
 
The Nations and a Man 15 
 
 This was the most unkindest cut of all for Yen. He 
 winced, touched with anger. 
 
 " Are you going or not ? " said Brabant, an ultima- 
 tum in his tone. 
 
 "No," said Yen; then, more decidedly, "no, no I" 
 
 Brabant put out his arm and pushed him on the 
 shoulder. 
 
 It was not a violent push, but in an instant the 
 doctor's face was almost black with rage. He had in 
 his hand a stout bamboo stick, which he at once lifted 
 and slashed with terrible force across the soldier's 
 cheek, leaving a bruised weal which Brabant bore with 
 him to the grave. 
 
 In retaliation the soldier lifted his large and bony 
 fist, and sent it into the doctor's face. Yen How 
 dropped. 
 
 The street was deserted. Not knowing what to do, 
 the girl and the soldier bent over him for fi.ve minutes, 
 when, to their surprise. Yen How raised himself slowly, 
 placed his handkerchief against his red and dripping 
 lace, and slowly limped away without a single word. 
 
 Once he stopped deliberately as he moved off, turned, 
 and looked at them ; and in the moonlight they dis- 
 tinctly saw him twice shake his forefinger warningly in 
 their direction. 
 
 Then he went on his way. 
 
 Between that night and the beginning of May he 
 never once stepped outside the house in which he lived. 
 He had resumed his close and far-reaching studies. 
 
 At the beginning of May he was on board the Penin- 
 sular, bound for the East. 
 
 By the end of September he was a member of the 
 Japanese Parliament. 
 
 In December we find him a leading spirit in the 
 Tsung-li-Yamen, or Chinese Foreign OflSce, and mak- 
 ing voyages between Tokio and Pekin. 
 
CHAPTEE II 
 
 THE HEATHBlir CHINEE 
 
 Y'EN How was nothing if not heathen. He was that 
 first of all. 
 
 His intellect was like dry ice. Though often secretly 
 engaged in making The Guess, on the whole, he despised 
 all religions — the faiths of the West, the superstitions 
 of the Bast, he despised them all alike. He was full 
 of light, but without a hint of warmth ; and so lacked 
 the religious emotion. 
 
 It is not likely that ordinary ethical considerations 
 would much influence the aims of such a man. He was 
 like an avalanche, as cold, and as resistless. 
 
 What was Dr. Yen How's aim ? Simply told, it was 
 to possess one white woman, ultimately, and after all. 
 He had also the subsidiary aim of doing an ill turn to 
 all the other white women, and men, in the world. 
 
 If the earth had opened and swallowed him, then he 
 would have renounced his hope ; but for no lesser reason. 
 He went coolly and patiently, to work to secure his 
 desire. 
 
 But no man, surely, ever employed means so huge to 
 an end so small. A European, perhaps any other man, 
 having once conceived the means, would quickly have 
 forgotten the end in the tremendous interest of the 
 means themselves. But in all that Yen did the face 
 of Ada Seward was always consciously "before his eyes." 
 The nature of this man was as simple as the elemental 
 rock. 
 
 His career in the East, from the first hour of his re- 
 turn, was meteoric. He rose like a rocket. The order 
 of the day in China, and especially in Japan, was 
 Western modernity ; and here was a man who simnly 
 16 
 
The Heathen Chinee \^ 
 
 oi'eathed Western modernity, and who yet was an 
 Eastern of the Easterns. His skin was more yellow 
 than the yellow man's, and his brain was more white 
 than the white man's. When the English Inspector- 
 General of Eoads and Bridges at Tokio asserted that 
 the Imperial tax in Britain on railway passenger traffic 
 was, he believed, £3 per cent, Yen How's face wrinkled 
 into a chaos of smiles. "No— two," he said quietly; 
 and no one doubted which was right. Yen introduced 
 a new method of protecting bridges during the daily 
 earthquakes of Japan, by means of articulated joists 
 and sleepers. When the Naval Director at Pekin in- 
 troduced a specification for a new battle-ship to be 
 mounted with two 111-ton guns. Yen proved by sta- 
 tistics (which he quoted from memory) that the ten- 
 dency of the most modern shipbuilding was rather in 
 the direction of quick-firing guns than of heavy 
 armaments. The 111-ton became 45-ton. He was soon 
 invaluable. 
 
 At this time the people of Japan were strongly ex- 
 cited against the freebooting of Eussia and Germany in 
 China, and strongly animated in favor of England. 
 England was, in fact, the beau-ideal, the Great Pattern, 
 of Japan. It required no great force of imagination 
 for her to call herself " the Britain of the East " ; this 
 notion at once occurred, of itself, to every one ; and, 
 of course, the copyist sympathized with her original 
 rather than with others. With England predominant 
 in China, moreover, there would be an assurance of free 
 trade ; and Japan was a trader. So strong was the en- 
 thusiasm in favor of England, that the nation was even 
 willing to put its fleet at the disposal of its Big Model 
 in case of need. 
 
 The ulterior purposes of Japan, of course, remained 
 in doubt. She was even then building in various parts 
 of the world an additional fleet, which, when finished, 
 would make her a sea Power far in advance of any nation 
 in the whole earth, with the exception of England 
 herself. What in the hour of her manhood, when she 
 had cast her leading-strings, she would do with this vast 
 force was a disturbing question to many ; but, mean- 
 
1 8 The Yellow Danger 
 
 while, it was clearly her intention to use England as 
 an ally — till the years ripened. 
 
 Under the Marquis Ito's Ministry Yen How was 
 offered a post of Under-Secretary, but he refused it. 
 He suggested that he should become Secretary to the 
 Minister as his prirate servant ; and this was arranged. 
 He knew that high public rank in Japan would exclude 
 him from high public rank in China, if his double 
 personality should become known — and China was the 
 chief field of his labors. Meanwhile, he was drawing 
 large revenues as a mandarin, and lived, for his own 
 purposes, in a style nearly princely. 
 
 " Poh ! " he said to the Marquis Ito, sipping tea among 
 rugs, " there are no statesmen now. Statesmen ! — there 
 are no such things. Not here — not in Europe. An 
 ordinary man is a man who thinks in days ; a statesman 
 proper thinks in thousands of years. The outlook and 
 computations of a statesman should be as much vaster 
 than those of a private person, as a country is vaster 
 than a tea-house. Believe me, there are no states- 
 men." 
 
 " Come, doctor, why do you say that ? " asked the 
 Marquis. 
 
 " Look forward five hundred, a thousand years, 
 Marquis, and what do you see ? " answered Yen How. 
 ' Is it not this ? — the white man and the yellow man 
 in their death-grip, contending for the earth. The 
 white'and the yellow — there are no others. The black 
 is the slave of both ; the brown does not count. But 
 there are those two ; and when the day comes that they 
 stand face to face in dreadful hate, saying, ' One or 
 other must quit this earth,' shall I tell you which side 
 will win ? " 
 
 " Which do you think ? " 
 
 "The white will win, Marquis." 
 
 " Perhaps I differ from you," said the Marquis Ito. 
 
 "Ah ! you differ from me. But I am right all the 
 same ; and I mean, sooner or later, to prove it to you 
 abundantly, abundantly ! The white will win, I tell 
 you 1 You great men in Japan are trying to copy them, 
 straining your poor necks to come up with them ; but 
 
The Heathen Chinee 19 
 
 I have passed my life in studying them — and I've got 
 something to tell you ; listen to it : you cannot, Mar- 
 quis, you cannot, you cannot ! " 
 
 "Our Navy already " began the Marquis. 
 
 " Poh ! your Navy ! Who built it for you ? It was 
 they. Your Navy is like a razor in the hands of an ape 
 which has seen its master use it. The brute may or may 
 not cut its own throat with it. And as soon as they 
 build a navy for you, they will build one twice as big 
 for themselves, and twice as good. There is no reason 
 why you should not follow them, and go on following 
 them — only understand that you cannot catch them I 
 And this is another thing that you should understand 
 — that the longer you follow them, the farther they get 
 away from you. Their rate of progress is continually 
 increasing. Every day that passes over the world gives 
 them an additional advantage over you. To-day their 
 guns can mow you down by hundreds ; in a hundred 
 years they will mow you down by thousands ; in five 
 hundred years by millions. Can't you see ? — you are 
 losing time ! " 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 " Ah, I mean that there are no longer any states- 
 men. Marquis. The eye of the statesman ranges far, 
 far into the tracts of the future, doesn't it ? But we ! 
 Here are we now — we Japanese, we Chinese, we yellow 
 men — playing about in little diplomatic mud-puddles 
 with French, and Eussian, and English and German, as 
 if all that mattered two sen ! And all the time we know 
 well, yet seem not to know, that French, and English, 
 and the rest, are equally our foe, and tyrant, and vul- 
 ture, one not more than the other ! That if we do not 
 eat them all now, at once, they all will swallow us 
 whole some day, soon — soon. And to see China fight- 
 ing with Japan in such a case, and Japan banging into 
 China — is it not childish enough to make a donkey, or 
 even a Grand Lama, laugh ? There are no statesmen 
 any longer. Marquis." 
 
 " Well, come, I see something in what you are driv- 
 ing at," said Ito. " We and China are like two birds 
 pecking at each other on a bough, when suddenly they 
 
20 The Yellow Danger 
 
 are 6oth down the belly of a serpent, which has been 
 calmly watching them. "Well, but what are we to do ? 
 By your own showing, the birds can do iiothing against 
 the serpent." 
 
 " Did I say that ? " asked Yen, lifting his eyebrows 
 in innocent surprise. " Oh, I didn't mean it ! There 
 are many birds, you see, and few serpents. In the 
 world to-day there are 408,000,000 Christians and — 
 mark the figures — 1,004,000,000 non-Christians. I 
 can see that you are startled." 
 
 " You think that by sheer force of numbers " 
 
 " Yes, if we had taken our opportunity in time — if 
 we had struck two hundred — a hundred years ago. 
 Even to-day I believe that it is hardly too late, if the 
 yellow race can find a great Ipader. I am perfectly 
 sure that in a hundred years' time it will be too late." 
 
 " Why so ? " 
 
 " I have told you. By that time the white man will 
 have something like a magician's power over all nature. 
 He will say to the mountains and the seas : ' Be re- 
 moved ! ' — and at his mere whisjDer they will obey him. 
 We yellow men, too, will have advanced, but they will 
 have vastly outstripped us. We cannot follow them, I 
 tell you. The day will come when our mere numbers 
 will no longer be of any importance in balking and 
 overthrowing them." 
 
 " You talk of big things, my friend," said Ito. " Are 
 you serious ? " 
 
 "Yes, Marquis, I am serious." 
 
 "You advocate a League of the yellow races ?" 
 
 "I do." 
 
 "He ! he! the idea tickles me; it is so very far 
 from realization — there are so many obstacles " 
 
 " No, really — I think not. I believe it is very near 
 to realization. Events are at this moment in progress 
 at Pekin which will /orce it to accomplishment — soon. 
 Suppose I tell you that I, personally, have laid those 
 events in train ? " 
 
 " You, doctor ? What, are you going to lead us all, 
 then, against Paris and London ? He ! he I " 
 
 " Perhaps, Marquis," 
 
The Heathen Chinee 21 
 
 "What, to face the Nordenfeldts, and the Maxims, 
 and the Krupps ? The Chinese will run from the first 
 tvyelve-pounder ! " 
 
 " There may not be any twelve-pounders there when 
 they get to Paris and London," said Yen How with 
 absolute coolness, yet with an emphasis and an intona- 
 tion of solemnity in his voice which held the Marquis 
 from answer for a minute. 
 
 "Eeally, I don't understand you," he said at last. 
 
 "Yet my meaning should be clear." 
 
 " No — do explain yourself." 
 
 Yen How rose to his feet before he answered. 
 
 "Marquis," he said, "is it possible you do not see 
 that China has it in her power to turn Europe into an 
 exhausted waste within, say, three months from to- 
 night, without firing a single shot, or spending a single 
 tael ? " 
 
CHAPTEE III 
 
 KUMOES OF WAR 
 
 As the year wore on, some of the International dif- 
 ficulties centering round Kiao-Chau, Port Arthur, and 
 Hainan reopened. In England more than all the old 
 unrest revived. 
 
 What added to this unrest was the fact that some of 
 the items of the rapidly-succeeding batches of news 
 were quite inexplicable. 
 
 Prom the beginning of the year it had been known 
 that Germany had not made so brilliant a bargain in 
 the acquisition of Kiao-Chau as she had imagined. 
 The territory placed under her "sovereign rights" 
 had been strictly limited by China, and granted only as 
 a "lease." When Prince Henry of Prussia arrived 
 with the Deutschland and Gefion, he found that there 
 were no " laurels " to win, and nobody at whom to 
 strike out with his absurd mailed fist. 
 
 Moreover, on much the same terms as Germany ob- 
 tained Kiao-Chau, and, later in the year, Eussia obtained 
 Port Arthur, Britain obtained A¥ei-hai-Wei and Mirs 
 Bay. 
 
 What, then, was the surprise of the world, including 
 the Germans themselves, when, in the middle of De- 
 cember, came the news that China had ceded a large 
 additional region to the Kaiser, absolutely without 
 conditions ! 
 
 There was not a single brain in Europe which could 
 divine the motive of this virtual gift. 
 
 At this time Li Hung Chang, recalled to power by 
 
 the Emperor at the beginning of the year, was still at 
 
 the head of afEairs in Pekin. But in the short space 
 
 of two months he had acquired the h^ibit of taking no 
 
 33 - 
 
Rumors of War 23 
 
 step without the suggestion of the new element in 
 Chinese politics, the far-seeing Oriental-European, the 
 much-toiling member of the Tsung-li-Yamen, the 
 omniscient Yen How. Already Yen had swung him- 
 self into the position of the virtual ruler of China. 
 
 Yen How seemed to Li Hung Chang, haunted as the 
 old statesman had always been by the vision of dis- 
 memberment and downfall wliich overhung China, 
 something like an angel of light. Here was another 
 brain which saw as his had all along seen — only far 
 more clearly, and with powers of invention far vaster 
 to avert the catastrophe. 
 
 " Let us be definite," Yen had said, in words which 
 old Li long remembered, one night as they smoked to- 
 gether alone on a moonlit veranda. " Do let us be 
 honest with ourselves, your Excellency ! You agree 
 with me that the yellow man is doomed — if the white 
 man is not ; in your heart you think it. Then let us 
 say it in definite words ; for as soon as ever we have 
 said it, we have gone half-way toward grappling with 
 our fate." 
 
 " Ah, I have said it often and often," answered Li, 
 " but to what good ? " 
 
 " If you believe that now is the time for action, as I 
 do, you have the matter in your own hand." 
 
 " How so ? " 
 
 " To me it is clearer than the moonlight there. The 
 facts of the situation seem to stare me in the face. " 
 
 " Speak, Yen How." 
 
 " I will speak, your Excellency. To me it seems 
 that if we could supply a motive to the combined Jap- 
 anese and Chinese nations to traverse Asia and the 
 Caucasus, and then to overrun the Europe of to-day, 
 there is no power on earth that could permanently 
 check the overwhelming momentum of their progress." 
 
 "It is nonsense, my son," said Li, with a pull at his 
 long pipe. 
 
 "INotethis," replied Yen — "1 only say that I believe 
 — for who can be sure ? The white man is strong and 
 stern ; his frown is dreadful. I only say that I believe 
 —though a host of four hundred millions cannot be 
 
24 The Yellow Danger 
 
 mown clown in a day, your Excellency. The throats 
 of the Maxims might grow hoarse and burst at this 
 task. Still, perhaps you are right — perhaps I talk 
 nonsense. I did not seriously mean to propose a march 
 against the Maxim thunder. But I have a thought — 
 a thought. Suppose China and Japan can take away 
 the Maxims first, and then march afterwards." 
 
 " Speak your meaning, Yen How," said Li ; " all is 
 dark to me." 
 
 " We wish the white races killed," answered Yen ; 
 " well, there are two ways, are there not ? We might 
 kill them ourselves — that, you say, is nonsense. The 
 other way is to get them to kill one another." 
 
 Li's pipe came from his mouth, and the outer corners 
 of his eyes screwed up into an expression of the most 
 exquisite enjoyment. ' / 
 
 "What is left alive of them after their mutual 
 slaughter," Yen How went on, "we can kill. Their 
 lands will be weak with loss of blood, their treasur'es 
 will be exhausted — there will be no Maximfe there any 
 more." 
 
 At these last words his own eyes, too, wrinkled up 
 into delicious merriment. 
 
 " The trump card is in the hand of China," he said. 
 
 How the white races were to be made to destroy one 
 another Li never asked, though the conversation lasted 
 far into the night. He knew well. That, at least, was 
 simple. 
 
 "England," said Yen as they parted, " she is the 
 worst. All the others against her." 
 
 A few weeks afterwards the cession of large additional 
 territories in China to Germany was rumored. 
 
 And now followed, in rapid succession, a series of the 
 most startling, the most inexplicable reports. 
 
 It seemed as if China was not waiting for dismem- 
 berment from abroad, but was dismembering herself 
 wilfully, with precipitate frenzy. 
 
 Pirst came the intelligence that France had been be- 
 sought by the Chinese Government to assume the Pro- 
 tectorate, without conditions, of Hainan and Yun-nan. 
 
 These few lines of telegram threw Europe into a state 
 
Rumors of War 25 
 
 of fever. It was decided by every one that, if the in- 
 telligence was true, no earthly consideration of risk 
 would keep the rapacious hand of the Frenchman from 
 grasping at this plum. 
 
 In a week or so it was definitely known that the news 
 was true, and that France hadf accepted the offer. 
 Eumors of war filled the air. The world was agog, 
 and every spot was an arena for discussion. Only one 
 man was silent — the British Foreign Secretary. The 
 newspapers besought him for a word ; he remained 
 wrapped in taciturnity. A deputation of merchants 
 waited upon the Under-Secretary ; he answered only 
 with a few strong words of hope. 
 
 At this time Yen How's name got into the papers. 
 It was said that this mysterious man, whose dazzling 
 rise in the Celestial Empire was sketched, had recently 
 taken a fresh journey to Tokio. Then a vague tele- 
 gram, printed in England in small nonpareil type, ap- 
 peared, stating that the probable object of Yen How's 
 renewed journey was to conclude a secret treaty between 
 China and Japan. But the report was unsubstantiated. 
 
 The real bomb was yet to burst into the midst of 
 Europe. It was hurled by the St. Petersburg corre- 
 spondent of the Daily News. 
 
 China had offered to Eussia the protectorate of the 
 Yangtse Valley. 
 
 It was now, for the first time, that it entered two or 
 three of the shrewdest heads in Europe that China was 
 deliberately seeking to plunge the world into war by 
 working upon the rapacity and selfish greed of the 
 nations. 
 
 One gentleman, living at a country-house in Hamp- 
 shire, wrote to the Times to this effect. But his letter 
 attracted no attention. 
 
 Yet, looking back now, it seems strange that the 
 idea did not occur to others. For it must be remem- 
 bered that the Yangtse Valley had been regarded as 
 peculiarly the sphere of English power. More than 
 this, England had now partly guaranteed a Chinese 
 loan of twelve millions sterling, and it was agreed that 
 the security for this should consist of the land-tax and 
 
26 The Yellow Danger 
 
 the unpledged part of the Customs dues. Kow, the 
 chief source of both land-tax and Customs dues was 
 the Yangtse Valley. 
 
 Yet the next day the Eussian JVovosii published an 
 inspired article, stating that on no account could Eussia 
 withdraw from the prominent place into which erents 
 had forced her in the East. 
 
 The feeling in England was one of horror at the blind 
 and criminal cupidity of the Continental nations. The 
 word " war " was on every tongue. Twice in one day 
 there were hurried meetings of the Cabinet. Thou- 
 sands of private letters poured in upon the Foreign 
 OflSce, urging patience- and firmness. 
 
 But the hand of the Government was forced in an 
 unexpected manner. 
 
 Two items of news followed each other rapidly. 
 
 First, that on the 21st day of the 12th moon of the 
 24th year of Kuang Hsii — that is to say, on the 14th 
 December 1898 — the Yellow Jacket had once more 
 been taken from Li Hung Chang ; and that the dom- 
 inant talents of the man. Yen How, had triumphed 
 over all obstacles, and raised him to the very head of 
 affairs at the Court of Pekin. 
 
 The next day a telegram from Sir C. M. Macdonald, 
 the British Minister in China, reached the Foreign 
 Office. This was at once made public. 
 
 It stated that China professed herself unable to meet 
 the next accruing interest-instalment on the loan, 
 though the Minister had information from Sir Eobert 
 Hart, the Controller of the Imperial Maritime Customs, 
 which led him to doubt the avowal of inability. 
 
 Whatever else this might mean, it certainly seemed 
 to mean war. The security for China's default, real or 
 pretended, which was due to England, had already been 
 placed under the control of Eussia. 
 
 In the House of Commons the Under-Secretary stated 
 that there was still a hope of peace — a hope that " the 
 Empire of Eussia would act with that spirit of fairness 
 and magnanimity in this crisis which alone could prove 
 her worthy of her great traditions." These words were 
 borne at a run by dozens of excited members to in- 
 
Rumors of War 27 
 
 terested individuals among the crowd which surrounded 
 the House from Westminster Bridge round to the 
 Aquarium. 
 
 London went to sleep with some degree of quietude 
 that night, Mr. Curzon's reply having been published 
 in an eagerly bought-up 10 o'clock edition. 
 
 But the next morning, Mr. Goschen being abroad 
 at an early hour, it was suddenly discovered that, by 
 some extraordinary means, Malta was telegraphically 
 isolated from England ; and a hurried telegram was at 
 once despatched from the Admiralty to Admiral Sir 
 Michael Culme-Seymour, the Flag-Officer in Commis- 
 sion at Portsmouth. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 FIKST BLOOD 
 
 Before eleven o'clock the Majestic, the flag-ship of 
 the Channel Squadron, was leaving Portsmouth harbor 
 behind her at the rate of ten knots. She was under 
 the command of the senior oflScer in command of the 
 squadron, Vice-Admiral Sir Henry Stephenson, and 
 with her went the little gunboat Halcyon. 
 
 The mystery underlying the sudden journey of this 
 couple was not difficult to unravel. The truth was, 
 the Government was greatly startled by the event of 
 the morning. The Majestic was, in reality, a convoy 
 to the Halcyon ; the smaller vessel was acting as a 
 despatch-boat to Malta, and the battle-ship was seeing 
 her on her journey till she was deemed to be out of 
 danger of molestation. 
 
 It had come to that already. 
 
 At the Government offices the words "treachery" 
 and "war "had risen to more than one agitated lip. 
 Europe, it was felt, was drifting, drifting — whither ? 
 
 The task of the Halcyon was to warn the Governor 
 of Malta, and to order the mobilization of the Med- 
 iterranean Fleet near the Straits of Gibraltar. It 
 might be necessary at a few hours' notice to block the 
 entrance of the Mediterranean ; it might even be 
 necessary to hurl back a foreign invader from the shores 
 of England, and the Channel Squadron was wofully 
 limited in weight of metal. 
 
 During the day business in London came practically 
 to a standstill. Wholesale withdrawals of foreign 
 securities were reported from the City. By 3 p. M. it 
 was generally known that a military attache to the 
 Embassy at Paris had arrived by private yacht with a 
 «8 
 
First Blood 29 
 
 sealed despatch from Sir E. J. Monson, and had 
 hurried to the foreign Office. 
 
 A day of almost breathless tension reached its 
 climax when, at 9 p. m., Mr. Curzon made the an- 
 nouncement to a full House that peaceful negotiations 
 were still in progress with Eussia, but that, late in the 
 afternoon, Germany had made demands of England 
 and China with respect to the recently-ceded territories, 
 with which England, as he might say at once, would 
 certainly be unable to comply. 
 
 The next morning, before break of day, England 
 found herself telegraphically disconnected with the 
 Continent. 
 
 About this precise hour, the Majestic, having her 
 small companion some half a mile or more away on 
 her starboard quarter, was butting her way about S. 
 by W. through a rough Biscay sea. It was a cold and 
 squally morning, still dark, though a chill hint of day 
 now mingled bleakly with the East. The sea was hand- 
 ling both ships rudely, *nd the Majestic' s ponderous 
 lurching throagh some six or seven degrees brought the 
 acrid green sea washing about the base of her forward 
 barbette, while from the bows of the Halcyon it went 
 hissing aft in a continuous rain of spray. 
 
 It was just after five bells in the morning watch, at 
 an hour when the gloomy gray of the morning had 
 lightened a little, that the lookout man of the 
 Majestic reported a big ship astern steaming leisurely 
 south about seven miles away. The rate of the 
 Majestic was ten knots, that of the stranger about six ; 
 but immediately after her coming into sight, a black 
 cloud of redundant smoke revealed the stranger's will 
 to improve her pace. 
 
 That she had been lurking about with some object 
 of search was clear. That she was now getting up 
 steam seemed to indicate, if anything, that she had 
 found what she was looking for. 
 
 In a few minutes it was made out that she was La 
 Gloire, a French battleship of about the weight and 
 armature of the Majestic. 
 
 La Gloire's cloud nf smoke was premature — it oc- 
 
30 The Yellow Danger 
 
 casioned a suspicion of her motives. The first thing 
 which Sir Henry Stephenson did was to order the 
 Halcyon by trumpet-call to steam at full speed S. "W. 
 a distant of six miles. The Halcyon, at all events, had 
 to be kept out of danger. 
 
 Yet he could hardly have expressed his reason for 
 giving this order. Was any one at war with any one ? 
 He was ignorant of the fact, if so. 
 
 He was not long in doubt. La Gloire, even while 
 getting up steam, had pricked off her course three 
 points to starboard. It seemed as if she was about to 
 give chase to the Halcyon. 
 
 "What ! Are we in for a fight then. Captain ?" 
 said the Vice-Admiral with a smile of surprise, and 
 a puckered brow. 
 
 " It almost looks like it, certainly," replied Fleet-. 
 Captain Hardy. 
 
 "Well,- come now, we shall see," said the Vice- 
 Admiral. 
 
 By this time La Gloire had not only hoisted her 
 colors but had extra colors on masts and stays. The 
 Majestic wore the ordinary single ensign. 
 
 Captain Hardy had ordered steam for full speed. 
 The next moment the Majestic swung round to star- 
 board about six points. She was still ahead of La 
 Gloire. At her present course and speed she would 
 interpose between the English gunboat and the French 
 ship. 
 
 For quite half an hour the two ships continued to 
 approach each other slowly and obliquely, having 
 started from a separating interval of about five miles. 
 On this course the sea was more aft, and the rolling 
 and sullen plunging of the ships less marked. 
 
 On board the Majestic, meanwhile, all was bustling 
 action. Decks were cleared, magazines were opened, 
 ammunition and projectiles got out ; water-tight doors 
 were closed. The dawn lightened to a chill and drear 
 twilight. 
 
 The real object of La Gloire was to intercept and 
 capture any despatch-boat from the Channel, which 
 might attempt to take intelligence through the Straits. 
 
First Blood 31 
 
 The sending out of the battle-ship mth such an object 
 was, however, a breach of international law, and an 
 act of treachery ; for no one had declared war against 
 England, though declarations of hostilities were already 
 in the bureaux of more than one of the ambassadors at 
 London. 
 
 That the despatch-boat should be convoyed, and by 
 a first-class battle-ship, was unexpected. La Oloire 
 found herself checkmated. There before her lay her 
 prize ; but between her and it was the thunder and 
 lightning of England. 
 
 But, though checkmated, she showed no intention 
 of being checked. She kept on her way with rising 
 speed. The two ships, in malign silence, like two 
 red-eyed planets rushing to jarring combat, drew 
 nearer. When their speed had increased to thirteen 
 knots, they were about two miles apart. Decks on 
 both were cleared, collision-mats were ready, prepara- 
 tions were made lor rigging torpedo-nets in an emer- 
 gency. Nearer, in awful silence, they drew, two giants 
 with limbs oiled for battle ; and the bleak and raw sea- 
 wind of the dawning made hoarse sounds above their 
 funnels. 
 
 But one of the ships was still in doubt whether there 
 was to be fighting, and, if so, why. There was a brief 
 consultation on board the Majestic, and then she 
 signaled : 
 
 " Are we combatants ? " 
 
 There was no reply. 
 
 To this silence the Majestic sent aloft the answer : 
 
 "Trafalgar." 
 
 And now the baleful silence recommenced. Both 
 commanders had stationed themselves in their conning- 
 towers. On either ship not a soul was to be made out 
 by the glasses save the crews of the quick-firing guns 
 on the hurricane decks, and of the machine-guns on 
 the tops. By five minutes past seven the fleet-engineer 
 of the Majestic announced that he had steam enough 
 to drive the vessel at her utmost trial speed. 
 
 The strategy of the French commander in not an- 
 swering the Majestic' s question was soon apparent, for 
 
32 The Yellow Danger 
 
 Sir Henry Stephenson felt himself bound to wait for 
 the first shot, being uncertain how matters stood on 
 shore. And the first shot in modern naval warfare 
 must often mean victory. 
 
 The two vessels slowly converged. La Oloire on the 
 other's starboard side, steering S. by E. ; the Majestic 
 on the other's port bows, heading S. by W. Suddenly 
 La Gloire sharply altered her course by several points 
 to the eastward, and impetuously bore down upon the 
 Majesiic. 
 
 " Well," said Sir Henry Stephenson to himself, 
 " that is uncommonly like an act of hostility. Well, 
 then, Mr. Frenchman " 
 
 Immediately the Majestic, too, pricked off eastward, 
 her after-pair of 67-ton guns being kept trained on the 
 enemy as she maneuvered. The ships were now so well 
 within effective range that the Majestic's thin smoke, 
 blown into a wide hovering fog by the east wind, half 
 concealed her movement from La Gloire. 
 
 For a time it seemed as if the British ship were in 
 retreat, and the French giving chase ; then suddenly 
 both ships were hidden from each other. Sir Henry, 
 taking advantage of his windward position, had thrown 
 overboard some twenty casks of smoke-producing tow 
 and naphtha and tar, which at once separated the two 
 ships with a blackness of thick brown reek, mingled near 
 the water with bickering tongues of flame. The com- 
 mander of La Gloire, fearing that in this fog of fume 
 the Majestic might suddenly turn about and ram him, 
 at once changed his course southwest, and was im- 
 mediately the retreating ship. The English admiral 
 had guessed his thought, and when the region of the 
 smoke-making composition was passed, the beam of 
 the Majestic was abreast of La Gloire's poop. 
 
 It was the lieutenant in charge of the fore-barbette 
 of the Majestic who first woke the thunder of this win- 
 ter-morning tragedy. 
 
 Simultaneously, with one bang of wrath that shook 
 the Majestic herself from stem to stern, both the 67- 
 tonners of this barbette went crashing into La Gloire's 
 quarters. 
 
First Blood 33 
 
 At this moment the ships were uot much more than 
 half a mile apart. When the smoke cleared it was 
 at once seen that the whole stern armament, of La 
 Gloire was in ruins, her after-barbette shattered, the 
 two heavy guns unshipped. One of the shells had 
 penetrated abaft her after-armored tube and there 
 burst, killing fift}' men, and rending into a chaos of 
 d6bris all it met. From the poop of the French ship 
 rose a wide hurry of white smoke. At the same time 
 a steady bombardment of quick-firing guns was opened 
 from both vessels. In three minutes all unarmored or 
 unsheltered spots in each ship were cleared of every 
 living thing. Twelve-pounders, six-pounders, three- 
 pounders mingled in swift-cracking uproar, punctuated 
 by the irut growl of the Gardners and the more rasping 
 detonation of the Nordenfeldts. All the air was war, 
 and all the intervening sea a commotion of hissing 
 foam. 
 
 But now the machine-guns in the tops were silent, 
 their protecting shields had been shot away, and their 
 crews annihilated. One of La Gloire's funnels was 
 gone, and the other pierced, while three projectiles 
 from her had burst their way through shields of six- 
 inch nickel steel, and put three of the Majestic's cen- 
 tral battery guns out of actions, striking them fairly on 
 the chase. Within three minutes the two ships had 
 belched forth a flaming hail of some twenty-two thou- 
 sand rounds of shot, riddling all except the most 
 heavily armored parts of each other, tearing to shreds 
 all light gun-screens, and turning unarmored ends and 
 box-batteries into shambles. 
 
 Already it seemed improbable that either ship, unless 
 the other were at once destroyed, could come out of 
 this anarchy of thunder and live. 
 
 The starboard side of the Majestic was still presented 
 to the Port of La Gloire but La Gloire's speed had been 
 greatly reduced, owing to injuries to her funnels, and 
 the Majestic had forged forward abreast, then some- 
 what ahead of the other. 
 
 Vice- Admiral Stephenson was every moment await- 
 ing the second crash of his after-barbette into the 
 
34 The Yellow Danger 
 
 French ship's beam, -when La Oloire's two fore-barbette 
 guns sent out their voices simultaneously. 
 
 One of the shots glanced against the center armor- 
 belt of the Majestic at the water-line, leapt, struck her 
 fore-armored tube, and went driving far forward into 
 the sea, where it burst in a high water-lily of spouting 
 foam. 
 
 The other wrought terrible havoc. It struck the 
 Majestic's central battery at the height of the deck, 
 burst inside, blew away the chief part of the hurricane 
 deck, and turned all the guns in that battery into a 
 mere heap of twisted and crumpled metal. 
 
 But as the British ship staggered at this blow, her 
 blue-jackets sent up a cheer, for the next instant the 
 after-barbette in their own ship was talking, too ; and 
 a few seconds afterwards it was seen that La Oloire's 
 forecastle was on fire, that she had gone down by the 
 bows, and that her screws, half out of the water, were 
 furiously revolving in a broad mound of wheeling 
 spume. 
 
 Was she sinking, then ? The British Vice-Admiral 
 expected now to see her strike her flag. But even as 
 he looked, he was undeceived. 
 
 Yonder, a hundred yards astern, somewhat to his 
 port side, he saw a sight which might have made even 
 the heart of a N'elson leap. It was a small object, look- 
 ing like a cubical box ; and even as he glanced at it, it 
 disappeared utterly beneath the waves. 
 
 He knew this to be one of the ingenuities from the 
 Forges et Chantiers de la Mediterranee. It was a sub- 
 marine boat, and the object which he had seen for a 
 moment was the top of her conning-tower as she rose 
 for an observation of distances and directions. 
 
 The submarine boat had been secretly lowered into 
 the water from La Oloire's starboard side. Her motor 
 was electric, supplied from storage batteries, and her 
 speed, even at some depth, considerable. Vice- Admiral 
 Stephenson knew that her aim was to pass under his 
 torpedo-nets, carrying an electrically-fired torpedo, to 
 be attached to his already half-ruined ship. 
 
 At once he went circling at full speed to starboard. 
 
First Blood 35 
 
 crossing the bows of the now slowly-progressive La 
 Gloire, one of whose fore-barbette guns was useless, 
 and the other unready to lire. 
 
 At the same time he had rapidly lowered from his 
 port side a second-class torpedo boat which he then 
 'carried on deck. By means of hot water from the 
 Majestic's boilers, she was already under steam, and 
 with careful handling, in spite of the parent ship's 
 now headlong, wheeling flight, she touched the water 
 in safety, and at once went fretting fussily through 
 the billows, a mere cloud of hurrying spray, at a speed 
 of fourteen knots. Like some buzzing bee with deadly 
 sting, she drove straight upon La Gloire. 
 
 The alarm on the French ship at this hasting ruin 
 resembled panic. Disregarding the movements of the 
 Majestic, her commander at once put his helm-a-port, 
 and turning upon his small foe the comparatively 
 uninjured armament of his starboard side, poured 
 forth, in one continuous roll of artillery, a bombard- 
 ment of some twelve thousand pounds per minute. 
 La Gloire was now, however, well in the trough of the 
 sea, which flowed in bulky swells from east to west ; 
 the greater portion of her huge outburst of fire failed 
 to take effect ; and still the puflSng thing came near 
 and yet nearer, overwhelmed, but steadfast, drowned, 
 but headlong, tiny, but terrible. 
 
 The climax of the fight was near. It had lasted but 
 a few minutes : it had seemed like an eternity in 
 hell. 
 
 At about three hundred yards from La Gloire the 
 little torpedo-boat launched a Whitehead. 
 
 As the oiled and gleaming needle of steel slid swiftly 
 into the water, it passed straight through the body of 
 a great swell, and came instantly out on the other side, 
 making directly for La Gloire's quarter ; but before it 
 could reach her, the ship maneuvered slightly to star- 
 board, and the projectile slipped hurriedly under her 
 stern, and exploded harmlessly some- distance away. 
 
 But even as it did so, another torpedo came shooting 
 through the waves from the little boat. 
 
 At the same time the crew of the torpedo-boat were 
 
36 The Yellow Danger 
 
 Been to be wildly leaping at random over her sides Into 
 the waves. Seen— but dimly seen — for the whole craft 
 from stem to stern, as well as all that region of the 
 water into which she was now plunging on her last 
 voyage, was enveloped in one hissing white cloud of 
 stinging vapor. Two of her men instantly sank 
 scalded to death. A tWelve-pounder, shot upwards, 
 had burst into her boiler. 
 
 It had not come from La Oloire. It had come from 
 the unseen thing which was cruising darkly beneath 
 the sea in search of the Majestic. 
 
 Immediately the submarine boat rose again, and the 
 man in her conning-tower, looking a moment abroad, 
 saw the Majestic — or rather he saw a vast mass of 
 smoke which utterly concealed the Majestic and the 
 direction of her bow. All he could note was that she 
 was fearfully and wonderfully near to La Gloire ; that 
 she was approaching La Gloire — rapidly, rapidly — with 
 horrid impetuosity. 
 
 He did not hesitate a moment, but, putting his fins 
 into play, instantly sank, and made for a point at 
 which he believed he would intercept the rushing 
 ship. 
 
 The mass of smoke which he had seen around the 
 Majestic had been intentionally caused by her com- 
 mander. The Vice-Admiral had ordered every gun 
 which still worked to be discharged, whether they 
 bore upon the French ship or not, and enveloped in 
 the mantle of ascending reek which poured from the 
 hot weapons, he put his helm hard down, suddenly 
 left the evolutionary curve of sixteen points through 
 which he had been circling, and drove straight upon 
 La Gloire. He was going to ram. 
 
 At that great moment expectation stood in horror. 
 " Prepare to ram ! " vrent forth the command from 
 the conning-tower, and every man on the Majestic fell 
 flat to his face, as though at the sound of the trump 
 of doom. And now, while the clock might tick, and 
 tick again, the men on La Gloire became aware of 
 what was coming. ' Up out of her envelope of vapor 
 suddenly loomed the Majestic upon them, near ans 
 
First Blood 37 
 
 huge, like a monster rising from the deep. Jugt then 
 the remaining fore-barbette gun of La Oloire was be- 
 ing discharged, and the ships being nearly bow to bow, 
 the shell went forth with disastrous havoc, shattering 
 the thickly armored fore-barbette of the Majestic, bat- 
 tering the conuing-tower, destroying the funnels, and 
 shocking the Vice-Admiral into a state of insensibility. 
 
 But even as it did so, the crash came. The ram of 
 the Majestic touched La Gloire on her starboard bow, 
 glanced a little, then with a horrid " z-z-zip-p," " z-z- 
 zip-p" then with a bursting and rending uproar like 
 the cracking asunder of an arsenal, went tearing and 
 smashing a shapeless hole 20 feet in length along her 
 beam. The sea poured into the doomed ship ; and at 
 once she lurched bow-ward to starboard. 
 
 But the ram of the Majestic was not yet clear of La 
 Oloire, when the most stupendous hubbub of the whole 
 battle, drowning every other sound, rent the heavens. 
 It was a double detonation, yet the two reports followed 
 so closely one upon the other, that they seemed almost 
 like one. 
 
 They were the sounds of two torpedoes. 
 
 The 28,000 tons of the two great ships half-leapt 
 from the water, and started apart, shivering to their 
 keels ; and two immense pillars of white cloud, which 
 soon were one, rose high, shutting them from each 
 other. 
 
 One of these torpedoes had been affixed by the crew 
 of the submarine boat beneath the bow of La Gloire, 
 which they had mistaken for the Majestic ; the other 
 was the second of the two which had been despatched 
 from the Majestic's torpedo-boat before she had sunk. 
 It had caught on to the keel of La Oloire aft, and its 
 explosion had been delayed, perhaps half a minute, till 
 now. 
 
 When the smoke cleared a little, the commander of 
 La Oloire was seen, with blood-soaked clothes, and 
 haggard face, and eyes staring with horror, standing 
 on the wreck of his after-barbette, frantically hauling 
 down his colors. He sent forth to the wreck which 
 he had made of the Majestic this cry of terror — 
 
38 The Yellow Danger 
 
 " Au nom de Dieu ! — we are sinking ! for God's 
 take. . ." 
 
 The captain of the Majestic at once lowered his only 
 boat which was capable of floating, though half 
 of her port-side, too, was smashed away. The whole 
 crew of the British vessel had hurried to deck, ready, 
 even as tlaey cheered in victory, to aid in the work of 
 rescue. 
 
 But as the boat pushed off, men were seen leaping 
 hurriedly from La Gloire, in a vain attempt to escape 
 her suction as she went down. She gave them little 
 time. The bursting of the two torpedoes fore and 
 aft had simply turned her into a skeleton of discon- 
 nected ruin. She lurched a little aft — up went her bows 
 like two hands laid together in prayer — then her 
 whole length settled evenly lower ; she lurched aft 
 again, obliquely, clumsily ; then, as if with sudden re- 
 Bolve, she skipped forward, dived her nose briskly into 
 the sea, and disappeared. 
 
 Three of her crew of six hundred were saved. 
 
 Meantime, the captain of the Majestic was signaling 
 to the Halcyon, waiting, eager for fight, five miles 
 away : 
 
 " "We are sinking — make haste." 
 
 The great ship was settling slowly down by the 
 bows ; for the torpedo which had burst beneath the 
 bows of La Gloire had wrought great havoc upon the 
 other's forward bottom also ; nor could the pumps pro- 
 duce much impression upon the inrushing waters. 
 
 The Halcyon succeeded in taking off the hundred 
 and fifty-two that were left of her crew, taking also 
 on board the crew of the French submarine boat, who 
 had escaped injury. They hardly stopped to watch the 
 Majestic settle slowly down, before the gunboat's bows 
 were once more turned, to bear her momentous message, 
 toward the Straits. 
 
 But it Dr. Yen How had been there to see that 
 battle of the giants, and its result, the corners of his 
 eyes would have wrinkled up into a very web of 
 tickled merriment. 
 
CHAPTEE V 
 
 HOW EN'GLAIfD TOOK THE KBWS 
 
 On the morning of the duel between La Gloire and 
 the Majestic it was rumored at an early hour in the 
 neighborhood of Fleet Street that China had dismissed 
 Sir Eobert Hart from the ControUership of the Im- 
 perial Maritime Customs, and that a Eussian was 
 about to be appointed in his stead. 
 
 The announcement appeared in the morning papers, 
 and its almost immediate consequence was a rise of 
 threepence per quartern in the price of bread. 
 
 But though there were few who were not by this time 
 in a state of excited expectancy, things on their out- 
 side wore much their usual appearance. In London 
 the commonplace 'bus and cab went about the streets, 
 and the occasional bicycle, with swift and silent feet, 
 maneuvered among them. Perhaps from Holborn and 
 the Strand to the City the 'buses were fuller than 
 ordinary, perhaps the cabs moved at a slight increase 
 of pace. The pavements were rather crowded, as much 
 perhaps, as on a Christmas Eve night, not nearly so 
 much as on a Lord Mayor's Day. In back streets the 
 coalmen cried " Coal," and their faces were black with 
 the grime of the ordinary workaday of life. 
 
 Yonder, the sun wore his usual broad-faced benig- 
 nity. He seemed to have no suspicion that on this par- 
 ticular morning his old earth was in her death-throes, 
 and a quite new earth in travail to be born. 
 
 It was a bright and sunshiny forenoon, the 16th of 
 March 1899 — eighteen days and nine months before the 
 dawn of the twentieth century. 
 
 The Evening News it was which, in a premature 
 eleven o'clock fourth edition, applied the match to 
 39 
 
40 The Yellow Danger 
 
 the latent mind of excitement which smoldered in the 
 minds of the people. It declared in a little thunder- 
 bolt of breathless news, five lines of " pica" type, that 
 the Stock Exchange had been suddenly closed, and 
 that it was rumored that the Government was ap- 
 pointing private brokers for the transaction of only 
 such business as might be essential. 
 
 A step so decisive, as every one saw, could only have 
 for its object the prevention of a financial panic which 
 might be disastrous. And for this prevention there 
 must be a cause not as yet generally known. 
 
 Yet such a step should have been expected ; for 
 hardly any, except the peace-at-any-price party, any 
 longer hoped that war could be averted — though with 
 whom the war was to be, against what odds, it was not 
 so easy to decide. At any rate, no one could suppose 
 that the cessions of territory by China to the three 
 Powers were spontaneous ; it was shrewdly suspected 
 that they were the result of a secret understanding ar- 
 rived at between them and China at the time when the 
 three had combined to save China from Japan, after 
 the Chino- Japanese war. It had, therefore, the look 
 of a conspiracy to oust England from her share in an 
 empire four-fifths of whose commerce was being car- 
 ried by British ships ; and from end to end of the 
 land the idea that England should submit to such a 
 conspiracy was scouted with indignation. 
 
 The severance of telegraphic and telephonic com- 
 munication, too, between the Continent and England 
 looked like an act of war, whoever was responsible for 
 it. It was reported, and then denied, that three 
 army-corps of 120,000 men were being mobilized to- 
 ward Brest. It was known that the "War Office, the 
 Admiralty, and the Foreign Office were in intensely 
 active inter-communication ; that there were frequent 
 and hurried meetings of the Cabinet. But still, with 
 that silence which precedes the storm, with that sub- 
 dued excitement which a trifle will cause to burst into 
 passion, England waited, still hoping against hope to 
 be allowed to go on her way in peace. 
 
 The public were in blissful ignorance of the fact that 
 
How England Took the News 41 
 
 the Majestic and La Gloire had already been lying four 
 or five hours at the bottom of the Atlantic. 
 
 Then came the announcement ol the Evening News, 
 and the pent-up emotion broke suddenly out. In the 
 City, even before this, the streets had become a mere 
 sea, with currents and eddies, of thronging heads. 
 Here the facts of the case were sooner known ; when 
 the rumor spread westward, London was awake. All 
 pretense at trafBc quickly ceased. 
 
 The general tendency and main current of this wel- 
 tering human ocean was westward in that part of it 
 which was east of Charing Cross, and eastward in that 
 part of it which was west of Charing Cross. The 
 House of Commons, as in all supreme moments of stress 
 and danger, had become the cynosure and the magnet 
 of the nation. Thither the throng pressed. 
 
 What was it all about ? No one was certain. Was 
 there war — at last ? — in very truth ? And with whom ? 
 No one knew. 
 
 For twenty-six years Europe ha>. \w&n pn. otically at 
 peace. The Grseco-Turkish war, the ^^panlsb-Ameri- 
 can were not wars — they were the bickeiiig <>[ niughty 
 children. The Franco-German had been grim eiiuiigh, 
 but it had long since got to be recognized that the 
 next, when it actually came — at last— would hardly 
 resemble it ; for the French and German nations had 
 fought, and each still existed an integral nation in spite 
 of the squabble ; but the struggle that was looked for- 
 ward to when Europe, in the fulness of time, next 
 brought forth her monstrous offspring of war, would 
 as men knew, be stupendous, world-wide, and final ; 
 the combatants would consist of mankind ; the whole 
 future of the world would be determined by it ; and 
 in the greatness of that day, war, the destroyer, would 
 itself be destroyed. 
 
 This was the logical outcome of the conditions under 
 which Europe, groaning under her weight of armor, 
 waiting, watching, eager to end her foul disease of 
 hatred, had for many years been living. 
 
 And now — at last — she was in travail — pang on pang, 
 and shriek on shriek ; and her birth-hour was at hand. 
 
42 The Yellow Danger 
 
 But in the London streets the crowd was worthy of 
 the occasion — a crowd without violence, perfectly self- 
 controlled — the meeting of a nation. There was a poor 
 old Chinaman with a sore and swollen foot, on the heel 
 of which he used to limp, begging, about the City and 
 Holborn. By some chance he became involved in the 
 crowd opposite the New Law Courts, where it was very 
 thick ; and he was soon at a loss what to do with his 
 big, bandaged foot without boot. At that moment the 
 name of China stank. But the old Canton beggar was 
 no sooner seen to be in difficulties than the press opened 
 before him ; he hobbled forward ; a murmur spread 
 round him — half jeer, half cheer — and a rain of five or 
 six pennies made him blessed. He hobbled through 
 a lane which instantly closed behind him, thanking the 
 gods for war. 
 
 The bells of St. Clement Danes burst out, telling 
 the notes of a slow hymn-tune. 
 
 Eastward, in a window of the Daily News, there was 
 a big sheet of paper, written over in large, blue-pencil 
 letters with the words : " War with Eussia." 
 
 Westward, in the fa9ade of the National Liberal 
 Club, there was a square, white space exhibited to the 
 public inscribed with the words in charcoal: "War 
 with France and Germany." 
 
 "I s'y," said a work-girl to her lover, "there's a 
 blooming Frenchman a-looking at the placard. Cant 
 you tell by the squint of Win ! " 
 
 " Oh, don't show him to me, or I'll go straight for 
 him," said Bill ; " a Frenchman mykes me sick." 
 
 But the girl's remark was passed on ; eyes were 
 directed toward monsieur. He turned white, finding 
 himself at the mercy of the crowd. But no harm was 
 done to him ; he was only quietly but persistently 
 hustled, till he reached a comparatively empty by- 
 street, dripping with the sweats of fear. 
 
 The exhibition of gratuitous notices in windows and 
 at doors was the order of the day. Old habits of Stoic 
 silence seemed for the moment to have disappeared — 
 for the moment was ecstatic. Europe, it was felt, had 
 drifted — drifted from the old moorings — into what new 
 
How England Took the News 43 
 
 seas and latitudes ? At Gatti's place in the Strand was 
 written up in huge letters: "Italy to the Kescue !" 
 In the shop window of some foreign faddist in Soho 
 appeared these words : " Eussia is the Natural Ally of 
 England ; " and in Holborn, at the First Avenue Hotel, 
 which was richly decorated with British and American 
 flags, these words : " One Blood, One Eace, One 
 Speech." 
 
 A little street arab in half an hour attained to sudden 
 wealth ; he was a newspaper boy, and had in his hand 
 a bundle of three Stars. In a moment of inspiration, 
 Harry Tibbies, jammed against one of the lions in 
 Trafalgar Square, nimbly flung and twisted himself on 
 to the pedestal, and held aloft his Stars. Thousands 
 of eyes turned upon him. He took from his pocket a 
 match, and deliberately applied the flame to the papers. 
 Pointing to the smoke and flame, he cried in his shrill- 
 est Cockney : 
 
 " That's the French. So much for them ! " 
 
 Thereupon he turned and pointed upward to the 
 statue of Nelson. A shout of cheers at once filled the 
 square, while the urchin was bombarded with a hail of 
 pennies, sixpences, shillings, till he could no longer 
 gather them up. When he had been lifted down, and 
 coddled by the laughing crowd, an old gentleman got 
 from him his address, and promised to remember him 
 " if " . . . but at " if " he stopped. 
 
 Down by St. Stephen's some cheers were making 
 themselves heard. It was three o'clock — a Thursday. 
 The members were arriving in crawling carriages, one 
 by one. 
 
 Mr. T. P. O'Connor stood up, leaning forward in 
 his cab, bowing on each side, like Eoyalty. One man 
 shouted : " Strike hard, Tay Pay ! " And another : 
 " Don't spare them ! " Mr. O'Connor drove out his 
 large fist, and shook it in fearful menace at the sun. 
 
 The round orb of Mr. Chamberlain's eyeglass was 
 all that could be distinctly made out of him, but behind 
 it, his face seemed Ehadamanthine in its sternness, 
 ashen in its pallor. A profound silence fell upon the 
 people as he passed. 
 
44 The Yellow Danger 
 
 Within the House itself the benches were soon 
 crowded, all but the' Treasury and front Opposition 
 benches. Prayers were read. So far there was no sign 
 of impatience or emotion. There were " Questions," 
 though there was nobody to answer them ; there was 
 also a Light Eailway Bill for somewhere to be reported, 
 and the House calmly proceeded to the business in hand. 
 
 It was a place of stately traditions ; the exhibition of 
 emotion had always been foreign to it. Even when the 
 elementary passions of humanity broke through, and 
 swept like whirlwinds within its walls, it had known 
 how to comport itself with a dignity impossible to the 
 other senates of the world. 
 
 N"o one, observing its outward aspect during that 
 half hour, could have dreamed that the nation it had 
 led so long from greatness to greatness stood on the 
 very brink of swift and final ruin. 
 
 The Speaker put the question whether the Railway 
 Bill should be reported. Only two Labor members 
 rose to oppose it. The Speaker said presently : 
 
 " I think the Ayes have it." 
 
 The thing was done. All eyes cast furtive glances 
 in the direction of the spot behind the Speaker's chair. 
 At that moment the form of Mr. Balfour was seen ad- 
 vancing slowly toward the Mi''^si;erial Bench. 
 
 Behind him, in a strange topsy-turveydom of party, 
 came Sir William Harcourt talking to Mr. Chamber- 
 lain, and Mr. Asquith w '■nering to Mr. Curzon. 
 Others followed. Then it was seen with a thrill, born 
 of the certainty now of calamity, that the Prince of 
 Wales had just quietly walked into the Peers' Gallery, 
 immediately followed by Lords Salisbury, Eosebery, 
 and the Duke of Devonshire. Peering through the 
 gratings of the Ladies' Gallery were Mrs. Gladstone, 
 the Duchess of York, and others, while the Italian and 
 American ambassadors sat in the places reserved for 
 diplomats. 
 
 Below, in the body of the Chamber, was not a sound, 
 except a faint scratching of the pen of the Clerk to the 
 House. Yonder, in the Press Gallery, the alert press- 
 men held pencil or pen ready, eager to record forever 
 
How F oland Took the News 45 
 
 every word of .iie momentous utterance which was 
 coming. 
 
 In the spirit c!^ the House was deep commc on ; on 
 the surface oin.l-: , 
 
 Mr. BaKoii . rose to speak. 
 
 His face I/yre traces of some sort of sufferi;-';:. like 
 that of a w.-iD. who has passed through the trayai. of a 
 great ord,:al. This was partly due to a want of sleep, 
 occasioudd by the stress of the last few days. Under 
 his eyes were the semicircles of fatigue. But, apart 
 from this, the face which he turned absently round 
 the House before he spoke was changed : the dilettante 
 politician, the charming literary amateur, the ennuye 
 lounger — ^these familiar phases of his personality were 
 no longer in evidence. Care sat on his faded cheek, a 
 gravity heavy as the world. 
 
 He made a half-turn toward the Speaker, and as he 
 said "Sir," and paused, his neck stiffened with dignity. 
 
 " Sir," he repeated, " I need make no apology at the 
 present time for interrupting the ordinary routine of 
 the business of this House. Some adumbration of what 
 I have to say must have already entered the mind of 
 every one present. And yet, perhaps, not even the 
 most far-seeing and the most prophetic of us may have 
 been able to forecast the gravity of the announcement 
 which it is now my duty to make to this House and to 
 the people of Britain. 
 
 " The recent course of affairs in China is known to 
 all of us, and to all the /rorld. It has not been sug- 
 gested, even by our er . mies, that our policy in that 
 country, either originpii ;; or recently, was an aggressive 
 one. The enterprise of our citizens, indeed, in the 
 ordinary cr.urse of commerce, secured for them the 
 greater pa\t of the foreign trade of the land ; but with 
 that strong and large bounty of our race, which re- 
 sembles nothing so mich as the free air of heaven and 
 the brea:l',hs of the ocean which it inhabits, we have 
 left it open to e '■ery man on the face of the earth to 
 go and do like^.ise, by engaging in free competition 
 with our?3.Tes. Later on we secured the appointment 
 of an Bn£li.slijr-''n to the Controllership of the Imperial 
 
46 The Yellow Danger 
 
 Maritime Customs in China ; in view of the fact that 
 our trade with China amounted to a sum of ten millions 
 sterling annually, this was a step dictated by ordinary 
 caution. But what has been the consequence to other 
 nations ? This : that our nominee has impartially 
 distributed all subordinate posts in his gift to French, 
 German, Eussian, and Englishman alike, regardless of 
 nationality, regardful only of merit. Such has been 
 our action in the past. With regard to recent events, 
 we know, and our enemies know, that the Government 
 of this country has, in its holy passion for the main- 
 tenance of the peace of the world, submitted to affronts, 
 to wrongs, to insults even, which would, weeks ago, 
 have driven any of the less restrained Ministries of 
 continental empires into a declaration of war. 
 
 " Even on the points where undoubtedly many an 
 Englishman would have considered that concession was 
 derogatory to honor, we made concessions. We asked 
 only of Germany that Tientsin should be a free port ; 
 of France, that Yun-nan should be open to British 
 enterprise ; of Kussia, that the valley of the Yangtse 
 river should remain neutral country. Without threats, 
 with no exhibition of heat, we claimed these rights. 
 
 " The reply of France, of Germany, and of Russia 
 has been a declaration of hostilities. 
 
 " Two hours ago their respective Ambassadors placed 
 a notice of war in the hands of the Government." 
 
 The House received this announcement with a per- 
 fect stillness, in which horror contended with indigna- 
 tion. Mr. Balfour continued : 
 
 " It is impossible to doubt that this vast combina- 
 tion of power is the result of a wilful and wicked con- 
 spiracy, aimed primarily at the British Empire, but 
 aimed, in the end, against the progress and happiness 
 of the human race. It comes upon us, like a bolt from 
 unclouded skies, at an hour when the democracies of 
 the world, recovering from centuries of mutual blood- 
 shed, begin to catch glimpses of the dawn of a better day, 
 and look forward to the yet fairer fruits of the peace 
 which they enjoy. Sir, the declaration of this war is 
 a blasphemy against mankind, and can proceed only 
 
How England Took the News 47 
 
 from those mysterious powers of evil which seem ever 
 to stand ready to mar the blessedness of the earth. 
 Away now, for many a day, with the fair aspectf'of our 
 modern life, the quietude of homes, and the untroubled 
 flow of things. With one thought, at least, every 
 Englishman may console himself, as he goes forth to 
 bear his part in this stupendous struggle : ' Britain is 
 not to blame.' Not to blame — and yet not all-unpre- 
 pared, I think, sir, to comport herself with high valor, 
 as of old, in this the greatest crisis of her august his- 
 tory. Nor is it probable that there lives a single Eng- 
 lishman, who, even in this hour of trial, can doubt 
 that that same Providence which has led our race from 
 small beginnings to the empire of half the earth, will, 
 in its dark purposes, conduct it yet further upon its 
 destiny of triumph and glory." 
 
 Mr. Balfour sat down in the midst of a cheer which 
 burst from every member of the House — English, 
 Scotch, Irish, and Welsh — in a very tempest of loyal 
 passion. The assembly leapt to its feet, and volley on 
 volley of enthusiasm filled the chamber with sound. 
 Exultation, for the moment, took the place of dignity ; 
 and there ensued an exaggeration of one of those whirl- 
 wind " scenes " which have occurred at intervals. 
 Members bounded across the breadth of the House ; in 
 the midst of the tumult, Mr. Burns was seen at the 
 Treasury Bench, shaking the hand of Mr. Chamber- 
 lain ; two Irish members were sobbing in a kind of 
 hysteria to each other ; and Mr. Labouchere, forget- 
 ting, was shouting to Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, who 
 happened to catch his eye : " Eussia must be conquered 
 first, and then Prance — Eussia first ! " 
 
 During this row and chaos. Sir William Harcourt 
 rose, seeming to wish to speak. A Labor member, 
 who had been talking at the Speaker's chair, rushed 
 away. " Order ! Order ! " cried the Speaker, rising. 
 Almost instantly the House resumed its quiet, aijd sat 
 once more stern and impressive. In five minutes it 
 had spent its exuberance. Now it was the Parliament 
 of Britain again. 
 
 It was noticed now, with wonder, that Sir William 
 
48 The Yellow Danger 
 
 was at the Treasury Bench instead of on the Opposi- 
 tion side. Mr. Balfour near him, was leaning his head 
 on his hands, in a pose of absolute weariness. Sir 
 William said : 
 
 " I am asked, sir, to say a few «"■ .'■^•li b;y ihe Leader 
 of the House. It was his intentiou ' i- add a few brief 
 words to what he has already said . '■ ut the mental 
 strain put upon him during the last ft >v days has left 
 him in a state of practical collapse. The right hoii. 
 gentleman has asked me to supply his place. If it 
 should seem strange to any honorable member that the 
 Leader of the Opposition should be asked to supply 
 the place of the Leader of the House, I can only reply 
 that the Opposition now consists of the countries of 
 Eussia, France, and Germany ; in this country, cer- 
 tainly, there is no longer an Opposition. (Loud cheers.) 
 I believe it to be a fact, sir, that if the rulers of the 
 Continental empires in question had had any kind of 
 conception of the real temper of the nation which they 
 have wantonly and cruelly attacked, they would have 
 paused — they would have hesitated. It is a country 
 hard to conquer, sir — a race hard to quell ; at least, it 
 will be a united race and country. Liberal and Badical 
 and Tory shall henceforth lose their titles in the com- 
 mon appellation of Soldier ; there shall be no more 
 Orangeman, and no more Parnellite ; these shall merge 
 their names in the common name of Patriot. The 
 moment is great ; but England is great, too, and equal 
 to the moment. (Prolonged cheering.) I have risen 
 to announce, sir, that the chiefs of the former Opposi- 
 tion have this hour come from a meeting in Downing 
 Street, which we were requested to attend by the 
 Leader of the House with a view to the formation, 
 between us, of a Permanent Committee of Public 
 Safety. I wish also to state that an immediate reduc- 
 tion of the interest on Consols and Government Stock 
 from two and three-quarters to one and a half per 
 cent, is proposed ; that a tax ou non-professional in- 
 comes exceeding £1,000, considerably in excess of the 
 present rate, has been agreed upon ; and that th-3 
 House will be asked to read three times and repori' 
 
How England Took the News 49 
 
 to-day — for it is possible that hostilities have already 
 commeixced — a Bill granting to the Government a sum 
 of seventy-five million pounds for war expenses." 
 
 After this, with perfectly business-like calm and grasp 
 of details, the House proceeded to the matter in hand, 
 getting through a mass of work with a celerity which 
 astonished itself. Near six it rose. 
 
 An hour previously the Sergeant-at-Arms, attended 
 by a mass of city functionaries, had declared war 
 against the three countries from the steps of the Eoyal 
 Exchange. 
 
 Meanwhile, the news had gone like wild-fire through 
 the country ; and everywhere it met with the same in- 
 dignation, scorn, and hard-headed pride. It was not, 
 as Sir William Harcourt had shrewdly said, a partic- 
 ularly easy task which the nations of Europe had 
 undertaken. 
 
 England might break ; but it was already clear that 
 she was not fashioned of the kind of steel which could 
 be made to bend. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 HAKDY. 
 
 " Ikvasion^ " was the word which more frequently 
 than any other rose to the lips of Englishmen. 
 
 The muster of French, Kussian, and German ships 
 in the Northern Seas was eagerly criticised. It was 
 found that their weight of metal was overpoweringly 
 great compared with the small muster of the Channel 
 Squadron. Away out in the China Seas the British 
 fleet had been strengthened ; it was cruising in force 
 in the Mediterranean ; it was at the Cape, at Australia, 
 at North America, at the "West Indies, in the Pacific ; 
 it was not in the English Channel. 
 
 Under these conditions the warlike- activity in Brit- 
 ain itself went on with intensity. Even before the 
 declarations of war the Adjutant-General had issued 
 telegraphic orders all over the country for the calling 
 out of the first-class army reserve, and the mobilization 
 of the militia and volunteers. With wondrous celerity 
 commercial England turned herself into military Eng- 
 land. What conscription did for foreign countries, 
 that the manly mood of the race did for us. The 
 women of England, especially, exhibited a spirit as 
 warlike as the peril of their country was immense ; 
 and banishing fears and tears, they put on the sternly- 
 proud brows of those heroic Eoman matrons, who 
 laughed when their sons were borne home dead with 
 wounds in front. " Go along, boy, and give it 'em 
 'ot this time ! " said a Clerkenwell mother, handing 
 his musket to her son. " And don't be a-sparing o' 
 thot sword o' thoine, Jock," was the admonition of a 
 Lancashire wife as her husband, in premature haste, 
 set out, like many another, to flock to the regimental 
 50 
 
Hardy Si 
 
 center, before receiving the intimation that his prea- 
 ence was requisitioned. " And you'll give them a 
 good taste of what old Devon men are like, won't you, 
 Steve ? " was the exhortation of a Bidef ord lass. This 
 was the mood — heroic, nothing less. Night and day 
 the regimental districts and all military centers were 
 hard at work, calling rolls, drafting troops to their 
 regiments, and making all necessary preparations. A 
 sound of trumpets re-echoed through the land. 
 
 On the night of the announcement in the House of 
 Commons, at about ten o'clock, — suddenly, on the east 
 balcony of Buckingham Palace, the Queen appeared. 
 
 It had been supposed that she was still at Windsor, 
 and by what contrivance she came here without attract- 
 ing attention was unknown ; to the crowds, thirsting, 
 as they were, for some outward symbol of the might of 
 England to which they could vent their intolerable 
 emotions of love and loyalty, she appeared like a god- 
 send dropped from Heaven. 
 
 One involuntary far-reaching shout of joy, spreading 
 by contagion far up Piccadilly, far along Pall Mall, and 
 re-echoed in thousandfold acclamations, even by those 
 who could not see her, burst instantly forth. A strong 
 lime-light or electric light arrangement had been con- 
 trived, which focussed a powerful beam of white con- 
 centrated luminosity around her, and shot in shimmer- 
 ing rays far out and down through the night. Grouped 
 around her was a party of the Eoyal family. On the 
 right, the Prince of Wales ; on her left. Lord Salis- 
 bury. In her hand she held aloft an object, the sig- 
 nificance of which the crowd for a moment failed to 
 grasp. When it did, the enthusiasm intensified be- 
 yond all bounds. It was one of the faded and ragged 
 old flags, brought that afternoon from St. Paul's, 
 which had served as ensigns in Wellington's Peninsu- 
 lar campaign. 
 
 A scene similarly striking was being witnessed on the 
 esplanade at Southsea at the same hour, where some 
 seven thousand blue-jackets, and the marines from 
 Gosport, were on parade, and were being reviewed by 
 the Princess May. Hither she had hurried after wit- 
 
52 The Yellow Danger 
 
 nessing the scene in the House, and by the side of 
 her sailor-husband, and Sir Michael Oulme-Seymour, 
 rode from end to end of the improvised ranks. Prince 
 George addressed the men with a message of confidence 
 from the Queen, and hinted at the awful odds which 
 they would probably soon be called upon to face. He 
 and every one was . conscious that he was talking to 
 doomed men. 
 
 The Princess dismounted. She had a basket, which 
 she opened, and from it took a strip of blue ribbon. 
 A high flush of ardor mantled her face as she attached 
 it to the bosom of a staff-captain near her. A touch 
 of pathos was added to the ceremony through which 
 she now deftly went by the fact that she wore a loose 
 velvet mantle, the reason for which could not be con- 
 cealed. To every officer, from fleet-captain and com- 
 modore to sub-lieutenant and cadet, she attached the 
 little symbol of affection. So solemn was the rite that 
 even the crowd was silent. It was her salute to the 
 dying. 
 
 But even during the progress of this scene, one of 
 a number of picket-boats which had been sent out from 
 Portsmouth during the day was steaming into the har- 
 bor, fussy with news. 
 
 She and two companions, smart little steam-pinnaces 
 which flitted through water like fish, had, earlier in the 
 day, spied a fleet of cuirasses, canonnieres, croiseurs, 
 and bdtiments de transport about S. by E. from New- 
 haven, fifty miles out. They were mostly French, but 
 there were some German also. 
 
 The three boats, at intervals of a few minutes, came 
 panting into Portsmouth harbor, like fiuttered birds. 
 Each contained five men, and the fifteen, almost at the 
 same time, stood grouped round the Commander-in- 
 Chief on tiae Hard. 
 
 " Could you make out what ships they were ? " he 
 asked. 
 
 " We were rather too far off for that, sir," answered 
 a sub, near him. 
 
 There was silence for half a minute. 
 
 It was broken by a voice, which said ; 
 
Hardy 53 
 
 " The Atniral Baudin is among them, sir, the Hoclie, 
 the Massena, the Kaiser and the Deutschland. " 
 
 Sir Michael Culme-Seymour turned ; he looked at 
 the speaker ; his eyebrows lifted a little. He did not 
 know him. 
 
 Then, after a minute's deliberation, the Admiral said : 
 
 " How many ships all told ?" 
 
 " There are about seventeen battleships, sir," an- 
 swered a middy eagerly, " about twenty to twenty-three 
 cruisers, and a large fleet of liners — Messageries Mari- 
 times and Norddeutscher Lloyd — with an indefinite 
 number of gun and torpedo boats, tenders and compo- 
 site small craft. They are making for Bognor, Little- 
 hampton, or perhaps Worthing in a quadruple line of 
 a good twenty or thirty cables' interval." 
 
 "There can hardly be seventeen battleships," said 
 the Admiral musingly. " Do you confirm that ? " 
 
 He turned suddenly to the unknown person who had 
 addressed him before — a mere stripling with a face 
 highly flushed with excitement. 
 
 "Well — not quite, sir," the young man replied ; " I 
 decided that there were fourteen battleships, twenty- 
 four cruisers, thirty-eight troopships and liners, and a 
 flotilla of 104 small fry." 
 
 ' ' You seem pretty certain of your figures ? " the 
 Admiral said, with a smile. 
 
 " Middlingly certain, sir." 
 
 " May I ask — who are you ? " 
 
 " My name is John Hardy, sir." 
 
 " And vour ship ? " 
 
 "The Poiverful, sir." 
 
 " Then, what on earth are you doing here ? " 
 
 (The Powerful was away out in the Yellow Sea, 
 whither she had been commissioned since the previous 
 year.) 
 
 " Looking about, sir," replied the young man, drop- 
 ping his light-blue eyes. 
 
 " But why are you not in China ?" 
 
 " I fell ill just as my ship was going to sail, sir, and 
 as he said it, he gave one of those peculiar half-secret 
 poughs, so indicative of the consumptive chest. 
 
54 The Yellow Danger 
 
 "I see. Well — but how came you to be in the 
 Jupiter's picket-boat ? " 
 
 " I was on the Jupiter as a middy before joining the 
 Powerful, sir. Captain MacLeod knows me, and has 
 been liindly pleased to notice me. I am a bird without 
 a roost. I came down from London, hoping for some 
 of the trouble down here. Captain MacLeod allowed 
 me to take " 
 
 " Ah, that explains it, then. Well, he seems to have 
 done well." 
 
 The Commander-in-Chief bestowed upon him a smile 
 of passing approval, and turned away. In a moment 
 he had forgotten the young seaman ; but when, a little 
 later, he was reading a telegram from the chief coast- 
 guardsman at Worthing, giving the sighted ships of 
 the enemy, number for number as Hardy had given 
 them, then he thought once more of John Hardy. 
 
 " Extraordinary genius for facts," he murmured. 
 
 The Admiral knew that the picket-boats must, in 
 order to avoid being blown out of the water, have re- 
 connoitered the advancing fleet at such a distance as to 
 'be themselves invisible, or nearly so, to the enemy. 
 There could be no doubt that John Hardy's long- 
 lashed, azure-blue eyes possessed the faculty of see- 
 ing. 
 
 It often happened that people who came into contact 
 with this young sailor thought of him a second time at 
 unexpected moments, as the Admiral now did. 
 
 In a previous chapter we said that Dr. Yen How, 
 sitting in a London 'bus on a certain night, was "per- 
 haps " the most important person in the world. We 
 should have stated the fact with quite absolute decis- 
 ion, if it were not that we were thinking of this par- 
 ticular sub-lieutenant, John Hardy. 
 
 They two — the little Chinese doctor, and this con- 
 sumptive English lad — held in their hands the desti- 
 nies of the world. 
 
 Each had his own idea of the shape which the fu- 
 ture of the human race should take ; each was deter- 
 mined that it should take the shape which he chose, 
 and no other ; and each was immensely strong. 
 
Hardy 55 
 
 It was fated that these two should meet — soon- -and 
 more than once. 
 
 It was now six o'clock, and the blue-jackets had al- 
 ready passed in a swarm of hurrying boats to their re- 
 spective ships. As the telegrams arrived from the 
 coatsguardsmen on the southeast coast they were 
 transmitted by semaphore to the fleet. The Mag- 
 nijicent, under Eear-Admiral John Fellowes, was the 
 flagship of the second-in-command of the Channel 
 Squadron, and now, in the absence of the Majestic, 
 became the flagship of the fleet. 
 
 At the Horse Guards, meanwhile. Lord Wolseley 
 was receiving and sending message after message, both 
 telephonic and telegraphic, relating to the despatch of 
 troops from Aldershot, Victoria, London Bridge, and 
 Clapham Junction to the South. Every ten minutes a 
 Brighton and South Coast train, packed with over a 
 thousand regulars and volunteers carrying a day's 
 cooked rations, dashed forth from each of these 
 stations. Away in hasty flight swept the long strings 
 of bristling carriages, the throttle-valves shrieking the 
 dragon-cry of defiance and challenge which England 
 sent out in answer to her foes. 
 
 By seven o'clock fifteen thousand men were massed 
 upon Brighton, and an unaccustomed rattle of some 
 ninety limbers sent thrills of very unusual dismay 
 through the placid bourgeoisie of London-by-the-Sea. 
 War, so long a word and a myth, had suddenly become 
 a thing, real enough, near enough. Long files of 
 private carriages, taking away mostly women and chil- 
 dren, wended northward upon the Brighton road, while 
 a ciowd filled the steep street leading to the station, 
 to watch the ever-new batch of arrivals which debarked 
 at all the platforms, np and down alike, and at sidings, 
 the empties being returned along the up and down 
 lines according to convenience. By eight o'clock thirty 
 thousand troops with one hundred and ten guns, under 
 Sir Evelyn Wood, were concentrated, and waiting for 
 the enemy ; and all through the night the number was 
 being rapidly increased. 
 
 But they waited in vain. 
 
56 The Yellow Danger 
 
 England had been several times invaded by foreign- 
 ers. The last occasion was in the year 1066, and that 
 occasion Providence designed to be the last forever. 
 This land had since then nursed a race as superb and 
 firm as the foot with which she spurned the breakers 
 raving round her inviolate shores. 
 
 At one bell in the second dog-watch the signal was 
 given from the flag-ship ; the Channel Squadron, in a 
 double line ahead, at intervals of six cables, some under 
 forced draught, was to steam down Spithead for the 
 Channel, the Magnificent, like the bell-wether, of a 
 flock, leading one line, the Prince George the other. 
 
 At that moment John Hardy climbed from the look- 
 out pinnace which he had been permitted to command, 
 on to the deck of the Jupiter. 
 
 His heart misgave him, he shrank within himself, he 
 slunk guiltily. He knew that he had only to be 
 noticed to be turned peremptorily away. He was 
 merely a visitor, a guest— a privileged one, it is true — 
 but an outsider. That he should dream of taking part 
 jn the coming fight was preposterous, the more so as 
 every man knew beforehand that all were going to 
 certain death. And he had no shadow of status in any 
 ship present. 
 
 But he wanted desperately to see the row, and his 
 mind was one of those dominant ones not very subject 
 to considerations of routine. 
 
 Once, when a " chief -captain " of cadets on the 
 Britannia, with no further temptation to dissolute- 
 ness than his weekly two-and- sixpence of pocket- 
 money, he had been reported to the Admiralty for 
 " unsatisfactory conduct " ; another such report, and 
 he would have bidden farewell to the British Navy for- 
 ever. It was that same gipsy attitude of mind, that 
 sort of devil-may-care lawlessness characteristic of 
 him, which was working in him now, as he stood 
 sulkily there, abaft the after-funnel. He felt like 
 being shut out and banished — and he wanted to see the 
 row. He thought of skedaddling and hiding till the 
 ship was well out from land. 
 
 But there was a suspicion of meanness in this con- 
 
Hardy 57 
 
 trivance, and even while he hesitated, Captain Angus 
 MacLeod sighted him. 
 
 The captain hq,d been an intimate friend of Hardy's 
 father, and was an executor of the very large real and 
 personal fortune of which the boy was the heir. Hardy 
 now, at the age of nearly nineteen, was an orphan. 
 The family was Hampshire. The country-house in 
 which he had passed his earlier boyhood lies fifteen 
 niles south of Andover. 
 
 The captain beckoned. Hardy ran and stood before 
 him on the hurricane-deck with downcast eyes, and 
 cheeks blushing like a girl's. By "nature he was ex- 
 tremely bashful. 
 
 " You here ? " said the captain, with a deep serious- 
 ness in his tone. 
 
 " As you see, sir," answered John, with a faint at- 
 tempt at a smile, and a nervous shifting of a leg. 
 
 " You know as well as I do, John,'^ said the captain 
 sternly, "that this is only a piece of insolence on your 
 part ! " 
 
 "If it strikes you in that light, sir — of course : but 
 I should take it very kindly of you if you could see 
 your way to let me be in for the trouble." 
 
 " In for the trouble ? This is a most unprecedented 
 piece of cheek, John Hardy ! Be good enough to get 
 ashore, sir. Do you imagine that I am going to have 
 your blood on my hands, then ? " 
 
 "Whose blood, sir?" 
 
 " YoH7' blood, sir ! " 
 
 " My blood is all right, sir," said John sulkily. 
 
 " Come, come, are you sane ? Can't you see that 
 we are all going to pretty certain death, boy ? " 
 
 "I can't think that, sir." 
 
 " Not ? Aren't French and German cannon as good 
 as English, then ? " 
 
 " They may be on land, sir ; but hardly, I think, on 
 Her Majesty's seas." 
 
 At these words, " Her Majesty's seas," back went the 
 captain's head in one sudden cry of gleeful laughter. 
 Her Majesty's seas ! Perhaps there was not one living 
 man English enough, and audacious enough, to pro- 
 
58 The Yellow Danger 
 
 duce that phrase, save this particular sub-lieutenant 
 standing bashfully there. 
 
 Bub he, on his part, saw nothing extraordinary in 
 the phrase— it slipped from him quite naturally, an 
 ofEspring of his quietly supercilious habit of mind. 
 
 The captain's face settled soon again to gravity. 
 This was no laughing matter. 
 
 "But we are wasting time, John Hardy," he said 
 severely. " Will you be good enough, now, to leave 
 my ship ? " 
 
 " In what, sir ? " 
 
 " In — in — what did you come in ? " 
 
 " In the picket-boat, sir." 
 
 The captain turned his face from side to. side, puz- 
 zled and irritated. John, seeing entreaty useless, was 
 adopting tactics. 
 
 " You shan't stay here, sir — ^that is certain," cried 
 the captain. " Somehow or other — you go ! Get the 
 dinghy." 
 
 " Shall I scull her ashore, sir ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " And who will bring her back, sir ? " 
 
 " I don't care ! Take two blue-jackets, then." 
 
 " Isn't it rather late, sir ? " 
 
 " How ? " 
 
 " I fancy the ship is already moving rapidly through 
 the water, sir." 
 
 The captain started. 
 
 " Boy, boy," he muttered under his breath. He 
 loved the lad, and had loved his father. 
 
 But the captain was just now extremely busy. He 
 tossed his hand and walked away. The strength and 
 tenacity of John Hardy's will sometimes produced 
 results which had the look of fate and inevitableness. 
 
 And so it happened that he was with the Channel 
 Squadron, borne in the Jupiter, when it steamed at 
 thirteen knots past Selsey Bill to meet the fleet of thfl 
 Allies. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 IN THE CHANKBL. 
 
 De. Yen How had his idea, and John Hardy had 
 his. Nothing in the world is of such supreme impor- 
 tance as an Idea. 
 
 Dr. Yen How's Idea was this : that the cupidity and 
 blind greed of the white races could be used by the 
 yellow man as a means to the yellow man's triumph ; the 
 white races could be made to exterminate each other 
 preparatory to the sweep, in hundreds of millions, of 
 the yellow man over an exhausted and decimated 
 Europe. Hence the grants by China of territories to 
 Eussia, Germany, and France — -and the consequent war. 
 
 John Hardy's Idea was this : that the new naval 
 warfare admitted of every bit as much constructive 
 plan and shrewd sea-tactics as the old ; that the sailor- 
 hero was still possible — the new Drake, the new 
 Richard Grenville, the new Nelson ; that it was not 
 (as every one supposed) a mere question of weight of 
 metal, or superiority of gun-fire, now any more than it 
 ever was ; that a man born with the sea in his soul, and 
 the sea-breeze in his hair, like the old sailor-souls, 
 would still do the trick. 
 
 This was his Idea ; and he had also this other, sub- 
 sidiary to that first one — had it more vitally than any 
 other modern Briton — that nothing in the world was 
 of the least importance, except England, and the 
 march of England, and the glory of England. 
 
 Perhaps the lad was utterly unconscious that he had 
 these ideas, but he had them ; they were there in him, 
 radically and profoundlv ; and if he was unconscious 
 
 59 
 
6o The Yellow Danger 
 
 of them as he was of his circulation, that was an added 
 proof of their radicalness and profundity. 
 
 His nature was as elementary, and simple, and strong, 
 as the nature of Dr. Yen How. 
 
 Just as the captain of the Jupiter flung his head 
 irritably and turned from him, John Hardy caught the 
 sleeve of a middy who was hurrying past, and said 
 eagerly : 
 
 " I have got permission to see the row after all ! " 
 
 "Good biz," the middy nodded, as he passed on. 
 "I wish you joy !" 
 
 And presently he was at the sleeve of a sub. Saying : 
 
 " Here I am, you see. I have got permission to look 
 on at the row after all ! " 
 
 "It is like your ubiquitous luck, Hardy," the other 
 said, and hurried by. 
 
 Hardy was usually more taciturn than this ; the fact 
 that he went about in this way volunteering his news 
 showed that he was more or less excited, out of him- 
 self. He was going to see a fight — a real one this time. 
 To this moment he had no idea what a naval battle was 
 actually like. Summer maneuvers were a different 
 affair. 
 
 His coldly practical nature was illustrated by the fact 
 that the grudging quality of the captain's permission 
 did not at all lessen his satisfaction ; he had got it — 
 that was enough. He looked only at results. 
 
 The object of the enemy was to effect a landing at 
 Shoreham, or near it — a quiet spot, less conspicuous 
 than Brighton or Worthing. They hoped by their 
 prompt and sudden arrival, so soon after the declara- 
 tion of war, to catch the British fleet napping — as, in 
 fact, they partially did — and so to be able to land three 
 corps d'arinee, consisting of 120,000 men, 360 guns, 
 30,000 horses, and a fairly adequate commissariat and 
 field-transport matSriel, without the inconvenience of 
 first of all undergoing a naval engagement. 
 
 Their sudden presence on the shores of Britain 
 proved that war must have been secretly premeditated 
 and prepared for by them some time before the decla- 
 lation of hostilities — another indication of that sus- 
 
In the Channel 6i 
 
 picion of treachery which, all through, characterized 
 the action of the Allies in this war. But the excellent 
 telescopes of the coast-guards, and the brisk scouts of 
 the British fleet, served to give a warning which, though 
 late, was not hopelessly so. The enemy, moreover, in 
 their over-confidence, had committed an error in 
 tactics in approaching too near the coast while there 
 was still a little twilight. 
 
 OfE Bognor the captains and commanders of ships 
 wore assembled in the large ward-room of the Majestic. 
 Eear- Admiral John Fellowes had signaled half-speed, 
 and summoned them to a conference. 
 
 The oflScers sat round, hanging on his words, as the 
 Eear -Admiral began to speak. 
 
 "Of course, gentlemen," he said, "it has been a 
 matter of anxious consideration to me in what forma- 
 tion we are to approach the enemy. What makes our 
 arrangements rather difficult is the fact that we know 
 little of their present disposition. But it seems to me 
 that one thing should be certain — namely, that their 
 troop-ships and liners will be stationed well in the rear, 
 while the whole weight of metal of their ships of war 
 will be put forward to protect their land forces on the 
 liners, etc. They will assume that our first care will 
 be to destroy their land forces in our panic at the idea 
 of invasion, and their whole efEort will be bent upon 
 protecting them, and frustrating us. 
 
 " Of course, in thus guessing our objects they are 
 right enough. We wish, naturally, to baulk the at- 
 tempt at invasion ; but I must point out to you that 
 our object, to be wise, must be twofold, and that our 
 secondary object is more important than our first. 1 
 mean, that from the reports we have received of the 
 number of transports, etc, it is impossible that they 
 can have with them a land-force of more than 120,000 
 to 160,000 men, and that, even supposing these effect a 
 landing, and the land-forces at present in Britain are 
 possibly quite capable of dealing with them, provided 
 the enemy be not reinforced by fresh increments of in- 
 vading army-corps in the near future. 
 
 " It must, then, be our business to make such fresh 
 
62 The Yellow Danger 
 
 invasions impracticable for some little time by shatter- 
 ing, as far as we can, the enemy's powers of convoy — 
 that is, their ships of war. For I need not point out 
 to you that the combined countries of France, Eussia, 
 and Germany may place several millions of armed men 
 in England, practically as fast as they choose, if only 
 they have ships to bring them over, and a convoy to 
 protect them from the battle-ships and coast-defense 
 ironclads at British stations. And against such forces 
 the land-force of Britain would, of course, be impotent. 
 
 " This, then, is my point of view. We must send 
 back our invaders with such a rip in their battered 
 metal that these particular war-ships shall have had 
 enough of invasion for some little time. 
 
 " In the effort we shall all probably perish, but that, 
 I take it, is not with any of us a matter of salient im- 
 portance. 
 
 " What I propose is this : that we approach to 
 within five miles of the enemy in our present forma- 
 tion ; if they approach us in line abreast, or in a 
 semicircle convex or concave, then we echelon right 
 and left respectively, each battle-ship fastening on the 
 nearest antagonist as fortune may decide ; while gun- 
 boats, torpedo-boats, and fast third-class cruisers like 
 the Pelorus, will deploy right and left in an attempt 
 to get behind the enemy, where they will do all the 
 damage they can, special attention being given to the 
 destruction of rudders and screws, so as te obviate their 
 ramming-power. 
 
 " If, on the other hand, they confront us in line 
 ahead, then we retain our formation, the first ship at- 
 tacking the first, the second the second, and so on. 
 
 " My instructions at present cannot, of course, but 
 be general, and much, in any case, must be left to 
 individual initiative — happily so, I think, in the case 
 of British commanders. Further orders will, if neces- 
 sary be sent out by trumpet-call, and passed from ship 
 to ship in both files." 
 
 A bow of a,cquiescence went round the table. The 
 policy was felt to be bad for the immediate present, 
 but wise for the immediate future. 
 
In the Channe) 63 
 
 At that moment the flag-lieutenant of the Eear- 
 Admiral entered the room. 
 
 "The enemy's fleet is reported in sight, sir," he 
 said. 
 
 "Ah! what is the hour ? " 
 
 " Nearly three bells, sir." 
 
 " What has been made out ?" 
 
 " Only three electric search-lights in a line — pro- 
 bably they are thirteen miles off." 
 
 "Are preparations well advanced on board"?" 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 " And the same, I presume, in all your ships, gentle- 
 men ? " 
 
 They all expressed assent. 
 
 " Well, then, gentlemen, here, you see, we are in 
 for it — ' it ' meaning the flrst really great naval battle 
 of modern times. I dare say that we shall conduct 
 ourselves with credit, flghting as we do in the name of 
 justice and our country. In half an hour, say, we 
 shall be face to face with these people. I recommend 
 that a ration of grog be served out to all blue-jackets 
 meantime, and that final preparations be pushed for- 
 ward. My flag-lieutenant will send up as signal the 
 words ' For England.' I think that is all I need say 
 now, except to wish you a very hearty good-by, and a 
 fine fight, and the aid and favor of Almighty God." 
 
 The officers, having saluted, trooped hurriedly forth 
 with mutual adieux, and half -satiric, half -sad morituri 
 salutamuses, and went away through the gloom each 
 to his own ship. 
 
 The snouts of the ponderous bulks of metal were 
 plowing leisurely through the sea. 
 
 Yonder, lit by flash-light on the flag-ship, fluttered 
 the battle-word of the coming combat — " For Eng- 
 land." 
 
 But the night now had darkened. A wind freshened 
 from the sou'west, and drove somber expeditions of 
 slow cloud over the face of the scurrying and strug- 
 gling moon. She seemed affrighted at the pregnant 
 silence of this gliding navy — a silence pregnant with a 
 thousand thunders. But the sea was fairly calsL, 
 
64 The Yellow Danger 
 
 crisped only with short low fringes of foam driven by 
 the wind. 
 
 The Jupiter was the second ship in the port file- 
 that is to say, on the side nearest the coast as the fleet 
 forged eastwards. 
 
 Her captain had been so preoccupied with afEairs 
 during the bustle of the afternoon that he had eaten 
 nothing for hours. Almost immediately on reaching 
 his own ship after the conference, he hurriedly de- 
 scended to his quarters, and sat to swallow some cold 
 mouthfuls. 
 
 Happening to lift his eyes as he ate, he saw, sitting 
 on a couch in the apartment, and quietly watching 
 him, his guest, John Hardy. He had forgotten 
 John. 
 
 "Well, John," he said, across a gag of mutton, " so 
 you have dared, after all. In spite of my orders, eh, 
 sir ? Well, I suppose I must make the best of you, 
 as you are here. But you are a foolish lad, you 
 know." 
 
 " It can't be of any consequence, sir," said John. 
 "I wanted to see a fight. It is always experience." 
 
 " Yes, yes. But a young man like you. Have yon 
 no care for your life, sir ? " 
 
 " It can't be of any consequence, sir." 
 
 " ' A day less or more, 
 On sea, or on shore. 
 We die — does it matter when ? " 
 
 Is that the sort of sentiment, eh, John ? " 
 
 "Something of that sort, sir." 
 
 " Well, you might do worse, perhaps. But what is 
 the matter with you ? The sweat is rolling down your 
 face. 
 
 " They have been allowing me to help a little about 
 the ship, sir." 
 
 " What, with your own hands, sir ? " 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 "Well, John Hardy — I shall never have another 
 chance of telling you, so let me tell you now, boy — ^I 
 
In the Channel 65 
 
 must say that I regard you as a most worthy specimen 
 of the Navy. Your school and cadet careers were not 
 very brilliant, were they ? Rather — ahem — well — we 
 will say nothing of that. But in other respects — you 
 know what I would say, perhaps — I give you my Cer- 
 tificate — that sort of thing. Certainly, you are as bold 
 as a fly, modest, thoroughly English — a little — er — 
 original, perhaps, eh, sir ? Like your father, eh, sir ? 
 But with the makings of a great sailor in you, John 
 Hardy. Pity you should be throwing yourself away 
 like this." 
 
 John was blushing. 
 
 " You are very kind, sir," he just muttered. 
 
 " Do not mention it. The circumstances excuse one, 
 you know, in being quite frank." 
 
 " Quite so, sir." 
 
 John, all the time, was burning to ask a question. 
 Suddenly he said : 
 
 " Might I ask, sir, what are the proposed tactics for 
 the battle ? " 
 
 "Well, John, there's going to be plenty of fun, 
 apparently, for you to see. The idea is to concentrate 
 all our efforts upon the battleships and big cruisers, so 
 as to render it out of the question, if possible, for this 
 particular fleet again to act as convoy to an invading 
 force." 
 
 " And the liners and transports, sir ? " 
 
 "They are to be left severely alone this time." 
 
 " To land their troops on British soil, sir ? " 
 
 " Yes, boy — ^yes — this time." 
 
 Suddenly John Hardy leapt to his feet, his hands 
 clenched, his face inflamed. 
 
 " Oh, sir ! " he cried. 
 
 The captain looked at him in surprise, saying : 
 
 " Well, what's the matter ?" 
 
 " Captain MacLeod, England will never bear such an 
 indignity ! " 
 
 " Well, my boy, but war, you understand, is not fun 
 and heroics — it is dead earnest. England will have to 
 bear it, I'm afraid." 
 
 " She shan't, ly God ! " cried 'John Hardy, striking 
 
 5 
 
66 The Yellow Danger 
 
 out his right fist, suddenly riTen and smitten by the 
 Call of Heaven within him. 
 
 Then, immediately, he fell back upon the couch, 
 Bobbing bitterly into his two hands. 
 
 The captain stood over him, patting his shoulder, 
 murmuring : 
 
 " Poor John ! poor John I " 
 
CHAPTEE VIII 
 
 THE BATTLE 
 
 The fleets drew nearer, vaguely revealed to each 
 other hy electric search-lights. 
 
 That morning, as early as five o'clock, the French, 
 Russian, and German national anthems had been played 
 on board the fleet of the Allies at Brest, and the colors 
 saluted. Immediately afterwards the ships steamed 
 out of harbor. The land- troops were already massed 
 on board the transports. 
 
 To prevent their movements being watched and re- 
 ported, they had proceeded at a high speed, never very 
 far from the French coast, till they reached the longi- 
 tude of Fecamp ; then, striking directly northward for 
 Beachy Head, had slackened speed about five o'clock, 
 forty miles from the coast ; then, as the twilight 
 gathered, they had deflected their course to about west 
 by north, making in a leisurely way for the neighbor- 
 hood of Shoreham. When they flrst became aware of 
 the approach of the British fleet, they were moving 
 almost directly westward, as the British were moving 
 directly eastward. 
 
 The formation of the enemy was in a quadruple line 
 abreast. In the front were fourteen first-class battle- 
 ships at twelve cables' interval ; in the second, cruisers 
 of the three classes ; in the third, gunboats, torpedo- 
 boats, and composite gun-vessels ; in the fourth, the 
 array of liners and troop-ships bearing the land- 
 forces. 
 
 The British Rear- Admiral had rightly surmised what 
 
 67 
 
68 The Yellow Danger 
 
 would be the action of the French Contre-Amiral ; his 
 primary thought was for the troop-ships. Out from 
 the flagship went a trumpet-call, repeated far over the 
 ocean in a long line of sonorous and brazen-lunged 
 iteration. Down the files of ships it went braying, a 
 voice that died and instantly rose in vibrant outcry 
 again, commanding all troopers and liners to go pacing 
 backward twelve miles to eastward, and there main- 
 tain a hollow square till further notice. 
 
 Through the wide region of black smoke which poured 
 forth now over the Channel from the entire allied fleet, 
 flocked the captains of ships to a hurried conference 
 with Contre-Amiral des Vismes de Monthier on the 
 Amiral Baudin. 
 
 His recommendation was that the allied battleships 
 should form in two double lines, converging inwards 
 toward the British ships, just as the British ships (as 
 could be already surmised) were diverging outward to- 
 ward the Allies. He said : " We have fourteen battle- 
 ships — they, I take it, eight." (In reality, the British 
 battleships only numbered seven, for the Majestic was 
 gone.) " I propose, then, that the four battleships of 
 our present line now farthest to starboard will form 
 the outer converging line of starboard attack, and the 
 next four the inner converging line, parallel to the 
 outer ; thus, toward the coast, two starboard lines of 
 eight allied battleships will have between their broad- 
 sides a line of four British battleships — and the contest, 
 I think, should be short. 
 
 " In the same way with our port battleships ; the 
 three farthest to port will form the outer converging 
 line, the next three the inner — thus two port lines of 
 six allied battleships will have between their broadsides 
 a line of four British battleships, eight to four, and six 
 to four. The contest should not be long, messieurs. I 
 even suggest, as a point of tactics, that, in view of our 
 preponderance, we should make our victory instantane- 
 ous by placing a very short interval between the combat- 
 ant ships — say, a kilometre at the most ; for, of course, 
 the shorter the conflict the less our damage — a point of 
 
The Battle 69 
 
 immeasurable importance to us, considering the r61e we 
 have to fill in convoying more invading land-forces in the 
 near future. I need not point out, too, that an enemy's 
 ship, hemmed in between two hostile ships, will be the 
 more hampered in ramming, the closer the quarters. 
 But we have little time for tallc ; cruisers, gunboats, 
 and composite vessels will find their work cut out ac- 
 cording to the dispositions of the enemy's less massive 
 flotilla. I can only hope that these recommendations 
 meet with your approval, as I know they do with that 
 of my colleague, Vice-Admiral von Griidenau. Adieu, 
 then, messieurs ! This interruption to our progress 
 will, in a quarter of an hour, be overcome. Vive la 
 France ! Vivent — vivent — les Alliis ! " 
 
 " Vive la France — vivent les Allies!" repeated the 
 allied commanders round the table, as they raised to 
 their lips wine poured from the carafes ; then, saluting, 
 they hurried to their gigs. 
 
 And none too soon. They had hardly reached their 
 ships, and turned them to the performance of the pre- 
 scribed evolutions, when the fleet of England was upon 
 them. 
 
 The Centre- Amiral had made a small error in guess- 
 ing the formation of the British battleships. He had 
 assumed that, their number being small, they ap- 
 proached the allied fleet in two divergent single lines 
 of ships ; but the British Eear- Admiral, hoping for 
 some unknown hypothetical advantage, had, as we have 
 seen, decided to advance in two divergent echelons, or 
 step-shape formations. The error was of little impor- 
 tance, for the Allies would quickly detect the formation, 
 and modify their movements accordingly. 
 
 Unfortunately for them the eyes of John Hardy, 
 with their faculty of sight and insight, were abroad 
 over the sea that night. 
 
 He had burst into sobs in the captain's quarters of 
 the Jupiter. The captain stood over him, patting his 
 shoulder, wondering at the intensity of the lad's pride 
 and patriotism. 
 
 But it was neither pride nor patriotism which wa? 
 
70 The Yellow Danger 
 
 then rending the frail frame of Hardy with sobs— it 
 was something far more. To hear irresistibly the 
 Heavenly Call to be up and save the world, and then, 
 at once, to be overwhelmed with the bitter sense of the 
 strong Commonplace, and with the feeling of sheer 
 impotence in the face of it— this is the tragedy of 
 genius. 
 
 John sobbed. There had risen in him a sublime 
 strength, an immoderate arrogance, and with it the 
 tingling consciousness that, were he that night the 
 Admiral of the Fleet, he would and could some- 
 how save England from the shame of an invading 
 foot ; then, all at once, he remembered that he was 
 by no means the Admiral of the Fleet. So he 
 sobbed. 
 
 But his sobs were in the nick of time, for he had the 
 trick of luck. They softened and touched the captain, 
 just at the right instant. 
 
 "Well, John, I must be going," he said. 
 
 John lifted up his hot face. 
 
 " Where shall I take my place, sir ? " he asked. 
 
 "Your place ? I should stay here if I were you." 
 
 "May I, sir, if it is not asking too much " 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " Come with you, sir." 
 
 "Whereto?" 
 
 " The conning-tower, sir." 
 
 " My good fellow ! " 
 
 "If it is not asking too much, sir. One must see 
 the fight from somewhere, as one happens to be here." 
 
 " Well — but — the conning-tower ! " 
 
 " I shall make myself small, sir. You won't talk to 
 me, nor I, of course, to you. A guest chooses his lodg- 
 ing in a case of doubt, you know, sir." 
 
 He was smiling now, and when he smiled his face 
 was wonderfully winning. 
 
 The captain hesitated, and was lost. He said : 
 
 ''Well, you are an original, John, that's all I can 
 say — ^like your poor father before you, boy. Come along, 
 then — come along ! " 
 
 They ran briskly up. 
 
The Battle 7l 
 
 Suddenly the still night was a-sound. The two fleets 
 were about to mingle. 
 
 At that moment so great was the disparity of weight, 
 that the wildest hope of patriotism could have predicted 
 nothing but swift destruction to the British ; nor was 
 the objective of the British captains victory, hut only 
 the disablement, as far as might be, of the enemy. 
 
 To explain the appalling ruin and havoc which one 
 pair of seeing sailor-eyes brought upon the entire allied 
 squadron, we must employ diagrams. 
 
 The following is the formation in which the seven 
 British battleships approached the enemy, with an in- 
 terval of about a knot, or nautical mile, between each 
 pair of ships, A being the Eear-Admiral's ship, the 
 Magnificent, A' the Prince George leading the starboard 
 echelon, and B' the Jupiter, bearing Hardy. 
 
 ■c c' 
 
 The following is the formation in which the allied 
 battleships advanced, about the same interval being 
 
72 
 
 The Yellow Danger 
 
 preserved among ship-pairs as among British ship- 
 pairs. 
 
 Visi ^ 
 
 The fleets were no sooner on the point of mingling 
 than Hardy, standing now with Captain MacLeod in 
 the conning-tower of the Jupiter, was in full possession 
 of their method of advance ; and he was no sooner in 
 full possession of it, than he started, his eyes widened, 
 and words burst from him. 
 
 " Sir," he cried, "the enemy are advancing in two 
 double files. It seems clear to me that they suppose 
 us to be advancing in two single files." 
 
 " Yes, that is so," said the captain, proceeding to 
 give the order in which John had interrupted him. 
 
 "But, sir, sir," persisted John. 
 
 " Well, John, well," said the captain. 
 
 "It seems to me, sir — really — that if the Jupiter and 
 the Victorious both put out external lights and lie low, 
 the enemy will continue to think that we are in single 
 file instead of in echelon, and then " 
 
The Battle 73 
 
 Up leapt the captain's arms. 
 
 " By gad, you are right, boy ! " he cried, staring hard 
 at Hardy, his head struck into a sudden sideward sus- 
 pension of silent meditation. 
 
 Then, in a flash, he saw it all — the whole inward- 
 ness of the boy's suggestion —the long vista of results 
 — the whole huge drama of the enemy's disaster. 
 
 " Sir — Captain MacLeod " said John, all eager- 
 ness. 
 
 " But to warn the Victorious in time ? " mused the 
 captain. 
 
 " Send me, sir ! "Water from the engines — the picket- 
 boat ! The Victorious is only two miles off ; I shall 
 be there in three or four minutes. " 
 
 " Well — I say yes. You understand, of course, that 
 you will never come back." 
 
 " Thank you, captain — good-by — they are done for, 
 captain, by the Lord !" 
 
 He was gone, rushing. 
 
 On board Her Majesty's ships of war things were 
 done with a certain nimbleness ; everything was oiled 
 and easy, and went off with the gliding smoothness of 
 lightning. The Jupiter was carrying at her masthead 
 the bright white steam-light, on her starboard bow 
 the usual green, and on her port bow the usual red 
 light ; by the time these were out, and the whole ship 
 plunged into darkness, the little picket-boat was driv- 
 ing her head through two combs of foam, herself in 
 darkness, with Hardy and three blue-jackets, in a 
 direction nearly south. 
 
 The picket-boat passed before the ram of the Repulse 
 (C), and in less than two minutes Hardy was at the 
 conning-tower of the Victorious (B). 
 
 Suddenly the Victorious, too, vanished into darkness. 
 
 The night was now very gloomy. 
 
 There remained a third ship, the Mars (D), whose 
 presence it was desirable to conceal for the time being ; 
 the concealment was not so necessary, as she was more 
 remote from the advancing fleet, and by the time the 
 significance of her presence in her then position was 
 understood, the mischief might be done. 
 
74 The Yellow Danger 
 
 But Hardy would leave nothing to chance. It was 
 quite out of the question now that, if he attempted to 
 reach the Mars, the little picket could live in the 
 shattered sea-surface, into -which, surely, in a minute's 
 time all that area of water would be torn by shot and 
 shell. Yet he dared. The little boat, in a very pas- 
 sion of haste, throbbing as though she would throb her 
 little heart out, went panting northwestward toward 
 the Mars. 
 
 Was he too late ? There was a sudden shock and 
 roar from the east, and in the night a dull glare red 
 and morose. He sat, the tiller-ropes in one hand, the 
 other holding a double-glass to his eyes. A gust of 
 wind had blown away his straw hat ; the breeze was 
 a-play in his hair. 
 
 A British first-class torpedo-boat rushed sounding 
 past him, hasting wrathf ully to battle, washed in spray 
 from stem to stern. Close by his starboard bow she 
 dashed like an angry darting fish, leaving the little 
 picket nodding and dipping in a choppy sea which 
 almost swamped her hurried embassy. The next 
 moment a shrapnel-shell burst into light a hundred 
 yards before him. The fight had commenced — Bellona 
 was abroad. 
 
 Was he too late ? He knew now that to reach the 
 Mars he must perish. Certainly, he could never return 
 to the Jupiter. But he held on his way. He was full 
 of a great joy. Now he knew verily for what he was 
 born ; it was for this — the mixed and multitudinous 
 roar of cannon sounding over the sea — England's sea 
 — Ms sea ! Something in his heart, in his life's 
 blood, and in his very soul's soul, answered to it, 
 was akin to it. Never had he been really glad till this 
 night. He held on his rash and desperate way. 
 
 His eyes were alight with battle. 
 
 Suddenly he said under his breath : " Bravo ! " 
 
 The lights of the Mars had gone out into darkness. 
 
 Her captain — Captain Henderson — had noted, first, 
 the extinguishing of the Jupiter lights, and had been 
 puzzled ; then the going out into darkness of the 
 Victorious. He had stood with knit brows for two 
 
The Battle 75 
 
 minutes, and had understood. A few seconds later 
 the Mars, too, was invisible. 
 
 At once John Hardy put his helm to starboard, run- 
 ning about northeast, to regain the Jupiter. He was 
 now hurrying into the very region of the starboard 
 limb of the enemy's fleet, and by the time he neared 
 the Repulse, that ship was already engaged with two 
 of the enemy. In another half-minute the sea around 
 these three was a white tempest of thrashed and spurt- 
 ing spray, as when thronging hail flogs stingingly upon 
 a lalce, and the sky about them was a vague domed 
 cavern of coppery flame. Never did sailor, in so small 
 a craft, run the gauntlet of a more ticklish peril, pass- 
 ing through a sea crowded with torpedoes and crack- 
 ing shells, and balls of fire. But the picket-boat never 
 so much as swerved ; straight onward she throbbed, 
 through the region of lurid half-light, at her stern- 
 post the Union Jack ; then once more into darkness. 
 John Hardy sprang up the side of the dark Jupiter and 
 ran to the conning-tower. 
 
 " You have done it, then, John ? " cried Captain 
 MacLeod ; "I congratulate you from my soul." 
 
 "Thank you, sir. Now, perhaps, I think we may 
 see these fellows banged a little " 
 
 " We may, John, we may — thanks to you, boy. 
 Wait, wait — let us see." 
 
 It did not take long to see. 
 
 In a very few minutes the condition of the battle was 
 this : two French ships, one on each side of her, were 
 battering the Magnificent (A,) into shambles ; two more, 
 one on each side of her, were making a wreck of the 
 Prince George (A) ; two more were tackling the Repulse 
 (Q,) ; the Jupiter was not fighting, the Victorious 
 was not fighting, the Mars was not fighting — the Allies 
 being unconscious at the moment of their presence in 
 their then unsuspected position ; one German ship was 
 in collision with a French on the starboard side of the 
 Resolution (C) ; one French ship was ramming another 
 French ship between the Resolution and the Mars (D) ; 
 another French ship was blowing a German ship out of 
 the water at a point a long way to the west of the British 
 
76 The Yellow Danger 
 
 fleet ; and two German ships were cruising about in 
 the same longitude, searching in vain for two enemies 
 which should have been there, and were not. 
 
 Thus, of the fourteen allied battleships, six only 
 were engaged in actual conflict with three British 
 vessels, while a fourth British vessel (C) was pouring 
 a tempest of barbette, quick-firing, and machine shot 
 into the shij)s in collision on her starboard, and watch- 
 ing the sinking of a French ship rammed by a French 
 on her port side. How this complexity of tragedy 
 overwhelmed the enemy will be readily seen by the 
 following plan, published in every London newspaper 
 the next morning. Black squares and small letters 
 stand for allied ships, circles and capitals for British, 
 the three British which put out their lights being 
 ■printed black. 
 
 W-^: >■ i 
 
 ft 
 
 * J* 
 
 
 •x x;2 
 
 ./ -\ \i< 
 
The Battle ^^ 
 
 It -will be seen from the plan that, the lights of the 
 three ships being extinguished, the starboard limb of 
 the allied squadron saw a straight line of Briiish ships 
 — namely,C, C, A', — consisting of the Resolution, the 
 Repulse, and the Prince George. This made thorn 
 certain of their conjecture that the British were ad- 
 vancing in two single lines, and they accordingly pro- 
 ceeded to port and starboard of these three, in order 
 to attack on both broadsides ; but expecting not three, 
 but four, British vessels in each limb, the allied ships 
 n and o went on south-westward to seek them. 
 
 Meanwhile, on their port side also, the allied ships 
 saw a straight line of British ships, namely A, C, con- 
 sisting of the Magnificent and — once again — the Res- 
 olution. Believing that this limb, too, consisted of 
 four distinct ships, two of which were farther on, and 
 not appreciating the fact that the same Resolution (C) 
 was about to be attacked by two of their starboard 
 fleet, they steamed forward. Two of their ships, c and 
 /, reached the stations indicated on the plan, surprised 
 to find no enemy ; while two others, I andw, came into 
 contact with two of their own starboard limb, b and e. 
 Before she could stop her speed, m had hopelessly 
 rammed e, and the Resolvtion was pouring a murder- 
 ous hail upon both 5 and I, which had similarly collided, 
 S, at this time being an inert mass floating helplessly 
 with screws shattered by I ; while yonder to the west, 
 c and both searching for the missing enemy, made a 
 sudden discovery, and began to batter eacli other with 
 shrapnel, before ever guessing at the hopeless error, 
 and the blind delusion, and the harum-scarum of dis- 
 aster, in which they had been involved by the simple 
 expedient of Hardy. 
 
 At this moment — simultaneously — the three dark- 
 ened ships opened fire ; and peaceful merchantmen, 
 heading with slow industry on their diverse ways, heard 
 far and wide over the Channel the cry and rumor of 
 that complex war. 
 
 It was a fearful battle. Nearly all the allied ships 
 which were in actual combat with British ships, having 
 ta^ken position in the hope of pouring a double broa,d- 
 
78 The Yellow Danger 
 
 side on the British ship, one from each side, now snd- 
 denly found themselves in the predicament which they 
 had planned for the British ; for, without warning, a 
 dark unsuspected ship opened fire upon them, placing 
 between two fires those who for others had planned 
 two fires. 
 
 Thus, the ship h was between the fires of the Jupiter 
 and the Repulse, the ship j between the fires of the Re- 
 pulse and the Victorious, and the ship d between the 
 fires of the Victorious and the Magnificent. As yet, 
 no colors had been struck, but the Friedrich Wilhelm 
 (i), whose stern-works had been shattered by the Du- 
 guesclin (Z), was a barely-floating ruin, with only one 
 water-tight compartment uninvaded by the waters; 
 the Prince George {A') was just plunging — with screws 
 high in the air, and a shriek from her burst and hissing 
 engines that reached the clouds — to her last resting- 
 place ; the Massena (e), with a strange fatal sudden- 
 ness, had sunk on being rammed by the HocTie (m) ; 
 and almost immediately afterwards the Hoche herself 
 cracked in twain amidships, struck by a torpedo in- 
 tended for the Massena, which had been launched by 
 a second-class torpedo-boat lowered in the dark by the 
 Mars ; while the Mars herself, haying not yet relighted 
 her lamps, was rammed at her central armor-belt by a 
 second-class British cruiser, the Cliarybdis, the smaller 
 ship sheering away with broken bows to go down by 
 the head three miles away amid a crowd of allied 
 cruisers. 
 
 Yonder to westward of the thickest region of battle, 
 the Amiral Baudin (c), with a single 37-c.m. shell, had 
 annihilated both funnels of the Brandenburg, while the- 
 Brandenburg , before she could detect the ruse by which 
 she was made to destroy her own flagship, had rattled 
 the ribs of the Amiral Baudin with a rain of thousands 
 of rounds of machine and quick-firing 10^ and 8-c.m. 
 shot, and had sent a barbette shell shrieking into the 
 bowels of the French ship, where it ripped her armored 
 deck, and in a nightmare of fury rent the whole cen- 
 tral interior of the vessel into debris. 
 
 It was shortly after this that even the din of that 
 
The Battle 79 
 
 wide and various warfare received, as it were, an added 
 shock of horror, when a broad sheet of flame was seen 
 to rise and ride in quivering glare toward the sky, and 
 the next moment a bang of thunder where the Repulse 
 had been shook the universal sea. A fire had run 
 through her entire length between-decks, and ignited 
 at nearly the same moment every atom of explosive 
 within her into one splendid detonation. She did not 
 burst — she crumbled to fragments. At the same time, 
 at the other end of that line of ships, the Magnificent 
 was quietly going down by the poop, where a French 
 submarine-boat had affixed a Whitehead. 
 
 In a very few minutes after the actual commence- 
 ment of hostilities, four of the seven British battleships 
 had disappeared, and nine of the allied fourteen. 
 
 Of the intricate and incalculable warfare that was 
 darting in furious wrath in every direction in the shape 
 of the less massive armatures little was salient where 
 all was vast. The enemy was preponderant in number, 
 but deficient in weight of first-class cruisers. The 
 mutual havoc went on rapidly with complex disaster 
 and success. Ships about to disappear rose again, 
 blown high by torpedoes ; men on the point of going 
 down in the wheeling suction of some great vessel were 
 arrested in their descent to be mangled by distracted 
 shrapnel, or scalded by some flight of stinging steam ; 
 crafts were destroyed and destroyed again, and ten 
 times destroyed again, before they sank in scattered 
 shreds. It was an anarchy and blindness of rage, 
 which rent the already rent, and mutilated the already 
 murdered. 
 
 The Jupiter, by some favor of her position, was still 
 seaworthy, when Captain MacLeod, a minute after the 
 blowing up of the Repulse, said aloud to himself : 
 
 "Now, I think I might very well ram that ship." 
 
 " That ship " meant the French battleship k, which, 
 now that the Repulse had gone, was turning, together 
 with her sister-ship /, her whole attention upon the 
 Jupiter. Part of the Jupiter's fore-deck had already 
 been ripped, and a fore barbette gun unshipped. 
 
 At once she went wheeling in a sixteen-point curve 
 
8o The Yellow Danger 
 
 to starboard, pouring at the same time a broadside 
 upon the enemy. But it was at once seen that the 
 most delicate seamanship would now be required, for 
 not only was the Jupiter's intention detected, but k 
 began to maneuver to anticipate the attack by herself 
 delivering the ram, while the chase was promptly 
 joined by/, which had just lodged a finishing shell in 
 the Victorious (B). 
 
 The three vessels, though one of them was sinking 
 slowly, and all were more or less ruined, were intact in 
 engines and steering-gear, and went careering in swift 
 flight on evolutionary curves whose outcome only the 
 nicest commanding skill could determine. To destroy 
 a funnel of one or both, — this was Captain MacLeod's 
 hope. He started a rattle of quick-firing shot as the 
 three vessels wheeled nearer. But there was a racket 
 on board the Jupiter — a bursting shell — a clatter of 
 broken plate — a stream of blood poured down John 
 Hardy's face — Captain MacLeod fell limp at his feet. 
 
 At that moment, from the conning-towers of both the 
 French ships there went forth the command : " Pre- 
 pare to ram." The Jupiter was between them ; and 
 her captain was laid low. 
 
 But a born sailor now commanded her. 
 
 Hardy gave the order to slacken speed. With his 
 eyes on both the hurrying, impending ships he waited 
 thirty, thirty-five seconds ; and at the right fraction of 
 a second he ordered : " Full steam ahead ! " 
 
 Blood covered his face, and the breeze in his hair 
 gave him an aspect of wildness and disarray ; but his 
 brain was cool. 
 
 As the poop of the Jupiter slipped elusively from be- 
 tween the two advancing rams there arose an outcry 
 on both the French ships. But it was too late. No 
 celerity of hand, no power on earth, could now avert 
 the awful catastrophe. The two bows met, and crashed. 
 
 One of the French ships leaned to port, as if fainting 
 in despair, then languidly sank. 
 
 Was he really in command ? Captain MacLeod lay 
 at his feet. Who knew ? Would not his, John Hardy's, 
 commands be obeyed tacitly, if he tacitly assumed the 
 
The Battle 8i 
 
 command ? And he, at least, was under no orders 
 from the Eear- Admiral. He ordered three points to 
 starboard, and full speed ahead. The Jupiter went 
 hasting at once directly northward. 
 
 Hardy was running from the fight. 
 
 The first clear necessity seemed to him now to get 
 out of the battle, while the Jupiter's engines were still 
 intact. 
 
 He suspected, indeed, that she was already sinking. 
 But there was hope. She went plowing northward. 
 Her position on the outskirts of the battle favored 
 him. 
 
 Of what particular crime was it that he was guilty ? 
 He knew well that it was a crime. Was it treason, or 
 piracy, or mutiny, or felony ? The place which he 
 occupied should have been filled by the commander of 
 the Jupiter, now that her captain was senseless. 
 Hardy knew that ; but her commander was under flag- 
 orders. He was not. 
 
 Three miles to the north he turned the ship's bow 
 from north to northeast ; three more miles and he 
 turned it from northeast to east. Now he breathed 
 freely ; the Jupiter was well beyond effective range of 
 the battling ships. 
 
 Her lights had long since been again put out. On 
 she went through the darkness, east by south now, 
 battered and broken in her upper works, but tolerably 
 sound below — and with funnels still whole ! and with 
 a ram plowing through the water at eighteen miles 
 an hour ! and absolutely safe now from shot ! 
 
 John Hardy stood in her battered conning-tower 
 with the wind in his light hair, and the blood on his 
 face, and a slight frown on his brow. And on through 
 the darkness drove the silent battle-ship. 
 
 In little more than half an hour she was upon that 
 hollow square of troopers and liners, which were here 
 just forging through the water till the conclusion of 
 the fight. There were thirty-eight of them, and they 
 contained over 120,000 men. 
 
 Suddenly, out of the darkness, the Jupiter pounced 
 upon them. 
 6 
 
82 The Yellow Danger 
 
 Has the reader seen a thoroughbred, long-snouted 
 fox-terrier, the prize-winner perhaps at some show, let 
 loose in a small room among a hundred hoarded rats ? 
 With a gleeful, sudden spring he is among them, as 
 they scamper into a huddled heap at the corners, seek- 
 ing to hide from the very sight of their little, leering 
 eyes that countenance of wrath. He, for his part, 
 gives one, and only one, swift crack at the bones of 
 the neck, and disdainfully drops the limp vermin to 
 go on to the next. 
 
 It was something in this way that the Jupiter dealt 
 with these thirty-eight troopships and liners. One 
 after another they cracked like teapots, they snapped 
 like rotten twigs, they sank at a touch. Hardy rammed 
 one on one side of the square, and went straight 
 on and rammed another opposite ; but in the rapid 
 passage from opposite to opposite, he had sunk five 
 others with barbette and broadsides of quick-firing 
 guns. The Jupiter rushed among them like a fury, 
 dashing through a multitude of complex evolutionary 
 curves, and heaping havoc all around. It was a scene 
 of unparalleled carnage. In a short time the ram of 
 the ship was forging through masses of men and horses 
 struggling in the water ; what was left of the sides of 
 the square was shooting forth flames ; and the Jupiter 
 herself was being swept by tempests of bullets from the 
 land-forces. Without visible result, however. Three 
 only of the transports, sufiBciently uninjured by the 
 time they could get speed, escaped. The rest went 
 down. 
 
 It was now a question with Hardy whether he could 
 save the Jupiter by beaching her. She was already low 
 by the stern, and the coast was miles away. The mo- 
 ment his work was ended, he gave the order to turn 
 her bow directly northward. 
 
 He only just failed. 
 
 Half a mile out from Brighton, he bent over Captain 
 MacLeod, looked close into his eyes, and put his hand 
 over his heart. The heart beat, but a splinter bad 
 gashed all the chest. 
 
 " Sir, sir," said John, " can you not " 
 
The Battle 83 
 
 He shook the Captain. A moan came from the 
 prostrate man ; his eyes opened. 
 
 "Try to understand," said John ; "you will have 
 to swim or be lost. Can you understand ? " 
 
 The Captain stared stupidly, but nodded ; and John 
 stripped him hurriedly, then himself. 
 
 The next moment he gave the order : 
 
 " Hands to leap overboard and make for shore ! " 
 
 There was nothing resembling a boat any longer left 
 on board the Jupiter. 
 
 In two minutes three hundred blue-Jackets were in 
 the water, and the Jupiter, left alone, took in a smooth 
 cascade of sea over her poop. 
 
 A blue-jacket on one side of Captain MacLeod, and 
 John on the other, made slow progress forward. To- 
 ward ten o'clock they felt bottom ; they dragged them- 
 selves forward, and fell upon Brighton beach. 
 
CHAPTEE IX 
 
 JOHN HARDT GIVES AN OEDBE 
 
 Hakdy in a faint on Brighton sands — Hardy waking 
 on a down bed in Cavendish Square" — the transition is 
 rapid, but that is what in fact occurred. 
 
 Captain MacLeod, though gashed over the chest, 
 woke to consciousness before John. John had his 
 constant wound inside his chest, and gave signs of it 
 in the form of those pathetic, clandestine coughs of 
 his. He woke wheezing with asthma. Besides this, 
 he had a scratch on his brow from a shell-splinter. 
 
 No. 11a Cavendish Square had been the town-res- 
 idence of Hardy's race for some generations, and here, 
 in solitary state the young man lived when in London. 
 
 London, lately, had seen a good deal of him, though 
 he liked the country when on shore. This new attrac- 
 tiveness of London was concentrated for John in a cer- 
 tain house in Hampstead. 
 
 When he opened his eyes, torn by a cough, they met 
 two others bending low over him — old ones, surrounded 
 by wrinkles ; anxious oneS; full of solicitude. It was 
 half -past eleven o'clock. 
 
 "Well, Bobbie," said John with a smile, and 
 stretched a little. 
 
 "I am pleased to see you so much yourself, I am 
 sure. Master John," said Bobbie ; "how are you feeling 
 now ? " 
 
 "I, Bobs? Much the same as usual, I suppose. 
 Where on earth am I ? " 
 
 " You are in Cavendish Square, sir — ^in your own 
 chamber." 
 84 
 
John Hardy Gives an Order 85 
 
 " Oh ay — I see that. I remember now, Bobbie. 
 The battle, eh ? and the swim, eh ? The old Jupiter 
 did not do so badly, after all. Did any of the enemy 
 escape ? And Captain MacLeod — how is he, Bobbie ? " 
 
 " He is said to be doing fairly well. Master John. 
 He has a wound in his chest, which is not serious. He 
 is better off than you, I am thinking. It was he who 
 brought you here, sir." 
 
 " When ? " 
 
 " About four in the morning, sir." 
 
 "Ah, I fancy I recollect something of it. Well, 
 that's all right, then, Bobbie." 
 
 " Ah, Master John, not all right, perhaps ! When, 
 when, sir, will you learn to take care of that chest. 
 
 sir 
 
 •?" 
 
 "Oh, bother the chest, Bobs, boy. A fellow has 
 got to do his duty, I suppose, Bobbie ? " 
 
 John Hardy's eyelids lifted as he said this, and he 
 turned upward the pure cerulean azure of his eyes in 
 clear open query upon old " Bobbie," the aged butler 
 of his father and grandfather. 
 
 " Well, sir — well — if you put it in that way, of 
 course. But still, there is this to be said : it was not, 
 so to speak, jour dtcty to go through this ; you had not, 
 as one might say, any right to be there " 
 
 "No, Bobbie, but I was there, you see. And being 
 there, it was natural that one should do what little one 
 could for the old country, don't you think " 
 
 "What little, sir?" cried Bobbie. " Ah, that is 
 like your way of speaking, sir — like your father before 
 you. Master John ! This is a proud day for poor old 
 Bobbie, Master John — forgive me for these tears, sir, 
 the tears come quickly when we are old. Master John 
 — a proud day, and the tiptop hour in the life of your 
 father's old servant. Master John, making dying easy 
 to him from this day onwards, sir. It was what I pre- 
 dicted of you, and to-day you have made true your old 
 Bobbie's word before all the world. Master John. Eng- 
 land this morning is ringing, sir, with the name of 
 Hardy, ay, and France, too, sir, and Europe and 
 America ; and the servants down at the Hall have sent 
 
86 The Yellow Danger 
 
 a telegram to poor old Bobbie, sir, all of them in a 
 body, congratulating me on the man you have shown 
 yourself, and it's a proud day, sir— a proud day — for 
 poor old Eobert Mason, Master John, is this that you 
 have brought me." 
 
 Eobert's flow of words Avas choked by sobs._ John 
 put out his hand, drew him nearer to the bedside, and 
 laid one arm round the stringy old neck, the boy's affec- 
 tionate nature overflowing in murmured words. 
 
 "I am so glad, Bobbie, if I have made you happy," 
 he whispered. " You know I would do anything to 
 do that, wouldn't I ? But what is it all about, 
 Bobbie ? Have I done anything very extraordinary, 
 then ? England was bound to beat those mounseer 
 people, anyway, wasn't she ? " 
 
 Bobbie disengaged himself hurriedly. He had his 
 proofs with him — chapter and verse. He had been 
 poring all the morning over a score of newspapers, weep- 
 ing as he only wept over his old Bible. He had brought 
 them. He flaunted them in the face of John. 
 
 " Eead those, if you want to know what you have 
 done ! Well, it's a proud day — a proud day — ^for poor 
 old Bobbie, that's all I can say ! " he cried in a weak, 
 broken voice, treading woe-begone about, his face in 
 his hands. 
 
 John glanced through three or four of the papers, 
 half sitting up, while Bobbie held ever and again to 
 his lips a glass of egg and milk. 
 
 The Times concluded an article by saying : " As- 
 suming that the account to hand derived from the state- 
 ment of Captain MacLeod be correct, what words of 
 eulogy shall we find in our English tongue to extol and 
 glorify the very young man to whom Britain this day 
 owes her immunity from the shame of an invading 
 foot. In ancient Eome, the people would have been 
 acutely conscious of their inability to invent any 
 Dignity equal to their sense of obligation to such a de- 
 liverer. This young man would have been proclaimed 
 Saviour of his Country, and would have been entrusted 
 with the supreme direction of affairs — naval, military, 
 and political — with the injunctigji to see to it ne res-. 
 
John Hardy Gives an Order 87 
 
 puhlica damnum capiat. How will England adjust 
 herself to this new-found personality in her midst 'i 
 We wait with some anxiety to see what shall be done 
 by the Government to the man whom the nation de- 
 lighteth to honor." 
 
 The Daily Chronicle lost itself in allusion and met- 
 aphor. It said: "What Nelson was to the ship of 
 wood and sails, that, it is already clear, is this young 
 man to the ship of steel and steam. That is to say, he 
 is its genius. He is more still — he is its embodiment. 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson, in one of his essays, points out 
 that occasionally a man is born who is himself, as it 
 were, the Thing in connection with which his activities 
 are employed ; thus, Nasmyth was concentrated Iron, 
 Edison is himself Electricity, Eudyard was himself a 
 Lighthouse. We may add, John Hardy is himself a 
 modern Battleship." 
 
 But it was reserved for the Daily Telegraph to embody 
 in its ornamented style something of that shudder of 
 delight with which England, through all her breadth, 
 learnt with that morning's sunrise that she had still a 
 son with a voice hoarse enough to proclaim once more 
 to all the earth her Empire of the Sea. No style could 
 have been too florid to express that day the feelings of 
 the nation ; for emotion is, in its very nature, florid ; 
 and England was in the grip of an emotion. 
 
 The Telegraph said : " No one has yet accused this 
 journal of hero-worship ; and in speaking as we have 
 spoken of Sub-Lieutenant John Hardy — whom, we 
 confess we have for the first time heard of half an hour 
 ago — it is partly the man whom we laud, but above all, 
 it is the great nation that could have produced him. 
 We have at command some special information about 
 Mr. Hardy ; and we say with the certainty of knowledge 
 that he is as essentially an English thing as the cliffs 
 of Dover, or the smuts of the Black Country. No other 
 land could have given birth to anything at all resembling 
 him. He is doubly the child of England ; for he is the 
 child of the sea also. The sea is part of England. The 
 oceans are not her boundary — they are her continua- 
 tion. If one were to ask Mr. Hardy, " What is the 
 
88 The Yellow Danger 
 
 breadth of England ? " he would probably reply, " Hei 
 breadth is the distance between the Poles." Such, at 
 least, is the account we have received on good authority 
 of the temperament of this latest scion of an old Hamp- 
 shire family of thoroughgoing " sea-dogs." 
 
 " For^the rest, the young gentleman is said to have 
 an ailment of the chest ; he has the typical blue eyes 
 of the English tar, and very light wavy hair, which he 
 wears rather long. He is small in stature, and slim. 
 His face is said to be the gravest, saddest, prettiest 
 girl-face in the land, and his disposition in private life 
 is much more than usually mild, soft, and anectionate. 
 Our informant hints at a supposed weakness for the fair 
 sex, and confesses that, at the examination stage of 
 his career, the man who bids fair to become the 
 national hero proved himself far from brilliant. 
 
 "So much we have been able to gather ; and this 
 fact also, that from boyhood Hardy has seemed to be 
 deficient in one of the ordinary instincts of humanity 
 — the instinct of Pear. Nothing, so far, has appeared 
 to have had any tendency toward alarming him ; to use 
 our informant's words, " He would remain cool if the 
 earth were bursting to pieces." Such is the man who 
 has ranged himself on the side of England against the 
 allied nations of the Continent. 
 
 " This is no time of ordinary routines and gradual 
 processes. The moment is ecstatic — the hour is im- 
 mense with Eate. Let the nation for the nonce fling 
 to the winds its old Shibboleths of Use and Wont, and 
 now, without delay, proceed to garland with its fairest 
 laurels the head which has been its salvation. It is 
 certain that, but for Mr. Hardy, we writing here 
 should be writing with a boom of cannon in our ears. 
 What guerdon is high enough for the man who has 
 averted such a doom ? Fleet-Captain— Vice-Admiral — 
 Admiral ! — these are the honorary titles that occur to 
 us, as in no way commensurate with the reward which 
 England owes, and will insist upon paying, to her de- 
 liverer. ISTay, we know little of the English people if it 
 do not straightway find something so akin to its own 
 secret temper, something so precisely like its own inner 
 
John Hardy Gives an Order 89 
 
 gelf, in John Hardy, and in the cool rashness of John 
 Hardy, and in his contemptuous way, and in his auda- 
 cious gallantry, and in his homely, Cromwellian grand- 
 eur of mind — that a burst of enthusiasm from the 
 entire nation shall at once proclaim him its chosen and 
 darling. England, as Mr. Matthew Arnold said, is a 
 Nation "in the grand style " ; John Hardy, we do not 
 hesitate to say, is a Man ' ' in the grand style." It will 
 not be surprising if these two, having once come across 
 each other, shall, without delay, strike up a friendship 
 perhaps unparalleled in history. The beginning of 
 such a friendship, we to-day announce." 
 
 So the Telegraph. The Standard, on the other hand, 
 came out with an essay on Blood. " A democracy 
 without an aristocracy," it said, " is like an egg with- 
 out salt. It was necessary for Sub-Lieutenant Hardy, 
 before he could annihilate the navies of Europe, to 
 have behind him a long line of ancestors whose home 
 was the sea. He is the apex of a pyramid, the rest of 
 which consists of centuries of the ocean-life and ocean- 
 culture of a race. It is Blood that tells." 
 
 The Morning Post was the only organ to suggest that 
 the country should insist upon the importance of 
 order, and see to it that, if only formally, the young 
 lieutenant should be court-martialed ; while the Even- 
 ing News covered itself with horrid fame by saying : 
 " By the Goddess of Victory, Nelson has slain his 
 thousands ; but by Jupiter, Hardy has slain his ten 
 thousands ! " 
 
 There was no journal which did not join in this 
 chorus which rose to greet John Hardy as he woke on 
 the 17th of March. He was the only person who saw 
 his praises with anything like equanimity. 
 
 He glanced through three of the articles, then pushed 
 the heap from him. 
 
 " Well, Bobbie," he said, " it is decent to see one's 
 name all about in the prints. But what is it all for ? " 
 
 " There is the opinion of England," said old Eobert, 
 " about a son of John Nelson Hardy, sir ! " 
 
 "Of England, Bobs? "said John ; "don't you be- 
 lieve that. These writing fellows are not England. 
 
90 The Yellow Danger 
 
 England is silent — great and silent. She means more, 
 Bobs, and says less. She -will love me, too, for 
 what I have done, perhaps — but different from this talk 
 — in her own silent way " 
 
 He stopped, coughing. 
 
 " Ah, thatoongh. Master John !" said Eohert. 
 
 " Bother the cough ! it is rather bad this morning, 
 though, isn't it ? Do you know what I think I shall 
 do, Bobbie ? " 
 
 " Well, sir ? " 
 
 " Go to a hot country at once." 
 
 " A hot— what, sir ? " 
 
 "A hot country, Bobs.". 
 
 Bobs was alarmed. He at once suspected diplomacy. 
 John was whimsical, and wilful. Bobs knew what it 
 meant when those dry rose-lips closed tightly. 
 
 " Which country. Master John 'i " said the old man 
 tremulously. 
 
 He divined horribly that the bird was about to fly 
 from the old cage. 
 
 " Which country, sir ? " he repeated before John 
 answered. 
 
 " I am thinking of China, Bobbie," said John. 
 
 The old man's hands met in terror. 
 
 " China, Master John ? Oh, don't, don't say China, 
 Master John ! " 
 
 " I believe that China is a hot country — in the 
 summer, Bobbie ? " said John in innocent query. 
 
 " I know nothing about China, Master John. Cer- 
 tainly, it is no fit place for such as you." 
 
 " Oh, I don't see that, Bobbie." 
 
 " But why China, Master John, if you really think 
 of going anywhere ? China, recollect, is at the other 
 end of the world." 
 
 "But that's where my ship is, isn't it, Bobbie ? " 
 
 " Your ship ? What, ships again f — and you cough- 
 ing there like an echo among the Chiltern Hills ? 
 Well, well, I suppose it's no use an old man talking, — 
 who has served your father before you, and your grand- 
 father before him." 
 
 " Yes, it is, Bobbie ; believe me, it is, Bobs ! But 
 
John Hardy Gives an Order. 91 
 
 still — really — you will try and be good, won't you ? I 
 mustffo, Bobbie." 
 
 "Well, that sea!" said Bobbie, a hand over his 
 mouth, shaking the head of contemplative wonder- 
 ment. He was thinking of that " sea-fever " which, in 
 the history of the house of Hardy, had more than once 
 resulted in domestic tragedy and disaster. 
 
 " Well, that sea !." he said—" those ships ! " 
 
 "No, it isn't quite that, Bobbie ; it isn't the sea," 
 said John. " Don't go blaming the sea. Of course, 
 one is fond of the sea, and all that ; but that isn't 
 quite the reason now. I feel that I must go, and I 
 must really." 
 
 " Well, but isn't that what I said, Master John ? — 
 that it is no use an old man talking ? That no one 
 pays any heed to him ? no one whom he has watched 
 over, and yearned his heart over, more than any son ? 
 
 Ah " suddenly the old man fell half over the bed, 
 
 imploring with tears. " Listen to me. Master Johnnie, 
 do, now — give up these wild thoughts ! What good 
 can come of them ? So, from a boy it always was — and 
 did old Bobbie ever lead you wrong ? Do, now, don't 
 think of such things — it is the Enemy puts them in 
 your head — drive them away ! Here is all England 
 going to make much of you — why not stay with old 
 Bobbie ? Don't go, my son ! Don't you go ! You 
 are not in a fit state, and it is no fit place, among a 
 pack of heathen men, fighting fiends — what good can 
 you do ? Stay here with me ! Can you suppose that 
 I would tell you wrong ? Come, now, comfort old 
 Bobbie's heart — tell me " 
 
 John Hardy rubbed his pink face against the old 
 man's shriveled cheek. 
 
 " It is so hard to say no to you, Bobbie," he said. 
 "I hardly think it is right of you to urge me in 
 that way. You see, I have made up my mind, and it 
 is hardly — kind, is it ? If one's mind is made up in a 
 certain way, it is beyond one's power to change it, is it 
 not ? Go I must, you see." 
 
 The dry rose-leaves were pressed close now, and 
 Bobbi? should have noticed them ; but he went rashly on. 
 
93 The Yellow Danger 
 
 " Only listen to me, Master John," he said. " Hear 
 me out " 
 
 " No — no more," said John. " I bid you be silent 
 now. Pass me a sheet of note-paper and a pencil." 
 
 Old Bobbie, mouse-quiet in a moment, hobbled to a 
 desk, and then back. 
 
 John scribbled a few words, handed them to the old 
 man, and said : 
 
 " It is all right, Bobbie. I am not the least cross, 
 you know. But there are times when one must be 
 allowed to go one's own way, aren't there ? Have that 
 telegram sent off at once, will you ? And bring me a 
 good big tumbler of champagne, will you, Bobs ? " 
 
 The telegram with which Bobs shuffled off contained 
 these words : — 
 
 To Selby Captain of English Bird, lying at Freshwater. 
 
 Please have English Bird ready to sail by Sunday night at 
 latest. Going coast Spain. John Hakdy. 
 
 The English Bird was a 74-ton schooner-yacht of 
 Hardy's own, with an easy speed of ten knots. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 JOHN HAEDT AMOK-G WOMEIT 
 
 John Haedt had this trouble : he was " non-intel- 
 lectual," and his passion had fastened upon a person 
 all intellect. 
 
 Had his entry into the Navy depended upon his pass- 
 ing the usual examination as a competitor, he would 
 certainly never have entered it. As it was, he was a 
 " service cadet," and had received a nomination as the 
 son of an officer of the navy who had performed long 
 and distinguished service. Even so, he had had to pass 
 a test examination ; and in this very elementary ordeal 
 he had failed in the subject " French." Once more he 
 received a nomination, and once more he was given a 
 chance in the examination-hall of the Commissioners 
 of Cannon Row — his very last. All that half-year he 
 was " swotting " like an elephant at the fatal " French," 
 to the neglect of " Composition," another of his weak 
 points. During the hot week in June preceding the 
 examination he was a true slave of the lamp ; but his 
 strong will this time was at work. With his lucky 
 knack, he scraped through. The number of " pass " 
 marks was 660 : he got 662. 
 
 Hardy was not a book-man ; he had even a secret 
 contempt for book-men and book-learning. 
 
 Moreover, as we said before, he got into trouble later 
 on. While in training on board the Britannia he had 
 been reported to the Admiralty for "unsatisfactory 
 conduct" and had been "warned." The "unsatis- 
 factory conduct " consisted in walking arm-in-arm with 
 
 93 
 
94 The Yellow Danger 
 
 a girl of the lowest class though the streets of Dart 
 mouth, both the girl and John being pretty far gone iu 
 a state of intoxication. 
 
 These, then, were his weak points ; That he was 
 far from literary ; that he was too fond of fermented 
 things ; that he was too fond of feminine persons. 
 
 Up to the time at which we met him, he still made 
 spelling mistakes in common English words in writing 
 ordinary letters. 
 
 In five or six of the ports of Europe there was more 
 than one young woman unf orgetful of the crinkled hair 
 and angel-eyes of John Hardy. He was, indeed, pain- 
 fully shy in the presence of women, and was a very 
 clumsy and heavy lover — but he was also very good- 
 looking, and naif : and one thing made up for the other. 
 On the whole, he "arrived." 
 
 He loved every woman in the world ; and this love 
 was, in general, returned. 
 
 But most of all he loved Miss Isabel Jay, known to 
 her friends as " Bosey " ; and Bosey, apparently, did 
 not love him. Her love was already taken up by some- 
 thing else — a thing which she called "Art." 
 
 He went to see her on the day of the telegram to 
 Freshwater. A strip of black plaster concealed the 
 scratch on his forehead. He was in the habit, even on 
 visits of ceremony, of wearing a rough and heavy pea- 
 jacket, such as pilots wear, with brass buttons, and 
 thus attired he went out into the streets, a soft cap an 
 his head. 
 
 Could he have been recognized, he would have been 
 lifted on the shoulders of the people, and carried to 
 his destination. 
 
 A servant ushered him into a very dainty inner room 
 at Hampstead — a kind of studio-boudoir, in a Greek 
 style, with Corinthian pillars, and flimsy saffron hang- 
 ings. Miss Jay was rather an heiress, and lived with 
 an old aunt in stately solitude. There now she sat 
 before an easel, with brush and palette. 
 
 She was a lady of many accomplishments : of that 
 unspeakably " new " kind ; had written two novels of 
 the "problem" sort; she was a preacher of land- 
 
John Hardy Among Women 95 
 
 nationalization ; she had painted one knows not liow 
 many pictures ; she was not yet nineteen ; and she 
 was pretty. 
 
 She had a substantial body, with a waist quite as 
 large as that of Eve or Venus. She wore her red- gold 
 hair in coil upon coil of neglige richness about her head ; 
 her eyes were green. 
 
 In her large countenance there were intelligence and 
 strong self-assurance. The hard bones of her corset 
 were not more visible through her bodice than the 
 Will of her character in her face. 
 
 "Oh, Mr. Hardy, I am glad!" she cried. "Ah, 
 and I have heard ! " 
 
 " About the battle, and so on ?" 
 
 " Yes, if "so on " means yourself. How very brave 
 you must be ! " 
 
 " Englishmen are that, you know." 
 
 " Are not a good many great cowards ? Men do so 
 live in regions of fantasy ! Women are more prosaic — 
 and clearer. Did you ever see an average English girl 
 in the presence of a mouse, Mr. Hardy ? " 
 
 " Girls are different," said John. 
 
 Bosey's lips tightened. This was the kind of ancient 
 point of view, purely male, to which she had the most 
 touchy antipathy. 
 
 "Oh, different of course," she said, "in pose of 
 nervous structure, and so on, and so on. But sub- 
 stitute for the mouse the broker's man, and you get at 
 once a measure of the average Englishman's courage." 
 
 " Somebody has been misleading you," said John. 
 " Englishmen are brave. Foreign people are afraid of 
 things." 
 
 She looked at him with real pity, for his insularity, 
 his unintelligence. 
 
 " But why misleading ? Can it be that you think an 
 ordinary girl incapable of observing for herself ? " 
 
 "I? Why if you only knew how much I like 
 girls !' 
 
 " Merci ! " 
 
 " Ah, now you are sarcastic." 
 
 "You are too shrewd." 
 
96 The Yellow Danger 
 
 " 1 never know whether you are making fun of mt 
 or not." 
 
 " Well, what does it matter, Mr. John ? " 
 
 " But it is not nice to he made fun of by some one 
 whom you like." 
 
 "B.ea.Wy like?" 
 
 " You know ! " 
 
 "You are too complimentary." 
 
 " Like isn't the word. I think I like you better than 
 any one in the whole world." 
 
 " Now you are — what is the word ? — spooney." 
 
 " I should be as happy as the Queen if you would 
 only like me back." 
 
 " Spooney ! " 
 
 " You are not making fun ? " 
 
 " Don't be suspicious. You are too penetrating." 
 
 " Well, what do you say ? " 
 
 " To what ? " 
 
 " To my liking you so much ? " 
 
 " I can only say that it is distinctly spooney." 
 
 " But do you like me back ? " 
 
 "Oh, // Well, yes, as you ask me. I like you — 
 back. But in my own fashion, you understand ; not 
 in that designingly spooney way." 
 
 "I do not understand you," said John. "You are 
 not like other girls." 
 
 " Then logically you should not like me, since you 
 like other girls so very very much." 
 
 " I do, though. I like you much better than any of 
 the others. You must not go by logic." 
 
 " Ah, but I am nothing if not logical, Mr. Hardy." 
 
 " But facts are facts, aren't they ? if logic contra- 
 dicts a fact, then you must throw the logic overboard 
 to the sharks. I tell you I like you better than any one. 
 That is enough." 
 
 " Enough for what — for me ? " 
 
 " It should be." 
 
 " But our human nature is more or less complex, I 
 suppose ? Do you mean that the mere fact of your 
 caring for me should be enough to lead me to corre- 
 sponding actions ? That is wrong, you know. Listen, 
 
John Hardy Among Women 97 
 
 Mr. Hardy : we first met — how long ago ? — about five 
 weeks, I think — at Lady Sinclair's, you remember. 
 And since then, how many times ? About six, per- 
 haps. Well, I can see that you are used to easy 
 conquests, you know ; and at once I detected that you 
 were laying yourself out to be captured by me, if I 
 chose to take the trouble to capture you. But I did 
 not choose ! I hare other things to think of ; and it 
 will be as much as I can possibly do, supposing I live 
 for eighty years in tolerable health of body, to get 
 through the little all I have in mind. I am not going 
 to say that it is out of the question that some day I 
 may not allow myself to be seduced into marriage by 
 some man or other ; but, at the moment, it is a thing 
 so remote from the actual strain of my thoughts, that, 
 I assure you, it has quite the look of an impossibility. 
 All the time, mind you, I am secretly alive to the 
 fact that it must be very nice to be petted and kissed 
 by charming lips ; but it is not, you see, precisely what 
 I have chosen for myself. You know about " scorning 
 delights and living laborious days," don't you ? Well, 
 that is my way. So I beg, once and for all, that you 
 will be more sensible with respect to me for the future, 
 Mr. John." 
 
 Bosey delivered this lecture with brush uplifted. 
 She bent and gave a touch to the picture. 
 
 As the last words passed her lips, a sigh escaped 
 Hardy, and this sentence, barely whispered : 
 
 " You are the mate for me, by the Lord ! " 
 
 She heard him and cried : 
 
 " Mr. Hardy ! " 
 
 His lips were pressed together. But as he was the 
 firmest, so he was the most uncouth, of lovers. He said : 
 
 " I am going to China in a day or two. I should 
 like to marry you before I go. " 
 
 She broke into ripples of evil laughter. 
 
 " Not so soon ! Not so soon ! " she cried, angry now. 
 
 " When I come back," he said simply. 
 
 She looked into his face in unfeigned surprise. 
 
 " Have I not told you ? " she cried, almost with 
 alarm. " What do you mean ? I am quite a free 
 7 
 
98 The Yellow Danger 
 
 subject, you know. This is not Turkey ; this is not 
 — Peru. Do you mean that because you are to be the 
 national hero, and so on ? Oh, but that is in rather 
 queer taste, then ! Have I not answered you ? " 
 
 "Hove you !" 
 
 " I don't care ! " 
 
 " I do ! " 
 
 " You do not ! " 
 
 " Ah, you don't know ! " 
 
 " You are to keep away ! " 
 
 " I shall have you yet ! " 
 
 " Have me ! " 
 
 'i Yes." 
 
 "Silly boy." 
 
 " Give me one ! " 
 
 " Don't come " 
 
 "Just one." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " Kiss." 
 
 " Ur ! — silly. Do — go — away. This is too absurd ! " 
 
 She stamped. The dry rose-leaves had brushed her 
 hot cheek. So far had passion led Hardy. Then he 
 started — to this point he had never dared, on his own 
 initiative. A shock of scarlet shyness possessed him. 
 
 " Ah, now I have presumed," he said, stammering. 
 "Forgive me — I will go " 
 
 " Well, it is of no consequence, Mr. Hardy," she 
 answered, calm already, holding out her hand, " but 
 perhaps you had better go." 
 
 " Well, then — But you understand that I am go- 
 ing to China ? " 
 
 "Perfectly. I oelieve that you will find the Chinese 
 charming artists." 
 
 "While I am away you will not be marrying some 
 one else ? " 
 
 " Not I. You may be confident that I shall remain 
 self-sufficient. Even the new National Darling, you 
 see, cannot tempt me." 
 
 " But you will think sometimes of a poor sailor." 
 
 " The newspapers, you know, will remind me of the 
 poor sailor." 
 
John Hardy Among Women 99 
 
 " Good-by. I am going." 
 
 "Then go." 
 
 " When I come back from China, I shall have yon." 
 
 " You said that before — whatever having me may 
 mean : and I said — No." 
 
 "But I shall." 
 
 "Well, we won't discuss the matter now. I am 
 sorry for you, you know, because you look — epaU. 
 But you will soon get over it, and it will do you good. 
 You were over-confident, you know. Will you say 
 good-by, now ? " 
 
 " May I kiss your hand ? " 
 
 "Nonsense ! you are just like a child." 
 
 "May I?" 
 
 " Well, if that is any comfort to you " 
 
 He kissed her hand with old-fashioned ceremonial, 
 caught up his cap, and was gone. 
 
 Had he been more successful, he would have walked 
 straight home, and to bed, and so made the course of 
 history otherwise. 
 
 As it was, he went wandering through a number of 
 streets in a desultory mood, not knowing whither he 
 went. 
 
 Night had fallen. 
 
 He had a deep radical love for this girl. He said to 
 himself, walking himself tired : "I will have her, I 
 will have her, by the Lord " 
 
 Suddenly his own name caught his eye. He was 
 in front of the Palace Theater of Varieties. 
 
 London was alight. The streets thronged with 
 people. The fa9ades of the Palace were arrayed with 
 galaxies of jets. 
 
 There, on a board, the ink still wet, appeared the 
 attraction of the night : 
 
 MISS LOTTIE COLLINS 
 
 Will Appear To-night 
 
 In Her New Patriotic Song, 
 
 Entitled : 
 " BRAVO, JOHN HARDY 1 " 
 
100 'the Yellow Danger 
 
 The song had been composed, learned, orchestrated, 
 and rehearsed, all in the course of a single day. 
 
 He stood looking at the placard, smiling. He felt in 
 his pocket ; he had some money. It was about time 
 for the entertainment to begin. He went in. 
 
 His mind was, in some of its aspects, as unstable as 
 water. It shifted like phosphorescences in tfte dark. 
 All forms of pleasure, especially, had great power to 
 deflect and draw him. He could be won from grave 
 to gay by the simplest means. He had not only the 
 soul of a hero but the mind of a baby. 
 
 He remembered that one could smoke and drink in 
 music-halls. By heaven ! he would make a night of 
 it. If there was blame, the blame was Bosey Jay's. 
 
 He never took the dry-land quite seriously. To him 
 it was " shore " — rather a foreign place — a place for 
 "sprees." 
 
 He put his hand into his pocket again, and looked 
 at what money he had. There was plenty. Now 
 then for Bacchus and Terpsichore ; wine, and song, 
 and — Woman ? 
 
 Nearly all the afternoon, at this very hour, a stream 
 of carriages, containing ecstatic photograph-hunters, 
 Mr. Goschen, Lords of the Admiralty, pressmen rabid 
 for an interview, distinguished persons, were moving 
 toward, and away from, the door of No. 11a Cavendish 
 Square. John Hardy was not at home. 
 
 He found himself in one of the " pit-stalls " during 
 the performance of a ventriloquist. In a few minutes 
 he had provided himself with cigars, and a goodly 
 tumbler of spirit-and-soda-water. 
 
 A girl, sitting next to him, touched a companion on 
 the other side of her — a soldier, whose name was John 
 Brabant — and whispered : 
 
 " Just look at him ; isn't he handsome ? " 
 
 Her name was Ada Seward. She was the woman 
 v/ho, alone in the world, had been able to melt the ice 
 of Dr. Yen How. 
 
 She was a small creature, with skin of a warm yel- 
 lowish color, and little quaint Chinese eyes, and light 
 hair with the whitest tinge of red in it ; not per- 
 
John ttardy Among Women loi 
 
 haps pretty, but with some unspeakable attraction of 
 piquancy about her uncommon, saucy little face, 
 which had caused her to receive twelve ofEers of mar- 
 riage before she was twenty. Her friends declared that 
 she was the living image of Miss Marie Tempest, the 
 "Geisha" prima donna. In figure she was typically 
 English. 
 
 She was perishing to speak a word to the sweet pink 
 lace by her side, to its delicate aristocratic lines. At 
 last, during a loud song consigning the German nation 
 to perdition, she found her chance. 
 
 "Now, young gentleman," she said, "that is my 
 dress, please ; it won't be fit to look at to-morrow if 
 you throw any more brandy-and-soda over it." 
 
 John gave her the sweetest smile she had ever be- 
 held on mortal lips, and said : 
 
 "Pardon me." 
 
 At the same time, he looked into her face, and liked it. 
 
 The waiter had already borne him three whispering 
 glasses of beverage. 
 
 " May I ? " he said ; " here, waiter — may I order for 
 you and your companion ? " 
 
 John Brabant bowed low with a hearty " Thank you, 
 sir ! " 
 
 But Ada, who was quite three or four grades higher 
 in the socal scale than he, being in his company only 
 owing to old associations, nudged the soldier deprecat- 
 ingly, objecting to the obligation. 
 
 It was too late, however. The offer had been ac- 
 cepted. In a few minutes John Hardy and Ada were 
 talking — Ada laughing, John smiling. Brandy-and- 
 soda became the order of the day. Hardy had soon a 
 good deal more than enough. 
 
 The audience was in a queer mood, impatient, in- 
 tolerant. There was neither an empty seat nor a spare 
 inch of standing-room in the place ; but the people's 
 interest was all bent upon one future point in the 
 entertainment — ^the entrance of Miss Collins — and 
 meanwhile they took not the least pains to conceal 
 their indifference. There was something rowdy in the 
 tone of the assemblv. 
 
102 The Yellow Danger 
 
 " By Jove, I am liking you ! " 
 
 His lips were at her ear. 
 
 " Ah, now, that's the drink talking, not you." 
 
 "The drink? Nonsense!" I am, really. Are 
 you liking nie back ? " 
 
 " Ah, that would be telling ! " 
 
 " You are ! " 
 
 V Go away with you ! Why, I have only just seen 
 you !" 
 
 " That is of no importance." 
 
 " Oh, isn't it, though ! " 
 
 " Don't be a cruel girl. Here, waiter- 
 
 " Do you know what I think you are — from your 
 ways ? " 
 
 " No ; tell me." 
 
 " Tou tell me ; let me see if I am right. What are 
 you?" 
 
 "You mean my profession ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " I am a sailor." 
 
 Had Ada's ears been more delicately nurtured, she 
 would have detected there, half-driink though Hardy 
 was, a very slight intonation of imperial arrogance. 
 
 " A sailor ? You ? Go on ! Show me your 
 hands." 
 
 " Oh, my hands are not very rough, I admit. But 
 still — I am a sailor. You may believe me — in the 
 navy, you know." 
 
 " I see. Well, do you know I had an idea of some- 
 thing like that ? A sailor ! Yes, that is what you are. 
 You come to the point so soon, don't you ? — like sailors 
 do." 
 
 " Well, but do you like me back, now ? " 
 
 " No, thank you. No sailors for me. They are 
 here to-day, and gone to morrow." 
 
 " That is because they must. You can't punish 
 them for doing their duty to their country, can you ? " 
 
 "The country is one thing, but girls have got to 
 look after themselves, you see." 
 
 " You are too practical. 
 
 " I have got to be." 
 
John Hardy Among Women 103 
 
 " But you will have me for your sweetheart r " 
 
 "Perhaps I will, and perhaps I won't. It de- 
 pends." 
 
 Here was an Achievement in Indefiniteness. John 
 Hardy fled from the mental indeterminateness in which 
 the answer left him, by turning to his glass for a 
 drink. 
 
 The shifters of the indicating numbers removed the 
 card 7, and put up the card 8; "8" meant Lottie 
 Collins. A murmur of expectancy rumored through 
 the building. The air grew electric. Every ont 
 knew that great things were coming. Already the 
 nerves of the audience were strung high and tense. 
 
 " That is very indefinite." 
 
 "I can't help it. Wait and see how we feel to- 
 morrow morning." 
 
 " Only say now that you like me." 
 
 " Well, suppose I say — yes. No, no — ^it's too 
 stupid!" 
 
 " Sweet of you, Nell ! Is your name Nell ? " 
 
 " Yes. How on earth did you know ? It is my 
 second name. They call me " Ada."' 
 
 " Ada— what ? " 
 
 "Ada Seward." 
 
 " I shall call you " Nell." I like that better." 
 
 " And what is yours ? " 
 
 "John." 
 
 Ada was smitten by Coincidence. On each side of 
 her was a ' ' John " — one a soldier, the other a sailor. 
 She was the link which united and disparted Her 
 Majesty's forces. 
 
 "John— what?" 
 
 Here John paused. He was now in a high state of 
 fuddlement, but was capable of remembering that his 
 name was on placards all about the town, and about to 
 be proclaimed by " No. 8." 
 
 "John — what ?" came the question again. 
 
 But Miss Collins rescued him. There was the rattle 
 of a drawn-up curtain — an intense " Sh — h— h " swept 
 through the building — and at once there followed a 
 clap and cry of applause as the whole audience leapt 
 
I04 The Yellow Danger 
 
 to its feet. Miss Collins had bounded on to the stage, 
 be-draperied from head to heel in the Union Jack. 
 
 The air was electric. Every heart bounded in every 
 bosom. John Hardy's right arm had stolen and twined 
 round Ada Seward's left, his fingers kneading and 
 
 Ealpating the soft flesh of her forearm. With his left 
 and he lifted the glass to his lips. He alone, on the 
 subject of himself, remained careless. 
 
 Amid a dead silence the artiste lifted up her arm, 
 and so for a minute stood. Then she gave a sharp, 
 shrewd twist to her wrist, and passionately shouted — 
 
 " Bravo, John Hardy ! " 
 
 And again the audience leapt to its feet, with howls 
 of rapture, which lasted five minutes. 
 
 The boxes were packed with some quite distinguished 
 people. 
 
 At last there was quiet. The artiste began to sing. 
 The tune was simple and stirring — the words were like 
 raw rum, as crude and as strong : 
 
 When the Allied fleet came over, and passed the Straits of 
 Dover, 
 
 They thought they'd have it all their little waj; ; 
 But a knowing little cardy (they call him Johnnie Hardy), 
 
 He crashed them his Ta-ra-ra-Boom-de-aye. 
 
 Chorus 
 
 Oh ! isn't he a jolly little boy ? 
 
 And don't he know his little way about I 
 When he handed in his card, and the French saw 
 
 " Johnnie Hard," 
 Lord I transformation scene, you bet, and wild, dis- 
 tracted rout ! 
 
 There's a little sailor lad, and his eyes are mild and sad. 
 And you'd think he'd not one blooming word to say ! 
 
 But holy Moses guard ye (he's known as Johnnie Hardy) 
 When he crashes his Ta-ra-ra-Boom-de-aye I 
 
 Chokus 
 Oh I isn't he a joy, that jolly sailor-boy ? 
 
 And don't he know his little way about 1 
 When he winks his little eye, you may just lie down 
 
 and die, 
 For his red right hand is thunder, and his eyes shoot 
 lightnings out I 
 
John Haixiy Among Women 105 
 
 By this time the audience, wrought to a high excite- 
 ment, had caught the lilt of the tune. When Miss 
 Collins repeated the last chorus, the house vociferated 
 it, utterly drowning her Toice in the wheeling tumult 
 which now prevailed. She pretended to retire, loaded 
 with the masses of flowers showered upon her from the 
 boxes ; but at once returned at the call of the audi- 
 ence. She sang : 
 
 Ah, boldly they came over ; and they crossed the Straits of 
 Dover ; 
 
 But " Hardy ! " was the answer England hurled that day ; 
 And Johnnie winked his eye, and they all lay down to die, 
 
 When he crashed them his Ta-ra-ra-Boom-de-aye 1 
 
 Chorus 
 So isn't he just bricks, with his little crafty tricks ? 
 
 And don't he know his little way about ! 
 For his head is crisp with curls, he's a devil with the 
 girls, 
 But ten thousand times a devil when the Dogs of War 
 are out I 
 
 Once more she repeated the chorus, the audience 
 taking it clamorously up. Then she tripped from the 
 stage. But the house roared after her with the frenzy 
 of men parting with their last earthly hope. She had 
 now utterly mesmerized and enthralled them. The 
 moment was ecstatic with an electrical tension im- 
 possible to describe. They bawled, they yelled, they 
 stood up straining forward with gesticulations, tears 
 
 E curing down many faces, handkerchiefs waving. At 
 ist she reappeared. She had a verse in reserve. She 
 sang : — 
 
 Old England is the mother, and each of you a brother. 
 To this stern brow that bids the world obey ; 
 
 And now we shan't be tardy (God bless you, little Hardy !) 
 In crashing more Ta-ra-ras-Boom-de-aye ! 
 
 Chorus 
 So isn't he a joy, this British sailor-boy ? 
 
 And don't he know his little way about ! 
 He couldn't hurt a fly, but he's tricky, and he's sly. 
 And he makes the sky to redden, and the roaring deep 
 to spout [ 
 
io6 The Yellow Danger 
 
 She rendered this last verse with almost distracted 
 verve and heat ; and before proceeding to give the 
 chorus a second time stretched forth her arms, and in 
 a fierce tone of command, cried : " Stand all ! " 
 
 The audience sprang upright yelling the male part of 
 it uncovering. The singing of the last chorus burst 
 forth universally. And there too, was Hardy, hope- 
 lessly drunk now, with an arm round Ada Seward's arm 
 he, too, standing, he too — with an e^apty glass bran- 
 dished in his left hand— laughing and singing : 
 
 So isn't he a joy, this British sailor-boy ? 
 
 And don't he know his little way about I 
 He couldn't hurt a fly, but he's tricky, and he's sly_, 
 
 And he makes the sky to redden, and the roaring deep to 
 spout 1 
 
 No sooner had Miss Collins disappeared, amid an un- 
 paralleled tempest of sound, than the audience scat- 
 tered. They were capable of no more emotion for that 
 night. 
 
 Hardy found himself in the street, leaning on Ada 
 Seward's arm. They were alone. Where the soldier 
 Brabant had vanished to, neither Brabant himself nor 
 any one else knew. 
 
 " Shee cheers for ole Nelson ! " cried John Hardy. 
 " Ha ! ha ! ha ! — ole Nelson. Shee cheers, by the 
 Lord " 
 
 " Come now, be good," said Ada. " Get into this 
 cab, will you ? " 
 
 " Where you live ? " 
 
 She gave him the Pattison address, and impressed it 
 upon him. 
 
 " Mind, I shall expect to hear from you," she said, 
 as she shoved him into the cab, and kissed him. 
 
 John going home in the cab, murmured, with faint- 
 ing, intoxicated breath : 
 
 " Bosey ! Bosey ! I shall have you yet, — by the 
 Lord " 
 
 And Ada waited in vain. The next morning he had 
 forgotten her address. 
 
 But he remembered — her name. 
 
CHAPTEE XI, 
 
 JOHN" HAKDY AMONG THE N-ATION-S. 
 
 The next day John Hardy shut himself up in a fit 
 of sulky moroseness, flatly refusing to see any one. 
 The day after that was Sunday, and on Sunday evening 
 he was at Freshwater. 
 
 His yacht was ready to sail. 
 
 He had in his breast-pocket letters of credit from the 
 bankers of his solicitors to business houses in Paris, 
 Berlin, Petersburg, Pekin, and Shanghai. 
 
 He had also with him a French dictionary, a German 
 dictionary, a bible, and a very elementary French con- 
 versation book. 
 
 He had also with him a portrait of Bosey Jay, which 
 he had obtained that morning from Lady Sinclair. 
 
 He had also with him a Colt's revolver. 
 
 He had also with him a shilling map of Northern 
 China, and four sorts of foreign coin. 
 
 As he stepped from the train from Newport at Fresh- 
 water, he saw a late Sunday-edition placard announcing 
 that 100,000 English troops were about embark for Havre 
 for a French invasion ; and this made his heart rejoice. 
 
 The English 5«iV«? weighed anchor at 8 p.m. He was 
 under requisition by letter to attend at the Admiralty 
 the next day, but he took not the least notice of it, 
 leaving it to be supposed that he had set out before re- 
 ceiving the requisition. He was a free subject, he said 
 to himself. 
 
 Before sunrise on Wednesday morning he arrived 
 at the old town of San Sebastian on the north Spanish 
 coast. 
 
 He had taken the precaution to bring no linen marked 
 
 107 
 
io8 The Yellow Danger 
 
 with his name. He intended to travel as an American 
 citizen, under the name of Petersen. From San Sebas- 
 tian he sent back the yacht to England, and at once 
 proceeded with a small trunk by train to Bayonne, 
 thence to Bordeaux, and thence by way of AngouMme, 
 Poitiers, and Tours to the French capital. He reached 
 the Gare d'Orleans on the Thursday morning at 9.30, 
 nearly a week after the battle of Shoreham, and pro- 
 ceeded westward to a hotel in the neighborhood of the 
 Madeleine, reporting himself in the hotel bulletin as 
 having traveled from Spain. 
 
 The first thing that happened to him was that he fell 
 in love with that charming courtezan, Paris. 
 
 He had been so exceptionally and scrupulously in- 
 sular, that he had always shrunk from leaving England, 
 except in the ships on which he served. Hence he 
 knew some of the ports 'of Europe very well, but had 
 never been to Paris. Now was revealed to him the filU 
 dejoie of the cities of the earth, the pure feminine, as 
 queer, and treacherous, and lovely, and indescribable, 
 as woman. Whoso truly loves woman will not escape 
 her witchery. She is the divine sinner. 
 
 Hardy intended to leave Paris at three o'clock ; but 
 he put off his departure till the next day ; and mean- 
 time he got into trouble. 
 
 The news of the disaster to the allied fleet had four 
 days since reached France. But the whole thing was 
 incredible ; it was not believed, or believed with only 
 half the mind ; and for this reason : that the news had 
 come by the roundabout way of the Mackay-Bennet 
 cable — from New York ! "What lent some color of truth 
 to the report was the incomprehensible fact that the 
 Contre-Amiral and General de Eosney had sent no de- 
 spatch-boat to announce the landing of the troops on 
 English soil. Yet the nation refused to believe the 
 incredible. They waited, with suspended mind, with 
 bated breath, wildly hoping. 
 
 In the impossible contingency of their fleet having 
 been defeated, they argued that at least one ship would 
 have escaped to bring them the news. But no ship 
 had come : the fleet could not be defeated. 
 
John Hardy Among the Nations 109 
 
 The fact was that Jive ships had escaped — ^three liners 
 and two battleships. But of the three liners one was 
 towing another at the rate of about half a knot an hour, 
 and the third was just forging through the water against 
 a head wind under sail alone. The two battleships 
 were German, and in sorry plight. One with a broken 
 screw, and one with disabled engines, they were making 
 their slow way north-eastward with a vague outlook 
 toward Bremerhafen in the mind's eye. 
 
 Of the British ships not one craft had remained afloat. 
 
 However, on the morning of Hardy's arrival in 
 Paris, one of the three liners drifted on to the French 
 coast, near St Val6ry en Caux, having on board an 
 infantry brigade, and a crew, perishing with hunger, 
 on the verge of frenzy with thirst. By noon Paris 
 knew. 
 
 Then there was brouhaha and houlabalu, or, as we 
 say, "ructions." 
 
 Paris, in her rages, as in all else, is like a woman. 
 She tears her finery and ribbons to shreds ; she foams 
 at the mouth ; her hair is " all over the place ! " 
 
 Her last exuberance had taken the shape of the Drey- 
 fus riots. Monsieur Zola had been the scapegoat. He 
 had been declared a " degenere" by the University; 
 had been regarded as a " cas " by the alienists ; had been 
 hopelessly caricatured ; was regarded as a man done 
 for. 
 
 He waited. On this Thursday morning he had his 
 revenge. 
 
 Under the great statue of France in the Place de la 
 Bastille he stood, and the crowd around him spread far 
 up the avenues, leading into the Place. He was recog- 
 nized : " O'est M. Zola ! " And he harangued them. 
 
 He had always been known as a very decent orator. 
 And he three times used the word " trahison." 
 
 This word "treason" has a strange glamour for the 
 French mind, carrying with it an extraordinary hint of 
 the blackest infamy. 
 
 It was a word which Paris could ill bear at that mo- 
 ment. It simply made the crowd a kennel of rabid 
 dogs. Already in other parts — in the Cite, the Place 
 
no The Yellow Danger 
 
 de la Concorde, la Vilette— excited throngs were rush- 
 ing riotously about the rues and avenues and boule- 
 vards, without the incentive of M. Zola's " trahison." 
 And in the midst of M. Zola's crowd, in the deadliest 
 peril, stood John Hardy. 
 
 On his forehead was the strip of plaster which covered 
 the scratch received at Shoreham. 
 
 By some sure intuition, the French know an English- 
 man at once ; they say of you at a glance, " II est an- 
 glais." And Hardy was very much of an Englishman. 
 
 If ever human boy enjoyed himself, it was he at that 
 moment. He loved a row for its own sake, and here 
 was the sweetest of all rows — a French row. 
 
 What added a touch of exquisiteness to his enjoyment 
 was his inner knowledge of the cause of the row. 
 These children had dashed themselves like impotent 
 waves against the rock of England, and were now as- 
 tonished to find that rock was hard, and could shatter 
 them. 
 
 John could hardly understand a word of the ha- 
 rangue, though he once heard his own name, but he 
 guessed what it was all about, and he saw it in the dis- 
 torted faces of the people. He stood looking up into 
 the startling eyes of the orator, quietly smiling. 
 
 At the first sounds of uproar he had run from his 
 hotel, and followed a crowd eastward. No thought of 
 his danger occurred to him. His attitude of mind to- 
 wards the people among whom he found himself was 
 one of quiet and assured dominancy. 
 
 M. Zola was about to complete his oration, and the 
 mob to rush with some indefinitely hostile purpose to- 
 ward the Elys§e, when Hardy felt himself touched with 
 a deliberate tap on the shoulder. 
 
 He looked around and up. 
 
 He was confronted by an extremely foreign-looking 
 person, a middle-aged man to judge by his face, but 
 with a head of quite white long hair, and a splendid 
 white beard and moustache. He wore a gray, broad- 
 brimmed, soft-felt sombrero sort of hat, which drooped 
 on one side like a lady's Gainsborough. But the part 
 of him that attracted attention was his two hands ; 
 
John Hardy Among the Nations iii 
 
 they were simply two constellations of bulky flashing 
 jewels : on each of the eight fingers being several 
 huge rings, glittering with every variety of luminous 
 stone. 
 
 His face was very excited. But he said to Hardy, 
 with perfect polished politeness, lifting his sombrero : 
 
 "Ah, monsieur a marcM sur mon pied ! " 
 
 " Je ne comprends," said John. 
 
 " Ah ! it is as I thought. Monsieur is, then, Eng- 
 lish." 
 
 " That is so," answered John incautiously. 
 
 " Ah ! English — good. Very- well — all-right. I 
 wished to say that monsieur has marched on my foot." 
 
 John knew that this was a lie. But he made a con- 
 cession ; with a condescending nod and smile he 
 said : 
 
 "Merci!" 
 
 He meant to say " Pardon." But " merci and par- 
 don," somehow, were very much mixed up in his 
 mind ; he often used one instead of the other. 
 
 The very-foreign person said with a bow : 
 
 " I cannot help to think that the action was inten- 
 tioned on the part of monsieur." 
 
 " Go away, will you ? " said John Hardy. 
 
 " But monsieur has not answered my question." 
 
 "Yes, I have. Be good enough to go to the de- 
 vil." 
 
 "To the ? Very -well— all right." And at 
 
 once he lifted his voice high, interrupting the orator, 
 crying out : 
 
 " Voila, messieurs — un anglais — de la Marine an- 
 glaise " 
 
 John had committed the indiscretion of wearing his 
 mariner pea-jacket, with brass buttons engraved with 
 anchors. 
 
 There arose an outcry round him. A commotion 
 spreading wider through the crowd, like circles round a 
 pebble-splash, had him for its center. M. Zola ceased 
 to hold forth. 
 
 They pressed round stiflingly. Hardy began to 
 cough feebly. He pushed back with his elbow a 
 
ri2 The Yellow Danger 
 
 rough-looking, brazen-eyed fellow in an ouvrier's 
 smock. But his effort to free himself was poor in 
 force. In a moment or two his jacket was rent ofi 
 him, and a cruel fist smote him heavily in the jaw. He 
 saw clearly now that he was on the point of being torn 
 to pieces. 
 
 He wondered what he could do ; and having calmly 
 measured the situation, and seeing no chance of escape, 
 he broke into a laugh at his own expense, calling out 
 loudly : 
 
 " Oocliers ! Cockers ! " 
 
 By " cockers " he meant to call them "pigs." 
 
 In a moment he was on the ground on his back. 
 
 But whatever force it is which underlies the world 
 had this frail and dauntless lad in its keeping for the 
 time being. He was necessary. 
 
 A diversion was caused by a loud pair of lungs, which 
 cried : 
 
 " Mais, messieurs, ecoutez-moi, ecoutez-moi " 
 
 It was the very-foreign person, who was also vehe- 
 mently interposing his utmost bodily vigor to the 
 rescue of John. 
 
 " You know me — you know me all — listen to me — I 
 am Edrapol " 
 
 ' ' O'est Edrapol ! Edrapol / " 
 
 Instantly the rumor spread far, amid vives. Edrapol, 
 the duellist, the Bulgarian, the world-renowned master 
 of the pistol and the rapier ; it was he. 
 
 He explained. The English sailor had committed 
 upon him a personal outrage. He begged — it was his 
 simple right — that the life of the miscreant should be 
 spared to make the reparation which was only his, 
 Edrapol's, plain due. The stranger's death was certain 
 either way, but, in short, messieurs, the other way was 
 more neat — more convenable. 
 
 And so Hardy was, as it were, torn from the rough 
 hands which had seized him. Edrapol's popularity in 
 Paris was paramount. The mob, led by Zola, rushed 
 westwards. Hardy and Edrapol wore alone. 
 
 The escrimeur, bowing, handed his card to Hardy, 
 and requested a return of the favor. 
 
John Hardy Among the Nations ii.-^ 
 
 " What for ? " said John. " I hare no card." 
 
 " But monsieur will meet me ? " 
 
 " AVhere ? " 
 
 "In the Bois, monsieur." 
 
 " But what for ? " 
 
 "Why, to fight, monsieur." 
 
 " You don't mean a duel ? " 
 
 "Why, naturally, monsieur." 
 
 "I see. But an old man like you ? " 
 
 "Not too old, monsieur, perhaps! Does monsieur 
 then hesitate ? " 
 
 " I do. It is absurd." 
 
 " Monsieur is, of course, sensible to the interpreta- 
 tion which one would naturally put upon any hesita- 
 tion from his part ? " 
 
 "No. I am not sensible of it. What interpreta- 
 tion?" 
 
 "That monsieur is a coward." 
 
 " Well, but I am not one, interpret as you please." 
 
 " Still, monsieur, I say the natural interpretation. 
 I am sure you will realize my point of view if you rec- 
 ollect that I have the reputation of being the deadliest 
 swordsman in Europe." 
 
 " Is that so ? Oh, I didn't know." 
 
 " Now I think monsieur realizes my point of view ? " 
 
 "I do rather." 
 
 " And monsieur will now fight ? " 
 
 " I don't mind. What with ? " 
 
 "All that will be arranged for us by others, mon- 
 sieur. If you will give me your name, your address, 
 and the address of a friend to whom I may send a 
 friend of mine " 
 
 " I have no friend worth mentioning here. Send 
 your friend to me personally." 
 
 He gave his real name and his address, and turned 
 away from the bowing figure before him. He set out 
 for his hotel. 
 
 Later in the day he found himself in front of the 
 Chambre des Deputes, and dropped in with a stream 
 of the public. 
 
 A glance showed a full house — Zola, Papa Sardou, 
 8 
 
114 The Yellow Danger 
 
 the young novelist, Pierre Louys — and the Parisian 
 pressmen overflowing into the foreign press. 
 
 Below, no dull uniformity, as in the Honse of Com- 
 mons, but variety, colors, races. There is M. Grenier, 
 the Mussulman deputy, his white Arabian burnous, near 
 the "passage of the Left." The center is packed 
 — Eepublicans and Opportunists — Government-snp- 
 
 Eorters these. The Eight is the stronghold of the 
 lericals and Legitimists. To the Left, the Socialists. 
 
 In the center of the circle, the tribune — a pulpit ; 
 and behind the tribune, but towering above it, the 
 throne of the President of the chamber, M. Brisson. 
 
 M. Brisson wears no wig like our Speaker ; but his 
 patriarchal beard is full of awe. 
 
 M. Hanotaux, in the Tribune, is explaining that 
 " nothing in the actual situation so far is of importance 
 as regards the annihilation of the British Empire in 
 the near future ! " 
 
 Applause from Center and Eight. Queer sounds 
 from the Left. There is going to be a row. 
 
 " It is a coalition whose very name is Victory." 
 
 " It has already been defeated ! " yells a voice from 
 the Left. (Huge hubbub ; M. Clovis Hugues, the 
 long-haired poet, screaming something ecstatic through 
 the din.) 
 
 President Brisson rises. He bids them recollect that 
 France looks to them for an example of calm and sage 
 deliberation. " Deliberation cahne etsage!" 
 
 Hardy understands the words, because they are like 
 English words, and he throws a gasp of laughter be- 
 hind his head, crying : 
 
 "By the Lord . . . !" 
 
 M. Hanotaux proceeds, though interrupted. His 
 peroration is a touching appeal to the honor, the glory 
 of France. He descends. 
 
 Prom the Left a cry : " Jaures ! Jaur^s ! " And 
 the young leader of the Socialists, large, blonde, swings 
 himself up to the Tribune. " Hanotaux is an infame. 
 Prance has been made the tool of Eussia and Ger- 
 many 1 " President Brisson calls the speaker to order. 
 But there is deaf obstinacy in the curve of the broad 
 
John Hardy Among the Nations 115 
 
 back turned towards the President. He makes M. de 
 Mun, the orator of the Catholics, the object of his 
 bitterest thrusts. M. de Mun retorts. The two men 
 glare. Like a ball flung from hand to hand, so the 
 stinging and witty retort darts quickly to and back be- 
 tween them. The Socialists egg on their man with 
 cries, the Eight their man. 
 
 A voice from the Eight : " You are the paid spy of 
 the British Eothschilds ! " This from M. Garnet, a 
 little fat man, a mere sphere of flesh. " You are a 
 liar and a coward ! " roars M. Jaur^s. 
 
 There is a struggle on the front right benches. It is 
 Garnet held back by his friends. The air is electrical. 
 The journalists in their cribs stand and yell their own 
 various views of the world. 
 
 Suddenly, from the left, a figure reels through a 
 blind and drunken curve. He dodges tlie stray 
 members on the floor, wheels, and fetches Garnet a 
 blow. 
 
 Ha ! sits the wind so, then ? Hardy chortles, rear- 
 ing with glee. In the passage leading from the Eight 
 to the lobbies there follows a scrimmage, from which a 
 figure darts up the Tribune ; Garnet has given JaurSs 
 a blow under the ear. 
 
 Then all is chaos. Everybody is rushing everywhere. 
 Wherever any one sees a head, he drives his fist at it, 
 yelling. The whole Ghamber rolls and tumbles in a 
 tumult. They are like bits of vegetables wheeling pro- 
 miscuously in a boiling and bubbling pot. President 
 Brisson puts on his tall hat as a sign that the seance 
 is at an end. The 7nelee forces itself into the lobbies. 
 Outside there is a clash ; a sound of pistols. John 
 Hardy has seen — France. 
 
 Meantime, all over the city the Garrison of Paris was 
 in the streets, trying to clear them of the rioters. 
 Night fell. 
 
 At eight o'clock a gentleman waited upon Hardy 
 from Edrapol. But he could not speak English, and 
 the interview was a fiasco. Hardy sat down and wrote 
 the following letter, which he handed to Edrapol'a 
 second : — ■ 
 
ii6 The Yellow Danger 
 
 SiE, — This is to let you know that after considera- 
 tion I have changed mind about the duel for the pres- 
 ent. If you like to think I am afraid of your fine 
 swordsmanship, you can, but tliat is not really the 
 case. . On the contrary, when I tell you my motives, 
 you ought to consider the writing of this letter, if any- 
 thing, a rather brave and worthy act on my part. The 
 fact is, I am a servant of Her Majesty the Queen, and 
 have already, in my way, been able to do some good 
 for my country. As you know, England wants men 
 just now, and that is why, after consideration, I do not 
 see my way to expose my life wantonly, while things 
 are as they are, for a mere trifle. I am sorry to have 
 to disappoint you, and myself too, in our little duel ; 
 but that is how I look at it. However, I make you 
 this promise : that on the day this present war is over 
 I will seek you out, in whatever country you may be, 
 and present myself before you for the purpose of get- 
 ting through with our little duel ; and on that you may 
 rely. I keep your card. — I remain, sir, your servant, 
 
 JoHif Haedy. 
 
 The amount of self-suppression, of noble patriotism, 
 which the writing of this simply- worded letter implied 
 for the arrogant spirit of Hardy may be assumed : when 
 it was finished, he gave it, with a curl of the lip, to 
 the ambassador of Edrapol. 
 
 The next morning he left Paris, and reached Aix in 
 the evening, whence he proceeded to Berlin. To 
 Berlin the bare news of the disaster had been flashed 
 the day before ; but it was not until the next morning 
 that more detailed accounts came from the two ruined 
 battleships, now arrived at Bremerhaf en. Hardy found 
 the Unter den Linden boulevard quite a Babel with the 
 bawling of the news-vendors ; it was rapidly being filled 
 by groups rushing thither as to the main channel of 
 intelligence from all directions of the city, while the 
 Foreign Office in the Wilhelm-Strasse was being besieged 
 by a great crowd clamoring to hear the truth, and 
 spreading away to the Schloss, where, it was said, the 
 Emperor was closeted with his Chancellor and his Chief 
 
John Hardy Among the Nations 117 
 
 of the Staff. The humor of the crowd was sullen ; but it 
 needed only the appearance of Wilhelm, accompanied 
 by the Empress, on the front balcony of the Schloss, 
 to turn discouragement into elation. Wilhelm sud- 
 denly drew his sword and ilashed it in the sunlight. 
 Then there was joy. No people cheer like Germans. 
 Demonstration was their specialite. They excelled in 
 looking pleased. Their /or^e was to claim the Future 
 with verve and assurance, whether it really belonged 
 to them or not. Hardy was in the midst of the crowd 
 round the Schloss. He saw the flash of Wilhelm's 
 sword. An hour later he was with a throng cheering 
 itself hoarse in front of the Austrian Embassy, opposite 
 the old home of M. Benedetti, so closely associated 
 with the outbreak of Germany's last war. The Austrian 
 Minister had unexpectedly appeared before the people, 
 who now went wild with delight, a large area of the 
 crowd presently starting to sing old Schneckenburger's 
 " WacM am Rliein." Hardy observed every gesture, 
 and every expression of every face which came within 
 his range of vision, and he said to himself : 
 
 "So much for mein Herr, then." 
 
 He reached Konigsberg the next morning, and thence 
 went on to Vilna, Pskov, and St. Petersburg. 
 
 Everywhere there was commotion, excitement, 
 crowds, posters, moMl. 
 
 In the Kevski Prospekt at St. Petersburg, in the 
 Izak Platz, on the "English Quay, "there were throngs, 
 proclamations, printed heads of the Tsar, and every 
 open space was gaudy with banners. The town, how- 
 ever, was fairly quiet, though there were some arrests 
 of Nihilists. The Eussians were the most English of 
 the Continentals, or tended to be, when once their 
 races became homogeneous. They had the ruralness, 
 and something of the Stoicism, the Puritanism, and 
 the nimbleness of the British ; with this was mixed a 
 certain Orientalism — a vermilion line in the gray of 
 their character. 
 
 At his hotel John found an ostler of the Simbirsk 
 Province, an adventurous and cosmopolitan man, who 
 had been a sailor trading between Hull and Copen- 
 
ii8 The Yellow Danger 
 
 hagen for some years. He understood English. He 
 struck up a friendship with John, and told him his 
 history. John oflered him 500 roubles if he would un- 
 dertake to deliver a letter by hand in England, setting 
 out at once. And this offer Ivan accepted. 
 The letter which John wrote was as follows : — 
 
 " My deab Bobbie, — Here I am in St. Petersburg 
 after passing through France and Germany, and just 
 about to set out to get by the Trans-Siberian Railway 
 over all that great continent of Northern Asia to Vla- 
 divostok on the other side of the world, and so, please 
 God, to Pekin, and my ship. 
 
 " Dear Bobbie, this is what I have to tell you, and you 
 can write a letter to the Times yourself, so as to let 
 the country know what little I have to say. The 
 French are about to mass four Army Corps in the di- 
 rection of Havre, and I don't think that for the present 
 we can do much with them there, though later on, 
 when we get our pecker up a bit, 1 know that ten 
 Frenchmen won't be able to hold out against one Eng- 
 lishman. The German Cock-of-the-walk has tele- 
 graphed for the King of Saxony, and Prince Albrecht 
 of Prussia, his Field-Marshals, and for Count Walder- 
 see, Chief of the General Staff. Seven of his twenty 
 Army Corps are mobilizing — namely, the ist, or East 
 Prussian ; the 17th, or West Prussian ; the 12th, 
 Kingdom of Saxony ; and the 3d, 4th, 5th, and 6th, 
 belonging to Brandenburg, the Province of Prussian 
 Saxony, Posen, and Silesia respectively. But whether 
 all these are intended to go to help the French, or to 
 defend his own northern coast, or what, I do not know, 
 not knowing much about fighting on terra Jirma. 
 
 "Well, dear Bobbie, I have seen my full of the people 
 with whom I have been. I saw some splendid fisticuffs 
 in the French House of Commons, and no end of fun ; 
 and some very excited people in Germany and Bussia. 
 My opinion of the French is, that they are very nice 
 people, the French women especially. But they are 
 old, they are no good any more, they have not got any 
 youth and go left in them ; you. IcnoT? what they arg 
 
John Hardy Among the Nations 119 
 
 like, Bobbie ? Like patte {sic) de foie gras, nice but 
 tainted. They are over-civilized, like an old dowager 
 that's not fit for anything, but to make love-matches. 
 France is no good any more, except for ornament and 
 for tourists to come to. For energy she has got vivac- 
 ity, and for nerve, verve — like a frivolous old beau ! 
 The world has nothing to expect from her. They are 
 wonderfully ahead of us in some things — their lower 
 class especially is far far ahead of ours in everything — 
 but they do not move, their legs are heavy with age. 
 The future belongs to us. At the rate we are going 
 now, we shall soon have all that France has, and a 
 thousand thousand times more, for we shall have youth 
 and energy and vastness as well. The Germans are a 
 young nation and they have all the enthusiasm of a 
 young nation, and they will go ahead perhaps alright 
 (sic). But they have not got anything in reserve, Bob- 
 bie. Froth is enthusiastic and young, too, but not 
 very strong. I think the Eussians would make mince- 
 meat of the Germans, just as the Germans would of 
 the poor pretty French. But the Eussians are raw, 
 new, and uot, I don't think, a nation at all. Not one 
 of them is the chosen race, dear Bobbie, ' the peculiar 
 people.' If you want to find that, I think you had 
 better look nearer home. 
 
 " Well, no more at present. I shall expect you to take 
 good care of yourself, mind, while I am away, so that 
 I shall find you hale and hearty when I come back, if I 
 ever do. Don't be getting up too early in the morn- 
 ings, now ; and don't forget your bottle of porter reg- 
 ularly every night, as something is wanted at your time 
 of life. — With love to Bobbie, from his son, 
 
 "John Hardy." 
 
 From this letter it will be seen that John Hardy 
 could not only express his ideas with force and point, 
 though in simple words, but that he possessed a large 
 tract of brain, capable of taking in the world, and sum- 
 ming it up, and passing right judgment upon it, " as 
 one having authority." 
 
120 The Yellow Danger 
 
 The letter reached England three weeks later, and 
 could not escape the keen scent of the pressmen. It 
 was published bodily in all the papers, bad spelling and 
 all, the public gloating joyfully over its gentle wisdom, 
 its humor, and its simplicity. 
 
 All this time Hardy was traveling, partly by train, 
 and partly by camel caravan, towards his fate in the 
 capital of China, 
 
CHAPTEE XII 
 
 THE AWAKENING 
 
 Dr. Yen How was seated in a garden of the Imperial 
 City, reading. 
 
 He was arrayed in sumptuous robes of the softest, 
 richest silk, embroidered with the iongue-darting 
 Dragon, in token of high rank. 
 
 His pigtail reached to his calves : but at present only 
 one inch and a half of it was of the doctor's own hair. 
 The rest was artificial — made of fine black silk. Many 
 dignitaries of even the highest rank in China adopted 
 this convention. 
 
 Yen How, a minute or two before, had drawn the 
 chop-sticks between his lips as the final ceremony to a 
 dainty feed on rice-birds (just then in season), and the 
 juiciest, tenderest tea. The meal had been held before 
 him by attendants in gorgeous robes, themselves of 
 high rank. 
 
 The ice-bound winter of Northern China was over. 
 The sudden, hot spring was here. 
 
 By the right hand of Yen How was a stand of ebony 
 arabesqued in walrus-tusk. On it was some of the pig- 
 ment which the Chinese use for ink, and brushes such 
 as they use for pens ; there were also some folios of fine 
 silk paper ; there was a silver gong ; and, half falling 
 to the ground, the North China Daily News. 
 
 In Yen How's hands was an old copy of the Shang- 
 hai Mercury. Yen How was reading it ; and as he 
 read, his eyes went small in a smile. Something 
 amused the doctor. 
 
 It was this : Herr von Biilow, the German Foreign 
 
 121 
 
122 The Yellow Danger 
 
 Minister, had, a good many months before, made a 
 remark in the Reichstag which was reproduced later on 
 in the 3fer cur y. Von Biilow had said : "The Chinese 
 Empire has already lasted 4300 years ; it will last an- 
 other 3000." 
 
 "He did not mean it," murmured Yen How, "be- 
 cause he is a fool. But a fool may sometimes say a 
 true thing, without meaning it." 
 
 At the same time he touched on his breast the 
 decoration of the Red Eagle of the First Class which 
 the German Emperor had conferred upon him im- 
 mediately after the grant by China of the territories to 
 Germany. 
 
 Then he went on with his slow, contemplative 
 reading. 
 
 We have spoken of the meteoric career of this man 
 in China ; we said that he " rose like a rocket." But 
 he did not do all this by miracle. A rocket will not 
 rise of itself ; it must be impelled by an upward, ac- 
 countable force. 
 
 To what did Yen How owe his supreme authority ? — 
 for his authority was now far more absolute than that 
 of any Brother of the Sun and Moon who ever occupied 
 the throne of the Hsiis. He owed it first of all to his 
 Learning ; secondly, to his intensity of Racial Instinct ; 
 and thirdly, to his audacious Genius. 
 
 To his Learning, first of all : for in China every door 
 was open to the learned man. The learned man's 
 learning, however, must be Chinese j and here was the 
 miracle of Dr. Yen How's achievements in the State 
 Examination Halls of Canton and Pekin : that he who 
 there proved himself more instructed than the pundits 
 in Chinese wisdom, had spent the greater part of his 
 life in acquiring Western scientific views and methods 
 in Heidelberg, Paris, and Edinburgh. 
 
 He began at the bottom. He passed through the 
 examination at Canton. The " Hall " was not a hall 
 at all, but a double row of small sentry-boxes, capable 
 of holding one person only, in which the examinee, 
 provided with food, ink, brushes, and paper, spent two 
 solitary weeks, seeing no one, answering his questions. 
 
The Awakening 123 
 
 He usually came out more like a dead than a living 
 man, and, even for the most erudite, the ordeal was 
 one of fire. 
 
 During that fortnight of dark seclusion. Yen How 
 smiled and smiled and smiled again. He was examined 
 on the complex Theology, the fanciful History, the intri- 
 cate old Law, the amazing Astronomy of the Chinese. 
 In all these subjects, and many more, their Learning 
 consists of an immense range of minute dogmatism, 
 which the whole lifetime of their wise men was spent in 
 acquiring. Yen How's big brain knew all about these 
 subjects — more about them than his examiners. But he 
 differed from them in this : that he alone knew the 
 falseness of the answers which he painted. His eyes 
 were all smiles as he sat there writing about the earth 
 going round the sun in so many seconds, and about 
 the place of Confucius in the third hierarchy of the 
 gods. It was the sweetest fun to him. 
 
 When he came from his sentry-box at the end of the 
 two weeks among a number of wan and tottering men, 
 his tough visage showed no sign of fatigue. He smiled 
 always. He knew that he would be First on the 
 list. 
 
 And First he was. Later, when the result was an- 
 nounced at the portal of the " Hall," he was carried 
 to his home through the streets on the shoulders of 
 the people. 
 
 The Chinese populace still cherished the same awe and 
 high reverence for the Learned Man which, in Europe, 
 was cherished in the Middle Ages for what was called 
 " The Scholar." 
 
 Yen How at once received a summons to appear be- 
 fore the Viceroy of Nanking. He appeared. A choice 
 of two things was put before him : he might either 
 accept a Judgeship in the Province of Kiang-si, or he 
 might go north, and compete in another examination 
 at Pekin, where, if he was moderately successful, he 
 would possibly obtain a post in the Inner Court of the 
 Imperial City. 
 
 One offer was a certainty ; the other hypothetical. 
 But Yen How had not the slightest intention of going 
 
124 The Yellow Danger 
 
 to be a Judge in the Province of Kiang-si. He had 
 other aims. 
 
 He went to Pekin, and very soon underwent the far 
 sterner ordeal in the famous Examination Halls of that 
 city. Again he was easily First on the list — a feat 
 which at once admitted him to high honor in the Im- 
 perial Court. 
 
 He had gained his entrSe. 
 
 Another Chinaman would now have said : " I have 
 achieved my end." Yen How said : " I have made a 
 beginning." 
 
 But the rest was not difficult. In Oriental countries, 
 rises, as well as falls, are rapid. " Let Haman be 
 hanged, and let Mordecai be put in his place." The 
 prophet Daniel rose from nothing to the supreme power 
 in a night. Yen How did it in two months. 
 
 So great was the necessity for Western methods, 
 and Western science, in the Government of China, 
 that the Chinese were actually compelled at that very 
 time to overcome their shuddering racial abhorrence 
 of the white man, and to pay large salaries to white 
 experts, in various departments, to plan and to admin- 
 ister. Germans drilled China's army, Englishmen col- 
 lected her customs. Frenchmen planned her railways. 
 
 It is not possible to estimate the omnipotence which 
 would suddenly fall into the hand of a real Chinaman, 
 who could do all this better than either German, 
 Englishman, or Frenchman. To the Chinese tongue 
 he was sweet as white mice preserved in honey. He 
 became the Emperor of the Emperor. 
 
 But then, besides Knowledge and Eace, Yen How 
 had something more : he had Genius — the large Eye — 
 the summoning Voice — the enchanter's Wand. The 
 vastness of his outlook — the world-dimensions of his 
 schemes — were simply fascinating. " Talk, my son, 
 talk," old Li would say, sitting before Yen How, hold- 
 ing his chin in his hand, his eyes riveted on the doc- 
 tor's face ; and when Yen ceased, Li would say : " Talk 
 on, my son, talk on ; your words have ilavor ; and the 
 palate of the ear is led astray by them." Yen How 
 soon became a sort of dissipation for the aged Minister, 
 
The Awakening 125 
 
 like an advanced novel for a very young girl. When 
 Li wanted sensation, he came and sat with his chin in 
 his hand, and listened with delicious musings to Yen. 
 It was at Li's own suggestion that the Yellow Jacket 
 was given to Yen How. It was among the necessities of 
 things, and Li saw it. And at once — without an hour's 
 delay — the little Heidelberg doctor began to act. 
 
 His first care was to bring about a secret treaty 
 between Japan and China. 
 
 He had not been idle in Japan. He had taken fre- 
 quent voyages down the Peiho to Tientsin, and thence 
 to Tokio. Of his insinuations to, and relation with, 
 the Marquis Ito, we have spoken. But Yen How kept 
 his most delicious plum of temptation in reserve till 
 the last. He then showed that however great China 
 became, Japan would always be the mistress of China ; 
 when China was the mistress of Europe and Asia, that 
 meant that Japan would be the mistress of the world. 
 The treaty was signed. It was his first step. 
 
 Yen How saw that the navy of Japan would be neces- 
 sary to his schemes. Without that, nothing permanent 
 and final could be done. 
 
 His next step was to bring about the European 
 war. 
 
 He did it so boldly, with such a grand disregard for 
 appearances, with such contemptuous prodigality, that 
 it was a wonder that both his present and ultimate 
 motives were not divined. For it must be remembered 
 that the idea of " The Yellow Danger" was no new one 
 to European statesmen. Again and again had the 
 more keen-eyed of politicians pointed Eastward, and 
 said to Europe : " The Yellow Danger ! the Yellow 
 Danger ! " Only a year or so previously had Lord 
 Charles Beresford, in a speech delivered, we think, at 
 Hull, used words like these : " The cloud at present 
 may seem only the size of a man's hand — but it is 
 there ; and its seemingly small size is due merely to its 
 remoteness, not to its intrinsic smallness. What ap- 
 paling fate would be that of Europe, if the yellow 
 races, in their hundreds of millions, organized a west- 
 ward march, is beyond the imagination of man to con- 
 
126 The Yellow Danger 
 
 ceive." Again and again had this note of warning 
 been sounded. But the mischief lay in this very fact : 
 that the cloud had appeared of "the size of a man's 
 hand." It was too remote. The idea was not yet 
 realized and assimilated by Europe. 
 
 Still, as we say, there was nothing at all new in 
 Yen How's idea of oyer-running Europe, as is proved 
 by the fact that that phrase, " The Yellow Danger," 
 had become quite common in every one's ears ; what 
 was new, was first, his discernment of the fact that 
 the yellow races would probably fail, unless Europe 
 were, to begin with, made ready for them by a great 
 inter-European war ; and secondly, the novel means 
 which he took to bring about that war. 
 
 No single soul outside China and Japan suspected 
 his ulterior motive of over-running Europe when he 
 made the grants of territory — for the cloud, though 
 often pointed out, was " like a man's hand " ; but 
 three people, at least, suspected his present motive of 
 bringing about a European war. One was a young 
 student in the Quartier Latin in Paris ; another was 
 Sir Charles Dilke, who mentioned it as just a possibility 
 at a dinner at the National Liberal Club ; the third 
 was a Hampshire gentleman, who, as we said in a 
 former chapter, wrote a letter to the Times during 
 the excitement preceding the war, making this sugges- 
 tion of China's motive. The letter attracted little 
 attention. This Hampshire gentleman was John 
 Hardy. 
 
 His eye had seen ! 
 
 Yen How's first step was the league with Japan ; 
 his second was the European war ; his third was the 
 organization of China. 
 
 This last was a great task — it was stupendous. Only 
 a new Confucius could have done it. But Yen How 
 was quite that. 
 
 To wake a nation which has been asleep for four 
 thousand years ! To lift the arm ! — and cry aloud ! — 
 and wake them in their myriads with a " Eouse ye ! 
 rouse ye ! the Hour is come ! the Day breaketh ! " in 
 a voice like the Trump of Doom ! 
 
The Awakening 127 
 
 The little doctor could do it — and did it. 
 
 But again, he did not do it by miracle. He knew 
 his way. 
 
 The results attained by great Talent do indeed looh 
 like miracle ; but they are not, of course, really so. 
 The man of talent himself knows that he must use 
 definitely precise ways and means, which, if used by 
 any one else in the same manner, produce the same 
 results. Talent is Industry — the capacity of being 
 infinitely interested — of taking infinite pains. 
 
 Yen How had been taking infinite pains from the day 
 when he could first pronounce his name. 
 
 All his acts in the rousing and organization of China 
 were based upon a profound knowledge of the Chinese 
 character. The principal points of this character are 
 an immeasurable Greed, an absolute Contempt for the 
 world outside China, and a fiendish Love of Cruelty. 
 
 It is impossible for the vilest European to conceive 
 the dark and hideous instincts of the Chinese race. 
 
 The first thing that happened after the outbreak of 
 the war in Europe was a wholesale massacre of Euro- 
 peans in the East. Wholesale — ^but not haphazard : 
 for Dr. Yen How was directing it. For the time 
 being, every European became precious in his eyes — ^he 
 collected them with care — he preserved them scrupu- 
 lously — and he distrib uted them with d eliberate wisdom. 
 They were conveyed over China from Yun-nan to the 
 villages round the Ming Tombs and from the Yellow 
 Sea to the Tien-Shans. No district was without its 
 white visitor. Then sounded Yen How's first trumpet 
 blast to the nation he meant to rouse. It is morn- 
 ing ! the Day breaks ! And at once there occurred a 
 memorable Passover-Day through the length and 
 breadth of China — a holiday of gore, an orgy of 
 death, to symbolize the annihilation of the white race 
 all the world over. When it was ended, there was 
 not a white man or woman alive on Chinese soil, except 
 on an island or two ; all had perished in the act of 
 undergoing the most loathsome public tortures. This 
 Solemn Feast-day, this Sacrament of Blood, made a 
 lasting impression upon the spirit of the Chinese race. 
 
128 The Yellow Danger 
 
 which is sensitive to the suggestiveness of symbols. 
 Yen How had begun well. Certainly, he knew his 
 man. 
 
 The killing of the German drill-sergeants of the 
 Chinese Army was left to be performed by the hands 
 of the soldiers whom they had drilled. 
 
 The territories granted to the Continental nations 
 were as yet unoccupied by them. The small European 
 garrisons actually in China had been easily over- 
 powered. And Europe was busy at home, fighting 
 against herself. At last China was free to do as she 
 chose. 
 
 The attitude of the nation as a whole at this moment 
 resembled that of a sleeping cat, which hears a sound, 
 and pricks her ears. 
 
 To say even so much of the Chinese is to say a great 
 deal. For centuries they had lain in deep, stolid 
 slumber, without one prick of the ears. There were 
 still many millions of them who, as Li Hung Chang 
 had said in Europe, had never so much as heard of the 
 Chino-Japanese war. 
 
 How to stir up such a people ? How to get at them, 
 and fire them, and make them act ? Yen How 
 knew. 
 
 He must, first of all, now that he had given them a 
 morning Dream of Blood, kick them hard to wake 
 them, bruising their flesh, if necessary : then, as they 
 rubbed their wide and startled eyes, he would preach 
 to them the Gospels of Greed — and Eace — and Cruelty. 
 
 Already, by the time John Hardy had reached Vladi- 
 vostok — just about four weeks after the battle of 
 Shoreham — the kicking process was in full progress. 
 There was a strange stirring, a movement, a new some- 
 thing, in old China. Men said : " "What is toward ? 
 What is to be ? Can these dry bones live ? " The 
 Spirit of a Man was abroad in the land — an intense 
 Mind, a vitalizing Leaven — kneading, fermenting, 
 energizing, creating. 
 
 The massacred drill-sergeants were replaced by Jap- 
 anese officers. But where there had been one German 
 there appeared now a thousand Japanese. 
 
The Awakening 129 
 
 Yen How's scheme was nothing less than this : that 
 every Chinaman should be a soldier. 
 
 Conscription in China . . . ! 
 
 Here was a lesson learned from Europe. 
 
 But when we say "soldier," we mean something 
 different from what is understood by the word among 
 us. We do not mean a man equipped with smokeless 
 powder, and magazine rifles, with Lee-Metfords, and 
 Martinis, and Sniders. We mean only a man having 
 some sort of arms — a club, or a dart, or a match-lock 
 or a poker — anything which would give him the idea 
 that he had to fight, and which would perhaps delay 
 his death a moment while myriads of others swept 
 over those who had killed him. The Chinese host was 
 to resemble a flight of locusts, covering the entire sky 
 from horizon, to horizon each member of which was 
 armed with some implement, not so much for the pur- 
 pose of killing, as for the purpose of protracting his 
 own death, while the rest of the host pressed forward, 
 blighting as they went. His duty was hardly to fight, 
 but to occupy time in dying. For this service none 
 were too old, few too young — and women were as good 
 as men. Yen How's army would consist of the 400,- 
 000, 000 which formed the population of China. 
 
 The organization of this war-host he planned prin- 
 cipally on the French model. 
 
 He divided the whole of China into 240 army-corps 
 regions, each containing about two million inhabitants. 
 This arrangement included Thibet, Mongolia, Man- 
 churia, and Korea, the heads of which countries he had 
 long since brought into line with his plans. 
 
 In each region he quartered the principal elements 
 of the field army-corps with the necessary staff, setting 
 up in each region a large number of recruiting dep6ts, 
 and dep6ts of artillery, transport, supplies of food and 
 forage, with clothing and camp-equipment. 
 
 The whole of the troops and organization for this 
 purpose was put under the command of the General of 
 that particular army-corps and its region. And this 
 General was, in every case, a Japanese. 
 
 Each region was divided into two hundred subdivis- 
 
 9 
 
130 The Yellow . Danger 
 
 ions, each of the subdivisions furnishing one regiment 
 of infantry of the line, twenty subdivisions forming an 
 infantry brigade command, and forty subdivisions an 
 infantry divisional command. Divisional commands 
 were also entrusted exclusi vely to Japanese ; brigade 
 and regimental commands to the most trustworthy of 
 the Chinese officers of the regular army. 
 
 Each corps was furnished with a vast corps-cavalry- 
 brigade, the horses — to use an Irishism — being mules, 
 and the weapon the long spear. 
 
 Each regiment was subdivided into three battalions 
 each battalion into four companies, and each company 
 into twelve squads. 
 
 Each squad contained from sixty to sixty-three per- 
 sons, who were known by numbers, from No. 1 to No. 63. 
 
 They contained children over the age of nine, women 
 (except the wives and daughters of mandarins and 
 other upper classes), and old men tottering on the 
 verge of the grave. The priest and pundit classes were 
 exempted also. 
 
 The nation was organized into an army. 
 
 This was one method which Yen How employed to 
 kick and prick it into wakefulness. 
 
 Each army-corps contained, beside its squadrons of 
 cavalry and its eighteen batteries of artillery, six sec- 
 tions of artificers, six artillery parks, thirty companies 
 of pontooners, six telegraph sections, and forty field- 
 bakeries. 
 
 But there were no field-hospitals or hospital orderlies, 
 no ambulances, no medical provisions. Yen How could 
 afford men. 
 
 One important feature of the army-corps was the 
 provision of armored carts. They weje to serve not 
 only for transport, but for defense in battle, and their 
 shape was contrived with this view, being long and low 
 with small wheels, and rather ponderous. One had 
 been made, or was to be made, for each " peloton." 
 
 All this was now in rapid and intense progress. And 
 the world knew nothing of it ! 
 
 China, north of Tonquin, had telegraphically isolated 
 herself. 
 
The Awakening 131 
 
 In Japan the manufacture of guns, swords, spears, 
 and small-arms was going forward with agonized 
 activity ; and these were coming over to China. 
 China's chief manufacturing energies were directed to 
 the making of armored carts and tents. 
 
 But the drilling of China was only one-half of Yen 
 How's method of rousing it. He knew that it was neces- 
 sary to drive the nation further still. He did this by 
 taxing it. 
 
 Let it not be supposed that any part of his motive 
 was a need of money for all this war preparation. The 
 loan raised in the previous year, which should have 
 been spent by China in paying Japan's war-indemnity, 
 was still, except for one instalment, in the pockets of 
 China. 
 
 The loan had not been necessary to China at all ! 
 She could have raised sufficient to pay Japan by an 
 issue of Treasury bonds, the purchase of which may be 
 made compulsory in China, if not subscribed to volun- 
 tarily. 
 
 Or she could have called upon the Viceroys to wring 
 enough out of the mercantile and agricultural classes. 
 
 But neither loan, nor bonds, nor Viceroy extortion 
 had been necessary ! Japan's mere credit was good for 
 the building of the vessels she needed ; and the money, 
 paid over to Japan, would simply have lain in the 
 Bank of England to Japan's credit. As a matter of 
 fact, in the secret treaty between the Marquis Ito and 
 Yen How, the payment of the indemnity was re- 
 mitted. 
 
 From this source alone China was, for the present, 
 rich ; but under the guidance of an exact administra- 
 tive brain like Yen How's she was vastly richer still 
 from quite other sources. 
 
 China, in reality, was never a poor country ; on the 
 contrary, she was potentially about the richest in the 
 world. Manchuria was an El Dorado of gold. The 
 mineral mines of Kwang-tung, Heilung-Chiang and 
 the Kirin provinces had been the envy of the nations. 
 But the curse of China had been her official class. The 
 heavy liMn charges, which went, nearly all of it, into 
 
132 The Yellow Dangef 
 
 the pockets of its collectors, stifled many an industry. 
 The Grovernment income was estimated at two hundred 
 and ten million taels, but only seventy million of this 
 — one-third — was accounted for. On the remainder 
 the mandarins wallowed in fatness. 
 
 Yen How's eyes screwed into a smile, and he said : 
 " No more of that, my sons ! " 
 
 The substance of what he said and what he did was 
 this : " You are to extort, you are to squeeze, and 
 plunder, and grind the people ten times — a hundred 
 times — more than ever before — till they perish like 
 sheep of it. But this time you are going to do it not for 
 your own benefit, but lor my benefit, and for the benefit 
 of China. I, Yen How, have said it, and will see to it." 
 
 "Within two months from his attainment of the su- 
 preme power, he had created a Board, formed on the 
 lines of the Imperial Maritime Customs Board, for a 
 clean-handed collection of the internal revenues. It 
 contained some Chinese officials, but more Japanese. 
 
 The immediate effect of this change was an increase 
 — by tens and hundreds — of the revenues which began 
 to pour into the Treasury of Pekin. 
 
 Prom the working of the mines, specially organized 
 and superintended by Yen How himself, a great incre- 
 ment of wealth began to flow into the swollen coffers 
 of China. 
 
 Yen How was not popular. He was kicking and 
 pricking China into unpleasant wakefulness. But he 
 knew that he had the sweetest oil in store to salve her 
 bruises at the right moment. 
 
 All these measures of his would have meant insurrec- 
 tion, revolution, at another time — the introduction of 
 the Japanese element, especially, into the new life of 
 China was distasteful to the people. But now the 
 stern universal military organization nipped every 
 thought of rebellion in the bud. 
 
 To turn a two-legged beast into a man — drill him, 
 straighten his spine, make a soldier of him. He will 
 never be a hopelessly unintelligent animal after that. 
 
 Yen How was drilling the Chinese beast, straighten- 
 ing his spine. By the time the beast could look round 
 
The Awakening 133 
 
 twice to tear whoever it was that was disturbing hia 
 slumbers, lo, he was already turned into a man with 
 sufficient intelligence to see that there was no resisting 
 this new Power which had him in its grip. 
 
 The Chinese, when they saw no help for it, began to 
 fraternize with the now ubiquitous Japanese element. 
 Yen How had foreseen this. They had already, more 
 or less, learned to submit to the domination of white 
 men. And the Jap was much less a foreign devil than 
 the white man. On reflection he was judged to be an 
 improvement. On reflection, Yen How, too, would, in 
 time, be judged to be an improvement. 
 
 But, meanwhile, he wore a secret steel plate over his 
 breast. 
 
 For the people of China were being terribly oppressed 
 and badgered. 
 
 The order of the day was drill, drill, drill — tax, tax, 
 tax — work, work, work — all over the land. 
 
 As yet no one knew why all this waS' — what was in 
 the mind of the gods above. Yen How had not yet 
 begun to preach his three Gospels to the people. 
 
 So matters stood when, on the 18th of April, Yen 
 How sat in his garden, reading an old Shanghai Mer- 
 cury. 
 
 An attendant opened a door in the courtyard, walked 
 softly towards the great little man, and prostrated him- 
 self before him. 
 
 " Speak on," said Yen How. 
 
 " A white man has been captured at Moukden, your 
 Excellency, by soldiers of the Liao-Tong division, and 
 sent on to Pekin. They have just arrived at the 
 Palace — and aw^it your instructions." 
 
 " Let him be taken to the Imperial Prison-house for 
 the night," said Yen How, " and beheaded at sunrise 
 to-morrow." 
 
 He went on reading. The servant made an obei- 
 sance, and turned away. 
 
 Do not call the man back. Yen How ! Let him go 
 and do your bidding, and read you your paper, and be 
 at peace ! For this is John Hardy that you have or- 
 dered to be slain — and he is as strong as the rocks, and 
 
134 The Yellow Danger 
 
 the strong earth, and the sky, and the stars in theii 
 courses fight for him ! 
 
 But Yen How called the man back. 
 
 "Stop! "he cried. 
 
 The attendant returned. 
 
 " What nation is he of ? " asked Yen How. 
 
 " His interpreter says that he is an Englishman, 
 your Excellency." 
 
 " Let him be brought before me here." 
 
 And Yen How went on reading his paper. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 JOHlf AND YEN 
 
 JoHK Hardy, having arrived at Vladivostok, had 
 engaged an interpreter, and spent two days in trying 
 to charter a craft for ^Nagasaki, where he hoped to 
 meet his ship, or hear about her locale. 
 
 His impatience was fevered ; for he heard that no 
 rencontre had as yet taken place ; but that, within a 
 week, it was expected that the allied French, German 
 and Russian vessels would meet the allied English and 
 Japanese. Such was the report brought by junks from 
 Nagasaki and Fusan, and by caravan from Newchwang 
 and Kin-chow. 
 
 An engagement had not occurred, for this simple 
 reason : that the Allies had practically been in hiding 
 from the English ; and the reason was this simple one : 
 that they were finding extraordinary difficulties in the 
 matter of coaling, the English and Japanese having, 
 as a matter of fact, created a " corner " by buying up 
 all the coal in the East ; so that from Singapore to 
 Vladivostok the cry had been coal ! coal ! 
 
 Now, however — so said the reports — the French, 
 German and Russian vessels had coal in plenty ! 
 Whence this supply had come, no one could conceive. 
 It was a mystery — but a certainty. 
 
 The battle, therefore, so long delayed, must come 
 soon. 
 
 Hardy's pulses beat faster ; and his chagrin was in- 
 tense when, after anxious search, he found no conipra- 
 dore willing or able to secure him a passage to Naga- 
 saki. The East was in suspense, waiting for the 
 
 135 
 
136 The Yellow Danger 
 
 future, without interest in the present. It turned a 
 listless ear to Hardy's pleadings. 
 
 Nothing remained for it but Port Arthur, where, as 
 he was told, he would be sure to find a willing junk. 
 But the journey was immense. Hardy almost gave up 
 hope of the battle. 
 
 But with strong heart he set out. He anticipated 
 no danger. China was not formally at war with Eng- 
 land. He did not know that, even in times of settled 
 quietude, no traveler's life was worth a rush in North- 
 ern China — as in the case of Sir Harry Parkes. 
 
 He had with him quite a little retinue ; and he 
 traveled in a palanquin borne between mules. 
 
 The northern Chinese were a hard, ferocious, and 
 treacherous race — considerably more so than the 
 southern. They were also larger and stronger men, — 
 rascals tall, and lean, and brawny, their bony tough- 
 ness being derived from the Tartar blood with which 
 their tribes were infused. Their language, too, was 
 different ; above all, their walk. The southerners 
 walked on the flat foot, like Europeans ; the northern- 
 ers swung along on their heels, with a backward slant 
 of the body, like a statue put to lean with its back 
 against a wall. 
 
 At Hunshun Hardy stopped for a night at a two- 
 roomed inn ; and here it was that, as soon as he was 
 asleep, a consultation occurred between the villagers 
 and his retinue of five. 
 
 The next morning he went forward, this time in a 
 a^riaglesa jinrichsha or mule-cart. He could no longer 
 bear the swinging between the palanquin mules. It 
 had reduced him to a state of weakness ; he was now 
 spitting up phlegm streaked with blood. 
 
 At every village now they were surrounded by in- 
 creasing crowds and clamors. But always John's serv- 
 ants spoke some words to the people, which had the 
 effect of restraining them. As he set out afresh, a 
 throng of those skeleton visages would be there to gape 
 greedily after him ; but still, he did set out. 
 
 A sickness of the heart — a sickness of the stomach 
 — grew upon him. 
 
John and Yen 137 
 
 Could Man — could Woman — be like this ? 
 
 Every nerve in his gentle and loving nature rose in 
 shuddering revolt against this race. 
 
 He saw the whisperings and confabulations between 
 his men and the mobs, and, with his instinct for truth, 
 suspected treachery. But he was quite helpless. 
 
 Everywhere, as he advanced, his eye noted the drill- 
 ing, drilling, to which the nation was being subjected. 
 
 But he was now very sick, and languid, and day by 
 day sat propped against the cart, staring wearily be- 
 fore him, under the growing heat. He was compelled 
 to keep up his strength with sips of the deleterious 
 Chinese spirit samshu ; and the only food which he could 
 procure for days was the sickening mass of rice and 
 greens which forms the staple Chinese diet. 
 
 He descended the river Yalu in a gorgeously painted 
 junk, drawn on each bank by a mule. Here he had 
 some rest, lying on the deck in long dreams of quiet- 
 ude through the starlit nights of a Chinese spring. 
 Never had the heavens and the earth seemed to him so 
 lovely, enthralled in a mystery of peace, as in those 
 vast sheeny nights of his descent of the Yalu." Near 
 Wiju he commenced the land-journey again, on mule- 
 back this time, somewhat recovered in health. 
 
 He was given now to understand that he was being 
 guided to Port Arthur. Instead of this, he was being 
 led northward, toward Moukden. 
 
 At Moukden was a garrison of the old regular army ; 
 and the railway from thence to Tientsin had lately 
 been completed. 
 
 At an inn at Moukden he was eating, when a Jap- 
 anese officer, accompanied by an interpreter, entered 
 the room, and bade Hardy follow him. It was 
 Yen How's decree that any white man found by 
 chance in Northern China should be sent on to Pekin. 
 
 Hardy was ineffably surprised, first, at finding him- 
 self in Moukden, and next at being hustled into a 
 queer, low, dark railway train, in the keeping of half- 
 a-dozen gigantic pigtails. 
 
 " But," he protested through his interpreter, " Eng- 
 land is not at war with China ! " 
 
138 The Yellow Danger 
 
 "No," said the Japanese with a grin, " but China is 
 at war with England." 
 
 In the train Johr.'s wrists were bound. His in- 
 terpreter and servants had disappeared. 
 
 They reached Tientsin by train, and thence went on 
 to the village of Tung-chow, five miles from Pekin, by 
 junk up the Peiho. Just as the sun set they arrived 
 at the mighty walls of Pekin, and had only time to 
 rush between the gates, when the ponderous jaws of 
 the city-portals clanged and roared behind them. 
 
 Pekin ! multitudinous, unfathomable city, place of 
 beauty and of horror, of romance, and of infamy ! city 
 of vast triple-boulevards, grand as the imagination of 
 an architect, loathsome as the stench of a sewer, city 
 of gauds and colors, vermilion, and emerald, and 
 blue, and of temples, and avenues, of palaces and lakes 
 and forests, immense, a world in itself, resembling in 
 its tone and aspect no other of the cities of man ! 
 
 Here may the hoariness of our race on the earth, the 
 vast age of the old world, be read even by the blind. 
 
 Whoever is a Dreamer, let him bury himself in 
 Pekin. The city is itself a dream — an opium-dream. 
 
 It was necessary for Hardy to pass through both the 
 Tartar and the Chinese cities before reaching the Im- 
 perial City. Each of these three is enclosed within its 
 own massive walls, independently of the great wall of 
 the whole town. The Imperial City was sacred ground. 
 Here resided the Supreme Power, and here also the Le- 
 gations. The profane foot entered it on pain of death. 
 
 They passed through a number of thoroughfares, 
 broad as three or four Holborns laid side by side, and 
 long as vistas ; streets thronging with camels, and 
 jingling mules, and the booths of small merchants, and 
 swaying pigtails ; and in an hour reached the Imperial 
 Portal on mule-back. 
 
 The leader of the little band produced his brevet, and 
 found admittance. They proceeded slowly through a 
 park, leading their animals now, and after traversing 
 a number of secluded granite street, and a long marble 
 colonnade, entered the courtyard of a vast, low, white 
 palace, 
 
John and Yen 139 
 
 Hardy, as they halted, leant wearily upon his mule. 
 There was a hollow pain at his chest, and at the back 
 of his shoulders. His lips were dry and cracked. 
 
 A door opened in the courtyard, and a soft-footed 
 official came to learn the reason of this intrusion. 
 
 A few words were spoken, and he tiirned away. In a 
 quarter of a hour he was back again ; and five minutes 
 afterwards Yen How and John Hardy were face to 
 face. 
 
 For quite a minute Yen continued to read his paper. 
 
 Then he lifted his head suddenly, and said to the 
 official : 
 
 " You may go ; wait in the vestibule : when I want 
 you I will sound." 
 
 The man went away. Yen How looked at John 
 Hardy, and John Hardy looked at Yen How. 
 
 Both were smiling. 
 
 Yen How had still under his eye a scar where the 
 fist of the English soldier, John Brabant, had struck 
 him. So he smiled. 
 
 Hardy's hands were unbound. This had been done 
 when he reached Tung-chow, where it had been neces- 
 sary to mount a mule. He had on the usual blue pea- 
 jacket ; and under this, in the breast-pocket, his 
 loaded revolver. 
 
 In the colloquy which followed, one of these two men 
 spoke an English as perfectly grammatical as that of 
 Tennyson or Macaulay, though with an intensely for- 
 eign something in his way of speaking it ; the other 
 spoke broken English. It was Yen who used the good, 
 and John the bad, English. 
 
 "Who are you, sir ?" said Yen How. 
 
 "Me Englishman," said John, "name John Hardy." 
 
 Yen had heard of the battle of Shoreham, and he 
 never forgot a name. He said : 
 
 " Don't talk pigeon English. I can understand 
 you. I have lived some years in England." 
 
 " Oh, veer goot. Me no knowee that. Me talk good 
 English to Chinaman." 
 
 " As you please. What is it you have come to China 
 for?" 
 
140 The Yellow Danger 
 
 "Me sailor. Me come from Kussia to Vladivostok 
 to joinee me ship. What for you no letee me join it ? 
 Englishman and Chinaman good Iriends." 
 
 " Since when ? " 
 
 " For always ! " 
 
 " You got a sister ? " 
 
 John was surprised, 
 
 " No," he said. 
 
 " A female cousin ? " 
 
 "Yes. Well " 
 
 " Will you give me your cousin for my wife ? " 
 
 John grinned. 
 
 " Why, you queer Chinaman . . . ! " he cried out. 
 
 "Ah, you say no, yon see. Englishman and 
 Chinaman are not such very good friends, then." 
 
 The chief fact about John Hardy was that he had 
 eyes which saw a fact. As these last words fell upon 
 his ears, he looked keenly into the placid face before 
 him ; and at once he realized that he was in the pres- 
 ence, not so much of a Chinaman, as of a mind. 
 
 And at once the instinct to speak pigeon English left 
 him. Unconsciously he began to speak naturally. 
 This was a great compliment to Dr. Yen How. 
 
 "But look here, Mr. Chinaman," he said, " what is 
 all this for ? Who are you ? " 
 
 " Well, since you ask, I am called Yen How." 
 
 John started. 
 
 "Ah, you know my name, I see," said Yen How ; 
 "I know yours, too." 
 
 "Yes. Very good — I am glad that I find myself 
 with you, since you are who you are. You are ac- 
 quainted with European ideas, and certainly a man of 
 sense. I wish to throw myself on your benevolence. 
 I find myself in such a silly sort of scrape. I am a 
 poor sailor trying to join my ship. Knowing China as 
 a friendly country, I thought I should have no diflB- 
 culty in passing through. Yet here I am ! What for ? 
 Isn't it very absurd ? Please help me to get out of 
 this ! If you cannot set me free of your own power, 
 you can at least put me in communication with the 
 British Ambassador." 
 
John and Yen 141 
 
 Yen How's eyes went small in a smile. 
 
 "There isn't any British Ambassador any more," he 
 said. 
 
 " How do you mean, sir ? " asked John. 
 
 "It is the Chinese custom to hang thieves by the 
 heels, head downwards," replied Yen. " The British 
 Ambassador has been hanged by the heels in the 
 square before the Pekin Temple of Confucius, and 
 died while the people were torturing him with hot 
 irons. " 
 
 John Hardy's left eyelid lowered in intense menace. 
 
 " That is not really so, Mr. Chinaman ? " 
 
 " It is, my son." 
 
 "And whose doing was that ? Not the Government 
 of China's ? " 
 
 " It was my doing, my son." 
 
 " Yours, Yen How ? " 
 
 "Mine." 
 
 Now the two men were really in contact. They 
 looked into each other's eyes, searchingly, eye to eye. 
 
 " You shocking little devil ! " said John Hardy. 
 
 " Call me what you like. I will repay your insult 
 by a compliment : you are a brave fellow." 
 
 "You will be strangled like a frog for this, Mr. 
 Chinaman ! " 
 
 " Whom by ? All the Englishmen in China are 
 dead." 
 
 "All?" 
 
 " Every one." 
 
 " A massacre ?" 
 
 "A regular sacrament of death." 
 
 " But the Chinese believe in a God above, I think ? " 
 
 " Poh ! not much." 
 
 " Vou do not ? " 
 
 " Not I." 
 
 " And the white men of other nations, they were 
 massacred, too ? " 
 
 "All— all." 
 
 " But with what motive ? " 
 
 "It would take too long to tell you." 
 
 "Ah I I know." 
 
142 The Yellow Danger 
 
 "You do?" 
 
 " Yes ! I know ! I know ! I had a queer, dim 
 idea long ago. N^ow I know ! I know ! " 
 
 "You are shrewd then, as well as brave." 
 
 " Yes ! I know ! " 
 
 John Hardy was in an ecstasy of discovery. He saw 
 the skies growing black, black over the earth. 
 
 " Well, will you give me your cousin for my wife 
 now ? " asked Yen How, all wrinkles. 
 
 John did not answer. His brows were knit. It was 
 only after a minute's thought that he made two steps 
 forward, and laid his right hand on Yen How's shoulder, 
 the doctor looking up into his face as he began to 
 
 "Now, look you. Yen How," John said, "I know 
 now, as I tell you, what your idea is like. Let me put 
 it in plain words : you mean to sweep with this Chinese 
 nation over Europe when our war is over, and Europe 
 is prepared for your coming. I was a fool not to see 
 it quite before — but that is it. And this idea is yours, 
 yours only. Yen How : I see that. You have the face 
 of a devil, you toad, you have ! Well, I have got an 
 ofEer to make you — a challenge — if you are man enough 
 to accept it. Get me out of this— put me on board 
 my ship. And I will undertake to fight you, and beat 
 you. I alone. Yen, against you alone. If you beat 
 me, I give you, not my cousin, but the Queen's 
 daughters for your wives. If I beat you, I squeeze the 
 life out of your throat, you frog. I promise you that 
 I shall breathe not a word of this plan of yours 
 to a living soul — no one shall know from me : and 
 no one shall know from me about the massacre and 
 the drilling of the people. I make you that offer. 
 Yen." 
 
 John Hardy had recognized the great mind in Yen 
 How ; now it was Yen How's turn to recognize the 
 same in John Hardy. Here was the full stature of 
 Man, the world-big Thought, the eun-kindled Imagi- 
 nation. 
 
 Yen How answered. 
 
 " Take your hand from my shoulder my son." 
 
John and Yen 143 
 
 " Well, what do you say. Yen ? " 
 
 " I say that your thought tickles me, boy." 
 
 " Well ? " 
 
 " And I say, that if I were to accept your offer, you 
 could go to your ship saying to yourself : "The great 
 Yen How has recognized me as one of the two kings of 
 the world." 
 
 " Still, I wait for your answer." 
 
 " How am I to count upon the silence you promise ? " 
 
 " Well, you know something of English life. I come 
 of a family of English gentlemen. We never break 
 our word." 
 
 "Well, come, we shall see. Your thought — ^what 
 shall I say ? — tickles me, my son. We shall see — come 
 now. But first — do you know that I gave an order for 
 your beheading ? And then I said I would see yon. 
 Do you know why ? I had a question to ask you." 
 
 " Well ? " 
 
 " Have you lived in London ? " 
 
 " Yes — sometimes." 
 
 " Ah, well — there is just a chance, then. Did you 
 ever know a lillee girl called — what's her name ? — Ah ! 
 Ada Seward." 
 
 Yen How could destroy a world without the quiver- 
 ing of a nerve ; but as he uttered this name in a vrhis- 
 per, he slunk, his voice trembled. 
 
 Hardy did not answer. The name sounded familiar. 
 He hung his head with knit brow, thinking. Suddenly 
 he blushed. He had remembered — the music-hall — the 
 drunken night — Lottie Collins — Ada. 
 
 Yen saw the blush. 
 
 To this man, drunk with his passion, it was incon- 
 ceivable that any other man could see this girl, and not 
 straightway go mad for love. Men will sometimes get 
 so intoxicated with wine, that the sober state becomes 
 inconceivable to them ; and they will say to a sober 
 companion : " Oh, you are drunk, boy ! " 
 
 Yen saw the blush, and he noticed now that Hardy's 
 face was more than usually lovely, even for one of 
 a lovely race. It was a face made to be loved by 
 women. 
 
144 The Yellow Danger 
 
 " You have seen her ? " He half rose from his seat, 
 and brought his mouth in an intense, secret, cunning 
 whisper close to Hardy's ear. 
 
 "I have," said John. 
 
 He had an instinct, even then, that he was running 
 some frightful danger in making this avowal. But he 
 was truthful in a very rigid, rather old-fashioned sense. 
 He had never told a falsehood. 
 
 "You have ? — in real truth ?" whispered Yen. 
 
 "I have." 
 
 "And — kissed her — eh, boy ? " 
 
 The Chinaman's face worked. He hissed rather than 
 spoke these words. 
 
 John grinned. 
 
 "Why, — you most queer person !" 
 
 He was ready to laugh a puzzled, anxious laugh. 
 
 " You have ! " 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " Kissed her — eh, John Hardy ? " 
 
 "Of course, I have kissed her." 
 
 " Then you die ! " 
 
 " What, not for kissing Miss Seward ?" 
 
 "You die, I say!" 
 
 " It was she who kissed me." 
 
 "You die ! you die, you little white devil ! you die ! 
 you die ! " 
 
 Up went the fingers of Yen's right arm, twinkling in 
 ecstatic wrath. 
 
 There was no mistaking Yen How. He meant this. 
 
 He pounded the gong twice with the hammer. 
 
 " In one half-hour " he said, with a furious nod 
 
 of the head at John. 
 
 Hardy, perfectly cool, saw clearly that all hope for 
 himself was lost. But he had no intention of leaving 
 Yen How behind, to work his mischief in the world. 
 
 The second sound of the gong had hardly shivered 
 and clanged, when Hardy, with the revolver whipped 
 from his breast-pocket, blew Yen How — passions, 
 schemes, ambitions and all — out of existence. 
 
 In intention, that is — in absolute, cool unerringness 
 of aim. The bullet struck Yen precisely over the 
 
John and Yen 145 
 
 center of his heart. But it struck a plate of steel mail, 
 and did not penetrate. 
 
 John was about to fire a second shot at Yen's head, 
 when suddenly the two men were locked in desperate 
 conflict. Yen had flung himself upon John. 
 
 Yen's eye had long before noted the bulge of John's 
 pea-jacket over the breast. He was half prepared for 
 what had happened. 
 
 The struggle was carried on with the entire physical 
 force of the two combatants, the revolver being the 
 aim of both efforts. 
 
 John, though below the middle height, was quite an 
 inch or so taller than Yen ; and he was able, with his 
 left hand, to seize Yen's pigtail, and draw it in a single 
 coil tight round Yen's throat ; while Yen enclosed the 
 other's right arm and ribs in a grip of iron, squeezing 
 with all his energy, and heaving and slanting his ad- 
 versary in the efEort to effect a throw. 
 
 The force of the tough little Chinaman was quite two 
 or three times that of the frail English lad. 
 
 This contest of strengths was a foreboding — and a 
 resemblance — of the larger national contest which was 
 impending. 
 
 Hardy was comparatively weak. But in his right 
 hand was a revolver, representing the Science of West- 
 ern Civilization, which, however. Yen's grip rendered 
 ineffectual ; and in his left hand was Yen's pigtail, 
 representing the barbarism, the superstition, the repul- 
 sive soul of the Bast. 
 
 Yen's face darkened. A gurgling came from his 
 swollen lips. The rat was being suffocated by its own 
 tail. The West was strangling the East. 
 
 Suddenly the revolver went off, and the bullet en- 
 tered Yen How's left foot. The Science of the West 
 had uttered a cry. 
 
 But the West was breathing its last gasps under the 
 stringent ferocious grasp of the East. 
 
 The contest was short, and it ended suddenly. A 
 little spout of blood welled and rolled from Hardy's 
 lips ; and at once he lost power, and fainted. 
 
 Before he could fall to the ground, an attendant had 
 10 
 
146 The Yellow Danger 
 
 come up, and struck him a blow on the brow with a 
 heavy bamboo. He fell at once flat on his back, his 
 face covered with blood. 
 
 Almost immediately Yen How was cool. 
 
 " Take him away," he said. " He has attempted 
 my life — ^he must not be killed." 
 
 " The torture. Your Excellency ? " 
 
 " Yes. But I will direct it myself. Go away." 
 
 He sat again, as the attendant lifted John in his 
 brawny arms. He commenced once more to read the 
 Mercury. 
 
 There was a bullet in his foot. But he would not 
 move ; the racking pain was sweet to him. 
 
 The intensity of the Chinese instinct of Vengeance 
 is a mystery — it is not human — it is not bestial — it may 
 be demonic. To us, at all events, it is incomprehen- 
 sible. 
 
 To them pain is joy, if, at the same time, they can 
 gloat over the knowledge that it is in their power to 
 take a thousand-fold vengeance on the causer of the 
 pain. They hug their pangs — they wantonly put ofl 
 the hour of their revenge — they roll in a secret luxury 
 of malice. 
 
 In the matter of Torture, the Chinese have excelled 
 all nations in a devilish cunning. They have investi- 
 gated the nerves of man, and adapted their plagues to 
 them with a nice and minute ingenuity. And Yen 
 was more ingenious than the most ingenious. 
 
 He intended to give his mind to this matter. Mean- 
 time, he went on reading. 
 
CHAPTEE XIV 
 
 THE VANISHED FLEET 
 
 It was twenty hours before John Hardy, in some 
 absolutely dark place, opened his eyes. At about the 
 same time, the battle at which he had hoped and striyen 
 to be present was going forward. 
 
 For over a year the question which had been agitat- 
 ing many an English mind was this : Is our weight of 
 metal in Chinese waters enough ? Is it commensurate 
 with possible contingencies ? Is it not too hopelessly 
 small ? 
 
 This anxiety had been somewhat allayed by the spec- 
 tacle of ship after ship of the British navy — the 
 Barfleur, the Bonaventure, the Hannibal, the Gibral- 
 tar — steaming away in mysterious haste to the East. 
 
 On the other hand, they had not steamed away 
 alone : they had followed — they had been followed by 
 — a host of the choicest, mightiest ships of Eussia, 
 France, and Germany, all hasting eastward, eastward, 
 as if in the sweep of some law of gravitation, all with 
 the same secret urgency, the same suggestion of mys- 
 tery, and ilurry, and design. 
 
 Heavy Eussian armaments like the Vladimir Mono- 
 mach had hurried after French craft like the Pascal, 
 and German craft like the Gefion. An addition of 
 some 30,000 tons to her Chinese navy was made by 
 Eussia alone in her ships, the Rossiya, the Cissoi Veliki, 
 the Navarin. 
 
 This Eastern fever had infected even nations not 
 precisely in the running. Away in the sweep of the 
 
 147 
 
148 The Yellow Danger 
 
 Chinese Current went battle-ships from Italy, from 
 Austria, from America. 
 
 In a few months the seas of the Far East were gravid 
 with the navies of the world. 
 
 China herself, by way of pantomime, had been 
 building cruisers at the Vulcan Dockyards at Stettin ; 
 and at that very time was promenading the boulevards 
 of the seas, quite like one of tlie chic, with the new 
 Hi-Chi, Hi-Tien, and Hai-Shen. 
 
 Tlie Hi-Chi had a speed of twenty-four knots, and 
 was a cruiser carrying an armament as heavy as many 
 vessels twice her displacement. 
 
 The fleet of Japan was in prime fighting order, mod- 
 ern, as smart as it was swift and strong. It was worth 
 any two of the fleets in Chinese waters put together. 
 
 Was England's weight of metal sufficient ? This 
 was the question. 
 
 The fact was, that England had ceased to be acutely 
 anxious when it was once known that her weight was 
 greater than that of any two of the European nations 
 combined. 
 
 She had added 37,000 tons, in round numbers, to 
 her former Chinese squadron ; Russia 36,000 ; France 
 11,000. But, all told, she had concentrated 136,700 
 tons in those waters, whereas Russia's total was only 
 83,000, and France's 26,000. It followed, therefore, 
 that Britain had a preponderance of some 17,700 tons 
 over these two. 
 
 This had seemed enough, considering that some of 
 Russia's terra-cotta colored ships were old fashioned. 
 
 It was hardly remembered that there was Germany, 
 too, with a weight of 27,000 tons in Chinese waters. 
 Russia, France, and Germany together had a prepon- 
 derance over Britain of 10,000 tons. 
 
 The fact was sufiiciently impressive in itself ; but it 
 had not been terrifying, even to those who remembered 
 the possibility of the German element being hostile to 
 the British, when they also remembered the splendid 
 fleet of — Japan. 
 
 Here was an additional element of 200,000 tons — all 
 on .the side of Britain. 
 
The Vanished Fleet 149 
 
 For was not Japan the friend of England ? Were 
 not their interests identical ? The Britain of the East, 
 and the Britain of the West — how natural that they 
 should stand shoulder to shoulder ! 
 
 But there was one question, in connection with 
 this queer, outlandish, yellow ally of England, the 
 correct answer to which would have sent as great a 
 shock through England, could she have known it, as 
 she had ever received in her history. The question 
 was this : " AVhere on earth, during the early part of 
 April 1899, did the Allied fleet in Eastern waters get 
 their supplies of coal ? " 
 
 We have stated that England and Japan, hy a clever 
 deal, had, weeks before, effected a corner in all the 
 Welsh and other coal in the East. 
 
 Yet on the morning of the 19th of April the whole 
 Allied navy, which some little time before had been 
 almost immobilized for lack of steam-fuel, and had been 
 hiding and dodging, each ship for herself, all about the 
 northern Chinese coasts, now steamed gallantly past 
 Quelpart in search of the British fleet, supposed to be 
 somewhere in the neighborhood of Chemulpo. 
 
 They were steering northwest ; Nagasaki lay south- 
 east ; they were therefore coming from Japan. Could 
 it be that from Japan they had obtained this coal ? 
 
 And where was the fleet of Japan ? For two days 
 Vice-Admiral Sir Edward Seymour had been expecting 
 it, by previous arrangement, to appear off ChemuljDo. 
 But as yet it gave no sign. 
 
 The Vice- Admiral was not at first precisely anxious ; 
 for his only ground of Suspicion that anything was 
 wrong in China was the fact, reported to him at Hong- 
 Kong six days before, that all communication between 
 that island and the mainland had mysteriously ceased. 
 Yen How had left the Englishmen on Hong-Kong 
 alive, having no desire to have every Chinese port 
 shelled by British guns. Hence, when the Vice-Ad- 
 miral coaled and started northward hurriedly on receipt 
 of a telegram from Tokio stating that the Allied fleet 
 had managed to procure some coal, and were steaming 
 eastward upon Japan, he had no suspicion of the mas- 
 
i5o The Yellow Danger 
 
 sacre. His reply to Tokio was that he was starting 
 northward at once, and would avoid an engagement, 
 until the junction of the two fleets ; and he instructed 
 the Japanese fleet to join him at Chemulpo. 
 
 But at Chemulpo he received a shock. There was 
 no white man in the place. 
 
 All he could suppose was that there had heen a rising 
 in the town, and the white men killed. 
 
 But he hardly attached any political importance to 
 the fact. Such things were common in China. 
 
 He waited with perfect confidence for the Japanese 
 fleet. 
 
 The next morning he received a cable despatched 
 from Nagasaki to Fusan, and brought two hundred 
 miles on mule-back to Chemulpo. It was as follows : 
 
 "The Allied fleets, plentifully supplied with coal, 
 are about to steam eastward in search of you. Japanese 
 fleet will follow." 
 
 " StesLm. easttvard ! " " Supplied with coal ! " " Will 
 follow ! " Certainly, now, if ever man was puzzled, it 
 was the British Commander-in-Chief. 
 
 For if the enemy were steaming eastward supplied 
 with coal, that meant Japanese treachery. But if Japan 
 were treacherous, and had joined the Allies, why on 
 earth did she take the pains to warn the British of 
 their advance ? 
 
 And why " will " follow ? They should have set out, 
 according to the Vice-Admiral's instructions, long be- 
 fore. If they had not already set out, they were 
 treacherous ; but if they were treacherous, why did 
 they give this warning of it, instead of taking the ad- 
 vantage of a surprise ? 
 
 That they w&re not neutral seemed proved by the 
 fact that they were "following " at all. 
 
 The Vice- Admiral's brow was a heavy cloud of care. 
 He decided that the missive was a hoax, then that that 
 was impossible, then again that it was a hoax. 
 
 He sent an expedition of blue-jackets by road to Seoul 
 to see who was there. They returned with the announce- 
 ment that there were no white men in Seoul. 
 
 The secret of Japan's action, though inscrutable, wa4 
 
The Vanished Fleet 151 
 
 this : she coaled the Allies in order that they might 
 destroy the British ; and she warned the British in or- 
 der that they might destroy the Allies. 
 
 She helped both sides, being the enemy of both. 
 
 But this policy was too subtle for the British Com- 
 mander to di-vine without an absolute clue. 
 
 The absence of white men at Seoul, as well as at 
 Chemulpo, was merely an added shock. It brought no 
 real light to the mind. He waited on, with anxious 
 heart, for the appearance of the Japanese. 
 
 Two days he spent in coaling the fleet out of four 
 colliers which had accompanied him from Hong-Kong, 
 and in taking in stores from the store-ships. At the 
 end of the second day there was still no sign of the yel- 
 low ally of England. 
 
 The thing was so inexplicable, that even wonder- 
 ment could find no guess. Japan was a nation among 
 nations, responsible, presumably careful to keep her 
 pledged word. What, then, could have happened ? 
 
 "What, in God's name has happened ?" said the 
 Vice-Admiral to himself twenty times during the 
 course of that terrible and sleepless night. 
 
 But he did not neglect the warning of Japan's cable. 
 The next morning, immediately after the saluting of 
 the colors, the fleet steamed from Chemulpo harbor, 
 the flag-ship being the Barjleur, one of the only two 
 line-of-battleships present. 
 
 The Vice- Admiral, in his ignorance of the real facts 
 of the situation, had no intention of being caught at 
 anchor without sea-room. 
 
 So far, no action had taken place in the East. The 
 approaches to Vladivostok harbor. Port Arthur, and 
 Kiao-Chau were crowded with mines, and defended by 
 forts. The Vice- Admiral had preserved his fighting 
 power from injury, till the first naval battle. After 
 that, in the event of victory, he meant to proceed to 
 the hostile ports. 
 
 He went cruising southeastward under half steam. 
 A bright, breezy morning of Spring. 
 
 But what now is that, away yonder on the southern 
 horizon ? A long streak of gfay mist, which has the 
 
152 The Yellow Danger 
 
 property of growing swiftly broader and darker. The 
 Japanese fleet at last, surely ! 
 
 No. It is the fleet of the allied enemy. That ia 
 quickly determined by the look-outs. 
 
 They numbered twenty-nine, and occupied the whole 
 region of the southern hemi-horizon. 
 
 The British ships were thirty-three. Among them, 
 however, was a very large number of smaller-tonnage 
 craft, torpedo-boat destroyers, first-class gun-boats, 
 second and third-class cruisers, despatch vessels, and 
 sloops of war, of varying weight, from about 4000 to 
 as low as 260 tons. But there, too, on the other hand, 
 were the great Terrible, and her sister-cruiser (in 
 whose books was the name of John Hardy, absent), the 
 Powerful. These had each a tonnage of 14,200. 
 There, too, were the Revenge with 14,150 tons, and 
 the Gibraltar with 7,700. 
 
 The weight of the enemy was greater ; but it was 
 not much greater ; and even so, it was not the custom 
 of Englishmen to count as a deterrent from battle a 
 preponderance of the enemy in physical power. The 
 Vice- Admiral banished from his mind for the time the 
 mystery of the Japanese fleet, and sent forth his com- 
 mand with a high heart. 
 
 Nimble Jack, below decks, belted his trousers with 
 a determined snap, and stripped himself of blouse and 
 shirt, prepared to sink, to fight, to swim, to die, to 
 live. 
 
 Already from the conning-towers could be discerned 
 the pea-soup color of some Eussian ships, though both 
 fleets were pouring round the horizon two regions of 
 dark smoke. 
 
 The British approached in a very wide wedge, the 
 Barfleur leading at the apex of the formation, while 
 the enemy maintained a double line, the whole of the 
 first line being composed of Eussian vessels, the heavy 
 Vladimir Monomach occupying the central post. 
 
 The barb, so to speak, of the British wedge was as 
 strong as possible. On each side of the Barfleur, 
 somewhat astern of her, came the Powerful and the 
 Terrible. It was the intention of the Vice- Admiral to 
 
The Vanished Fleet 153 
 
 begin well, and to derive all the moral prestige which 
 this fact might afiord. At the moment when the Vladi- 
 mir was two miles from the Barfleur, and three from the 
 Terrible and the Powerful, tlie battle commenced on 
 the British side. All the three British vessels had 
 kept their forward barbettes trained upon the Vla- 
 dimir, and they fired simultaneously. The result 
 was just like magic. Before the smoke had cleared, 
 the Kussian ship was no longer on the surface of the 
 waters. 
 
 An instant afterwards, and the battle was general. 
 
 In the fury of warfare which now ensued, let the 
 reader fix his eye upon a middle-sized and comparatively 
 unimportant ship which stands far back in the star- 
 board limb of the British wedge. She is called the 
 Iphigenia ; a second-class cruiser ; tonnage 3600, 
 horse-power 7000 ; not very wonderfully armored, 
 but agile in the water, and capable of showing a clean 
 pair of heels. On board of lier is — Fate. 
 
 Yonder is the Oefion engaged with the Terrible, and 
 yonder both the Pascal and the Indomptable with the 
 Revenge, and yonder- again the Barfleur with the 
 Admiral Nachimoff, and the Powerful with the Jean 
 Bart. "Wide is the war and various. The British 
 wedge has penetrated the fleet of the Allies. The 
 navies of the world are mixed together in a hotch- 
 potch of combat. Either with design or without, the 
 battle, within five minutes from its start, has become a 
 mere mUee of thunder. 
 
 There are instances, on one side and the other, of 
 splendid maneuvering, of the right thing done at the 
 right moment. But these all are individual, between 
 ship and ship, captain and captain. Neither on the 
 one side nor on the other is there any wide plan, or 
 grand plot, or omnipresent eye. On the whole, it is a 
 question of weight of metal against weight of metal. 
 The great man is not there. 
 
 Slowly, in his dark prison, the Chinese iron is entering 
 into the soul of John Hardy. He is being taught the 
 
1 54 The Yellow Danger 
 
 meaning of Fear, and familiarity with the face of Pain, 
 This, too, was necessary for him. 
 
 But see what a mess the Terrible is making of the 
 Gefioti yonder in the very thick of things. Some of 
 the ships are fighting at a little more than pistol-shot 
 distance ; and the Terrible is well within half a knot of 
 the dismantled Gefion, when Commander Maddern, 
 careering to starboard, trumpets forth through the up- 
 roar in a kind of German : " Haul down your flag, or 
 I'll ram ! " And half a minute later down sails the 
 flag of the Gefion ; and half a minute later still, down 
 dives the G^on herself to her final harbor at the bot- 
 tom of the Hwang Hai, which swallows with her all that 
 part of her crew which a pinnace of the Terrible is 
 unable to rescue. 
 
 But the Revenge has lodged a 13-inch shell in the 
 fore port magazine of the Indomptable in vain. The 
 French ship shudders — ^then, a little forward of amid- 
 ships, there is a red belch that spouts high above her 
 mast, and curves outward in a lurid rain far over the 
 sea — then there is a long reverberation of clattering 
 thunder — and the Indomptable bursts and sinks. But 
 this row is mingled with another, caused by the ram 
 of the foundering Pascal which is working and raven- 
 ing in the central armor-belt of the Revenge. The 
 three vessels disappear from sight within a minute of 
 each other. 
 
 There, on the far starboard edge of the British line 
 of battle, the Iphigenia — on board of which is Fate — 
 is leveling her whole port battery in one incessant roll of 
 Gardners and Nordenfeldts upon a small approaching 
 second-class torpedo-boat ; growling harshly is she, 
 like a hound which bristles and gnashes and snarls, 
 retreating backward, at the sudden apparition of an 
 advancing cobra. 
 
 The torpedo-boat lances one of her needles of steel, 
 but it is caught by a wave, tossed upwards in a whiff 
 of spray, and sent flying to starboard, where it ex- 
 plodes under the stern of the French first-class battery- 
 
The Vanished Fleet 155 
 
 cruiser Arethuse. As the tube of the torpedo-boat 
 sends forth another explosive, the ram of the IpMgenia 
 passes into and oyer her small assailant ; the torpedo 
 explodes ten yards away, but tears a hole in the f or'ard 
 protectiye bulkhead of the IpMgenia. She commences 
 to settle down by the starboard bow. 
 
 But what is this phenomenon which now suddenly 
 appals every eye — the eyes of friend and of foe ; some- 
 thing appalling by its mere novelty, not hitherto seen 
 in sea or land warfare — something in the air — with all 
 the properties and the powers of a spirit of evil ? 
 
 It is a balloon — narrow, low, and long — French in 
 origin. It can be steered backward and forward even 
 in the teeth of a light wind ; and its operators have 
 the power of dropping dynamite shells with a steel 
 casing, containing liquid oxygen and blasting gelatine, 
 upon the hostile ships. It has come sailing with the 
 light breath of the S. W. monsoon from a French ship 
 which has studiously kept far on the outskirts of the 
 battle. 
 
 It is not a toy ; nor is it sent up as a curiosity for the 
 amusement of the British ships. It becomes station- 
 ary high over the Barfleur, a black dot is seen to dis- 
 engage itself from it, and a moment or two afterwards 
 ninety-five British sailors are dead, and the engines of 
 the Barfleur are no longer there. Then, sparing of its 
 shells, it moves on in another direction, and then 
 swiftly in another, and another, letting fall each 
 time, like some evil bird, its deadly droppings. Ex- 
 cept two, which fall into the sea, every shell de- 
 stroys a ship. One bullet of a rifle would be sufficient 
 to prove fatal to it, but it is high, its movements are 
 swift and sudden, and when at last it tumbles, pierced, 
 into the sea, the battle is all but over. It has done its 
 work. 
 
 This had been the wisdom of France, in the time of 
 peace : that she had not despised the ingenious man, 
 and his ingenuities ; she had invited the thinker ; she 
 had welcomed the dreamer of dreams. 
 
 This was the second time since the beginning of the 
 war that the British had come into contact with the 
 
156 The Yellow Danger 
 
 Forges et Chantiers de la Mediterranee, and had shud- 
 dered intensely at the contact. 
 
 But we are an ocean race ! Every cock on his own 
 dunghill — and England on the sea. But for the French 
 balloon, the British would very likely have won the 
 battle by five seaworthy ships, and one unseaworthy. 
 As it was, they won by two seaworthy ships, and one 
 unseaworthy. 
 
 The last shot fired was fired by the Iphigenia_ at a 
 German third-class crniser, which she sank. This was 
 the last but two of the Allied vessels left afloat ; the 
 other two, having some time since struck their flag, 
 were now sinking fast. 
 
 Besides the Iphigenia, which had engines, funnels, 
 screws, and rudder intact, but had a considerable crank 
 bow-wards, three were afloat of the British craft the 
 Daphne, a twin-screw sloop, practically uninjured, and 
 the Barfleur, floating a mere log, unable to move. 
 There were fifty -seven men alive in her. 
 
 The Iphigenia had one boat, and the Daphne two, 
 still capable of passing over the water ; and these were 
 soon out, two of them making towards the Barfleur to 
 take ofE her crew, and the third in the direction of one 
 of the still floating two ships of the Allies, for the pur- 
 pose of rescue. 
 
 The sea was oilily smooth ; the breeze had died to a 
 mere breath ; the sun had climbed to noon. 
 
 All was still. Over four buried navies the water 
 swung lazily — as a cradle which one has ceased to rock, 
 of its own motion. 
 
 "Weirdly sad is that vast and wandering grave of the 
 sailor ; and careless is the great heart of the sea. 
 
 So intent were all who floated during this quiet noon- 
 tide in the central ocean upon the humane work of res- 
 cue, that no one noticed the swift approach upon 
 them of a growing cloud from the east ; and it was 
 only when a shrapnel shell came screaming upon the 
 already shattered Barfleur, that the British sailors, to 
 their consternation, discovered that yet another enemy 
 was upon them. 
 
 Presently, as though the new arrivals had found 
 
The Vanished Fleet 157 
 
 an entire fleet to oppose them, the air was full of 
 fire. 
 
 Five large cruisers were seen to be steaming at full 
 speed upon the small remnants of the four fleets. 
 
 But cruisers of what nation ? They carried no flag ! 
 
 The two vessels of the Allies — small torpedo-boat 
 destroyers — had long since struck their colors. And 
 at once, as a precautionary measure, the three British 
 vessels did the same. 
 
 But it made no difference ! The rain of fire con- 
 tinued. 
 
 Happily, before the boat of the Iphigenia reached the 
 Barfleur, the Barfleur dipped, and sank. So also did 
 one of the Allied ships, and also one of the Daphne's 
 boats with her crew. The other of the Daphne's boats, 
 and the Iphigenia' s boat, at once turned to hurry to 
 their ships. 
 
 For the moment, the Iphigenia was still beyond ef- 
 fective range of the shells of this strange enemy ; but 
 one of the screws of the Daphne was shattered by a 
 semi-submarine explosion. 
 
 At once, as their boats reached them, the two Brit- 
 ish ships turned tail under forced draught, flying 
 straight westward from this sudden, dread, mysterious 
 foe. 
 
 Both were very swift ; but the Daphne could now 
 only move with half her speed. On board the Iphige- 
 nia the pumps were at work. 
 
 The strange enemy, seeing that there was no longer 
 target for their shot, ceased fire, and slackened speed. 
 Only the swiftest of the cruisers was told off to con- 
 tinue the chase of the fugitives. 
 
 She gained upon them both, especially upon the 
 Daphne ; but a stern chase is a long chase, and it was 
 an hour before the first shell, shattering every gun in 
 the Daphne's port central battery, warned her that 
 further flight was useless. 
 
 The Daphne, as she fled, had again hoisted her en- 
 sign, and now again she struck it ; and again was sur- 
 render met by a hail of shot from this extraordinary 
 adversary. 
 
158 The Yellow Danger 
 
 The Daphne at once re-hoisted her colors, spun 
 sharply round to port, and bore straight down upon 
 her pursuer. 
 
 Her commander was at least determined to sell the 
 life of his ship dearly. 
 
 But he was met by such a cataract of shell and shot 
 that he perceived that he must certainly founder be- 
 fore accomplishing the ram which he meditated. 
 
 He determined, far off as he was, to risk the launch- 
 ing of his last torpedo. 
 
 It proved a happy inspiration. 
 
 The little needle of disaster went hasting, in stead- 
 fast headlong flight, in spite of swinging wave and 
 baffling spray, straight upon its victim. It fastened 
 upon her beam at the level of her armored deck, a few 
 inches below the water-line, and burst. 
 
 The strange vessel started, and, with a cough that 
 rent her, threw her fragments over the sea. She was 
 the Japanese cruiser TscMyoda. 
 
 A minute later, while the Iphigenia was still hasting 
 back to the scene of the duel, the Daphne sank with all 
 hands. 
 
 The Iphigenia was now miles out of sight of the four 
 Japanese cruisers. She continued her course eastward, 
 very slowly sinking all the time. 
 
 About midnight of the next day she was beached on 
 a sandy bottom not far from Kiao-Ohau. 
 
 She had on board a hundred and eighty men. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE SUICIDE OF ETTEOPE 
 
 At the time of the battle in the Hwang-Hai nearly 
 all Europe was at war. 
 
 If any one had imagined that Eussia, France, and 
 Germany could declare war against England, and 
 that there the matter would end, he must have 
 been blind to the actual meaning of the then condi- 
 tions. 
 
 Shortly after the defeat of the Allies at Shoreham, a 
 burst of Homeric laughter was caused over England and 
 the Continent by the announcement that the Prince of 
 Monaco (an independent sovereign, possessed of the 
 magnificent army of sixty body-guard carabineers) had 
 declared war against England. 
 
 The episode, amusing in itself, was not without sig- 
 nificance. 
 
 The Prince was not a mere pantomimist. He had 
 been compelled by some intricacy of the actual situation 
 to act as he had acted, and his action only meant that 
 so complex and finely-poised was the machinery of 
 modern European polity, that it was no longer possible 
 for any considerable portion of Europe to be at war 
 without plunging into war the rest of it also. 
 
 With the sound of the first cannon a thousand slum- 
 bering passions of the people started into life. The 
 hour had struck for the placing upon the stage of a 
 thousand schemes of long-meditated revenge, avarice, 
 and aggression. 
 
 Servia rejoiced. Her secret vow to settle the long- 
 standing account with her Bulgarian victors might now 
 
 159 
 
t6o The Yellow Danger 
 
 be fulfilled. Bulgaria rejoiced. jSTow at last would 
 she be free of Tsar and of Sultan alike. 
 
 Swedenlooked round with something of the aggressive 
 enterprise of her old hero, Gustavus Adolphus, wonder- 
 ing if now, at last, she could not accomplish the de- 
 liverance of her Finns from the oppressive hand of 
 Eussia. 
 
 The Cretans, certain now that the Sultan would 
 have his hands full of matters other than their small 
 selves, girt on the dirk and carbine of massacre. Aus- 
 tria turned her eyes toward Salonica with languishing, 
 and her right hand crept out to steal. 
 
 Eoumania dreamed that Eussia's only motive for war 
 was to furnish an excuse for Tier destruction, and 
 rushed in arms to her frontiers. Italy had territories 
 still "unredeemed": and was not this the time to 
 "redeem" them ? 
 
 Denmark had been nipped and curtailed, and her 
 day was come for vengeance ; Portugal was alert to 
 stab in the back her British rival in Africa in the hour 
 of his preoccupation. 
 
 At Athens, at Belgrade, at Sophia — from London to 
 Batoum — from St. Petersburg to Meglo-Kastro — the 
 sword leapt from its scabbard. 
 
 MoUl! 
 
 The Sultan pressed his fez tight upon his head, 
 sitting among cushions ; and the panic of the sinner in 
 the day of his calamity gripped coldly at this man's 
 heart. He had heard that the main body of the 
 Servian army was moving eastward from its head- 
 quarters at Knuzevatz, and were being massed upon 
 Srisch and Vranja, while fresh levies were being made 
 in order to form a strong reserve ; and he had hardly 
 heard it, when the further news arrived that a bloody 
 battle between Servian and Bulgarian divisions of in- 
 fantry had occurred near Vlassina, in which the Bul- 
 garians had been routed. 
 
 The messengers of evil followed fast one upon the 
 other, like the messengers of Job. 
 
 The same night a considerable Austrian body crossed 
 the Save, and quietly occupied Belgrade. 
 
The Suicide of Europe i6i 
 
 The next morning Austrian troops bivouacking in 
 the open spaces of the city, and Austrian ofRcers taking 
 dijeuner on the boulevards, met the astonished eyes of 
 the waking citizens. 
 
 It seemed as if the Golden Horn was in danger of 
 being broken. 
 
 For this action was tantamount to an act of hostility 
 against Eussia on the part of Austria. Within a few 
 hours after the occupation of Belgrade, another Aus- 
 trian brigade, without firing a shot, was installed in 
 Scemendria. The same day telegraphic communication 
 between Constantinople and Odessa was interrupted. 
 
 Macedonia was in flames, and a land of emeutes, — 
 both Anti-Turkish and Anti-Bulgarian, — from end to 
 end. The Vali of Saloniki was assassinated and muti- 
 lated in the streets of his city. 
 
 The Porte had called out the last class of rediffs ; 
 and rediffs from Smyrna and the Tripolitaine, to the 
 number of 70,000, were being massed with a view to 
 the protection of the frontier line. Fifty thousand 
 men, still left around Stamboul, were distributed along 
 the chain of forts from Eoumalie Kavak to the Golden 
 Horn. A fleet of Turkish torpedo-boats without tor- 
 pedoes, and ironclads without ammunition, steamed 
 northward through the Bosphorus. But before they 
 reached the latitude of Midia, a fleet of Eussian Black- 
 Sea battle-ships, torpedo-boats, and transports crowded 
 with 90,000 troops from Odessa, had shelled and oc- 
 cupied Bourgas. (Bourgas is in direct railway com- 
 munication with Constantinople. ) 
 
 The uncalled-for action of Austria in occupying the 
 two Servian towns was Eussia's defense for her occupa- 
 tion of the Bulgarian town. 
 
 Events followed one upon another with an ever- 
 increasing frightfulness of rapidity. Developments 
 which at other times would have required weeks for 
 their outcome, now required hours. Europe wheeled 
 in a delirium of haste. The next day half-a-dozen 
 sotnias of irresponsible Cossacks pushed forward across 
 the Galician frontier to Lubica ; and without delay 
 Austria declared formal war against Eussia. 
 
1 62 The Yellow Danger 
 
 Here was a topsy-turvydom of things— brought about 
 by the festering greed and the old malice of the 
 nations. Germany was the pledged ally of Austria ; 
 Germany was the pledged ally of Eussia against Eng- 
 land ; and Eussia and Austria were at war ! 
 
 Look, too, at those Italian Bersaglieri and Alpini 
 climbing like chamois over the Alps, with batteries 
 borne on nimble-hoofed mules, by the Mont Cenis route. 
 Italy means to get back, now, old Savoy — which is her 
 Alsace-Lorraine— and is engaged on the one hand 
 with French dragoons and mountain-chasseurs among 
 the Alps, and, on the other, is shelling with her fleet 
 the batteries that defend the Eiviera, preparatory to 
 landing three corps, her 3d, 4th, and 6th, in the neigh- 
 borhood of Nice and Mentone. — Yet Germany was 
 the ally of Italy ; and Germany was the ally of France ; 
 and France and Italy were at war ! 
 
 Mobil, then, ye sons of men ! Set briskly to it — for 
 it is now or never. Mobil for your lives ! 
 
 In England there was no longer a nation : there was 
 only a Militia. The nation had become an army. 
 
 After three days of a terrific artillery battle between 
 British ironclads and the forts de la Floride, de I'Heure, 
 and de Tourneville, an English army under Lord 
 Eoberts had occupied, first Havre, and then Harfieur. 
 A series of disastrous battles, between Harfieur and 
 Yvetot, had followed, in which the British, though 
 outnumbered, were generally successful in claiming 
 nominal victories. But they made no decided advance. 
 The hitherto unknown results of modern contrivances 
 were found to make victory almost as fatal as defeat. 
 The very small bullets of the Lee-Metford and Lebel 
 rifies — the enormous range of the magazine rifle — the 
 use of smokeless powder — were discovered to be ele- 
 ments whose effects were, on the whole, ten times 
 greater than had been anticipated. Division after divi- 
 sion hurried over from Britain to the support of the 
 Havre army ; and corps after corps of the French 
 massed upon Eouen, upon Harfleur, upon Confr6ville, 
 and the neighboring towns to oppose them. It became 
 a question of men. 
 
The Suicide of Europe 163 
 
 Five British ships, which were all that was left of 
 the Mediterranean S(jQadron after a great engagement 
 in the Bay of Algeciras, were reducing Marseilles at 
 the very time when the Italian ships were engaged in 
 an incessant artillery duel with the forts along the 
 Riviera coast. Yet Italy and England were not 
 formally allies. 
 
 North and south a dark cloud of tragedy widened 
 over France. In less than six weeks from the com- 
 mencement of the war her 7th, 14th, I5th, and 16th 
 Corps d'Arm§e had ceased to exist, in consequence of 
 signal Italian victories in the south ; while in the 
 north a steady deluge of British regiments had ac- 
 counted for seven more of her corps. Toulon, the im- 
 pregnable, was in the hands of General Ricotti. Havre 
 was a British base. 
 
 Already the reserve of the territorial army was being 
 mobilized for probable service. 
 
 France was shrinking under the intolerably harsh 
 frown of England. The Joy of the whole earth was 
 about to perish. 
 
 England herself, in her tough, silent way, was in the 
 grip of bitter sufEering. The Government had estab- 
 lished public granaries over the kingdom. But the 
 price of bread was prohibitive. Whole villages perished. 
 
 Singular as it now seems, she had had no separate 
 cable connecting her telegraphically with South Africa, 
 which was to a large extent her life. When she was 
 disconnected with the Continent, she found herself 
 disconnected also with her most important colonies. 
 It was necessary to adopt the method of sending a de- 
 spatch vessel round the Cape in order to recall the 
 Australian and Pacific Squadrons. The Suez Canal 
 had long since been blown up by the French officials 
 at Port Said. 
 
 At the Cape a naval battle had resulted, by some 
 few ships, in a victory for the Allies, in consequence of 
 overwhelming odds. Cape Town and the British sea- 
 board of South Africa had been shelled. Sierra Leone 
 had become French. 
 
 But Australia and the seaboard of India were already 
 
1 64 The Yellow Danger 
 
 safe. The enemy needed all their still floating navies 
 nearer home. 
 
 On the strongly^fortified German coast England's 
 success had been hardly less than marvelous. A small 
 fleet of British war-ships and troopers had appeared at 
 the entrance of the Kiel Canal, and captured Tronning. 
 
 There the two great branches of the Teutonic race 
 measured strengths. England had sent 100,000 men 
 to fight a nation boasting the most exquisite military 
 organization the world has ever conceived, and capable 
 of placing in the field an army approaching three 
 millions. 
 
 The first result was mere disaster for the invaders, — 
 but not moral defeat. They retained Tronning, and, 
 by a coup, the remnants of the scattered army under Sir 
 Evelyn Wood possessed itself of Stralsund. Thoy did 
 it under cover of a bombardment by a British fleet, 
 among the British ships being the three Swedish 
 cruisers Gota, Svea, and Vanadis, which suddenly 
 appeared, and joined in the action. 
 
 Nor was this England's last word to Germany. 
 
 It can never be that guns and swords alone can rule 
 the world. The nation with tlie stoutest heart and the 
 hardest brow, she is the mistress. 
 
 What happened at Havre, happened at Kiel and 
 Stralsund. England with astonishing, steady perti- 
 nacity sent men to fight — only, here, the rigor of the 
 thing was greater, the flame hotter. 
 
 In all that low-lying tract of land between Wismar, 
 Neu Brandenburg, Anclam, and Stralsund a series of 
 murderous conflicts took place, Wilhelm himself di- 
 recting the course of the campaign, and the English 
 being entrenched for the most part behind a semicir- 
 cular line of earthworks stretching east and west, with 
 Stralsund for base. 
 
 The three lines of railway, west to Lubeck and 
 Hamburg, east to Stettin, and south to Berlin, were 
 in the hands of the British ; and after a day of fearful 
 carnage in the neighborhood of Neu Brandenburg, 
 in which the German army was routed with a loss of 
 150,000 men, a successful rush was made for Stettin, 
 
The Suicide of Europe 165 
 
 which, in the course of a night attack, fell into British 
 hands. 
 
 The same night nearly the whole of Berlin was de- 
 stroyed by fire, a catastrophe attributed to the action 
 of Socialists. 
 
 And ever England came to Germany — raw levies, 
 meager Oockney-born lads, boors from the Downs, Lan- 
 cashire bodies, persons in kilts : not terrible to look 
 at : terrible to meet in battle. 
 
 Their chief characteristic is not that they are brave, 
 and agile, and cool ; but that by some unknown na- 
 tional quality of mind they really contrive to do what 
 they try to do. Their results always produce a certain 
 effect of surprise. 
 
 Before these nimble invaders the tapfere Erieger of 
 the Fatherland slowly receded. 
 
 From Then, that Metz of the East, from Konigs- 
 berg, and Dantzig, and the great military dep6ts of the 
 Northeast, troops were drafted to repel this obstinate, 
 rock-browed, small, unseasoned foe. 
 
 But the more the English poured their levies upon 
 the German seaboard, and the greater the draughts by 
 Wilhelm upon the as yet inactive corps, and nearer the 
 possibility of a call upon the Teuton shopkeepers and 
 burghers of the reserve, so the more Socialistic seemed 
 to become the opinions of the German nation. 
 
 Socialism — with its absurdities — with its heavenly 
 gospel of salvation for the world — had, for ultimate 
 good, or ulimate ill, got into the blood of the nations 
 during the latter half of the nineteenth century, far 
 more than any one then supposed. Men who most hated 
 the word, thought Socialism, and did not know it. It 
 was bound to come out when the great moment for its 
 birth arrived. 
 
 Wilhelm walked on an abyss, and the ground be- 
 neath his feet was parchment. 
 
 He had no sooner withdrawn a large portion of the 
 Army of the Vistula, than Danzig was sacked and 
 taken by the Swedish fleet. 
 
 The most extraordinary phenomenon of this vast and 
 Bomplex war was the success of Sweden everywhere. 
 
i66 The Yellow Danger 
 
 Within three weeks a division of her gallant lit, Lie army, 
 consisting of only three corps, had gained a permanent 
 pied d, terre as far south as Bromberg ; she had 
 wrought havoc with the northeastern coast-defenses of 
 Germany ; and she had turned West Prussia into a de- 
 populated wilderness. Another division of her army, 
 consisting of five corps, had in two great battles on 
 the Banks of Lake Ulea routed two Kussian war-hosts, 
 and had pushed on to Helsingfors, which they cap- 
 tured from the land side, and made their headquar- 
 ters. Intoxicated, they turned their faces across the 
 Gulf of Finland toward Cronstat. 
 
 The hands of Eussia were full enough. 
 
 Immediately upon the outbreak of war with Austria, 
 she had concentrated, as fast as her defective railway- 
 system would allow, great masses of troops, consisting 
 of the 4th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th and 13th Army Corps, 
 in the direction of Lemberg. Behind these followed 
 the more remote 13th, 16th, and 17th Corps. 
 
 Including the Corps d'Arm^e doing unsuccessful 
 battle with the Swedes in Finland, by far the greater 
 part of Eussia's vast territorial power was now in the 
 field, three additional army-corps having advanced 
 from Kars to the investment of Erzeroum, where a 
 crushing defeat at the hands of a mixed army of Turks 
 and English awaited them. 
 
 The eastern limb of the British Mediterranean fleet 
 had steamed tlirough the Bosphorus, conveying trans- 
 ports to Trebizonde, and then proceeded northwards, 
 with the double object of a search for the Eussian Black 
 Sea Squadron, and the bombardment of Odessa and 
 Sebastopol. 
 
 Austria had massed her forces into three armies : one 
 in East Galicia, on the Dniester, another on the San 
 with its back on Przemysl, the great bulwark of Middle 
 Galicia, and the third on Cracow, the key of western 
 Galicia, on the Upper Vistula. 
 
 The Great White Tsar was preoccupied. All around 
 his sky were clouds and darkness. That mighty breadth 
 of empire was already rocking to its fall. 
 
 The gray and green-coated soldiers of Eussia were 
 
The Suicide of Europe 167 
 
 swarming round her borders, more on the defensive than 
 the offensive. In the first fixed battle with the Aus- 
 trians, General Gourko, the old Invincible, had been 
 routed with such a horror of widespread massacre that 
 the brain of the aged General was unhinged. 
 
 And ever anew — after each orgy of blood — went 
 forth the cry over Europe : Mobil, MoMl. 
 
 In a skirmish near Karatova between two demi- 
 regiments of Macedonians and Bulgarians, not a single 
 man was left alive. 
 
 In fact, Europe was destroying herself. Everywhere 
 from Land's End to the Caucasus, the grin of a specter 
 was perceived in the air — the Specter of Hunger, and 
 grim Scarcity, and raw-boned Want. 
 
 England had America to supply her wants ; but 
 wants cannot be supplied save by the purchasing power 
 of the party who wants. England's purchasing power 
 had consisted in her commerce, and her commerce 
 was near to death. ' 
 
 America, moreover, in this crisis, had no idea of 
 small profits and quick returns. She had been thrown 
 by the war into a state of financial collapse. And she 
 raised her prices to prohibitive figures. 
 
 On paper England remained rich enough. Her con- 
 sols were taken up eagerly. The chief financiers and 
 bankers of the world filled her war-chest. The security 
 of by far the larger half of investments depended upon 
 her success. As a matter of self-interest the Eoths- 
 childs, and AVall Street, and the kings of finance, threw 
 in their lot with her. 
 
 But the industry of the world was at a standstill, 
 and there is no wealth not the direct offspring of 
 industry. 
 
 Germany, France, Italy and Eussia opened their 
 ports to all comers, adopting the free-trade policy of 
 England — but too late. That, of course, which they 
 were unable to buy was not brought to them to be 
 sold. 
 
 Eussian wheat, by Imperial command, ceased to be 
 exported. But it would quite certainly have ceased to 
 be exported without the command. 
 
1 68 The Yellow Danger 
 
 The fields grew rich and oozy with a human sap, the 
 blood of millions. But the hand of industry was 
 palsied to sow the seed. 
 
 Mobil, then, ye children of Europe ! Mobil all ye 
 can ! But know that in the end it shall bite like a 
 serpent, and sting like an adder. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE LOVE WHICH FOO-CHEB BOKE TO AH-LIN 
 
 Foo-CHEE was No. 13 of the 3d squad of the 1st 
 company of the 2d battalion of the 11th regiment of 
 the 3d brigade of the 1st division of the 17th Army 
 Corps of the great army of China. 
 
 Every morning and every night he lifted up both his 
 hands, and he blessed the name of Yen How, illustri- 
 ous, who by his might had changed the old flow and 
 show of things. Eor why ? Because Ah-lin was No. 
 15 of the same squad of the same company of the same 
 battalion of the same regiment of the same brigade of 
 the same division of the same Army Corps of the great 
 army of China. 
 
 Every day, between four and a quarter to six o'clock, 
 the company was drilled on the plain southeast of 
 Pekin, half a mile from the walls. The roll was called 
 before drill, and if any one was absent, he or she was 
 hanged publicly, by the heels, the next morning. So 
 Ah-lin Jiad to be there, and Foo-chee saw Ah-lin, and 
 blessed Yen How, illustrious. 
 
 Ah-lin was a girl of eighteen, very pretty, with the 
 elongated face which the Chinese adore, and eyes so 
 long, and narrow, and slanting. She was the daughter 
 of a tiny silversmith whose shop was on a fifth floor in a 
 gaudy Pekin main-street. 
 
 Her father lived his life in a corner of the single 
 room which was his shop and dwelling. His life was a 
 dream, and his food rice-greens and opium. When he 
 awoke from his paradises, he languidly took up a 
 piece of silver, and looked at it, and put it down again. 
 
 169 
 
1 70 The Yellow Danger 
 
 Ah-lin's father and mother and herself lived happily 
 upon fifteen tiaos per week. The father was exempt 
 from service, because one of his legs was incapable pf 
 walking. The mother served in a difEerent company 
 from that of Ah-lin. 
 
 But in spite of her poverty, Ah-lin had an elongated 
 face, and peepy little bewitching eyes, and a pigtail of 
 incredible length. Her feet, of course, had not been 
 cramped, and she walked with a fine free swing, slant- 
 ing a wee bit backward, like the true Northerner that 
 she was. 
 
 " Foo-chee," said Ni-ching-tang, who was the father 
 of Foo-chee, " take your eyes from Ah-lin, my son. 
 Leave Ah-lin be. She is loved by 8in-wan, and Sin- 
 wan is among the honorable ones in the days which are." 
 
 Ni-ching-tang knew what he was saying ; for he was 
 a very subordinate cook in the multitudinous kitchen 
 of Yen How, and Sin-wan was a warder in the Imperial 
 Prisons. Ni-ching-tang and Sin- wan were good nodding 
 acquaintances, as we should say. 
 
 That Sin-wan loved Ah-lin there could be no doubt. 
 He had more than once risked his neck in leaving the 
 Imperial precincts at unlawful hours to make signaling 
 gestures before the fifth-floor room.of Ah-lin's parents. 
 
 But Sin-wan was of middle age, and unduly stout. 
 His neck was thick and hard, and seemed made for 
 hanging. And his countenance was as hideous as Fe's, 
 the joss, as it stands carved out in the ebon idols. 
 
 Moreover, Sin-wan was addicted to orgies of the 
 spirit sanishu, and the impress of these excesses was left 
 on his brutal face. 
 
 Ah-lin's eyes, though narrow, could see much ; and in 
 her secret meditations in the darkness of the room at 
 night she would think that Foo-chee was pleasant to 
 look at, and Sin-wan was not. 
 
 Foo-chee was a young man of twenty, and a seller of 
 Thibet incense-sticks in the next street to Ah-lin's. 
 And these two units, among the tens of thousands of 
 human beings that swarmed and sweltered around them, 
 felt within them the stirrings of thatfprqe which made 
 the world. 
 
Foo-Chee's Love for Ah-Lin 171 
 
 Ah-lin hfid noted the following eye of Foo-chee often, 
 long before the strange drilling commenced ; and when 
 she found herself almost next to him in the 3d squad, 
 she had a presentiment and a tremor. It was the 
 doing of the upper gods. 
 
 " Ah-lin," said Ah-lin's mother, Xan-lin, " turn 
 away your eyes from the eyes that turn to you. Foo- 
 chee is pleasant to look at, but Sin-wan is among the 
 honorable ones in the days that are. A child should 
 love her father and her mother above herself, and do 
 all for them." 
 
 But it was the doing of the upper gods, what hap- 
 pened. Ah-lin was near to Foo-chee every day in the 
 new drill ; and the drilling straightened Foo-chee's 
 back, so that his backward slant as he walked was in- 
 creased, till a woman would have died for him. 
 
 But Sin-wan, one night, beckoned to Nan-lin from 
 the street, and Nan-lin sent down Ah-lin, and Sin-wan 
 took Ah-lin by the hand and said : 
 
 " Ah-lin is well formed, both in face and figure. 
 Therefore I, Sin- wan, will marry with Ah-lin." 
 
 At this directness Ah-lin hung her head. It was 
 not difficult to perceive the sequence of cause and ef- 
 fect in this matter — and she was afraid of Sin-wan. 
 
 " Do you say yes, Ah-lin ? " said Sin-wan. " If you 
 say yes, I will take you now to a meal in Hing-Chang- 
 Li's eating-house, with fresh tea to drink." 
 
 "I say yes," replied Ah-lin, "But my father and 
 mother — to whom all honor — do not wish me to marry 
 now." 
 
 "That is a lie, Ah-lin. Your father and mother 
 wish you to marry. And you wish to marry, too. But 
 you do not wish to marry with me. You wish to marry 
 with Foo-chee." 
 
 "Foo-chee ?" — she started — "Where did you hear 
 the name of Foo-chee ? " 
 
 " Your mother told me his name, Ah-lin." 
 
 " It is strange. 1 know no one with such a name." 
 
 " It is a lie, Ah-lin. His name is written in green 
 and red picture-letters over the booth where he sells 
 incense-sticks. I have seen it, and I have seen Mm." 
 
172 The Yellow Danger 
 
 " And what do you say is his name ?" 
 
 " Foo-chee." 
 
 " Well, it may be, Sin-wan. I know nothing of the 
 matter. " 
 
 " Foo-chee shall die, Ah-lin, if you do not marry 
 with me." 
 
 " Oh ! what for ? Whom has Foo-chee hurt ? He 
 sells his incense-sticks, and hurts no one ! " 
 
 " Now I have made you say that you wish to marry 
 with him. For you do not wish me to kill him, Ahlin." 
 
 " Kill him, if you wish." 
 
 "I will kill him." 
 
 " But why so ? " 
 
 " Because you will not marry with me." 
 
 " I did not say I will not marry with you, Sin-wan." 
 
 " Then you will ? " 
 
 "I must." 
 
 " When, Ah-lin ? " 
 
 " When the new drilling is no more." 
 
 " Oh, that may be never. No. It shall be while 
 this moon is big." 
 
 "I cannot, Sin-wan — I cannot." 
 
 "Why not, Ah-lin?" 
 
 " It is my father and mother, — to whom all " 
 
 " It is that dog's gall, Foo-chee ! Foo-chee shall die, 
 Ah-lin." 
 
 " Oh, me ! I am not feeling happy. Sin- wan !" 
 
 " No, nor am I feeling happy, till you say that it 
 shall be this moon ! Nor shall Foo-chee feel happy, 
 when my knife is rankling in his liver ! Say it, Ah- 
 lin ? " 
 
 "I say it, Sin- wan." 
 
 " While the moon is big ?" 
 
 "Yes, Sin-wan." 
 
 " Then I will go. And I will come again to-morrow 
 night at this hour." 
 
 " Did you not say that you would take me to the 
 eating-house of Hing- Chang-Li for a meal, with fresh 
 tea?" 
 
 " I cannot to-night, for I have no time, since T must 
 return now to the Imperial Prison. But to-morrow 
 
Foo-Chee's Love for Ah-Lin 173 
 
 night — or the night after — you shall feed at the eating- 
 house of Hing-Ghang-Li." 
 
 So Sin-wan turned on his heels, and walked away on 
 them. And when he arrived at the portals of the Im- 
 perial City, he was already late, and his bulging neck 
 was in danger. 
 
 The Imperial Prisons stood in a great quadrangle of 
 marble, fringed with stupendous avenues of long-haired 
 trees of the banyan genus, being surrounded by a moat 
 bridged by a number of marble bridges. The building 
 itself is of marble, and of very great size. A stone's 
 throw to the south stood the palace of the Austrian 
 Ambassador, embedded in a bower of foliage ; to the 
 north, a hundred yards away, and separated from the 
 prison by a lake overgrown with huge lilies and moon- 
 leaved water-growths, stood the shaded palace of Yen 
 How. The Imperial Palace itself was half a mile away 
 by the broad avenue, but there was also a short-cut to 
 it from the palace of Yen How. 
 
 It was the quiet hour of the evening- time, and the 
 sumptuous landscape of the Imperial City seemed to 
 faint and doze in a dream of lotus peace. 
 
 Leaning over one of the marble bridges that spanned 
 the prison-moat was an old man. It was JSTi-ching-tang, 
 the father of Foo-chee. His day's work was over, and 
 he was looking sleepily upon the dark and slumbrous 
 water of the moat. 
 
 As he leaned so, Sin-wan approached him, passing to 
 his duties in the prison. Ni-ching-tang would not have 
 heard the tread of the thick-felted slippers ; but Sin- 
 wan spoke. 
 
 " Give good to you, Ki-ching-tang," he said. " Has 
 his Might, the Governor, passed this way yet ? " 
 
 "No, Sin-wan," the old man answered, and his eyes 
 smiled ; "fear nothing. He will not know." 
 
 "Know what, M-ching-tang ? " 
 
 " That you are late— again." 
 
 Sin-wan leered. 
 
 "It comes of going to seek a little wife," he said. 
 
 " Poh ! it is nothing — if you are not seen. But a 
 wife?" 
 
174 The Yellow Danger 
 
 " Ah-lin is her name, and she is the daughter of 
 Lan-sing and Nan-lin, his wife. We will marry this 
 moon. She is well formed, both in face and body." 
 
 " What, with small feet too ?" 
 
 "No small feet ; but well formed in face and body." 
 
 " And she lives where ? " 
 
 "In the third quarter, and the main street." 
 
 " Why, I have a son who lives near the main street 
 of the third quarter." 
 
 " And what is your son's name, Ni-ching-tang ? " 
 
 Sin-wan did not notice that Ni-ching-tang paused 
 a second before he answered. 
 
 " My son is called Oheng-lu," he said. 
 
 Then Sin-wan passed on, and entered the prison. 
 
 As he went in, he took from his bosom a small cyl- 
 inder of ebony, round which clung a roll of silk- 
 paper. 
 
 On the paper were six lines of writing, each starting 
 from the top and going down to the bottom. Each line 
 started with a date, and underneath the date came the 
 instructions for that day. 
 
 This document had been painted by Yen How, with 
 his own hands. 
 
 Yen How had stood over John Hardy, with watch 
 and stethoscope in his hands. John had lain bound on 
 his back on the marble floor. 
 
 Yen How had examined him from head to foot. He 
 had felt the texture of his muscles, had palpated the 
 calves of his legs, had held his pulse, watch in hand. 
 He had applied the stethoscope to John's chest, and 
 heard the wheeze ; he had laid it over his heart, and 
 made an estimate of the exact timbre of the beats, 
 systole and diastole, venous and arterial. 
 
 When it was over, he knew the precise truth about 
 Hardy's vitality, its quantity, its intensity, its whole 
 diathesis ; he knew just how much mental and physical 
 torture the lad could bear, and for how long, without 
 an actual cessation of life. 
 
 He was not in a hurry. He waited — Hardy was well 
 fed and nourished. It was over a week before the tor- 
 ture began. 
 
Foo-Chee's Love for Ah- Lin 175 
 
 Now, when Sin-wan opened the door behind which 
 John lay in sleep, Ada Seward would no longer have 
 recognized the pretty boy who had sat beside her in the 
 music-hall, nor Miss Jay the gallant fellow who had 
 made her start in an alarm of self-retention. 
 
 Broad streaks of absolute white mingled with his long 
 fair hair. His bony hands clutched and trembled in 
 his sleep like the hands of some aged miser. 
 
 At the first faint sound of the key, he sprang with 
 a bound straight to his feet, wide awake. BLe had 
 learned to be afraid now. 
 
 Sin-wan, as he turned the key, muttered something 
 to two men who were now with him. They went away 
 up a narrow stairway into a room above. 
 
 He gave a final glance at the directions under Day 
 IV. on the silken scroll, and with studious brow ran 
 over the points on his fingers. This was the fifth scroll 
 of the kind, all covering a space of six days, which Sin- 
 wan had studied. 
 
 Having satisfied himself that all was ready, and his 
 instructions well in Lis head. Sin- wan entered the 
 chamber and closed the door behind him. 
 
 The sight of that face had become a pang and a sick- 
 ness to the soul of Hardy. To all his tortures it was 
 an added torture. It grinned in his nightmares. It 
 was the devil of his hell. 
 
 He sank back in a corner pale as death. 
 
 Sin-wan never brought him his food ; so that Sin- 
 wan's face was associated in his mind only with agony. 
 Yen How, who knew the mind and its secrets, had 
 willed it so. 
 
 The room was not very small, but it was of stone, 
 and damp. However, in one corner was a bed which 
 was nothing less than luxurious, the coverings being 
 of fine, padded silk. Hardy had not suffered from 
 cold ; still less from hunger or thirst. 
 
 These were tortures far and away too elementary 
 and obvious to occur to such a mind as that of Ten 
 How. The body, by itself, is capable of intense pangs ; 
 but never is torture exquisite when it is wholly divorced 
 from the mind. 
 
176 The Yellow Danger 
 
 Yen How's profound knowledge of this fact was 
 proved when he said to himself : 
 
 " One of his tortures shall consist in the daily sight 
 of— a Face." 
 
 Beside the quilted bed, there were in the chamber a 
 table, on which was water and wine : near it, a cush- 
 ioned chair ; and a stool made of a hard greenish- 
 colored wood, provided with a straight upright back, 
 and cross-pieces in the legs. It could not be moved. 
 It was cramped by iron rivets to the flooring. 
 
 The room was lighted by three Chinese lanterns 
 which hung above Hardy's reach, let down through 
 holes in the ceiling a short way. 
 
 Sometimes one, or two, or even the three, went out, 
 through some carelessness of the attendants ; and even 
 when they all burned, there was not much light. But 
 Hardy's eyes, long accustomed, saw everything. 
 
 One of the ingenuities of pain to which he had been 
 subjected consisted in the mere appearance of Sin- wan. 
 Once Sin-wan had entered, leered round, and retired. 
 The next day he entered, leered round, and retired. 
 "Was the ordeal over, then ? A heavenly hope leapt in 
 Hardy. The next day Sin-wan appeared with a brazier 
 crowded with white-hot wires. 
 
 Several times lately Sin-wan had entered, leered 
 round, and retired. With every new entrance now, 
 John hoped that on this day no new sword would 
 pierce him. For to-morrow he cared not — only for 
 this day his spirit cried to Heaven. But on many a 
 day Heaven turned her ear from him. 
 
 He breathed in an agony of Hope, in an Arctic Hell 
 of Fear. 
 
 In the course of weeks his great mind had quite col- 
 lapsed. He was now utterly demoralized and craven. 
 
 He knew neither morning nor night. He had lost 
 count of the days and the weeks. 
 
 He did not commit saicide, because, at first, the means 
 were not ready at his hand. It is not an easy matter 
 for a man to dash his brains against the wall. Later, 
 when he looked round for the means to kill himself, an 
 intense cowardice seized him. He clung to life — only 
 
Foo-Chee's Love for Ah-Lin 177 
 
 td life. Just one little spark, too, of his innate stub- 
 b(!irnness lingered. After a torture, he would pray- 
 aloud that Heaven would send its swift Messenger upon 
 him ; but his obstinate will to live returned, if a day 
 of peace was granted to him. 
 
 STow, as Sin-wan showed his face, he cringed against 
 the wall with staring eyes of expectancy. 
 
 Was this a day of torture ? or a day of grace ? 
 
 What added a touch of intensest horror to the 
 relation between this boy and this man was the fact 
 that they had never exchanged a word. They were as 
 remote and divided as two creatures of different 
 planets. Sin-wan did not know a word of English, nor 
 John of Chinese. 
 
 A day of torture, or of grace ? He had ceased to 
 care for the morrow ; but to-day . . . 
 
 A wild hope stabbed his heart. Sin-wan had no 
 sort of implement about him. He could not torture 
 without an implement. It was a day of — grace, then ? 
 
 No. The Chinaman walked to the cabinet in a 
 corner where lay some cords. And he lifted them on 
 his forearm, and he came to where John, half -standing, 
 half-falling, cowered. 
 
 John had long ceased to make any resistance to the 
 binding process. 
 
 During the operation this time he fainted. But 
 terror woke him. He was placed on the high-backed 
 stool, his arms bound behind the back, and his chest, 
 high up to the neck, upon it. Underneath, his shoe- 
 less feet were bound to the cross-pieces. 
 
 He could not move his head backward, for the 
 chair-back prevented him ; forward, he could move 
 it about fifteen degrees, and from side to side about 
 thirty. 
 
 What was in store for him ? He was wide awake 
 now. With starting eyeballs he waited. 
 
 Five minutes passed. 
 
 Then Sin- wan produced something. 
 
 It was a leather strap, four and a half inches broad, 
 sixteen long. At the ends were clasps. 
 
 He put it round Hardy's neck and clasped it. And 
 
178 The Yellow Danger 
 
 now Hardy could move his head neither backward, 
 forward, nor sideward. v 
 
 He sat with elevated chin, staring — a gaze of horror 
 into vacancy. Yet he felt no pain. 
 
 He waited five more minutes, and the dim thought 
 that reeled within his brain in a vertigo of woe was 
 this : how long ? how long, Lord ? 
 
 Five minutes, and then five more : and then he felt 
 — something. 
 
 Yet it gave him no pain. 
 
 It was a drop of fluid — water, in fact — which had 
 fallen upon his head from above. 
 
 He waited half a minute, and it came again ; and 
 half a minute, and it came again. And so, regularly, 
 every half-minute it came for some ten minutes. 
 
 This, of itself, to an ordinary person, would be a 
 misery. But by this time John Hardy was so famil- 
 iarized with agony that to him it was simply nothing. 
 The slowly-dropping water collected on his head, and 
 was trickling dowa his face, when he began to wonder, 
 with a species of glad incredulity, whether this could 
 be meant as a new torture. 
 
 He could have borne it all the night, and all the day, 
 and thanked God for His clemency. 
 
 Suddenly he lanced a horrid shriek. 
 
 A drop of something else had fallen upon his head, 
 and eaten into his scalp. It was a drop of strong oil 
 of vitriol. 
 
 Would the falling of the vitriol continue ? or the 
 falling of the water ? 
 
 The next drop was a drop of water. 
 
 But if it had been vitriol, and vitriol thenceforth 
 regularly, Hardy's agonies would have been far less 
 monstrous than, in fact, they were. 
 
 In this was manifested the profundity of Yen How, 
 that he knew how exquisitely to intensify the pangs of 
 the body by means of the travail of the soul. 
 
 The next drop was water, and the next was water, 
 and the next was water, and the next was — vitriol ! 
 
Foo-Chee's Love for Ah-Lin 179 
 
 \ And now John Hardy cried out against Heayen, 
 ^training at his cords, and bawling like a bull. 
 
 But drop by drop from the ceiling fell the implac- 
 al)le fluid ; not so many drops of water, and then a 
 diop of vitriol, but with crafty variations, sometimes 
 two drops of vitriol at a time, and then for minutes not 
 another. 
 
 Yen How, however, knew his craft too well to make 
 such an ordeal last very long. Sin-wan had instruc- 
 tions that, as soon as the victim showed signs of mad- 
 ness or collapse, the torture should cease. 
 
 Accordingly, when Hardy ceased to cry aloud, and 
 a reddish stream trickled down his chin, his bands 
 were undone, and Sin-wan cast his unconscious body 
 on the bed. 
 
 Just about the time that he did so, Ah-lin was stand- 
 ing before the incense-stick booth of Foo-chee. 
 
 "It is not that I am bold, Foo-chee," she said, 
 "that I come here to speak. But I must say what I 
 have in my mind." 
 
 Here was blessedness, and a wringing of the hands, 
 and an embarrassment of the pleased eyelids, and the 
 favor of the upper gods, for Foo-chee. 
 
 " It is an incense-stick that you desire," he said, "and 
 your name is Ah-lin, for I know it. And all the in- 
 cense-sticks which I have are yours. For why ? Be- 
 cause we stand and step together each day before sun- 
 down in the same company of the drilled— no other 
 reason." 
 
 " It is a lie, Foo-chee," said Ah-lin, " there is an- 
 other reason — though I cannot guess what it can be. 
 But whatever the reason be, you must now throw it 
 quite away. It was not for an incense-stick that I 
 came— though incense-sticks are pleasant, and I have 
 long desired one — but to tell you just that. You must 
 throw it quite away." 
 
 " And for why ?" 
 
 " Because another, who is greater than you, wants 
 just the thing that you want. If you get that thing. 
 
i8o The Yellow Danger 
 
 he will kill you. In order that he may not kill you, 
 he shall have the thing." 
 
 " Cruel Ah-lin ! " 
 
 " 'No, not I. You say what is not, not knowing, 
 Foo-chee. But he will kill you ; therefore he shall have 
 what you desire." 
 
 " Then I shall kill myself, not having what I desire." 
 
 " Cruel Foo-chee ! " 
 
 " You will, then, feel happy if I live, Ah-lin ! " 
 
 "Yes; and therefore I shall make myself feel un- 
 happy hy giving to another what you desire, in order 
 that I may feel happy at the same time in knowing 
 that you live." 
 
 " To feel happy and unhappy at the same time is 
 mixed, Ah-lin." 
 
 " But it is better, Foo-chee, to feel happy and un- 
 happy through a long lifetime than to feel nappy for a 
 little hour, and then die." 
 
 Here was the practicality of the Woman. Foo-chee 
 pondered it. Then he lifted his head and said : 
 
 " There is a riddle somewhere which I cannot solve, 
 Ah-lin. Let us go, instead, to the eating-house of 
 Hing-Chang-Li for a meal, with fresh tea. And with 
 you take three of these incense-sticks." 
 
 Ah-lin hesitated, and was lost. Foo-chee drew down 
 the flap over his booth, and carefully adjusted the ring 
 to the staple ; then together they walked off on their 
 heels ; and their swinging pigtails met and touched, 
 as it were knowingly, behind them. 
 
 And at the eating-house of Hing-Chang-Li they ate a 
 hearty meal, with a whole mitin of fresh tea-leaves. 
 
 They were in the sweep of the force which underlies 
 the world. It was the doing of the upper gods. 
 
CHAPTEE XVII 
 
 THE CHINESE I E O N 
 
 The next day John Hardy, at the hour of evening, sat 
 in his corner, watching his door with a kind of wild- 
 beast sullenness. 
 
 His nerves had an instinct of the hour when Sin-wan 
 was due to appear. 
 
 So sick was his soul with misery after the ordeal of 
 the day before, that he had eaten nothing since. His 
 food lay untasted on the table. 
 
 He sat sprawling with disjected limbs on the floor, 
 watching the point of Sin-wan's expected entrance 
 through the fierce and sullen corners of his eyes. 
 
 He had often had the thought of braining Sin-wan 
 with one of the porcelain platters, or of strangling him 
 with his pig-tail, or with one of the ropes used to bind 
 himself. As he sat there the thought now recurred to 
 him. His brain was in that condition in which thoughts 
 are no longer semi-voluntary, but seem to come and 
 go at random of their own motion, like v/inds through 
 the vacant heaven. He had, however, sufficient reason 
 left to give no entertainment to this thought. His 
 chance, if he ever had it, was long past. He was too 
 hopelessly frail now. 
 
 He sat long, expecting. One of his lanterns went 
 out ; then another ; in half an hour the third. He 
 was in darkness. 
 
 Suddenly the lad started as though a sword had 
 pierced him. 
 
 He looked eagerly towards the door ; and he said to 
 himself, "No, no." It was too incredible; he must 
 ]be mad. 
 
 181 
 
1 82 The Yellow Danger 
 
 "Mad, mad," he moaned, his head buried in his two 
 arms, as he rocked himself slowly to and fro,' with a 
 regular motion like a pendulum. So he went on for 
 about half an hour, his face hidden, with sometimes a 
 moan, and sometimes a word. " What have I done ? " 
 he said wearily, in the thinnest whine : " What have I 
 done — God, Father, God ? . . . But now I am mad, 
 mad. ..." 
 
 It had seemed to him, as the third lantern went out 
 and left him in darkness, that, at the edge of the door, 
 there was a long streak of semi-light — that the door was 
 open ! 
 
 He had sense enough to know that the condition of 
 his mind was one far and away removed from a state of 
 ordinary sanity ; that his senses were now quite capable 
 of playing him tricks. But when, after a long time, 
 he lifted his head, there, still before his eyes, was the 
 streak of light. 
 
 He sprang to his feet, and his pallor of death as- 
 sumed a hue of even more absolute wanness. Groping 
 limpingly along the walls, he made toward the door. 
 But, on the whole, it was rather to assure himself of 
 the optical delusion which he supposed, than with the 
 expectation of finding the door really open. 
 
 But the door was, really, open. 
 
 What made his heart go bumping and bounding 
 within his ribs was the look of Providence — the hint of 
 God's finger — in the fact of the lanterns all going out 
 at the very time when the door, by some extraordinary 
 means, had become unfastened. 
 
 But though one step meant salvation, and one in- 
 stant's delay meant death, yet could he not take the 
 step. The sudden shock of hope — the sudden suspicion 
 of Heaven — all but killed him. He dropped back 
 against the wall, panting, panting, trying with his 
 right hand to force back the violent galloping of his 
 heart. 
 
 But the instant that he could move, he moved. 
 With wide mouth and gasping chest, he cautiously 
 pushed back the door, and passed through it. 
 
 Toward what ? Toward certain qapture ? It mus^ 
 
The Chinese Iron 183 
 
 \ 
 
 tot be supposed that he was now in a mental condition 
 to give this question even a single thought. He went 
 through the open door precisely in the way in which a 
 wild animal passes through the open door of its cage — 
 instinctively toward liberty. He lived by moments. 
 At this moment he was free ; to the next he gave not 
 a thought. He simply walked forward as a stream 
 flows downwards — because it is a law of nature. 
 
 He found himself in a long corridor ; and yonder, 
 half-way down the corridor, was — a man. 
 
 The man's back was toward John ; and he was bend- 
 ing down, cleaning a blue-glass lantern. 
 
 It was at this sight that the first notion of the im- 
 possibility of his ultimate escape occurred to Hardy ; 
 and with this appreciation of the impossibility, came 
 also the ravenous Desire, the frenzied Hope. As he 
 slid swiftly back behind the door, and drew it upon 
 himself, he was no longer a mere wild creature of in- 
 stinct. He looked forward — he reasoned. 
 
 He waited, fearing worse than death to stir the door. 
 Then he had a sudden horror which pricked him 
 like a goad to action — if Sin-wan came ? It was his 
 hour ! 
 
 He very slightly pushed back the door, and peeped 
 out. The corridor was empty. 
 
 He ran now, with the stealthy feet of a man treading 
 on hot embers. His feet were bare and made no sound. 
 He had on a shirt and trousers. But the shirt was 
 filthy, and the trousers fiapped in long rags all down 
 his legs. His hair reached to his shoulders. 
 
 At the end of the corridor was a door. He pushed 
 it lightly. It did not move. He forced his shoulder 
 against it. It was locked. 
 
 He was as much a prisoner as before, then ? Im- 
 mediately after the first intolerable sinking of the 
 heart he could not believe it. A vague, but real, faith 
 was in him now. The mere fact that he was where he 
 was proved Providence. He believed dimly that God 
 now was willing him to be free, wild as the idea was, 
 far ofE as the probability might be. 
 
 He looked round for some means of escape 3 and 
 
1 84 The Yellow Danger 
 
 there, in fact, was a tall window in the side of the 
 corridor, slightly open. 
 
 He ran to it, and looked down. It opene4 upon 
 another corridor twenty feet below. 
 
 Twenty feet ! The distance was infinite. 
 
 Underneath his flapping rags one could see the red 
 and livid patchwork of his flesh, where it had been 
 nipped and pinched and burned and pricked and bruised 
 in half a hundred agonies. How could he leap twenty 
 feet ? It was as dreadful to him as to an infant. Like 
 the very aged, he was afraid " of that which is high." 
 
 But as he looked again he saw a short rope hanging 
 over the window-sill by which he could help himself 
 down. 
 
 And now, at this sight, it is a wonder that some sus- 
 picion of the fact that all these happy chances were 
 only part of another elaborate torture did not enter his 
 head. But his brain was so preoccupied with the idea 
 of Providence, that nothing of the sort occurred to him. 
 
 With endless pains he managed, with the help of the 
 rope, to reach the lower corridor ; and at once, with 
 the same stealthy trepidation, he set out, running in 
 the same direction in which he had so far come. 
 
 At the end of this corridor also was a door ; and at 
 his push it opened. 
 
 Now he was in yet another corridor, at right angles 
 to the first and second. In which direction should he 
 turn ? He did not care. He would be guided right 
 by the Hand that led him. Away to the right he went 
 with tottering gait, treading on embers, hugging the 
 wail. 
 
 If only his heart would cease its awful thumping ! 
 Surely, surely, through all that vast building, through 
 all Pekin, they would hear the echoes of that laboring 
 bosom ! So it seemed to him. 
 
 His white, wide lips were twisted awry in his effort 
 to take in and expel his noisy breath. 
 
 As he ran in this excess of agitation, he suddenly 
 remembered the battle of Shoreham, how he had been 
 cool in the midst of sounding cannon and angry war. 
 Could he not still be so ? Was he so much changed ? 
 
The Chinese Iron 185 
 
 He made a weak effort — a faint self-assertion of the old 
 John Hardy. But in another instant he forgot the 
 effort. It was far from him. 
 
 He reached the end of the corridor, and was about to 
 turn to the left, when, there before him, he saw two 
 Chinamen, near to him, talking. They were standing 
 in the middle of the passage which he had to pass. 
 
 Had they seen him ? Had they not heard the labor 
 of his heart ? Apparently not : they remained deep in 
 talk. 
 
 Must he lurk till they moved away ? Would they 
 not come his way ? 
 
 Suddenly, behind him, down the length of the cor- 
 ridor in which he stood, he heard a sound. He looked 
 and saw a man approaching him. He was between two 
 dangers. 
 
 The man's eyes were bent meditatively upon the 
 ground. He came swinging toward Hardy. 
 
 The night had not yet come, though it was near. 
 The corridor in which the two conversed was not dark, 
 but it was much dimmer than that in which John 
 stood. It was necessary for him to move — the third 
 man was coming near. 
 
 He stole forward, inch by inch, sideways, with his 
 chest against the wall, and his face twisted round 
 watching the two talkers. He came near them — he 
 was opposite to them — ^by a stretched-out arm they 
 could touch him. 
 
 Stealthily he crept, slowly as the movement of a 
 glacier; he was past them. And he was no sooner 
 past them than, with incautious haste, eager only to be 
 on — to be on — he sped away. During those instants of 
 slow motion he had passed through all the terrors of 
 the grave. 
 
 The two men calmly continued their talk ; the third 
 came up and joined them. Hardy went onwards undis- 
 turbed. 
 
 For quite half an hour he stole forward, all leers and 
 tremors, like a thief in the night, through three halls, 
 over a courtyard, along two more corridors, without 
 anywhere meeting any one. 
 
1 86 The Yellow Danger 
 
 The slumbrous gloaming deepened. He began to 
 think himself lost in this endless structure, without 
 hope of finding exit. 
 
 But at last he saw an oblong of distinctly lesser 
 obscurity ; he knew that this must be a door of exit 
 from the prison. 
 
 Could it be true ? Was he really about to escape 
 into the open day — under the sky, the clouds ? He 
 leapt forward. And as he did so, a man stood in 
 the doorway, and leant his back against the door- 
 post. 
 
 It was far from light now, but Hardy would have 
 felt the presence of that form and face in the darkest 
 midnight. It was Sin-wan. 
 
 John was still in full career to make for the door, 
 when his eyes fell upon this man ; and like a shying 
 horse he bolted aside. A door, as he touched the wall, 
 gave way before his pressure. He rushed through, mad 
 to put a world of distance between him and that face. 
 As he hasted forward, in the dark now, he stepped 
 upon nothing, and tumbled headlong down a flight of 
 stone stairs. 
 
 He had hardly time to pick himself up when he 
 heard that some one was behind him, descending the 
 stairs, humming a tune. And he knew that it was 
 Sin-wan. 
 
 OfE he rushed again ; and again, in five minutes, 
 there was light. He stood between two walls, about 
 five feet apart, about ten feet long ; and at the end of 
 them was a portal, painted green, half open ; and be- 
 foni the portal, he saw — trees ! 
 
 He was free ! and yet he shuddered. Behind him 
 was Sin-wan, coming, coming ; and before him the 
 open gate ; but the whole of the space between him 
 and the gate, and between the two walls, was paved 
 with broken glass. 
 
 There was not an inch of harmless ground upon which 
 to place his naked feet. 
 
 But Sin-wan was behind. Hardy stepped forward, 
 and reached the gate, and passed through it, run- 
 ning. 
 
The Chinese Iron 187 
 
 Every footprint which he left behind now was a foot- 
 print of blood. . 
 
 Still onward, panting heart ! The hand with which 
 He leads is surely rough — but still, is He not leading ? 
 
 And now for the bridge of marble ahead, which 
 spans the moat. He reaches it, and starts and stops. 
 
 There, in the middle of the bridge, leaning over the 
 parapet, looking at the water, is a man. 
 
 This gauntlet also Hardy must run. Crouching 
 against the opposite parapet he crawls forward. 
 
 His lust to be free is now a thousand thousand times 
 more intense than ever before. Every danger that he 
 has escaped has added to his terror, a deeper terror, to 
 his hope a wilder frenzy. Like a beast he crawls for- 
 ward on hands and knees, step by step, without a 
 sound. 
 
 But as he is exactly opposite the man, the man turns 
 quite round. Hardy leaps to his feet. They are face 
 to face, and eye to eye. 
 
 All is over, then. He has been seen. 
 
 But no ! What mean those groping hands, that 
 hesitating step, as the man turns slowly away ? Is he 
 Mind f Can those eyes see nothing ? So John Hardy 
 believes. Here, at least, is Providence, and the lead- 
 ing Hand. 
 
 Away, once more, towards the palace of Yen How, 
 and then down the long avenues to the portal of the 
 " Imperial City." This part of the way he remembers, 
 having passed through it before. Onward, in the shade 
 of the great trees, he limps, leaving behind him his 
 trail of blood. He meets no one. He is under the 
 open sky. Among the leaves sighs the evening wind. 
 
 He reaches the great portal, and, strange to say, 
 there is no one there. He passes out. He is in an 
 open space — beyond the Imperial walls — which prop- 
 erly belongs to the " Chinese City." 
 
 So far has he escaped. A feeling of absolute security 
 rushes upon him, and with it an overwhelming, speech- 
 less gratitude. He drops to his knees ; his face turns 
 upward in an ecstatic agony of love to the skies, washed 
 in tears ; out stretch his arms in adoration. 
 
1 88 The Yellow Danger 
 
 But between his eyes' and the sky comes a face, and 
 between his stretched-out arms comes a form. He 
 leaps with a shriek to his feet, recognizes the face of 
 Yen How, and faints in Yen How's arms. 
 
 The slightest possible smile wrinkled the corners Of 
 Yen How's eyes. 
 
 " Poh !" he said in English, "it is nothing. Why 
 such a cry as that ? It is your own fault, boy. You 
 ought to have known that Providence — if there is such 
 a thing — never works in these outright ways. Yen 
 How's Providence does — but Yen How is a smaller 
 fellow altogether than the Big One above — if He is 
 there at all. Is He there ? Is He there ? Ah ! — may 
 be, and may be, not. But just now it is Yen How 
 for you, and not He. The man cleaning the lanterns, 
 and the men talking together, and Sin-wan, and the 
 blind man — they all saw you, you know, boy, because 
 Yen How put them there to see you. And it is hard 
 to escape from Yen How, whose Ada Seward you have 
 been kissing, and whom you have tried to shoot, lillee 
 English boy. And Yen How is not done with you yet 
 — not yet — not yet. But those English ! " — here he 
 ceased to speak to the unconscious form in his arms, and 
 continued his meditative soliloquy in Chinese — " those 
 English ! They are just like devils for fighting ! Only 
 150 or 200 of them, they say, at Kiao-Chau, and six 
 weeks gone, and they not killed ofE yet. Stupid Jap- 
 anese ship-captains to let them get away in that fash- 
 ion. However — ah, lillee English kisser," — he ad- 
 dressed John Hardy again — "wouldn't you like to be 
 with the 200 white men at Kian-Chau now ? I think 
 you might be able to play some tricks with their help, 
 too. But Yen How has you tight — Yen How, the toad, 
 the frog, eh ? Stop, though 1 isn't there something 
 in your Bible about a plague of frogs in the land of 
 Egypt in the Pharaohs' time ? Yes, surely — yes. 
 Well, now, how would you like a little plague of 
 frogs in your land of England, eh ? Ah, well, it is 
 near. It is not far oS now. ..." 
 
 At this point a man appeared; Yen How handed 
 him the limp body of Hardy, and walked up and down 
 
The Chinese Iron 189 
 
 a long time that night under the shade of the trees of 
 the Imperial avenues. 
 
 About this time there were two men outside the Im- 
 perial precincts who ought to have been within them. 
 One was Sin- wan, and the other was the father of Foo- 
 chee, Ni-ching-tang. 
 
 Ni-ching-tang wejit to the dwelling of his son Foo- 
 chee, whom he loved, in order that he might see Foo- 
 chee, and receive from him the reverences due to a 
 father. And, lo, Foo-chee was not there ; and Foo- 
 chee's booth was deserted. 
 
 Said Ni-ching-tang : 
 
 "Now where can Foo-chee be ?" 
 
 Sin-wan went to the dwelling of his promised wife, 
 Ah-lin, to see her, and receive from her the reverences 
 due to a husband that is to be. And lo, Ah-lin was 
 not there. 
 
 So Sin-wan said : 
 
 " Now where can Ah-lin be ? " 
 
 Now Ni-ching-tang was shrewd, and Sin-wan was 
 shrewd. So Sin-wan said : 
 
 " Ah-lin is not far from the booth of Foo-chee." 
 
 And Ni-ching-tang said : 
 
 " He who knows how to find Ah-lin is far on the road 
 to the discovery of Foo-chee." 
 
 And Sin-wan set out to go to the booth of Foo-chee, 
 and Ni-ching-tang to go to the dwelling of Ah-lin. 
 And midway between the dwelling of Ah-lin and the 
 booth of Foo-chee these two men met in the street. 
 
 It was Ni-ching-tang who spoke. 
 
 " Ho ! ho ! — late hours — late hours," he said (and he 
 half hid his nose behind a sportive hand) — " late hours, 
 and a merry courting-time " 
 
 Sin-wan was struck dumb. Ni-ching-tang knew 
 that Sin-wan had no right to be out of bounds, but 
 Sin-wan did not know that Ni-ching-tang had no 
 right. 
 
 "A merry courting-time?" said Sin-wan at last; 
 " but it is not so with me, Ni-ching-tang." 
 
 "Well, after all, pleasure is pleasant to feel," an- 
 swered Ni-ching-tang, still harping on the same string ; 
 
igo The Yellow Danger 
 
 "and they will not know in the prison, Sin-wan, — foi 
 who will tell them ? " 
 
 "Pleasure is pleasant to feel, yes," said Sin-wan; 
 " but it is not pleasure which I am feeling now, M- 
 ching-tang." 
 
 " And why not. Sin- wan ? " 
 
 " Because Ah-lin, of whom I told you, is away 
 from her home ; and my mind is telling me that she is 
 making some one else feel pleasant instead of me." 
 
 " Ho ! that is bad. And who is that some one, Sin- 
 wan ? " 
 
 " He is called Foo-chee." 
 
 " Soh ! And you are now looking for Ah-lin ? — I see." 
 
 "I am looking for Foo-chee." 
 
 "And for why?" 
 
 " To kill him." 
 
 " Soh ! to kill Foo-chee. Well, that is the only 
 way. But has Foo-chee no brother, no father, who 
 will kill you back again ? " 
 
 "I do not know." 
 
 " With keen tortures ? " 
 
 " Poh ! I do not think of that." 
 
 " With dreadful agonies of the brain and the liver. 
 Sin- wan ? " 
 
 " ;N"o ! I do not think of that. He is a brotherless 
 dog, a seller of incense-sticks." 
 
 " Well — well, do your will. Sin- wan. It is the only 
 way. As for me, I am not feeling happy, too. I 
 have a son, who has an enemy. 1 am going to look 
 for my son now, that I may hear from him whether it 
 will be necessary for me to kill his enemy or no." 
 
 " Well, then, may you do well, Ni-ching-tang." 
 
 " And you, may you do well. Sin- wan ! " 
 
 And so they parted. But they neither of them found 
 Ah-lin or Foo-chee that night ; for they did not think 
 of looking into the eating-house of Hing-Uhang-Li, 
 where they two again were that night. 
 
 So Sin- wan and Is! i-ching-tang hurried back, both of 
 them, to the Imperial precincts, making an inward vow 
 that, on the next night, they would procure more time, 
 and do better. 
 
UHAPTEE XVm 
 
 SIN-WAN" 
 
 The next evening, at about six, John Hardy lay on 
 his back on the bed of his prison. 
 
 He was conscious that it was near the hour when 
 Sin-wan appeared. 
 
 His feet were so gashed and raw from his run over 
 the glass, that he had not stood since he had been 
 thrown upon the bed. For two days he had eaten 
 nothing, being sick, sick. He was not far from death 
 now. 
 
 How long, Lord ? How long ? This was the 
 burden of his feeble thought. 
 
 But he retained an intense interest in the nature 
 of the added pangs which this day had in store for him. 
 
 When the key turned, he sprang upright, though, 
 at the effort, the wounds in his feet broke into fresh 
 bleeding. 
 
 Sin-wan entered, and at his entrance this time John 
 Hardy's flesh writhed like the flesh of a twisting ser- 
 pent from his feet to the roots of his hair. 
 
 Fire was the instrument of torture at which he felt 
 the deepest horror. And Sin-wan had now with him a 
 brazier, which swung from his fingers by a handle. 
 
 In the brazier glowed and flushed the living coals of 
 flame. 
 
 He had in his hand no other instrument that John 
 could see. But John, by this time, had begun to learn 
 that when the instruments were at first invisible, then, 
 in general, the agony was the most relentless. 
 
 And now, at the sight of the flame, feeling himself 
 
 191 
 
192 The Yellow Danger 
 
 too hopelessly feeble to pass through any further hell 
 that day, Hardy, by an impulse, did what he had never 
 done before. He fell upon his knees, and stretched 
 out his clasped hands in an attitude of meek supplica- 
 tion to the Chinaman. 
 
 Sin-wan was a man ; he had the limbs and bodily 
 structure of the human being. Who could say if with- 
 in him, too, some trace of the divine origin of man 
 might not linger, some throe of love, some sob of pity ? 
 In John's eyes, as he knelt, cried a world of mute 
 pleading. 
 
 But the Chinaman showed no sign of having seen 
 him. He deposited the brazier in a farther corner, 
 took some small metal objects from a fold of his robe, 
 dropped them on the iioor, and approached the kneeling 
 form. He proceeded to bind him as before, arms and 
 feet, to the chair. But this time, first of all, he took 
 off John's shirt from the upper part of his body, leav- 
 ing it to hang downward from the navel. 
 
 This done, he went towards the fire, took up two of 
 the six small metal objects which he had dropped, and 
 put them on the fire to heat. 
 
 The six objects consisted of four tiny Latin capital- 
 letters in iron ; they were the letters A, S, Y, H — the 
 initials of Ada Seward and Yen How ; there were also 
 a roll of iron wire and a pair of pincers. 
 
 It was the intention of Yen How to print the four 
 letters all over the body of John Hardy — on his breast, 
 on his two arms, on his thighs, on his back ; two at a 
 time ; two each day. 
 
 And the letters of the first day, as Yen How had 
 ordained in compliment to his queen, were to be A 
 and S. 
 
 But, as usual, Yen How had no idea of inflicting the 
 mere brutal pang of a burn upon his victim ; some 
 mental refinement of pain must mix with the scream 
 of the physical nerves. 
 
 Sin-wan took one of the two iron letters from the 
 fire with the pincers, and holding it from him, ap- 
 proached Hardy. The iron emitted a red glow, and 
 (seemed to burn into tlie staring eyesight of the victim. 
 
Sin-Wan 193 
 
 When his bare chest could feel the radiated heat, 
 his torturer stood, holding the metal steadily still. 
 And so, for a few minutes, remained ; then returned 
 and replaced the iron in the fire, without having touched 
 John with it. 
 
 And now he climbed and stood upon the table, the 
 roll of wire in his hand. The three lanterns hung from 
 the ceiling by hooks near to open spaces in the board- 
 ing of the ceiling, through which the candles were 
 placed in the lanterns. Over one of these hooks Sin- 
 wan threw a length of wire ; and over another an- 
 other length of wire. The hooks were near to each 
 other. 
 
 With one end of each of the two pieces of wire he 
 made a half-loop ; and at once he hurried to the fire, 
 snatched up the red-hot letter A with the pincers, and 
 hung it upon one of the loops ; then the S, and hung 
 it upon the other. Their weight was sufficient to make 
 the wires run through their supporting hooks ; and they 
 fell upon the marble floor. 
 
 Sin-wan now gathered the other two ends of wire and 
 secured them to a point in the wall, having drawn the 
 two letters some inches from the ground. In his hand 
 he held a piece of bamboo, and with this, standing in 
 a line with the wires, he struck first one of the letters, 
 then the other, gently forward. 
 
 The two letters began to swing to and fro through 
 the chamber, with uneven motions, one this way, one 
 that. And right in the line of their movement sat 
 John Hardy. 
 
 It depended entirely upon the force of the propul- 
 sions which Sin-wan imparted to the letters with the 
 bamboo, whether or no they touched the naked chest 
 of the bound victim. 
 
 Sometimes they touched, and left behind them, as 
 they swung back, a whiff of smoke. Sometimes they 
 touched twice in succession, one, or both. Some- 
 times they were only expected — with a shrinking 
 horror, and whistling breath, — and did not touch 
 at all. 
 
 It vrds a monstrous torture — the worst he had yet 
 ^3 
 
194 The Yellow Danger 
 
 suffered— this coquetry of pain— these fleeting, incal- 
 culable kisses of the hot and dancing letters. For 
 every kiss — a whiff of smoke. 
 
 Let us draw a veil over his agonies. His mouth was 
 wide, bawling — his eyes straining from their sockets ; 
 and at the tension of every fiber of his soul and body, 
 his hair whitened — ^his skin grew sere — he lived through 
 many a year — he became an old man. 
 
 It was some twenty minutes before the see-saw of 
 the swinging wires ceased. Sin-wan hurriedly left his 
 post, ran toward John, and bound his eyes with a cloth. 
 What happened within the next five minutes John did 
 not know. He strained his ear to detect a sound, 
 though he kept on mechanically bawling in a lower 
 key. But he he9.rd nothing. In reality. Sin-wan was 
 reheating the metals to redness ; and his noiselessness 
 had for its motive the fact that he wished to take the 
 victim by surprise. 
 
 When the two bits of metal were of a bright glowing 
 red, he passed one limb of the pincers inside the top 
 of the A, and the other limb inside the upper curve of 
 the S, and, holding them so together, at once trotted 
 eagerly and silently upon John. 
 
 A beastly scream broke forth, wondrously like the 
 cry of a cat in the extreme of physical anguish. Sin- 
 wan had suddenly clapped the hot pieces upon Hardy's 
 right breast, and held them there. The metal sank, 
 as into a bed of soft luxury, into the wasting flesh, 
 flzzling forth a steaming smoke and reeking stench. . . . 
 
 At the exact moment when his spirit fainted, and he 
 lost the sense of pain, Foo-chee and Ah-lin met in one 
 long embrace. 
 
 Toward this they had been drawn and swept for days, 
 and now, as the poets say, the two trembling dewdrops 
 had trembled into one. 
 
 It was outside the walls of Pekin, and all the mem- 
 bers of Foo-chee's and Ah-lin's company had swarmed 
 back into the town ; for the drilling of the drilled was 
 oyer, And only these two were left. 
 
Sin-Wan 195 
 
 And Foo-chee said : 
 
 " Ah-lin." 
 
 And Ah-lin said : 
 
 "Foo-chee." 
 
 And Foo-chee said : 
 
 " I am feeling happy, Ah-lin ; for we are here where 
 none can see lis, and the moon which is rising there is 
 pleasant to see, though her face is round." 
 
 And Ah-lin said : 
 
 " Her face is broad in a laugh of joy, Foo-chee ! 
 And do you like a woman with a broad face, Foo-chee, 
 or with a long ? " 
 
 "I like a woman with a long face, Ah-lin," said 
 Foo-chee, "like yours, Ah-lin." 
 
 And Ah-lin replied : 
 
 "I am not feeling at all unhappy, Foo-chee." 
 
 And it was then that the two dewdrops trembled 
 into one in a long embrace. 
 
 A really long one : for it began a minute before the 
 closing of the gates of Pekin, and it lasted a minute 
 after it. And had they had any idea of the real state 
 of affairs, they would have felt like two very shattered 
 and dislocated dewdrops indeed. 
 
 It was Ah-lin who woke first from her trance, and 
 she woke from it with a start that made her pigtail 
 wriggle, and she whispered an awful pallid word into 
 the ear of Foo-chee, and together they started towards 
 the gates. 
 
 They were shut out, they were hopelessly late. 
 Pekin refused them. They must spend the long night 
 without. 
 
 Ah-lin had an instinct that this meant death for her 
 beloved, perhaps for herself also. 
 
 They stood hand-in-hand and the upper corners of 
 their slanting eyes went very high indeed. 
 
 Still, a whole night hand-in-hand with the beloved is 
 not nothing. They walked away with a happiness 
 troubled, but not destroyed. 
 
 An hour later Sin-wan and Ni-ching-tang were ran- 
 sacking a certain area of Pekin, one for his son, the 
 other for Ah-lin and her lover, but separately, unsus- 
 
196 The Yellow Danger 
 
 pected by each other. As for Sin-wan, his knife was 
 bright and white. 
 
 "Oh, where is Foo-chee ?" said Ni-ching-tang to 
 himself. " Is my son dead ? " 
 
 The suspicion grew upon him, it became a certainty. 
 He hurried back to the Imperial City, and made in- 
 quiries for Sin-wan at the prison. Sin-wan, he was 
 told, had obtained a scroll to pass in and out of the 
 sacred precincts at any hour of that night. 
 
 Soh ! Sin-wan was abroad then ; and if Sin-wan 
 was abroad, then it must be that Foo-chee was dead. 
 
 ]S"i-ching-tang went from the prison straight to the 
 palace of Yen How, and he descended into the vaults 
 wherein was his sleeping-room, and he held the reek- 
 ing flame of a saucer-lamp of earthenware over a box, 
 and into the depths of the box he dived. He brought 
 up two blue phials and a broken joss-stick ; one of the 
 phials contained a poison, and the other a non-poison- 
 ous drug ; and this last he put into his bosom. 
 
 Then he re-clasped the box ; and at once he fell up- 
 on his knees, bowing his body and folded hands up and 
 down, touching the cold plaster with his forehead. 
 And from his lips came groans of prayer. And he 
 burnt incense to the gods. 
 
 Then he went up again, and out from the Imperial 
 precincts. He, too, was provided that night with a 
 scroll of permit. 
 
 Onwards he went, walking very fast. And as he 
 treaded the intricacies of Pekin, he was engaged in a 
 sbrange continuous effort of mind : the effort to recall 
 all the English words he had ever known. 
 
 Once, long ago, he had served in the kitchen of an 
 English family in Canton, and had then been quite a 
 master of pigeon English. But now he found his vocab- 
 ulary wondrously small. On he went, cudgeling his 
 brains, through the dark and swarming vastness of the 
 city._ 
 
 Ni-ching-tang was a great man, if patience alone can 
 make a man great, for he searched all that night for 
 Sin-wan, and did not find him. So was Sin-wan a 
 great man, if patience can make a man great, for he 
 
Sin-Wan 197 
 
 searched all that night for Foo-chee, and did not find 
 him. 
 
 But towards the break of day, as he sat drinking 
 sanishu in a den. Sin- wan had an idea. He was a 
 drunkard, and could be inspired by drink ; nor was he 
 now sober. His idea was that Ah-lin and Foo-chee 
 were not in the city at all, but without it. 
 
 He went back once more to the dwelling of Ah-lin 
 to inquire if she had not yet come home. And then, 
 hearing that she had not, he said : 
 
 " Fearing me, they have fled from the city together, 
 and are now at Tung-chow. To Tung-chow, there- 
 fore, I will go. For the edge of my knife has the itch 
 this night, till Foo-chee scratch it for me." 
 
 But it happened that while Sin- wan was crying aloud 
 from the street to inquire for Ah-lin, Ni-ching-tang had 
 come to inquire also whether one Ah-lin was there. 
 And as the day was prone to break, Ni-ching-tang, far 
 behind Sin-wan, was cautiously shadowing him towards 
 the city-gate which leads out upon the Tung-chow road. 
 
 Sin-wan waited there twenty minutes, and when the 
 gates opened, he passed swiftly through under the 
 bellies of the crowding camels, the gall of malice and 
 yellow jealousy rankling bitterly in his jaundiced soul. 
 
 To kill — to hew, and slice, and stab — a ravening 
 hunger for this red breakfast was upon Sin-wan. He 
 had had a comfortless night, a night of dark thought 
 and impulse, and the hot s«tos7jm was talking hot things 
 to his head. 
 
 And surely the gods were on his side — anxious for 
 nothing that morning were they but how to provide a 
 red breakfast for Sin-wan ! See how they draw up the 
 curtains of night for him ; and now the day has that 
 very-early-morning grayness for which one can find no 
 adjective to express its utter yawniness ; and now, fusi 
 as it is light enough, something makes Sin-wan turn 
 his head to the left — and he sees. 
 
 But poor Ni-ching-tang is struggling frantically 
 among the mules and camels, which press inwards and 
 outwards through the just-opened gateway ; and he has 
 got jammed there, and the man is nearly mad in hig 
 
198 The Yellow Danger 
 
 agonized struggle to be free ; for Sin-wan has passed 
 through, and he has lost him. 
 
 Foo-chee, interlaced with Ah-lin, was fast asleep, as 
 was also Ah-lin, they half-propped against the outer 
 surface of the wall, between two buttresses, not very 
 far from the gates. 
 
 Sin-wan walked up to them, smiling, lest one or the 
 other should be awake, and see him ; and the knife- 
 handle was in his palm, and the blade up his wide 
 sleeves. And when he was right over them, and saw 
 how they breathed heavily, and how the confidence of 
 old love was in their careless embrace, he drove the 
 knife first into Ah-lin with a loud breath, and she sighed, 
 and died. And then, with loud breaths, he drove it 
 several times into Foo-chee, and he sighed, and died. 
 And then into Ah-lin again, and then into Foo-chee 
 again, he drove his knife. 
 
 " Dog's gall," he said, as he turned away, and found 
 himself face to face with Ni-ching-tang. 
 
 " What, Sin- wan, is that you ? " said Ni-ching-tang ; 
 " oh, /can see what you have been after. Ho ! ho !" 
 
 " Those are they I told you of," said Sin-wan. "I 
 have done what I said I would do, Ni-ching-tang." 
 
 " So I see. Sin-wan ! Well, it is the only way — the 
 only way." 
 
 " As for you, you will tell no one, Ni-ching-tang ? " 
 
 " Poh ! not I. For why should I ? I who have 
 known you these months, and the two dead not at all. 
 Phew ! see how they lie^ — still embraced. Are you 
 sure they are well dead. Sin-wan ? " 
 
 " Oh, well dead." 
 
 "They should be. The man — he has one, two, 
 three, four, five stabs — yes, five — ugly wounds, too. 
 The knife went deep each time. What was his name ? 
 — Foo-chee ? Ah, well, no more Foo-chee now — no 
 more Foo-Chee." 
 
 " Let us be going, Ni-ching-tang. For watching 
 dead dogs is not pleasant to the corners of the 
 eyeballs. 
 
 " But I feel pleasure while looking upon them. 
 Sin- wan ; and the middle of the eye is not offended by 
 
Sin-Wan i99 
 
 the sight of them embracing together — young things, 
 too. But you leer obliquely upon them, Sin-wan, 
 having slain them, through the corners of your eye- 
 balls, and so receive disagreeable feelings from their 
 sight." 
 
 "Still, let us be going — let us be moving away, 
 Ni-ching-tang." 
 
 "Well, as you wish it. Sin-wan, let us be moving. 
 But they lie very well together, Foo-chee and Ah-lin 
 — Foo-chee, with his five gashed wounds, and her arm 
 behind his neck. A young man, too, he seems to me 
 — a seller of incense-sticks, I think you said. No 
 more incense-sticks now for Foo-chee — and no more 
 Foo-chee now at all. Sin-wan. Well, well — well, well. 
 It was Foo-chee and Ah-lin ; and now it is no Ah-lin 
 any more, and no Foo-chee at all. Five stabs, too, 
 and ugly wounds all. One would have done the work, 
 but he got five, well home. Oh, they are well dead. 
 Sin-wan ! — have no fear. But Foo-chee has no father, 
 I hope, no brother, to avenge his death. Sin-wan ? " 
 
 "I care not." 
 
 " With horrid tortures. Sin-wan ? " 
 
 " Poh ! he was a brotherless dog." 
 
 "Well if that is so . . . But your walk is staggery, 
 and your eye wanders. We will have a morning 
 drink together in a drink -place which I know, and 
 then to the day's work. ..." 
 
 They re-entered the gates. A reaction had come 
 now upon Sin-wan ; his nerves were unstrung from 
 their high tension, and the samshu swam stalely in his 
 turgid brain. He followed Ni-ching-tang as a lamb to 
 the slaughter. 
 
 Ni-ching-tang led him down to a foul, dark cellar, 
 where drink was placed before them. And into one of 
 the two calabash-cups Ni-chin-tang poured a liquid 
 from a blue phial. 
 
 Sin-wan had thrown himself sullenly upon a plank- 
 projection near the black-earthen floor, and Ni-ching- 
 tang handed him the draught. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 " THE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY " 
 
 The draught was non-poisonous ; but Sin- wan had 
 hardly drunk half the contents of the cup when he 
 fell back, fast asleep. 
 
 And now, when no eye but God's could see him, 
 the malice of a fiend worked and twisted in the 
 face of Ni-ching-tang. He took Sin-wan's knife, 
 and he ran the edge of the blade gently, almost play- 
 fully, along Sin-wan's throat, and over his face, 
 and round the roots of his pigtail, reyeling in his 
 sense of power, wallowing in that sweet lust of cruelty 
 which brings to the Chinaman the same keen de- 
 light which bodily forms of enjoyment bring to the 
 Western. 
 
 He ran the knife-edge along Sin-wan's skin ; but he 
 had not the least intention of hurting him. The 
 pleasure of self-restraint with which he kept his itching 
 fingers from violence was exquisite. 
 
 The Chinese theory of vengeance is not, like the 
 Hebrew, " an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth ; " 
 it is, " two eyes for an eye, and thirty-two teeth for a 
 tooth." 
 
 Ni-ching-tang could easily have killed Sin-wan, as 
 he slept there ; but, had he done so, he would have 
 despised himself as a weak and bungling boor. 
 
 For vengeance to be complete and satisfying, the vic- 
 tim must know who it is that is taking vengeance upon 
 him, and why he is doing it ; and the avenger must 
 know that the victim knows. Under these conditions, 
 the longer the period which the vengeance occupies in 
 
 aoo 
 
" The Hundred and Eighty " 201 
 
 its accomplishment, the sweeter the cud of satisfaction 
 which the avenger chews. 
 
 Ni-ching-tang intended that, for the murder of his 
 son. Sin-wan should suffer weeks of torture before 
 death. And although it was beyond his power to in- 
 flict those tortures with his own hand (as he would 
 have wished), yet he knew that it was easy for him to 
 cause them to be inflicted by hands stronger than 
 his own. 
 
 He did not lose much time in the self-indulgence of 
 running the knife-edge over Sin-wan's throat. Pres- 
 ently he put down the knife, and he dived his hand in- 
 to Sin-wan's bosom. From thence he took out Sin- 
 wan's permit to pass in and out of the Imperial gates, 
 and also an Imperial Mandate ordering the Keeper of 
 the Prison Keys to deliver a certain key to the pre- 
 senter of the Mandate. 
 
 With these two rolls in his own bosom, Ni-ching- 
 tang ascended the narrow earthen steps, and at the 
 entrance above met the keeper of the drink-place 
 yawning his eyes into invisibility against the door. 
 Ni-ching-tang told him that a man, holding position in 
 the Imperial precincts, was asleep below, and did not 
 wish to be roused. 
 
 "Let him sleep: he will wake himself," said Ni- 
 ching-tang. 
 
 Then he sallied forth. He twisted at a steady trot 
 among a number of alleys, and stopped at a gaudy 
 bamboo-umbrella booth where an early-morning mer- 
 chant was lounging desolately. Ni-ching-tang spoke 
 some hurried words in the merchant's ear, and the 
 merchant nodded, listening, then disappeared down a 
 court, and in three minutes returned, leading a mule 
 by a rope. 
 
 M-ching-tang scrambled on to the back of the mule, 
 tossed his hand in token of thanks, drove his heels 
 into the outstanding ribs, and went galloping away. 
 
 He traversed in this way two lengths of intervening 
 street, and, still galloping, passed through the city 
 gate which he had lately entered with Sin-wan. He 
 turned the mule's head eastward toward Tung-chow. 
 
202 The Yellow Danger 
 
 Tung-chow, as we have said, is a village about four, 
 or possibly five, miles from Pekin. It is, as it were, 
 the " port " of Pekin, for it stands on the Peiho, Pekin 
 itself not being a river-city. 
 
 At Tung-chow, M-chin-tang had a nephew. And this 
 nephew was the owner of three river-boats, two of them 
 fitted with junk-sails, the third a mule boat, all three 
 traders down the Peiho with Tientsin in millet, rice, 
 and barley. In twenty minutes Ni-ching-tang, at the 
 river-side, was talking to his nephew from the mule's 
 back. And M-ching-tang said : 
 
 " Which of the three boats are here, Li-kien ?" 
 
 And Li-kien replied : 
 
 " The mule-boat is here, and also the TaJcu, which 
 lies there where you see." 
 
 " The Taku has a junk-sail, Li-kien ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Then I will buy the Tahu from you." 
 
 " I cannot sell the Tahii, Ni-ching-tang." 
 
 " It is a lie, Li-kien ; for you can, and you will. At 
 the waning of the next moon I will pay you for her 
 three hundred taels, which is a good reward, in silver 
 pieces. For your cousin, Foo-ehee, is dead — and there 
 will be no more Foo-chee any more now at all, Li-kien ; 
 for he has been murdered by five stabs, and ugly wounds 
 all. And it is necessary, in order that his s\d,yei' should 
 die with horrid tortures, that you sell me your boat, the 
 Takii, without much talking. And now you see that 
 you told a lie in saying that you could not, Li-kien." 
 
 " It was a lie," admitted Li-kien. 
 
 " And the part which you shall take in avenging 
 your kinsman," went on 1\ i-ching-tang, "shall be this, 
 Li-kien. You will put on board the Taku rice, and 
 spirit, and water, and fuel, and a rudder-oar, and 
 everything which a man may want for a voyage down 
 the Peiho, and a voyage over the sea, during a week, 
 or more. This you will do. And this also : you will 
 wait here near the Taku, all the forenoon if it is to 
 be so, till you see a young man come riding on a mule ; 
 he will be wrapped up from head to foot in a great 
 mantle, go that not much of his face, and nothing of 
 
"The Hundred and Eighty" 203 
 
 his head, shall be seen. His face shall be yellow like 
 a Chinaman's, but give a keen look into his eyes, and 
 you will see that he is no Chinaman, but an English 
 dog. You will put him on board the TaJcu, Li-kien, 
 and you will hoist the sail for him, for he is without 
 strength, and you will send him on his way alone. 
 And, as you send him on his way, burn an incense, that 
 he may go to his journey's end in safety ; for, if he be 
 recaptured. Sin-wan, who slew your cousin, will be 
 tortured, but not killed ; but, if he escape wholly, then 
 Sin-wan will be killed after he has been horribly tor- 
 tured." 
 
 Li-kien pondered, and then objected : 
 
 " But one man in the Taku, he must needs be cast 
 away, unless he be " 
 
 "He is a sailor, Li-kien, and do not fear. And be 
 sure you place in the Taku a drawing of China, and 
 instruments such as are used by seafaring men as the 
 sign-posts of the ocean. For he can doubtless read 
 such things ; and it is necessary for him to arrive at 
 Kiao-Chau, where he will meet with his countrymen, 
 and be slain with them when they are slain : but none 
 will know that it is Tie ; and Sin-wan will die. The 
 mule you will keep till I send for it." 
 
 Immediately the old Chinaman turned the mule's 
 head, and galloped back to Pekin. 
 
 All his movements now were characterized by an 
 intense haste, and yet by a certain calm which did 
 not forsake him. He had much to do, and yet he did 
 not stop to think of anything ; he did not forget any- 
 thing ; everything seemed prearranged. 
 
 Within the prison he was unknown, and he had the 
 Imperial stamp, which opens every door, in the form 
 of Sin-wan's papers. 
 
 When he presented himself before John Hardy he 
 had in his hands pigments, costume, and everything 
 ready for the necessary disguise. 
 
 At a new face Hardy started — for we see the finger 
 of God where it is not, and where it is we see it not. 
 John anticipated now some new torture, to be carried 
 out by a still more subtle agent than Sin-wan, 
 
204 The Yellow Danger 
 
 As for Ni-ching-tang, he spoke not a word, simplj 
 doing his will swiftly on the impotent captive. He 
 painted his face, he dressed him. And all the time he 
 was cudgeling his brains to. remember all the English 
 words he needed to tell Hardy what he was to do. 
 
 He found, however, that there was one fact of the 
 situation which all but balked his plans. Hardy was 
 weaker than Ni-ching-tang had counted upon. If 
 Hardy's mind was in as feeble a state as his body, it 
 seemed certain that Sin-wan would not die. 
 
 He took the dazed captive under the arms, support- 
 ing him, and half -dragged him forth. And while John 
 Hardy was still wondering to what new experience of 
 pain he was being hurried, he was in the open air. 
 And still Ki-ching-tang spoke no word. 
 
 With Ni-ching-Lang's own permit, and with Sin- 
 wan's, the two passed beyond the Imperial precincts, 
 Ni-ching-tang lifting after him the lagging steps of 
 Hardy. What was happening to him John could not 
 dream ; but yonder, beyond doubt, was the sky, and 
 there the sailing clouds, and under them a breeze of 
 heaven which went wandering gladly towards the sea. 
 
 It was not possible that he was free ? He did not 
 believe it. In his profound distrust of heaven and of 
 earth, he denied it. He was mad again — it was a new 
 torture — the most devilish of all. 
 
 But when he found himself beyond the gates — and 
 there around him spread the wide plain — and there, 
 tethered to a tree drowsed the waiting mule — and 
 there above him was the vast vault, and the free and 
 wandering airs — what could he think ? A strange, 
 low, whimpering sound— as feeble as can be imagined 
 — as thin as the plaintive whine of a very old and senile 
 man — came from his lips, and two forbidden tears 
 rolled down his cheeks. 
 
 He was wrapped in a long robe of soiled silk, which 
 covered the hat of straw on his head and descended to 
 his feet, hiding his rags beneath ; and on his feet Ni- 
 ching-tang had put felt slippers. Thus attired he was 
 pushed and maneuvered by the Chinaman to the back of 
 the mule. The rope was put into his hand ; and it 
 
" The Hundred and Eighty " 205 
 
 was then that, for the first time, Ni-ching-tang spoke 
 a word. 
 
 Ni-chiag-tang had need of his whole English vocabu- 
 lary to express now all he had to say. For quite half 
 an hour he went on talking, and it was evident that 
 the scheme which he was putting into execution must 
 have been long meditated ; for his instructions to 
 Hardy how to secure his safe arrival at Kiao-Chau were 
 as minute as possible. In his uncouth and tentative 
 English he gave some idea of the formation of the har- 
 bor ; and he also spoke of the position in which the 
 stranded IpMgenia lay, pointing out to Hardy that the 
 cruiser would serve as the chief landmark to warn him 
 of his destination. He gave John his own name and 
 that of his nephew. Finally, he handed John a sharp 
 knife with which to commit suicide in case of recap- 
 ture ; and he ended by saying : 
 
 "Am got you anything to question me ?" 
 
 Yes : John had something to ask. He said : 
 
 " Yes — one question." 
 
 And he waited a minute before he asked it. 
 
 " I owe nothing to Yen How, do I, for my present 
 freedom ?" 
 
 He repeated the question thrice, and no sooner had 
 Ni-ching-tang gathered its meaning, than instantly his 
 head went shaking in a series of vigorous " No's." 
 
 " No, no, no," he went ; " you no goee believe that, 
 mind ! You getee catch — getee catch ! Yen How 
 eatchee you — sharp — killee you ! " 
 
 Good ; all this, then, was not due to any clemency of 
 Yen How's. Even then—a.i that moment of feebleness, 
 when he was still hardly beyond his prison-walls — John 
 Hardy shrank from hearing that there existed anything 
 good, or human, or redeeming in the Cliinese character. 
 He was desperately and clandestinely unwilling to hear 
 it. Some dim and far-off instinct even then told him 
 that it would be necessary for him to go on believing 
 this bad race to be wholly bad, wholly of hell ; and that 
 it was in order that he might so believe it, that the 
 Chinese Iron had been ordained to enter into his 
 soul. 
 
2o6 The Yellow Danger 
 
 But, with a certain reluctanoe, he ventured upon 
 yet another question. He said : 
 
 "And you, sir — what is your motive for setting me 
 free ? — Mercy ? You want poor Englishman goee 
 free ? — Or you havee some other reason ? " 
 
 Ni-ching-tang smiled at this simplicity of the little 
 foreign devil, when the meaning of the question entered 
 his head. He said : 
 
 "Poll! you no troublee head for that. Me havee 
 other reasons. But that nothing for you." 
 
 Good again ! he owed nothing to them. 
 
 Ni-ching-tang pointed along a road, and the mule 
 moved. The Chinaman, whose presence in the Im- 
 perial precincts was nearly due, stood a while and 
 looked after the drooping figure on the mule's back. 
 Then he re-entered the city to arrange for the burial 
 of his son. 
 
 John occupied two hours in accomplishing the four 
 miles to Tung-chow, and, during this time, thrice 
 fainted from sheer powerlessness. 
 
 But on the banks of the Peiho, Li-kien was duly 
 waiting, and the Tahu was in perfect readiness to re- 
 ceive her strange white master. By the time the alarm 
 had spread through the Imperial precincts that, by the 
 carelessness of his jailer, the white prisoner had es- 
 caped. Hardy was in the middle of the Peiho, already 
 some miles below Tung-chow. 
 
 In a wondrously short time, as the boat glided down 
 the river, he began to lift his head, to observe, to 
 reason, to purpose. How large was the world to him ! 
 His wan eye turned whitely upward, and dwelt upon 
 the sky ; one great sob thronged in his bosom for exit 
 from his choking throat ; his face worked. 
 
 The boat was a bluff craft with an erection aft, mak- 
 ing her there a kind of house-boat, and with stones 
 laid round a slab of iron, for cooking, for'ard. The 
 junk sail could quite easily be hoisted and adjusted by 
 a single man, and gave to the boat, with a fair wind 
 and stream, a speed of some seven knots. In a land 
 where carts are driven over land by means of wind and 
 sail, as in China, the navigation of the seas and rivers 
 
"The Hundred and Eighty" 207 
 
 is in a condition far from elementary. John found 
 his craft pliant and ready, and the bulge of the up- 
 ward-tapering lug-sail was fine to his eyes. An ex- 
 hilaration of mood, ecstatic, high, grew upon him. 
 The day was broad and clear, and busy with breezes. 
 On either hand spread endless flat-lands, already sprout- 
 ing with the tender green of barley, rice and millet. 
 The river was all but deserted. 
 
 There was an aspect, not of earth, but of Paradise, 
 in the bright and balmy world. Henceforth — and he 
 knew it — he would have little to do with joy, and soft 
 emotion, and the throe of genial feeling ; for the gentle 
 heart within him was turned to stone, or something 
 resembling stone. But for the present he was too 
 weak in body and mind to resist the charm of the wide 
 and placid landscape, and the feeling of freedom which 
 it brought. His heart was still not quite a dead 
 thing. 
 
 Yet, let us record two facts. First, that John Hardy, 
 from boyhood, had been of an intensely religious 
 nature ; that he had had a somewhat crabbed habit of 
 reading methodically one chapter each morning from 
 the Bible ; and that his affectionate soul had overflowed 
 in affection for his Maker also. And secondly, let us 
 state, that on this morning of his deliverance he 
 several times resisted and repelled the impulse which 
 rose in him to give thanks to God. He refused. So 
 much had Yen How changed him. The boy had 
 hardened into something more (or something less) than 
 a man. 
 
 Midway between Tung-chow and Tientsin, he left 
 the rudder-oar and searched the boat. Li-kien, ap- 
 parently, had forgotten nothing ; there was food and 
 drink in plenty, a pot, a compass of Western make, 
 and a curious instrument, which he assumed to be a 
 contrivance for taking the sun's altitude, but which 
 he could not at once understand. 
 
 He made a fire, for which the materials were at hand, 
 put on some rice to boil, and resumed his place at the 
 oar. 
 
 Now and again a painted junk passed him, toiling up 
 
2o8 The Yellow Danger 
 
 the river ; but he was not even at the pains to hide 
 himself, as Ni-ching-tang had warned him, so sure 
 was he of safety. 
 
 At sundown he glided between the central space, 
 then open, of the bridge of boats across the Peiho at 
 Tientsin. At eleven o'clock, under a calm and radiant 
 night, he had Taku on his starboard beam ; and soon 
 he was in the open sea of the Gulf of Peohili. 
 
 Feeling drowsy, about fifteen miles from land, he 
 shipped his oar, lowered his sail, and went to sleep. 
 
 The point of his destination was Kiao-Chau, once 
 German, then very much English. 
 
 Here, seven weeks before, one dark midnight, a 
 hundred and eighty English sailors had beached the 
 battered second-class cruiser IpJiigenia, and landed. 
 
 The subsequent adventures of these men, when 
 properly written, would fill volumes. At present we 
 can merely glance at them. 
 
 At the moment of landing, the Englishmen were no 
 longer wholly in the dark as to the real state of things 
 in China. The absence of white men both at Che- 
 mulpo and Seoul, of which they knew, if not very sug- 
 gestive in itself, was very suggestive when no explana- 
 tion could be found of the fiagless ships, which had 
 chased them, except the one that these ships were 
 Japanese. 
 
 The possibility, therefore, that they would be mas- 
 sacred on Chinese territory occurred to them ; and their 
 object in coming to Kiao-Chau, which was not very 
 remote from the sinking ship, was to throw themselves 
 upon the protection of the Germans, who, as they sup- 
 posed, occupied the forts of Kiao-Chau. 
 
 Previous to this, the Germans had very strongly for- 
 tified the harbor and its approaches. Its waters were 
 thick with submarine mines, and two strong forts at 
 each of the claws of land which formed the entrance, 
 together with one on the low -lying island in the 
 basin of the harbor, made the position one of con- 
 siderable strength. 
 
 The harbor is about six miles long, and lies N. by 
 W. , and S. by E. Around it, in general, is high 
 
"The Hundred and Eighty" 209 
 
 ground, save at the northeastern entrance, where an 
 area of sloping meadowland rises gradually to the 
 higher levels ol the inner entourage of the basin. And 
 it was here that the IpUgefiia, then on the point of 
 sinking, was beached. 
 
 Fifty yards away, on the brow of a slope, stood 
 the N. E. fort. Though the night was dark, and rain 
 fell heavily, its outlines could be made out. 
 
 The blue- jackets held a sort of informal synod on 
 the sands. There was among them only one staff-offi- 
 cer, a lieutenant called Edwards, who, however, was 
 wounded in the breast, and in a kind of daze. Hap- 
 pily, all the special hands were in evidence except the 
 surgeon, these including the chief engineer, engineer, 
 and assistant engineer, tUe gunner, the boatswain, the 
 carpenter, with the stokers, and all engine-room hands. 
 Beside these there were a hundred and fifty blue- 
 jackets. 
 
 It was decided to make straight for the N. E. fort, 
 and though no one present could talk German, a vol- 
 unteer committee of ten men, headed by the chief 
 engineer, a Mr. Murray, set off toward the rising 
 ground. 
 
 But these were careless watchmen, these Germans ! 
 Where was the sentry, and the challenge, and the 
 soldier's stalk, and the rattle of the butt-end ? No. 
 where was there a light to be seen through all the 
 dripping and desolate night. 
 
 The ten men reached the fort to find it as solitary as 
 a desert. They called, and the hills echoed their voice, 
 and through the open portal the night-bird fled and 
 screamed. They passed within the gateway between 
 the two outer bastions, and into the courtyard, and 
 thence onward through every open door. They saw 
 one dead Chinaman sitting in the embrasure of a win- 
 dow, grinning in old decay. But otherwise there was 
 no sign of any struggle. At all events, there were no 
 Germans there. Only the guns remained, and some 
 ammunition, and some stores, but not a single small- 
 arm. 
 
 What to do now ? It only remained to visit the 
 14 
 
2IO The Yellow Danger 
 
 S. W. fort, and the fort on the island. And these they 
 found in the same condition. 
 
 The Chinese had gained possession of them hy kill- 
 ing the unsuspecting sentries in the middle of the 
 night and seizing, almost bloodlessly, the rest of the 
 garrison, so to speak, as they slept in their beds. The 
 captive soldiers were distributed over China for the 
 celebration of Yen How's Sabbath of blood ; and the 
 forts had then, for the time being, been deserted. 
 
 There remained no further doubt in the minds of 
 the British blue-jackets as to their own fate. But they 
 were resoved to sell their lives dearly. 
 
 The Iphigenia had still a steam-pinnace uninjured, 
 and in this they took turns in plying backward and 
 forward between the ship and the island all the night, 
 landing everything in the way of stores, small arms, 
 and ammunition which might prove useful. 
 
 The gunner, Shillitoe, counseled the occupation of 
 all the three forts ; but Murray and the rest, fearing 
 the result of a division of the little army, gave their 
 voice for a concentration of forces upon the island- 
 fort, on account not only of its disconnection with the 
 mainland, but also of the fact that it appeared to be 
 the most powerful. 
 
 This plan was somewhat unfortunate, because the 
 island was uncultivated and furnished no other food 
 than a scanty supply of wild orris and cassava roots, 
 though there were three springs of rather brackish 
 water. Moreover, at about sunrise, the movements of 
 the pinnace were observed by some peasants on the 
 mainland, and shortly afterward there was a consider- 
 able commotion to the east and north of the bay. 
 Though the work of the pinnace was not half com- 
 pleted, it was seen that no further voyage must be 
 attempted, nor had any effort as yet been made to 
 spike the guns of the other two forts. At about 
 seven, these two opened fire simultaneously upon the 
 island fort. 
 
 At this period China was awake, or at least had 
 opened her early-morning eyelids ; she had tasted 
 blood, and every Chinaman was feeling the thrill of 
 
" The Hundred and Eighty " 211 
 
 that electrical cobweb spreading over the land, of 
 which the brain of Yen How was the center. The 
 artillery combat which now commenced between the 
 island-fort and the others was fought not more obsti- 
 nately on one side than on the other. 
 
 But the fixed batteries of the outer posts had not 
 been constructed for inward attack, while the inner 
 had been constructed for outward attack. By noon, 
 the two outer fortresses were in ruins. But the poor 
 Iphigenia also, by which the castaways set much store, 
 had been broken by the wanton Chinese almost into 
 nothingness. 
 
 And now commenced a series of strenuous and ad- 
 venturous days and nights for these one hundred and 
 eighty men — or rather one hundred and seventy-nine, 
 for on the next day Edwards died. They had hardly 
 any food ; it was necessary to get it, and to get it in the 
 teeth of the armed Chinese, directed by Japanese. 
 And they got it. 
 
 Each night had its own tale of brilliant sortie, or 
 crafty ruse, or ticklish enterprise, or cautiously-pre- 
 meditated plan. One by one their numbers lessened — 
 they became a hundred and seventy — a hundred and 
 sixty. But those who remained went on furnishing 
 materials for a new Odyssey ; in two weeks they were 
 the most exquisitely-trained body of men in the 
 world ; every day added to them a new supremacy of 
 discipline and culture ; eye, and hand, and brain were 
 in it ; they could twist through the grass like snakes ; 
 could climb like Alpini ; could see in the dark ; could 
 shoot like machines ; could plan in deliberative council 
 like statesmen. In seven weeks they were a living 
 monument of the adaptability to every possible condi- 
 tion of life of the nimble English race. 
 
 JBut their Odyssey lacked Odysseus. It was Hamlet 
 without the hero. 
 
 To do anything of much greater importance than the 
 procuring of their food, they needed a Leader ; and a 
 very decent Leader indeed was on the way to join 
 them. 
 
CHAPTEE XX 
 
 " WHAT A FACE ! " 
 
 DuElBTG the afternoon of the seTenth day from Tung- 
 chow, John Hardy, hugging the coast, arrived in the 
 locality of Kiao-Chau harbor. The solitary helmsman 
 had made a good voyage, being familiar v^ith the 
 ocean-winds and their moods, and having an old com- 
 radeship with the brine and spray. However, he had 
 several times got wet, and every few minutes now was 
 shaken by a moist cough, alternated by vomitings due 
 to a constant sickness of the stomach. 
 
 He was being wafted along by a gentle breeze, when 
 he spied a portion of a ship's bow above the thin, in- 
 audible fringe of foam which lined the coast afar. 
 And at once, noting his course, he put out farther to 
 sea, and lay to, ten miles from land. 
 
 He guessed from the fragmentary look of the wreck 
 that the Chinese had been busy with the English sail- 
 ors of whom he had been told. At eleven o'clock, he 
 ran in for the harbor. Unfortunately, all he knew 
 about it was its locality. Ni-ching-tang, indeed, had 
 told him that the Englishmen were upon an island ; 
 but when he entered the basin he saw no island, for in 
 the darkness and distance the contours of the island, 
 which, on the east, is near to the mainland, seemed 
 part of it. 
 
 The moon was young. Just rising ; it was a night of 
 stars ; things near were visible, things remote lay in a 
 mystery of shadow. 
 
 Hardy ran his bow upon a gravelly bottom near the 
 east entrance, intending to mount the rising ground 
 212 
 
"What a Face!" 213 
 
 and search for the island. For what he knew, he 
 might be already on it. 
 
 In this way he came to the east fort, now mostly in 
 ruins. He passed through a broken arch, and saw 
 guns lying at random in the court. He examined the 
 battlemented square, and entered what remained of 
 the heavily-armed works. But there was nowhere a 
 human being. 
 
 His search was conducted with extreme caution. 
 With the same care he descended to his boat, and 
 made for the opposite side, where he saw a stonework 
 outline against the sky. Here the ascent was steeper ; 
 he scrambled up a pebbly footpath, scraped through 
 some scrub, and entered the fortification. There was 
 less marked destruction on this side. He examined 
 boUwerkswehre and glacis, aussenwerk and donjon, and 
 saw no one. Then he entered an inner court, where 
 was a low building with small barred windows : bar- 
 racks and mess-room. And in three of the windows 
 near the ground he saw a light. 
 
 On his hands and knees he crept toward one of the 
 openings. As he drew near he could hear a sound of 
 laughter, and some one protesting in harsh gibberish. 
 He knew now that he was among Chinese. But he 
 continued to advance, eager to acquire some sort of 
 knowledge of the facts of his situation. He reached 
 the window, lifted his head and peeped in. 
 
 The room which he saw was long and surrounded by 
 beds at regular intervals. On most of these lay China- 
 men asleep ; three only were intently playing some 
 sort of dice-game at a table on which was a lantern. 
 
 As Hardy looked — before he could run — before he 
 could cover his mouth — he was seized by a sudden 
 cough which sounded through the still night and the 
 quiet room. 
 
 The three Chinamen sprang up at once, looked in 
 amazement in the direction of the sound, then snatch- 
 ing three rifles, .and making a great noise, they rushed 
 toward the door. 
 Hardy, too, was off, running ; but before he could cross 
 the breadth of the yard the three were out of the door. 
 
214 The Yellow Danger 
 
 At the moment, he was in the shadow of the buttreaa 
 of a barbacan, and he knew that if he left it to cross 
 the strip of moonlight which lay along the exit from 
 the yard, he must be seen. He stood still, therefore, 
 crouching in the deepest shade. 
 
 The three, in a state of great excitement, ran toward 
 the spot which he had left, and finding nothing, scat- 
 tered about the yard in flurried search within the 
 deep embrasures of arches, and the black shade of 
 turret and buttress. Their eager examination was 
 disorganized, the second again scrutinizing a spot 
 which the first had just searched, and the third, per- 
 haps, following suit. 
 
 It was all over in the space of certainly not more 
 than a minute. One of the Chinamen rushed to the 
 corner in which Hardy crouched, his hands groping ; 
 in a few seconds he was followed by the second ; in a 
 few seconds more by the third. And they dropped 
 like a line of little wooden soldiers, upon which one 
 blows obliquely, one after the other, stiffly, at full 
 length. The knife of Ki-ching-tang was no sooner 
 out of the first than it was in the second, and instantly 
 in the third. Before the startled sleepers within had 
 rubbed their, eyes, sprung to their feet, and snatched 
 their weapons, he had diminished the population of 
 China by three. It was the first-fruits of his vengeance. 
 
 Now, meantime, was his chance to run, and he ran. 
 Thirty Chinese soldiers, however, were after him, and 
 one saw him as he slipped through the exit from the 
 inner to the outer courtyard. This man raised the 
 hue and cry, and it became a question of running, first 
 towards the outer exit, and secondly through the scrub, 
 and down the steep hillside, guns popping all the 
 while, and the Chinamen screaming in an ecstasy of 
 excitement. 
 
 Behind the rising ground, on the general level of 
 the mainland, there was camped a half-regiment of 
 the old regular army of China under a Japanese lieu- 
 tenant ; and these, hearing the firing, quickly set off 
 at the double up the gentle incline ^-t the back of the 
 fort. 
 
"What a Face!" 215 
 
 Hardy was saved from the shots of the thirty on the 
 top of the plateau by doubling and bending among the 
 scrub, but by the time he had plunged and scrambled 
 to the bottom of the steep path, bullets were whistling 
 round him. The night, however, was dim, and the 
 riflemen, as they ran, shot at random. 
 
 There lay his boat, her prow just touching and 
 swaying in the gravel. If he could push her off, and 
 gain the shelter of the house-deck, he would be safe. 
 Two of the Chinamen, however, who had not slackened 
 their speed in order to shoot, were upon him ; and 
 when he leapt to his bow, and put out the oar to shove 
 off, one of them, and immediately the other, took hold 
 of it. A short struggle ensued. One of the Ohina.men, 
 struck by a flying bullet in the nape, relaxed his hold 
 and dropped ; at the same time Hardy's power of grasp 
 failed, and the oar slipped from him ; but so suddenly 
 that the pulling Chinaman slid on his heels, and fell 
 backward into the surf. Hardy was quick to leap 
 upon him, buried his knife in his bosom, regained the 
 oar, and the next moment had the Taku afloat. 
 
 He hurried astern, trimmed the sail, and half shel- 
 tering himself under the deck, contrived to steer, 
 making farther up the harbor, where he now knew the 
 island must be. 
 
 In a minute or two the boat became the aim of the 
 three hundred or more additional rifles, now arrived 
 from the plain. They riddled her hull and sail, but 
 she kept on her way, till there came a boom of big 
 cannon from a quite unexpected quarter, and suddenly 
 the splintered TaTcu dipped her bow, and disappeared 
 in five fathoms of water. 
 
 The Chinese, apparently, had no heavy guns mounted 
 ready for use at the fort, for they fired none ; but the 
 English had ; and when the sentries reported a daring 
 Chinese junk approaching the island, she was fired at ; 
 and she promptly sank, riddled by her foes, shattered 
 by her friends. 
 
 In all the harbor of Kiao-Chau no Chinese craft had 
 dared for weeks to appear. 
 
 Happily the outward bulge of the island was dis- 
 
2i6 The Yellow Danger 
 
 ceriiible at the moment, and not more than 500 yards 
 distant at its nearest point. Hardy began to swim. 
 The Chinese, astonished at the sinking by the white 
 men of a boat containing a white man, ceased firing, 
 though a wanton shot or two dropped about the 
 swimmer. 
 
 Panting hard, he reached the near point of the isl- 
 and, where a sparse growth of thin-trunked plane- 
 trees made a wood to the watej's edge. And he had 
 hardly trailed his dripping form out of the surf, when 
 two men, springing from nowhere, had him by the 
 throat, and he was on his back with a pistol at his 
 temple. 
 
 Hardy said to himself : 
 
 "They will do well." 
 
 And he added aloud : 
 
 " I am an Englishman." 
 
 There was a scrutiny of his face, a chuckle, a few 
 exclamations, and he was on his feet. 
 
 The search -light apparatus of the' fort was out of 
 order. Till he spoke, no one on the island had had the 
 faintest suspicion of the truth. 
 
 In ten minutes he was in a lighted room, with nearly 
 all the hundred and fifty gathered round him, hands 
 on knees. There were far more questions than answers. 
 Chatter, chatter went the tongue of Jack. 
 
 " But you have not told us, sir, who you are," said 
 Murray. 
 
 "My name is John Hardy," he replied, " and I am 
 come to China in search of my ship, the Powerful. 
 Can you give me any news of her whereabouts ?" 
 
 " Oh, Lord ! " cried a blue-jacket, named Brassey, 
 " just hark at ^Affi^ / Poiuerful, is it? Why, sir, if 
 you'd as much water in yoxir inside to-night as the 
 Powerful' s got, it isn't Powerfuls you would be think- 
 ing about, I don't think." 
 
 " There has been a battle ? " 
 
 " That there has, sir." 
 
 "Who won ?" 
 
 "We did." 
 
 " By how many ships ? " 
 
"What a Face!" 217 
 
 •' The one we came here in, and two the Japs sunk." 
 
 "The Japs ?" 
 
 "Ay." 
 
 " They sunk some ships ?" 
 
 "They did that." 
 
 " But they were our allies, were they not ? " 
 
 "Funny allies at that." 
 
 " They gave you no warning of their real intentions, 
 I'll be bound," said John Hardy. 
 
 "Not they," some one replied, "it was bash-into- 
 'em, take-me-as-you-find-nu'.-boys, and no mistake. 
 They didn't even carry a flag." 
 
 " They have broken the law of nations," said Hardy, 
 looking on the ground. Then, after a few seconds, as 
 if musing, he added : " They have violated the Law of 
 Man." 
 
 And the words, taken in conjunction with the most 
 strange, grave face from which they came, had in them 
 something so solemn, and judicial, and meaningful, 
 that, for a minute or two, silence fell upon the men ; and 
 they looked at his bent form, somehow expecting him 
 to utter something further of singular and momentous. 
 
 But he gazed on the ground and said nothing. 
 
 Already this gray-haired youth, this venerable strip- 
 ling, had produced a profound impression upon them. 
 
 Somebody on the outskirts of the crowd whispered to 
 somebody else : 
 
 "What a /ace he's got!" 
 
 And the whisper went round. And now it was : 
 " Just look at the phiz of him" ; and now it was : " I 
 don't think he's all there"; and now it was : "Lor ! 
 look at his face." 
 
 It was a face in which there was something thrill- 
 ingly wild ; the face not merely of a judge and an 
 avenger; but of a judge and an avenger come back 
 from the grave, with just that hint of the Ineflable 
 which makes us shudder. 
 
 Yet he sat there simply enough, looking on the 
 ground, with one elbow on his wet knee. 
 
CHAPTEE XXI 
 
 muekat's diaet 
 
 Me. Mukeay, the nominal head at the fort — though 
 in reality he was only the first among equals — on open- 
 ing one of the chests brought from the Iphigenia in 
 the pinnace, found a quantity of note-paper, and as 
 there were pens and ink in the fort, he bound it in 
 some brown paper, wisely determining to keep a record 
 of the varied days of this strangely-fated crew. 
 
 "Under date 8th June we find as follows : — 
 
 %tli June. — Last night, near twelve, a strange thing 
 happened. We sank a Chinese boat in the harbor 
 with No. 3 south-bastion six-incher, thinking it an 
 enemy. It proved to have contained an Englishman, 
 named John Hardy, ship Powerful (as he says). He 
 reports himself as from Pekin in. search of ship. That's 
 about all we can get from him at present. IS o explana- 
 tion so far as to how he escaped death in long voyage 
 through China. Something strange about him some- 
 where, and men pass astonished remarks. 
 
 Still two sacks of rice left, last of third being used 
 at dinner to-day. Also two hind legs of camel with 
 quarters, three small sacks roots, two jars Chinese 
 spirit from the millet-farm, and about a pound of 
 tobacco. The sow, Joyce says, is near her confinement, 
 and a day or two should bring us great things from 
 her. Harris, Tom Brown, and Daly complain of 
 diarrhoea, and Machen of violent headache. Other- 
 wise all well. Tom Newton to be buried presently. 
 
 9^A June. — Tom Newton buried last night at ten. 
 For last message to his wife see under 6<A June. This 
 218 
 
Murray's Diary 219 
 
 morning noticed a considerable body of Chinese 
 (guessed 600) march past on brow of hill east of island. 
 Big dust-cloud ahead, looking like horse-artillery. 
 Brassey says they mean to give us fight. But I 
 disagree. Their game is to starve us out — if they 
 can. 
 
 This noon, Council. Eesolved : that at midnight 
 thirty hands swim to mainland at different points, tak- 
 ing Sniders in waterproof bags, and ammunition. 
 To meet near lake to N. E., and make a dash for prob- 
 able mules on tea-farm N. of lake. Long discussion 
 of ways and means. Eesolved : first volunteer to be 
 leader. To surprise of all, the stranger. Hardy, vol- 
 unteered first. Had listened to discussion without a 
 word, turning from speaker to speaker. Is small, and 
 seems weak in chest. Sow doing well. 
 
 10th June. — This day cook, to surprise of all, pro- 
 duced pudding made of roots and honey, found, he 
 says, near west stream in valley on island. First we 
 heard of honey here; lads all wild with excitement, 
 and everybody clapping cook on back. Am now smok- 
 ing last pipe. Tobacco done. Also last of German 
 coifee, and yesterday no more sugar. Lads hope for 
 unlimited supplies of honey, but I rather doubtful. 
 Not the right place even for the wild kind. 
 
 Expedition last night very successful. Two mules 
 (all there were on farm), also sack rice (brought over 
 by pinnace), also a skin containing some sort of oil, 
 and no one injured. Joyce says it is good for food, 
 but Brassey denies, and the two came to blows. The 
 men came back speaking well of Hardy, some saying 
 that he means more than he says. 
 
 Most of the day spent in washing shirts and sheets 
 by hands. Harris and Brown still bad with diarrhoea, 
 and now also Collins, but Daly better. 
 
 He is an original, this man (I mean Hardy). To- 
 day, while washing clothes, great discussion between 
 Brassey and Davis, which nearly came to blows. Says 
 Davis, " Why, the man is fifty-five," he says, "if he's 
 a day." Brassey answers that he will lay to it that he 
 is a lad of twenty-five, and not a day older. Then 
 
220 The Yellow Danger 
 
 other hands join in, one saying this, and another that, 
 and the lads getting warm. Hardy sitting a good way 
 off, washing sheets. One says : "Why not ask him, 
 and settle the question ? " But no one volunteers to 
 do that. Everybody going to have a look at sow this 
 afternoon, and plenty of bets. But nothing yet to 
 report. 
 
 nth June. — Great excitement this morning, and all 
 Chinese liquor finished. Sow littered with four, and 
 beauties all : one pinky-white, two pinky, white and 
 black, and one pure black. Lads all ready for fun, and 
 everybody determined to make a day of it. Hardy 
 alone drank nothing. Brassey very rowdy, but after- 
 wards got to sleep. One of mules refused to eat roots, 
 and was killed in afternoon. A detachment of lads 
 down by sea-shore cutting down trees for firewood 
 with swords, and one hatchet. Not an adze in fort. 
 Very slow business. Hardy recommended blasting, and 
 this tried with success. But fearful anxiety beginning 
 to be felt about powder and shot. Only three rounds of 
 ammunition left to some of big guns, and no possibility 
 apparently of making powder for ourselves. At six 
 o'clock. Council. Eesolved : to make a dash in small 
 hours of morning for west fort in order to seize possible 
 stores and ammunition. Hardy leading. Pinnace to 
 take two detachments of twenty-five each. A des- 
 perate piece of business, in my opinion not yet neces- 
 sary, but proposed by Hardy, who has seen fort, and 
 seconded by lads. Search this afternoon for more 
 honey, but without success. Men walking about with 
 hands in pockets, without tobacco. 
 
 I'Hth June. — Lovel, William Brown, and Jackson 
 dead, and not less than thirty Chinese. I with bullet- 
 hole in my left hand, very painful. Eesult : two 
 barrels of powder, and a green tea-box half full of 
 Lee-Metford magazine-rifle cartridges. Half of us, in 
 retreat, swam across harbor-mouth from west fort to 
 east, Hardy among us. Then along east side of har- 
 bor by land, pursued by Chinese, and then, swim- 
 ming again, to island. The toughest job we have 
 done yet. Our guns, ammunition, and some of our 
 
Murray's Diary 221 
 
 clothes, meanwhile, in hoat with captured things, and 
 we swimming with swords in our teeth. 
 
 But the curious thing is this. As we walked to- 
 ward our fort, the day began to break, and Hardy 
 having on no shirt, we saw all his body in a queer bruised 
 sort of mess, and two letters, quite distinct, an A and 
 an S, looking as if they had been branded into his 
 right breast. He throws no light upon himself, and 
 not one has the pluck to ask him. It is clear that he 
 is a gentleman, and it is " Sir this " and " Sir that " 
 from all the lads to him. 
 
 13th June. — Says Brassey to me this noon, " Wasn't 
 there," says he, "something about a John Hardy in 
 the battle of Shoreham that that collier from Perim 
 reported at Hong-Kong before we sailed north ? " 
 " Yes," I said, " there was." " Then this," says he, 
 "is the man." "There are many John Hardys," I 
 said. "But this," says he, "is the man." "What 
 makes you think that ? " I said. "Everything," says 
 he. And he was so certain of it, that he partly made 
 me so as well. He has gone whispering it, too, to all 
 the lads, and they are talking it over amongst them- 
 selves. Nobody asks Hardy, but before this day is out 
 I mean to put the question straight before him. Gun- 
 cleaning pretty nearly all day, and Walters, who has 
 been down to the water's edge on the east side reports 
 that Chinese are heaping a lot of stones on edge of 
 cliff, probably with intention of building. Let them 
 build away. The four piggies doing well, and the old 
 girl as pleased as punch. We shall never have the 
 heart to kill them. Not a scrape of baccy, and no 
 more honey. 
 
 UiA June. — It is to be hoped that this Hardy is not 
 come here to lead us all to the devil, but that is about 
 what I suspect it is going to amount to. Time will 
 show. He has a strong influence over the lads, and is 
 all for wild schemes and adventures. Says he last 
 night, most of us sitting about in the north mess-room, 
 " But what," says he suddenly, " are your ultimate 
 aims ? " " Ultimate aims, pir ? " says Brassey. " You 
 don't mean to live here always, I suppose ? " says 
 
222 The Yellow Danger 
 
 Hardy. " It's enough for us to think of getting food 
 to eat, without looking so far ahead," says Martin Hall. 
 " Don't be a fool. Hall," says Tom Brown ; " listen to 
 what the gentleman says." "I have not said any- 
 thing," says Hardy. " I merely ask a question, which 
 I leave to your reflection. If you will think it over, I 
 believe you will be wise. And if you cannot find an 
 answer, come to me, and perhaps I may be able to 
 help you." He very seldom speaks, this Hardy, and 
 when he does, the lads listen wonderfully to him. For 
 quite five or six minutes, I suppose,, not one spoke a 
 word after he had said this. And now they are all 
 saying that he's got some fine scheme in his head. 
 This afternoon at five. Council. Eesolved : that the 
 Chinese preparations for building on cliff be investi- 
 gated and destroyed, if necessary, between twelve and 
 one to-night. Hardy proposed as an amendment : that 
 an attack be at once made on Chinese village, three 
 miles to S. E., for purpose of getting in large store of 
 provisions in event of contingencies. But his voice 
 overborne by seventy-five to seventy-three votes. This 
 afternoon Day sent to wind octagonal clock in B bas- 
 tion, and broke mainspring. Have not asked Hardy 
 anything about battle of Shoreham, or marks on chest, 
 but mean to, sooner or later. 
 
 15th June. — This day extraordinary scene at Council. 
 It seems that Brassey, with five or six others, came to 
 Hardy about noon, a sort of deputation, telling him 
 that the men had been thinking over his words of two 
 nights before, and were wanting him to summon a 
 Council and say what was on his mind. Hardy says 
 yes, he would, as they wanted it. So about four. 
 Council. Hardy stands up, the lads sprawling all 
 about, on benches, on the fioor, looking at him. Hardy 
 has in his hand one of the three Bibles from the Iplii- 
 genia third chest. Well, everybody waits, wondering 
 now what is coming. Hardy begins to talk, and keeps on 
 talking for half an hour. All about himself first — his 
 family, where he was born, everything ; then about his 
 coming to China to seek Powerful, and his capture by 
 the Chinese at Pekin. Suddenly off he tears his shirt, 
 
Murray's Diary 223 
 
 and shows wounds and scars all over body ; and he 
 points to the gray patches in his head : Chinese torture, 
 he says ; some of the men wiped their eyes, so mov- 
 ingly he spoke. Sometimes when his face is animated, 
 I declare he looks like a lad of nineteen, and it is hard 
 not to love this man somehow. Then he went on to 
 speak of the Japs and their treachery to the British 
 ships ; then he said that all the white men in China 
 had been massacred by the Chinese ; and last of all, 
 out he came with the announcement that the Chinese 
 and Japanese combined are about to attack Europe. 
 Every one held his breath at this, and we were all pretty 
 excited by now. " Well, what are we to say of such a 
 race, men ? " says Hardy. " Do you not agree with me 
 that the earth would be well rid of such a people ? " 
 "Yes!" we cry; "yes! yes!" we all shout out. 
 "As for me," he says, "I, here and now, before you 
 all, and before Almighty God, devote my entire life 
 henceforth to their destruction ; and I invite you all to 
 take that oath with me." And so saying, he lifts the 
 Book, and kisses it. The men leapt round him at 
 once. One cries out : " You are the John Hardy 
 of the Shoreham battle, aren't you ? " Hardy says 
 "Yes." Then Brassey roars out : "Will you be our 
 leader ? " and every man-jack of us cheers this to the 
 echo ; and then Hardy hands Book to each of us, and 
 as we kiss it, each of us grips his hand in token of 
 obedience to his orders. And as the last of us grips 
 his hand (that was Paddy Burke), Hardy, turning away 
 from us, goes leaning out of the window, and Brassey 
 says a tear was rolling down his cheek which he wanted 
 to hide. I suppose there never was such a scene in 
 the world ; it was just as if we were all mesmerized by 
 him, some of us wanting to cry, and I as moved by his 
 influence as the rest. The lads are swearing to follow 
 Hardy through thick and thin. 
 
 Expedition last night did nothing, and discovered 
 little. There were merely some piles of stone and two 
 carts, but without mules. In one of the carts a hard- 
 backed land-turtle, which the lads brought back. But 
 their climb up that steep hill as good as useless. 
 
224 The Yellow Danger 
 
 From their report it is probable that the regular 
 Chinese force in the neighborhood is being increased. 
 Happily, perhaps, for us, this is a thinly populated 
 part of the country. Something will have to be done 
 for food, and that soon. It remains to be seen what 
 sort of stufi this Hardy is made of. No one can deny 
 that we got on pretty fairly before he came. Heat 
 fearful to-day, but rain now pouring in torrents 
 outside. 
 
 lath June. — At midday-mess Hardy says to lads ; 
 " Don't scatter, men. I wish to talk with you at once." 
 So immediately after meal. Council. Hardy at head of 
 table, I on right, Brassey on left, Tom Brown, Davis 
 and Joyce sitting near. Says Hardy : " You have been 
 good enough," he says, " to choose me for your leader. 
 I hope to prove myself worthy of your favor, but for 
 the present I prefer to consult with you, rather than to 
 give you orders. Here you are, a splendidly trained 
 set of fellows, and Englishmen — 148 of us. I believe 
 we might be able to do something more for our country 
 and ourselves than killing a few Chinamen now and 
 then. The thing is to know what we want to do, and 
 to set about it in the right way ; and, as a rule, the 
 right way is sure to be the simplest way." " Hear, 
 hear," says Brassey, who is a regular champion of 
 Hardy's, and everybody gives a nod at somebody else. 
 " Well, then," says Hardy, " but no man can work 
 without Tools, and every workman should stick to his 
 own Tool, the carpenter to his chisel, and the black- 
 smith to his sledge. We, men, are sailors ; and the 
 Tool of a sailor is a Ship. What we have got to do, then, 
 is to get a Ship." 
 
 This went straight to the lads — he spoke so sweetly 
 and simply to the understanding of everybody. We 
 cheered, every man, though not a soul could guess 
 where this ship was to come from, or what we were to 
 do with it when we got it. But the mere fact of his 
 saying it made the thing seem possible. 
 
 " A Ship, then," goes on Hardy ; " any sort of 
 Ship, so long as we've got our Tool to work with. And 
 you mustn't think that I urn child enough to propose 
 
Murray's Diary 225 
 
 to yon anything that is impossible for you to do. I 
 have studied you carefully since I have been among 
 you, and I know what each of you can do, and what 
 the whole of you together can do, and what you can- 
 not do. As for ships, they are lying round you in 
 plenty, only waiting for you to go and take one." 
 
 Everybody looked at him in surprise at this. 
 
 "Ships, sir ! " says Brassey, " whereabouts ?" 
 
 " All round the Chinese coasts," says Hardy. " I 
 told you, didn'b I, that the Chinese have seized and 
 massacred in a body all the Europeans they could find 
 in China. "Well, at the time of the massacre, there 
 were, of course, merchant-ships of all nations in every 
 Chinese port, and you may be sure that the Chinese 
 took special care to overpower and secure the sailors 
 on board these ships, lest they should escape home and 
 tell what the Chinese were up to. Meanwhile, the ships 
 themselves remain, probably quite empty, or perhaps 
 with a few Chinese on board in charge. I myself saw 
 five in Tientsin harbor when I sailed down the Peiho 
 to come here, and there did not seem to be anybody on 
 board. So you see we have plenty of ships and to 
 spare." 
 
 " But," said I, " how are you to get to them ? " 
 
 " In the pinnace," says Hardy. 
 
 " The pinnace can't carry even a quarter of us," 
 said I. 
 
 "Then she shall carry half a quarter of us," says he ; 
 " and the rest of you will remain here till we come for 
 you in the ship." 
 
 " But how are the rest of us to live without the 
 pinnace ? " said I. " We can't carry bags of rice on 
 our backs across the harbor, sir." 
 
 " I know that very well," says he, " and that is why 
 I proposed to you the day before yesterday to make a 
 raid on a village, instead of going to search into what 
 the Chinese are building, which does not immediately 
 concern us. What we have to do, in the first place, is 
 to get in a good stock of provisions by means of a se- 
 ries of bold and well-planned raids into the thinly-pop- 
 ulated country round, first crushing the small Chinese 
 15 
 
226 The Yellow Danger 
 
 battalion, if necessary ; and when we have enough 
 stores, both for us who go, and you who remain, then, 
 and not before, some of us will set off in the pinnace. 
 That seems to me good sense." 
 
 " And to me ! " cries Brassey, with a wave of 
 the hand. " And to me," goes the cry down the 
 benches. 
 
 "But," said I, " when we have got our ship, what 
 do we do with her — go home ? " 
 
 " No — that is not precisely what we swore to do," 
 says Hardy. " As to what we will do with our ship, I 
 have got a plan which I feel confident you will approve 
 when I lay it before you. But there is a good deal to 
 be done first, and I won't trouble you with that now. 
 The first thing I want every man to set his mind upon 
 is to bring me into the fort here a live Chinaman with 
 two sound legs. Without that nothing can be done." 
 
 At this our astonishment knew no bounds. A live 
 Chinaman ! 
 
 " And may I ask, sir," said I, " what it is you want 
 a live Chinaman for ? " 
 
 "To send him on a message," says he. " It is the 
 answer which he will bring back which will make our 
 ship of any use to us." 
 
 "He won't come back," said I. 
 
 " He will," says he. 
 
 " Eight you are, sir ! " cries Brassey. 
 
 "I will not keep you any longer now," says Hardy. 
 " But later in the day, I will select a hundred of you 
 to come with me to-night ; and I recommend you to 
 look to your swords and your rifles," 
 
 And with that we broke up, every one forming part 
 of a group to discuss our new man. The second mule 
 killed to-day, and two more of our men complaining 
 of bowel trouble. Joyce talking of blowing up tor- 
 toise with gunpowder, and saying that they are good 
 food in South Seas. Lads conversing about different 
 brands of tobacco, and smelling keg. 
 
CHAPTEE XXII 
 
 Murray's diary {continued) 
 
 Itth June. — Harvey, Lane, Yates, and Tom Joyce 
 dead. Brassey wounded in leg, Harry Jones in 
 leg, Field in shoulder, Burke in forearm, Mackay in 
 forearm, Wright in groin, and I again in left hand near 
 the old place — my bad luck. One or two wounds 
 look ugly, but the rest not much. Bodies of Harvey, 
 Yates, and Joyce with Chinese, but Lane brought 
 back and died in fort. Burial to-day at 3. Not less 
 than fifty Chinese done for, says Brassey. Eesult: 
 splendid haul of three camels (one killed in battle, and 
 carcass left behind), seven mules, twelve small animals 
 like sheep, two sacks millet, and five rice. Eeturning 
 loaded from village met Chinese battalion cutting us 
 off. Made quick charge, and thought they would turn 
 tail, but didn't. Sharp fight. Literally forced our 
 way through them. But our powder getting very low. 
 What shall we do ? Lads very well pleased with ex- 
 pedition, and speak well of Hardy. He proposes 
 that one of mules be set aside for drawing one of 
 Chinese carts on top of hill, to bring home haul on 
 next expedition. But mules won't eat roots, have to 
 be fed on rice, and grass on island scanty. Hardy says 
 salted mule-meat, but even so, weather very hot. But 
 will be tried. No live Chinamen to be got. They know 
 how to run, these Chinese. At four. Council. Ee- 
 solved : to repeat raid this night on village, N. W. by 
 N., six miles off, according to report of Eraser and 
 Brassey; Hardy looking far from well. 
 
 JHere follows Murray's account of three fresh raids 
 
 227 
 
228 The Yellow Danger 
 
 too minutely described to be reproduced here, and 
 conducted with varying success. In the last of the 
 three Hardy did not join, being ill.] 
 
 21st June.— At last, live Chinaman. Captured at 
 high noon. Five lads, among them Hardy, swam one 
 by one to east side, diving most of time. On cliff 
 some, Chinamen pouring stones out of carts _ for build- 
 ing. Men, hiding in scrub, climb up clifE-side, no 
 very easy matter with weapons and other things in hands. 
 Peep over cliff-edge, and decide which Chinaman 
 it is to be. Then rush out. Chinese off in their mule- 
 carts, and a squad of soldiers, some distance off, give 
 fire, but at random, taken unawares. As marked 
 Chinaman turns to gallop off in mule-cart, Brassey, 
 who has lasso, throws ; and lasso falls clean over China- 
 man's head, dragging him from cart, which gallops 
 off alone. Splendid feat for Brassey, for Chinaman 
 was not near, and Brassey has wounded leg. China- 
 man quickly bound, and hustled down hillside. Pin- 
 nace waiting at shore to bring lads and Chinaman, and 
 Chinamen atop still banging away. But no one hurt. 
 Lads say that Hardy gripped Brassoy's hand, and gave 
 it a squeeze. This like Hardy's decent way. China- 
 man being very kindly treated, by Hardy's orders. A 
 brawny raw-boned brute, and seems not to know what 
 to make of treatment. 
 
 22d June. — To day at one. Council. Resolved : 
 that sufficient stores now in fort to last all two weeks, 
 and that pinnace starts as soon as Chinaman is sent on 
 message. Eesolved : that Chinaman be sent to-morrow. 
 Hardy wishing him to grow accustomed to kind treat- 
 ment before starting. Hardy has chosen to accompany 
 him on voyage the following : — Brassey, Tom Brown, 
 Eraser, Burke, Knollys, Leaf, Pawsons, John Jones, 
 Maitlaud, Samuels, Clayton, Eogers, Machen, Gibbs, 
 John Pound, Maunder, Chapman, and Glyn. I remain 
 in charge. Practically no powder will be left when 
 lads set out. To-day overhauling of pinnace, and 
 preparations. . Lads found some opium on China- 
 man, which they smoked, and some of them still very 
 queer. 
 
Murray's Diary 229 
 
 iSd June. — To-day great fun, and lads talking of 
 sagacity of Hardy. But no one understands meaning 
 of message. Chinaman brought before Hardy after 
 midday meal. Hardy at table, with pen, ink, and 
 paper. We all standing round, Chinaman looking 
 queer. Hardy looks at him and says, " You talkee 
 English?" Chinaman makes no sign. "Can you 
 talkee English ? " No sign. Up Jumps Hardy on a 
 sudden, a razor in his hand, and he seizes hold of 
 Chinaman's pigtail, as if to cut it oif. " Oh, save, 
 savee," cries Chinaman. " Very good," says Hardy, 
 " you talk English, then." Hardy had guessed before- 
 hand that he could, because Chinaman, on day of cap- 
 ture, had on European felt hat like those some of 
 Chinese boatmen wear at Shanghai ; that was why 
 Hardy singled out this particular Chinaman. Well, 
 Hardy says, " You poor man ? " " Me very poor," 
 says Chinaman. " How mu.ch you give for one silk 
 pigtail ? " says Hardy. " Fifty tael," says Chinaman. 
 " You got fifty tael to buy one pigtail ? " says Hardy. 
 Chinaman looks scared. " Eifty tael ? " says he, "no, 
 no." " All right," says Hardy, " me going to cut off 
 your pigtail, and me going to give you letter to carry 
 Pekin. You carry letter well, and bring back true 
 answer soon, me promise to give you back pigtail, and 
 no do you any harm. You understand ?" Chinaman 
 trembling like a sail in the wind. But he says, " Yes." 
 Hardy says, " Very good." Then he turns round to 
 paper, tears half a sheet, and begins to write, lads 
 looking over his shoulder. He writes : 
 
 "To Ni-ching-tang, Imperial City, Pekin. 
 
 " You tell me quick where Japanese navy is, or me 
 very likely get caught, and then me tell Yen How who 
 set me free. If you can write, you write name of place 
 where navy is on this paper, and also name of your 
 nephew at Tung-chow, so that me may be sure the 
 answer comes from you. If you no can write, you tell 
 this man name of place, and name of nephew. Be 
 quick, or me get caught, and tell Yen How about 
 you. — John Hakdt." 
 
 When Hardy had finished his letter, he read it aloud 
 
230 The Yellow Danger 
 
 to Chinaman, and gave it to Chinaman. He said, 
 "If you no be back in nine days from now, me burn 
 your pigtail in fire, and you no have pigtail no more." 
 And with that, up he jumped to his feet, and wrap- 
 ping pigtail round left hand, with two sweeps of razor 
 he had it off about three inches from the root, leaving 
 just enough for the man to plait it on to again. China- 
 man curled and shivered, as though razor was in his 
 flesh, and a fine long pigtail it is, too. Hardy then 
 wrote name of Ni-ching-tang's nephew, by which I am 
 to verify that Chinaman really has been to Ni-ching- 
 tang, and handed paper to me to keep. Nephew's 
 name is Li-kien. If Ni-ching-tang cannot read, 
 Chinaman will deliver message verbally. It is clear 
 that this man Ni-ching-tang has some strong motive 
 for telling real truth to Hardy, but we none of us 
 know what motive is, nor why Hardy is anxious about 
 station of Japanese fleet. However, we have much 
 confidence in his views. Chinaman was let free, and 
 taken to mainland, and much fun we all had. Pinnace 
 now ready, and the nineteen men to start at midnight. 
 Nearest treaty-port, according to map, is Chefoo. 
 And to Chefoo they mean to go. Pinnace loaded with 
 last coal in fort. Compass sextant, chronometer, stores, 
 and everything we can think of on board. Weather 
 stifling hot, but lads in good spirits. 
 
 24:th June. — Lads, apparently, got out of harbor all 
 right last night. For us here the game is a waiting 
 one. After to-morrow, by Hardy's orders, a man to 
 be always on the lookout near the east fort during 
 night. If lads get a ship, she will show three lights 
 in a triangle to let us know when she comes. They 
 will send boats ashore to east headland, to take us off, 
 we swimming to east side of harbor, and taking all live 
 stock still left. ' If Chinaman not come back by the time 
 Hardy returns, nothing to be done, and red light to be 
 shown by sentry to ship. This day killed the sow. 
 The lads yawning, and spoiling for a fight." 
 
 [Six days of the diary follow, containing nothing 
 but trivial details of the life of the fort, and the ac- 
 count of a massing of some two thousand Chinese in 
 
Murray's Diary 231 
 
 the locality. The next entry of importance is on the 
 1st July.] 
 
 1st July. — This day at noon, Chinaman spied on east 
 shore of mainland making signals. Great excitement 
 among lads, who have heen dull. Sent two men to 
 fetch Chinaman over, and the fuss that beggar made 
 about coming into water lasted nearly an hour. At last 
 lads managed to bring him over between them. China- 
 man handed me Hardy's note to Ni-ching-tang, and 
 underneath in English letters, just legible, the words 
 "Nagasaki" and "Li-kien." It is clear, then, that 
 Chinaman did his work well, and the only thing open 
 to doubt is whether Ni-ching-tang has told the 
 truth in saying that Jap navy is at Nagasaki. China- 
 man trembling with eagerness to get back pigtail, 
 doubting apparently that we would keep our word, 
 and the lads having great sport in making him think 
 that we wouldn't. Pigtail produced at last, and lads 
 lashing one another with it all over the place, to China- 
 man's agony. Then pigtail given to Chinaman, to his 
 great joy. But I don't think it prudent to let him go 
 free, and am keeping him prisoner for some time yet. 
 
 2d July. — Some lads sent out to scont, report con- 
 tinued massing of Chinese tents on plain to S.T7., 500 
 counted, and we here without the power of firing three 
 rounds of shot. Heaven only grant that Hardy turns 
 up trumps. The men seem to take him with perfect 
 confidence, and the lapse of time makes no difference 
 to them. It is wonderful to me how thoroughly Hardy 
 has got over them. I never saw anything like it. The 
 two hind-quarters of sow completely spoiled owing to 
 heat, and the men all saying it is head cook's fault, 
 and he very sulky. 
 
 [On 3d July there is no entry.] 
 
 4th July. — Here we are, every man-jack of us, on 
 board a very smart and spanking little German barque 
 called the Conrad, a thing of about 400 tons, and we 
 making straight for Nagasaki, God only knows what 
 for. However, everybody in the best of spirits, and 
 the lads ready for any game. This man Hardy is, in 
 my opinion, as wild a creature as ever drew the breath 
 
232 The Yellow Danger 
 
 of life, and yet it would be a lie if I say that I hare not 
 every confidence in his leadership, for I have. The 
 Conrad is very high out of the water, and is scudding 
 along with a good stiff breeze, the foam singing past 
 the level of her bulwarks, and her deck too steep to 
 walk on without gripping hold of things. She's got 
 nothing in but her ballast, and not too much of that. 
 So away we fly, under all plain sail and courses— a tidy 
 spread of canvas for this light thing — but toward 
 what ? I am surprised at the lads : they don't seem 
 to be asking themselves that question. The nineteen 
 who went to Ohefoo have got a fine old tale to tell of 
 the capture of the Conrad, which they accomplished at 
 about ten at night, without the least trouble. There 
 was nobody aboard of her but an old Chinese woman, 
 and one of those frizzy dogs that the Chinese eat. 
 Not content with the ship and her three boats. Hardy 
 boarded two other ships in the port, and seized three 
 more boats, so that, counting the pinnace, we have got 
 seven boats in all, which is not bad for a little nipper 
 like this. What is troubling me is the thought of pro- 
 visions ; we have not enough to last us another three 
 days at the present rate of going on. The ship is 
 packed with men, and very far from packed with food. 
 It is true, we should be in sight of Nagasaki by sun- 
 down to-morrow, if this breeze lasts. But how in the 
 name of Providence we are to get provisions at Naga- 
 saki, even if we are not blown to the devil by some little 
 Japanese gunboat, is what I don't see. It isn't that I 
 mistrust Hardy ; there can be no doubt that he has a 
 head-piece, and can lead. But I am a prudent man, 
 and this looks to me like the wildest and maddest voy- 
 age that ever was made by any crew which ever put to 
 sea. 
 
 bth July, 1 p. M. — Breeze continued good during 
 night and all morning. Conrad splendid, and twice 
 did twelve knots. Lads looking out confidently for 
 coast before sunset. Hardy having long private talks 
 with Eichardson and Level, both of whom have been 
 Eastern traders, and say they know Nagasaki harbor 
 well. Everybody getting pretty excited, and some say. 
 
Murray's Diary 233 
 
 ing Hardy ought to speak. I with great weight of 
 fear at my heart, which I can't get rid of. 
 
 5//* July, 6 p. M. — Good for Hardy ! I belieye it will 
 work ! though as wild a thing, I suppose, as ever 
 entered into the brain of a man ! This day at five. 
 Council. Kesolved : that in the event 
 
 [Here Murray's diary abruptly ends, and is not re- 
 sumed till some weeks later. But the account which 
 follows is also due to Murray, though given in a dif- 
 ferent form.] 
 
 Some little time after one bell in the second dog- 
 watch on the 5th July, the Conrad's crew sighted the 
 blue coast of Kifisiu, they at that time being in a very 
 high-wrought state, on account of the announcement 
 made to them by Hardy in the " Council " at five, of 
 which Murray speaks. It may be said, by the way, 
 that Murray (a homely well-meaning man, more cau- 
 tious than enterprising by temperament) fails to give 
 in his diary anything like a fair idea of the enthusiasm 
 with which John Hardy by this time seems to have in- 
 spired this crew. As a matter of fact they now fol- 
 lowed him blindly, adoring his audacity, believing in 
 his success, entranced by his personality. Hardy was 
 for them a dazzling Angel sent to lead them to vague 
 glories and to indefinite conquests, the precise nature 
 of which did not, for the present, trouble their sailor- 
 brains. When he unfolded his" plans at the " Council " 
 on the 5th, they discussed nothing, but hailed with 
 rapture his proposals, eager to use their magnificent 
 training for him, to do and die for him. Even Murray 
 was infected. And at eight o'clock they lay-to behind 
 a small island outside Nagasaki harbor, and waited 
 there. 
 
 The moon rose. And everybody looked at her. For 
 in all the creation there was nothing half so interest- 
 ing to this crew this night as the earth's satellite. 
 
 She was at her full, and gravid with light. Up she 
 climbed from the East in peerless, cloudy majesty. 
 At midnight she was nearly overhead, and had then 
 wheeled about her a light fleecy cloud, prirTic with 
 jaiabow hues, like Miss Loie Fuller in her serpentine 
 
234 The Yellow Danger 
 
 dance. The night was full of shining, and shining was 
 on the calm water. 
 
 The crew of the Conrad looked at her, and swore. 
 John Hardy, sitting among- the main-sheet ropes be- 
 hind the wheel, looked questioningly at her, and mut- 
 tered ; but the moon did not hear. 
 
 It was better to be out at sea among the brisk 
 breezes and the spray. At one o'clock Hardy gave the 
 order to let go the sheet of the main-jib, and put the 
 helm to lee. The Conrad swung round, and went 
 snorting once more to Mother Carey and the central 
 sea. 
 
 At ten on the following night she was back at the 
 same spot behind the island, and there she lay-to again. 
 And the sailors watched the moon arise, and saw her 
 climb to her noon, gravid with light, and saw her 
 wheel about her a light cloud a la L5ie Fuller. And 
 they swore more than ever. 
 
 But this time there was no turning back. It was 
 now or never. Their stores were at an end. 
 
 John Hardy said to two men leaning over the bul- 
 warks near him : 
 
 " Well, by moonlight, then, lads. It may not turn 
 out to be so bad as we think." 
 
 And at about two o'clock in the morning, six boats 
 put off from the Conrad and rowed away. Two con- 
 tained nineteen men each, one twenty, one twenty-two, 
 one twenty-three, and one thirty-three. On board 
 the Conrad eight men were left. 
 
 At this hour the moon was westering far down the 
 steep slope of her setting course, and all the smooth 
 sea was Isranded with trails of crushed and tremulous 
 silver. The old and drowsing Night, heavy with vigil, 
 was all enkindled now and aglow, instinct with the glam- 
 our of the moonbeams absorbed through many a long 
 hour, like an old toper who has imbibed in solitary orgy 
 all the night, and towards morning he rises gorged for 
 bed, drunken, and sighing with surfeit. A flush of pal- 
 lid gold suffused the fainting air. Yonder, like a lamp 
 which lios burned through all the slow period of the 
 dark, and in the small hours it fumes and smolders 
 
Murray's Diary ' 235 
 
 red, and gives an odor in the room, so down with 
 troubled visage went the moon. Hardly a breath 
 sighed through the slumbering harbor, and about its 
 dark and silent islets. 
 
 The narrow inlet of sea which forms Nagasaki port 
 lies nearly north and south, and is about twelvemo (three 
 miles) in length. At its mouth it is only a quarter of a 
 mile broad, and though it spreads out within, it is 
 nowhere of very great breadth. All along its length, 
 however, on both sides, the land opens up into numer- 
 ous bays of some capacity. On the east side the land 
 is mostly flat, and here used to be the " foreign settle- 
 ment," with a water cfrontage of some 700 yards, backed 
 by picturesque slopes on which stood the villa-resi- 
 dences of the rich merchants. On the west side, how- 
 ever, where th-e moon went down, rose wooded moun- 
 tain and steep crag. The whole is thoroughly shel- 
 tered, and affords anchorage for the biggest ships. 
 
 The six boats, furrowing their silent, silvery way, 
 entered the harbor-mouth at the northwest, the lar- 
 gest boat (which contained Hardy, Eichardson, and 
 Brassey) leading. Any one looking at this little fleet 
 would have said that each of the boats contained no 
 more than two men. The rest of their crowding crews 
 were stowed away in the bottoms, and lined the sides, 
 lying mostly at full length, and covered with strips of 
 tarpaulin. Under the tarpaulins, too, were lanterns. 
 The cross-seats, except those used by the rowers, had 
 been removed. 
 
 The course lay among a number of islets, with the 
 navigation of which Eichardson seemed quite familiar. 
 They passed Kami-no-Shima, the site of a disused gun- 
 battery ; and they crossed a stretch of sea, all white 
 and encrusted with moonlight, to Takabok. 
 
 From the cliffs of Takabok, two centuries before, 
 thousands of Christians were flung by the Japanese 
 into the sea, because they refused to trample upon 
 the cross. And after two centuries Hardy came to 
 Takabok. 
 
 Yonder, a little inland, was the burning light of tlie 
 Iwoshima lighthouse, and, farther still, the less bril- 
 
236 The Yellow Danger 
 
 liant beam of the Kage-no-Shima pharos. Farther 
 still lay Pappenberg, and then Nezumi-Shima, which, 
 in old (juiet days was so often used as a picnic-place by 
 the white residents of Nagasaki. 
 
 One by one the islands receded, and the file of daring 
 boats stole nearer and nearer upon the interior of the 
 harbor, now in shadow, now adventuring swiftly across 
 a patch of sea gloating in the dream of moonshine. 
 And now, behind them is the last island, and before 
 them the open basin, and ponderous in black slumber 
 on the basin — the great navy of Japan. 
 
 But where are the eyes of the watchmen, that they 
 cannot pierce those dark coverings, and divine that 
 there, beneath them, is creeping nearer and nearer an 
 insidious death, a strange retribution ? The watchmen, 
 if they see, cannot divine. The riddle of destiny is far 
 beyond them. All droops and faints in slumber, the 
 sea, and the old night, and the moon musing in her far 
 western couch, and the divining of the watchmen. 
 
 Only the best-trained crew in the world, led by 
 the best leader, are awake : and they have sworn an 
 oath. 
 
 And, suddenly, a miracle of luck is revealed to them. 
 For yonder all the western half of the harbor is seen to 
 be lying in absolute shadow, while the eastern half is 
 still glittering in aspen coruscations of white light. 
 And the main part of the fleet, it is clear, is lying within 
 that western gloom. 
 
 The boats, by signal, separate. Each knows its work 
 — each has its instructions. 
 
 They are, in general, to aim at the stars, they are to 
 fly at big game, they are to make for battle-ships. 
 
 But each has separate recommendations to fulfil. 
 And to every man is given his place, and his work, ac- 
 cording to his powers. The company is organized into 
 captains, commanders, lieutenants, as in the big navy 
 at home. Hardy has been minute. 
 
 The biggest boat of all, containing thirty-three men, 
 cruises at zigzag for three or four minutes ; and then 
 Hardy sees, and decides. He whispers an order ; and 
 the boat — the long-boat of some European four-master 
 
Murray's Diary 237 
 
 — ^turns directly westward, and enters the recess in the 
 coast- wall which lies north of the Tetegami dock. 
 Here the water is hardly ruffled by a ripple ; and 
 here the blackness of shadow is complete. Few 
 points of light are visible within that gloom — only the 
 white harbor-lights of a great ship. 
 
 Her massive hull is just discernible, disparting the 
 water with its outward-bulging girth. She conveys a 
 suggestion of such ponderousness, that it looks as 
 though no power on earth could ever move that squat 
 mass an inch through the water. She is the bran-new 
 giant of the Japanese navy, the terrible Eirosahi, and 
 she has a crew of 576 men. 
 
 But they sleep, and the thirty-three wake ; and yon- 
 der to the far eastward, in the broad brand of shimmer- 
 ing and weltering moonshine, is a boat in which some 
 harbor-police are lolling on their oars, chatting, seeing 
 nothing. And the bull's-eyes of the lighthouses glare 
 steadily, and the watch-lights of the ships glare steadily, 
 and they see nothing. 
 
 The oars are muffled, and the boat glides through 
 shadow beneath the poop of the HirosaM, and when a 
 grappling iron steals upward and fixes in a beading of 
 the stern, we may very well say that the British lion is 
 crouching to spring. 
 
 Up wriggles Brassey by the pole and gains the cor- 
 nice, and, immediately afterwards, up wriggles Hardy. 
 And when Hardy gains the cornice, he coughs a little ; 
 and Brassey whispers in his ear a long "Sh-h-h-h." 
 
 Yonder, eight yards from them, is the officer of the 
 watch, walking to and fro, between the mainmast and 
 the aft twelve-incher. 
 
 The two lie on their faces, and are hidden by a ridge 
 of bulwark above the cornice. Within reach is a coil 
 of rope, and Brassey's hand steals between an interspace 
 of the taffrail, and with absolute noiselessness draws 
 forth the coil, makes a knot round one rail, and lowers 
 a rope-end to the boat. 
 
 And now the men arrive rapidly. There is plenty of 
 room to receive them. They are like flies climbing au 
 overhanging rampart by a spider's ^Z de toile. 
 
238 The Yellow Danger 
 
 Before the last man is up, three of them have run 
 stooping forward, and the officer drops without a groan. 
 Just then, from for'ard, a man climbs the stair to re- 
 port to the officer that the lights are duly burning : it 
 18 his half hourly duty. And as he reaches the top- 
 most rung, the sword of Brassey is in his breast and 
 he drops. 
 
 The upper deck of the ffirosaM is a village, nearly 
 five hundred feet long, hut an almost deserted village. 
 Just for'ard of the foremost funnel, two men are talk- 
 ing, one leaning against the foremast, one with his 
 hand resting on a boat-davit ; and a moment before 
 the sword pierces him, the latter gives a light laugh at 
 a jest of the other ; and the other utters a feeble cry, 
 and dies. The upper deck of the Hirosahi is an Eng- 
 lish village. 
 
 They descend to the main-deck, to the fo'cas'les, to 
 the cabins, to the engine-rooms, down to the turtle- 
 back armor-deck, at the water-line, and everywhere, 
 with the silence and the thoroughness of the Angel of 
 the Passover, they smite, they slay. As a man cries 
 out, he dies ; he opens his eyes, and they are sightless. 
 The ship flows with blood. 
 
 At a door for'ard. Hardy lifts a lantern and looks 
 into an apartment in which sleeps fifteen men. He 
 shuts the door upon them, secures it, and does not kill. 
 They are the remnant, — the only men left alive, — and 
 he will h-ave need of them. 
 
 In the bunkers of the Hirosaki are 700 tons of coal. 
 The Englishmen are soon crowding in the engine- 
 room. 
 
 Five other ships, besides the Hirosahi, are already in 
 their hands. But their work is not over. Massacre 
 for massacre — John Hardy's for Yen How's ! Each has 
 his Sabbath, and his Passover-night. 
 
 Once more the six boats put off from the six cap- 
 tured ships, each containing from five to nine men, all 
 carefully picked and mixed, according to their special 
 knowledge of ship-work ; and these six meet at an 
 agreed spot opposite the patent slip of the Dock Com- 
 pany. Then three of the boats' crews abandon their 
 
Murray's Diary 239 
 
 boats, stepping over into the other three boats, and 
 these three row away, each containing sixteen men. 
 
 And each glides beneath the stern of a Japanese war- 
 ship, and the men climb, and kill, and hurry to the 
 engine-rooms. 
 
 Down in smoky disaster and eclipse sets the red 
 moon, and the deep dark which precedes the morning 
 covers the silent tragedy. 
 
 Three pistol-shots altogether, two in one ship, one 
 in another, have been fired by the Japanese. These 
 shots represent all the struggle which has taken place. 
 
 But the darkness which has supervened, almost as 
 suddenly as the flickering-out of an out-worn lamp, 
 cannot prevent the watches on other ships from per- 
 ceiving that some of the fleet are pouring out an un- 
 accountable smoke from their funnels. They must be 
 lost in amazement, unless they conclude that the ships 
 have received secret orders from the Admiral to sail. 
 But they look on, and do nothing but look — for the 
 Admiral is with the fleet, borne in the Hirosaki, and 
 all, they think, is under his eyes. 
 
 There is a rattle of chains, and the steam-windlasses 
 are a-clank, and as the first faint hint of day tinges 
 the East, the solid-looking bulk of the Hirosahi — 
 moves. And one after another the nine bulks move, 
 wending northwards in file. 
 
 Nine — ^they are few in number, but they represent a 
 good quarter of Japan's weight in war-ships. And 
 with that quarter. Hardy would then and there attack 
 the other three-quarters, were it not that he lacks one 
 thing — men. The crew of a six-inch quick-firer is five ; 
 and five men represent the third part of a complete 
 ship's-crew in this sparsely-manned fleet. 
 
 But the sound of cannon is good to the ear of Hardy, 
 and in mere self-indulgence, as the Hirosahi steams 
 past the island of Takabok, he sends a wire-gun shell 
 among the still slumbering fleet. And the startled 
 hills of Nagasaki awake, and cry aloud with many a 
 voice of surprise, and the shell bursts in the engine- 
 room of a cruiser. 
 
 The shot is not answered. There is an amazement 
 
240 The Yellow Danger 
 
 so profound as to resemble coma. While it lasts action 
 is impossible. 
 
 But the amazement of the Japanese navy at being 
 shelled by their own Admiral-ship was, u. possible, 
 surpassed by the crews of the three new Chinese 
 cruisers, the Hi- CM, Hi-tien, and Hai-Shen, when, 
 three days later, at noon, a fleet of nine Japanese ships 
 proceeded without warning to sink them as they lay 
 at anchor at Shanghai. They made no resistance to 
 this overwhelming assault ; they simply sank. 
 
 In each of the nine were a few Japanese who, by 
 Hardy's orders, had been spared to do forced labor on 
 the ships. Being unarmed, they behaved well, and 
 from them was learned the probable station of the 
 three Chinese cruisers. 
 
 The " Hundred and eighty " (so called) then pro- 
 ceeded southward, and touched at Hong-Kong, intend- 
 ing to take on board whatever men they could find 
 there. But there were no longer any white men at 
 Hong-Kong, though there was coal. 
 
 They then turned their bows toward the West, 
 among them being the Conrad, with her crew of eight. 
 
CHAPTEE XXm 
 
 THE BROWN OF ENGLAND 
 
 By the end of July, one thing at least had heen 
 clearly hinted to the whole of Europe : that if those 
 English could not write music, they could work ; if they 
 could not make pretty things, they certainly could fight ; 
 if they were not "elegants," they at least possessed 
 the knack, and the secret, and the sword of the Con- 
 queror. 
 
 "La morgue Britannique ! " " la raideur Britan- 
 nique / " — it was not then, after all, a mere insolence of 
 semi-savages, but a pride based on a genuine supremacy 
 of racial value and valor. 
 
 The Continental nations were not quick in learning 
 this fact : a lingering unbelief persisted in them ; and 
 in learning it, they perished ; and in teaching it to 
 them, Britain herself all but perished. 
 
 The numerous campaigns had now occupied not 
 quite five months ; and at the end of this time Europe 
 was in a state of collapse and exhaustion far exceeding 
 that which existed at the close of the Thirty Years' 
 War. 
 
 About a league to the southwest of Lifige, in a pine- 
 wood, there stands a small, old-fashioned inn with 
 overhanging gables, whose frontage looks directly upon 
 the brown waters of the Meuse. Here the Emperor 
 Wilhelm, Duke Paul, representing the Eomanoffs, and 
 M. Hanotaux met by appointment. 
 
 The first was chiefly a soldier, the second chiefly a 
 diplomat, the third chiefly a man of business. 
 
 They sat in one of those vast bedrooms of old Bel- 
 
 ney 
 
 id 
 
 241 
 
242 The Yellow Danger 
 
 gian inns, on the first floor, grouped near a window 
 which overlooked the river. 
 
 The deliberation was conducted, as usual, in 
 French. 
 
 "The situation," said M. Hanotaux, "has — devel- . 
 oped. And developments generally demand new plans. 
 The facts we know : by means of a single contretemps 
 to our fleet, France finds herself with two invading 
 armies in her territories, Germany with three, and 
 Eussia with three. And in no case has any one of 
 these eight armies been unsuccessful." 
 
 " The defensive," said the Emperor, " has always been 
 intensely repugnant to the genius of the German army. 
 It is an army of conquest and aggression. The small- 
 ness of its victories in this war has been due to the 
 fact that it fought on German soil." 
 
 Duke Paul and M. Hanotaux smiled at each other 
 with their eyes. 
 
 " But the question is one of means, rather than of 
 causes," said M. Hanotaux. " Let us face this fact 
 boldly : that our great enemy is aided by the geogra- 
 phy of the earth. We should have beaten England — 
 we none of us doubted that we should. But we have 
 not. To me there seems to have been two chief rea- 
 sons for this failure, which may now be more or less 
 removed : First, the diversions caused by the hostili- 
 ties entered upon against us by other nations ; and sec- 
 ondly, the sea." 
 
 " But both reasons remain ? " said Duke Paul in- 
 terrogatively. 
 
 " The sea does," broke in Wilhelm, " but, candidly, 
 it is my opinion that France should long ago have made 
 peace with Italy, and Eussia with Austria." 
 
 " Your Majesty is perhaps a little sanguine in this 
 view," answered M. Hanotaux, "for Italy was the ag- 
 gressor, and perhaps one might say the same of Aus- 
 tria. On the other hand, Germany seems to have no 
 real cause for a bloody war with Sweden and Den- 
 mark." 
 
 " But was not Sweden, then, the aggressor, mon- 
 sieur, as far as Germany was concerned ? " asked Wil- 
 
The Frown of England 243 
 
 helm. " Did she not wantonly attack my coasts for no 
 other valid reason than that Germany was the ally of 
 Eussia ? And since Denmark has joined Sweden in 
 this attack, what would you have ? This, be sure, is 
 not a matter for the peace-maker, monsieur, hut for the 
 unsparing and implacable sword ! " 
 
 " Still," said M. Hanotaux, and he stroked his 
 straggling barbiche de bourgeois, " our conference, con- 
 ducted in a spirit of unyielding insistence upon rights, 
 will hardly result in good fruit. The fact is, that we 
 each of us have to fight one great, and at least one 
 smaller foe. I have inaugurated this meeting for the 
 purpose of asking in the most definite terms this 
 question : Since the resources of Europe are visibly 
 nearing their end, do we prefer to conquer the great 
 foe or the small ? Is it wisdom to persist in both 
 attempts ? " 
 
 " I agree with you in principle," said Wilhelm. 
 
 " The principle is obvious," said Duke Paul. 
 
 " And to me the details also seem obvious," said 
 M. Hanotaux quietly. "England triumphant over 
 Europe means, of course, the wiping out of the empires 
 of the world — it means a Cockney earth. When I say 
 ' a Cockney earth,' I shudder, your Majesty— I shud- 
 der, M. le Due Paul, — and you shudder, too. The 
 thought, you will say, is not pretty (Ge n'est pas bien 
 jolie ce quefaipense-la!). And the nations will not 
 permit that ? Let us make peace with our brothers, 
 that we may crush the stranger ! " 
 
 "A League of Europe ? " said the Duke. 
 
 " A League of Europe," answered M. Hanotaux, and 
 bowed. 
 
 Wilhelm flushed with enthusiasm, and he said : 
 
 " I agree ! — in principle." 
 
 " The principle is obvious," put in the Duke. 
 
 " And the details, I think ! " cried M. Hanotaux. 
 
 " Who will make a beginning ? " 
 
 " If we say — Germany." 
 
 "Not Germany !" said the Kaiser. 
 
 " Then Eussia," said M. Hanotaux. 
 
 "Hardly Eussia perhaps," mused Duke Paul. "The 
 
244 The Yellow Danger 
 
 heart of the Tsar is set upon the crushing of Sweden, at 
 least ■" 
 
 " Then France ! " exclaimed M. Ilanotaux, " since, 
 you leave to France this glory." 
 
 " You mean that you will accept the conditions de- 
 manded by Italy, monsieur ? " 
 
 " Yes, your Majesty ! " 
 
 " At once ? " 
 
 "'Eo — not precisely — but soon." 
 
 "When?" 
 
 " After the next great battle." 
 
 " Whatever the result ? " 
 
 "Yes, M. le Due Paul." 
 
 " But after the next great battle the southern re- 
 sources of France will, as I understand it, be at an 
 end," said Wilhelm bluntly. " You will be compelled 
 to do what you ofEer to do." 
 
 " Not ' compelled,' perhaps, your Majesty ; for the 
 territorial resources of Italy will be practically at an end 
 also. There remains, however, her — Navy. We have 
 need of it." 
 
 As the inwardness of M. Hanotaux's scheme un- 
 folded with these words, it won the whole interest of 
 his interlocutors. In both the royal and the ducal 
 brains ripened as the same instant this thought : "A 
 Second Invasion of England." 
 
 " I follow you with the closest attention, monsieur," 
 said Wilhelm. 
 
 " And I also find your reflections of the profoundest 
 interest, monsieur," ad^ed the Duke. 
 
 " France," proceeded M. Hanotaux, " will adopt 
 that line of conduct under the following conditions : 
 first, she will satisfy the claims of Italy on the un- 
 derstanding between her and Italy, that Italy becomes 
 the ally of the Allies ; and secondly, France demands 
 that the two Allies follow her example, by generally 
 granting the demands of Sweden, Denmark, and 
 Austria, on the understanding that they also become 
 the allies of the Allies against the common foe of 
 Europe." 
 
 Wilhelm leapt up. 
 
The Frown of England 245 
 
 " The thing is done, monsieur ! " he exclaimed. 
 
 " It is a question of when," said Duke Paul. 
 
 " Precisely/-" said the Kaiser, "it becomes a question 
 of when." 
 
 " When the next great battle between France and 
 Italy has been fought," answered M. Hanotaux. 
 
 " No ! " leapt from the mouth of Wilhelm, in a half-' 
 suppressed start, and then there was pause. The fact 
 was, that each desired to fight yet one battle with the 
 enemy with whom it was proposed to make terms, in 
 the hope and belief that the victory would be his, and 
 the terms of peace therefore more advantageous for 
 him. 
 
 Duke Paul spoke meditatively ; and he said : 
 
 " I agree, on the condition that Eussia will make no 
 terms with Sweden and Austria until after the next 
 considerable battle with each of these, whether the 
 battle of Prance with Italy has then occurred or not." 
 
 "And the conditions of Germany are identical," 
 said the Kaiser. 
 
 " Then there is nothing for it but to shake hands on 
 the compact, your Majesty, and M. le Due Paul. It 
 may be observed, however, that your condition, and 
 mine, insures a certain and very considerable reduction 
 of the not large territorial forces now at our disposal. Is 
 there no departure possible from this determination ? " 
 
 There was no departure. The three men spoke on 
 for an hour ; and as the darkness gathered, they rode 
 away toward Li^ge, and took train in different direc- 
 tions. 
 
 The agreement, often repeated, was this : five bat- 
 tles, one by France, two by Germany, two by Eussia ; 
 then, if possible, a European peace and League. 
 
 Eussia would be prepared to hand over to Austria 
 the doubtful legacy of the still warring Balkan States, 
 and all that stretch of fair land from the Golden Horn 
 to Cape Matapau ; and she would yield Finland, with 
 an indemnity, to the victorious arms of Sweden ; 
 Germany would buy off Sweden and Denmark ; France 
 would yield to Italy the Haute Savoy, Avoie, the 
 Alpes Hautes, Basses, and Maritimes, and Var. 
 
246 The Yellow Danger 
 
 For all this large generosity there was a cause, 
 bitterly near home, awfully pressing. The one thing 
 now that could save Europe from England was the im- 
 position upon England of the necessity to recall her 
 armies to defend iier own territory. 
 
 For, at last, 100,000 British soldiers occupied all tho 
 Seine valley between St. Germain and Argenteuil, and, 
 the headquarters of Lord Roberts and his staff was tho 
 Taverne St. Eoch near the great escalier of St. Ger- 
 main. A hundred thousand men — a small army when 
 the war began ; an immense war-host now. There was 
 no intention of attacking Paris, which required an in- 
 vesting circuit of 135 miles : — but Paris was not France. 
 Normandy already was once more British ; the rest of 
 France lay open ; and Italy had crossed the Isere. 
 
 Germany's plight was hardly less extreme. Her 
 splendid legions had thrown themselves northward in 
 three continuous streams to meet three branches of the 
 same Teutonic race of which she was part. To the west, 
 occupying Schleswig-Holstein and the upper reaches of 
 the Elbe as far as Domitz, Denmark lay encamped ; to 
 the east, Sweden had drawn lines of circumvallation by 
 a ring of earthwork forts and Schumann gun-turrets 
 round Breslau, having captured the Breslau-Posen rail- 
 way ; and midway between these two was that brazen- 
 browed, nimble, ever-intruding enemy, who alone had 
 made possible to the others their victories. Northern 
 Germany, from Hamburg to Tilsit, had been the scene 
 of the most unparalleled series of massacres — carnage 
 after carnage — ever witnessed in history ; Royal Saxon 
 Corps, famed in military history, Bismarck Cuirassiers, 
 gallant Silesian and West Prussian Corps — paragons of 
 the soldier's hope of attainment — all had been flung, 
 and flung in vain, into the devouring maw of war ; still 
 the British came, though in ever-lessening numbers ; 
 and still from farther and farther south marched the 
 precious levies of the Fatherland. Seven of the twenty 
 corps of the Imperial host remained ; and of these, two 
 Bavarian brigades were marching upon Naumberg, 
 whence a nondescript army of Socialists, Nihilists, and 
 malcontents had issued from its headquarters a manip 
 
The Frown of England 247 
 
 festo to the nation, announcing the day of Liberty, and 
 inviting support. 
 
 As for Russia, she turned a fourfold face south, 
 southwest, northwest and inward, and everywhere saw 
 doom. The Army of India, having waited in vain for 
 invasion, crossed the Helmund, annihilated at Merv 
 the still-unrecalled remnants of the Eussian army of 
 Turkestan, and had now, after a great victory at Novo 
 Tcherkask, reached Kharkov by road, with the Krem- 
 lin for its oljectif. Odessa, Sebastopol, and the Black 
 Sea littoral were British. Of the two divisions of 
 the Austrian army, one had in a single day disap- 
 peared ; but another quickly sprang in its place ; and 
 this, with its sister army, adopting Moltke's principle 
 of marching separately and fighting together, had, after 
 a strenuous campaign, only surpassed for carnage by 
 the great drama of blood transacting itself in Northern 
 Germany, made Poland an Austrian province, and 
 crossed the sources of the Niemen. Eussia was doing 
 doubtful battle in Bulgaria, Turkey, and Asia Minor. 
 The battleships of Sweden were at the mouth of the 
 Neva ; and in the heart of Eussia itself a deep subter- 
 ranean muttering, like a presage of universal earth- 
 quake and overthrow, was suggested by the mere word 
 "Nihilist." 
 
 This, in briefest outline, was the situation on the 
 Continent at the moment of the conference in the wood 
 at Li^ge. The three nations which had primarily been 
 made the tools of Yen How, regretted now their rash- 
 ness. They had miscalculated the Lion. 
 
 But, suddenly — as if it needed only the conference 
 in the wood to bring them luck — their sky cleared. In 
 the darkest hour of their extremity they found a hope, 
 their last. 
 
 On two days following, about two weeks after the 
 meeting in the wood, two considerable victories attended 
 the arms of the Allies. 
 
 One of these was French : the 14th (or Lyons) Army 
 Corps of 40,000 men met the advancing Italian Army 
 between Bourgoin and the left bank of the Ehone, and 
 though outnumbered by ten thousand, gave to Italy an 
 
248 The Yellow Danger 
 
 emphatic, and indeed final, negative to her long-fought 
 attempt at conquest. And at once the Aurillas brigade 
 of the 13th (Clermont-Ferrand) Corps, which was all 
 that was left of it, was ordered southward to cross the 
 Alps and carry the threat of war into the enemy's coun- 
 try, prior to the proposition to Italy of the terms agreed 
 between the Allies. 
 
 The second victory was Eussian, and was gained in 
 a far more momentous conflict over the magnificent 
 British-Indian troops, which had gallantly won its way 
 from Quetta almost to the walls of Moscow. Upon this 
 battle General Dragomiroff, in a great, final bid for 
 victory, had concentrated almost the whole remaining 
 forces of his master. It was a mixed combat in which 
 Ural, Orenburg and Transcaspian Cossacks fought with 
 Bengal Lancers, and Turkestan Infantry Brigades with 
 Eoyal Fusiliers. The battle, from the commencement 
 of which the 90,000 British were greatly outnumbered, 
 was, after five hours' massacre, won by a fianking move- 
 ment of Don Cossacks. The number of the slain was 
 160,000. 
 
 Great as was the exhaustion in which this dear vic- 
 tory left Eussia, the immediate result was a sudden and 
 enormous increase of her prestige. And two things at 
 once happened : first, Sweden, no longer acting in con- 
 cert with the great arm of England, which was the in- 
 centive to her audacity, became anxious to secure by 
 peace her conquests in Northern Eussia ; and secondly, 
 the Kaiser, knowing that terms would now be offered 
 to Sweden by Eussia, became anxious to make terms 
 with Sweden before her hands were freed to direct upon 
 Germany the entire remnant of her forces. In this way 
 it happened that nearly every one of the contending 
 nations were, owing to the results of these two battles, 
 strongly motived toward peace. Nor could Austria 
 resist the pressure of her allies, Italy and Germany, nor 
 the large amenities of Eussia south of the Balkans ; and 
 in the many-sided treaty signed at Vienna on the 33d 
 of August, Denmark, too, compelled by the pressure 
 of events, was one of the signatories. 
 
 It was now that the long expected had come at last. 
 
The Frown of England 249 
 
 Led by the rigor of events, and led by the general 
 tendency of long-maturing sentiment, an exhausted 
 Europe had inaugurated a League — as the first pre- 
 liminary to a renewal of her life — having for its object 
 the destruction of an exhausted Britain. 
 
 For Britain, too, was exhausted ; and already had 
 lost semblance to that land of free-handed opulence 
 which her sons remembered with sighs. Bull's girth 
 had thinned. 
 
 Yet if photographs at this hour could have been taken 
 of all her people, and the traits of these agglomerated 
 into the expression of a single face, that face would 
 have been the wild and wan and gaunt visage of a Man, 
 on whose brow brooded a fatal frown of indignation 
 and resolve, not to be softened but by death. 
 
 The idea of Europe was to hurl itself in its whole 
 banded strength upon this diminished force. And it 
 would be strange if, this time, the island could with- 
 stand the continent. 
 
 England's navy had, on the whole, done well. Up 
 to the moment of the new League, she still might be 
 said to command the seas. But with the League, even 
 without the practically intact navy of Italy, her su- 
 premacy was gone. With the navy of Italy, it was twice 
 and thrice obliterated. 
 
 The new Allies, indeed, looked forward with cer- 
 tainty to another great naval battle before they could 
 effect their design ; but their ultimate passage to Eng- 
 land was practically assured. 
 
 And Sweden, flushed with victory, contributed an 
 Army Corps ; and Eussia, freed from invaders, con- 
 tributed two ; and Germany one ; and France one ; and 
 Austria three ; and Denmark two brigades ; and Italy 
 two brigades. 
 
 MoMl ! 
 
 The port of debarkation was fixed at Antwerp, whose 
 neutrality thus suffered willing violation, and in the 
 last days of August 360,000 troops, troop-ships, and 
 war-ships were hasting over sea and land to rendezvous 
 upon Antwerp. 
 
 England, warned both from the Continent and 
 
250 The Yellow Danger 
 
 America, was not in the dark. On the 5th of Sep- 
 tember, when the great Armada set sail from the Bel- 
 gian port, her whole available force in ships of war was 
 massed in Portsmouth Harbor, all but ready to sail. 
 
 It was on this very day, towards two in the after- 
 noon, that a singular species of duel was taking place 
 between two men at Worthing. It was war in extremis, 
 as bitter as, and more breathless in its mad intensity 
 than, the great war going forward around them. 
 
 One of these men was called Eichardson, and the 
 other Atkins. Atkins was excise, with a salary of 
 thirty shillings ; Eichardson was municipal, and ac- 
 quainted with rates. His locale was the Town Hall, 
 and he earned forty shillings. Both were fairly active 
 young men of twenty-five. 
 
 Apart from their steady and respectable employ- 
 ments, each had a species of less reputable avocation, 
 which, however, he pursued with extreme zeal, and, 
 for some reason or other, was proud of. Eichardson 
 said that he was " on the staff " of the Evening News ; 
 and Atkins that he was " on the staff" of the Sun. 
 
 This only meant that they had agreed to send any 
 local news that might be of interest to those papers. 
 
 Now, on this 5th of September, a bit of local news of 
 considerable interest did, in fact, occur. For a strange- 
 looking little craft, which was nothing else than a 
 Maltese speronare, had arrived at the pier ; and from 
 her had landed a man of uncertain age, who slowly 
 walked up the pier with his eyes on the ground, made 
 his way to Dixon's Commercial Hotel half-way up the 
 Pier Street, and there disappeared. The rest of the 
 speronare's occupants had at once put to sea again. 
 But it was quite an hour afterwards, before either 
 Atkins or Eichardson, being employed on their Jekyll 
 affairs, got the least scent of this Hyde matter. 
 
 It was Atkins who, at the dinner-hour, first entered 
 Dixon's commercial-room. In the front of Dixon's 
 
 was announced a " Daily Ordinary," the two words 
 
 being separated by a great gap where the word " Shil- 
 ling," now painted out, had once stood. 
 
 As Atkins entered the room, he saw the back of the 
 
The Frown of England 251 
 
 gtranger, who was leaving it by a door which led to the 
 bedrooms above, and he started. 
 
 The whole interest of his life was instantly centered 
 upon this man ; there was something in his appearance, 
 his dress, which aroused the instinct of the reporter. 
 About the man was the brine and odor of the sea. 
 
 At this time, a bit of news was to the people ol! 
 Britain like rain to the desert. Men often spent their 
 very last half-penny in buying a paper, which they 
 knew could tell them little more than they already 
 knew. 
 
 We have said that Atkins was interested at sight of 
 the stranger ; but this interest became a passion the 
 moment that, approaching a spread side-table, he saw 
 beside a soiled plate a piece of paper ; and on the paper ; 
 a certain name written at the bottom of a promise-to- 
 pay, together with a London address. 
 
 It had happened that the stranger had, to begin with, 
 informed Dixon that he was without a copper in his 
 pockets ; and Dixon, after some demur, on the security 
 of a gold ring, an honest face, and a written promise- 
 to-pay, had not only trusted the stranger with a meal 
 and a bed, but had lent him twelve shillings to pay his 
 fare to London that night. The promise-to-pay he 
 had in a moment of bus tie left on the table, and Atkins 
 saw it, and turned to run. 
 
 And as he turned to run, lo, Eichardson was at the 
 door. And Atkins let his flat hand fall upon the paper, 
 and stood leaning with careless grace. 
 
 Eichardson, on his way to Dixon's, had heard of 
 the arrival of the stranger, and there was a breath of 
 haste at his lips. He said : 
 
 " Hullo ! Anything up ? " 
 
 " Not as I know of. You. heard anything ? " 
 
 " No. Seen the article in to-day's I). T. ? " 
 
 " No. Why are you so late to-day ? I have had 
 dinner ten minutes " 
 
 " What, are you off ? It's only- 
 
 " I've got to be. Beastly job on hand — gauging busi- 
 ness for Hatley's. See you to-night at the club " 
 
 Atkins' diplomacy was bad, for his walk toward the 
 
252 The Yellow Danger 
 
 door, for one thing, was too rapid to be natural ; and 
 Eichardson had noted his statuesque pose, his rather 
 
 Eale face, and his unmoving hand on the paper. So he 
 ad no sooner passed through the door, than Eichard- 
 son, too, had read ; and at once he, too, rushed to the 
 door. But it was locked on the outside. 
 
 The thought of summoning slow Mr. Dixon by the 
 bell never even entered his head ; he simply flew to the 
 window, dashed up the sash, dropped into the area, and 
 climbed up to the rails on the opposite side by the 
 help of a swinging coal-cellar door. 
 
 Yonder, half-way down the street, was Atkins, riin- 
 ning with all liis legs. Eichardson, as though life lay 
 before, and death behind, was after him. 
 
 Atkins, however, was considerably taller and fleeter, 
 Eichardson being inclined to fat ; and the race was 
 clearly the foremost man's, when, suddenly, there ap- 
 peared from a bye-street, with callous saunter, a 
 policeman about ten yards ahead of Atkins. 
 
 And at once Eichardson sent forth the impassioned 
 shout of " Stop thief ! Stop thief ! " many times re- 
 peated. 
 
 And an instant later Atkins was firmly gripped in 
 the arms of the officer. 
 
 "Let mo go, Jones, you infernal idiot !" screamed 
 Atkins, "you ought to know better, you damned 
 fool/ Can't you guess — Jones, you silly ass " 
 
 But Jones, with zealous sense of duty, maintained 
 his grip on the frantic man, till he saw the accuser 
 mysteriously rush onward past the accused. And he 
 tossed his head with a smile, as he relaxed his hold of 
 Atkins ; and he said : 
 
 " Oh, well, I suppose it's only one of their little 
 newspaper squabbles " 
 
 So Eichardson only reached the telegraph-office 
 about ten seconds before Atkins ; and the telegraph 
 man was engaged to Atkins' sister. 
 
 And therefore the Sun got its message some five 
 minutes before the News j but by some sleight-of-hand, 
 or extra energy, the Wews was not outdone. It 
 reacheci Piccadilly Circus some fifteen seconds before 
 
The Frown of England 253 
 
 the Sun, though the Sun was first at Holbom ; and it 
 was never quite determined to which of the two Fins- 
 bury and Tooting owed their gratitude for the news. 
 On the placards of each the words were the same : 
 
 John Haedt 
 Abbived 
 
 ISf ENGLAlfD. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 BEFORE THE BATTLE 
 
 During all that afternoon and night England, 
 Scotland, Wales, and Ireland uttered its voice. 
 
 For the 5th-6th of September the usual 5,000,000 
 letters and post-cards delivered by the Post Office leapt 
 to 14,500,000. This meant that the whole nation had 
 taken busily to pen-and-ink, to paper and card-board. 
 It meant that it was profoundly stirred about some- 
 thing, that it wanted something with its whole heart. 
 
 These extra millions of letters were directed to Lon- 
 don, some to the Government offices, the majority to 
 tlie London daily papers. Not a thousandth part of 
 them were ever opened. The Circulation Office of the 
 London Postal Service Department was kept in a flurry 
 of business all through the night. St. Martin's in the 
 morning got postmen where it could ; and the bags of 
 the carriers bulged. 
 
 When any vast collection of animals acts in this 
 spontaneous way, all doing the same thing, it is that 
 they are stirred by some instinct which is in unison 
 with the soul of the world. The Universal Voice is, 
 in truth, the voice of God. Democracy is thus a kind 
 of Holy Scripture. Its will is the Decalogue. 
 
 The nation, having eagerly drunk the news tliat 
 John Harily had suddenly reappeared in England as 
 rnysteriously as he had disappeared from it, demanded 
 his presence at the impending battle. It insisted that 
 no nonsense about formality or convention should 
 deprive it of his possible help. Most of the people 
 demanded his appointment as Admiral of the Fleet. 
 354 
 
Before the Battle 255 
 
 And why ? He had only been instrumental in win- 
 ning a single battle for England. If they had rea- 
 soned, their ardor of persuasion could not have been 
 BO intense. But the fact is, that their cry proceeded 
 from that divine instinct for truth which, in hours of 
 extremity, often inspires nations and sometimes indi- 
 viduals. That Hardy was the right man, just then, just 
 there, they felt intuitively ; and they did not mince 
 matters in proclaiming it. 
 
 The only person in Europe to whom the coming 
 battle, or his own possible share in it, did not seem of 
 direct momentous importance, was Hardy. 
 
 For the immediate motive of the Allies was to compel 
 the withdrawal of the British troops from the Con- 
 tinent ; but supposing they efEected a landing in Eng- 
 land, there impended an enemy upon them, as Hardy 
 knew, far more terrible than all the combined armies 
 of several Europes ; and this enemy would at once 
 compel them to do the very thing they sought to force 
 upon Britain. 
 
 And it was near — it was not far off. As he stepped 
 into the train at Worthing that night, he bought a 
 paper ; and in a small-type paragra;ph, unmarked per- 
 haps but by him, he saw this quaint item of news : 
 
 "A train containing 500 Chinese has arrived at St. 
 Petersburg from Vladivostok. They seem poor, and 
 the object of their journey is unknown. It is the in- 
 tention of the Eussian authorities to send them back 
 to their own country." 
 
 Hardy muttered to himself : 
 
 " So soon. Yen How ? " 
 
 But in the eyes of England, of Britain, of Europe, 
 the coming battle was the Greater Waterloo of world- 
 history ; the final shock of this annihilating war ; the 
 crowning Armageddon before a probable thousand 
 years of Peace. 
 
 If Britain failed now, she failed ; and if Europe, 
 then Europe failed, too. There could be little further 
 struggle : for who would be there to make it ? There 
 would be no fight left in the limp nations. 
 
 Hardy reached London at eleven P. m. It was 
 
:256 The Yellow Danger 
 
 partly expecting him, for as soon as the two Worthing 
 reporters had got ofE their news. Worthing had pricked 
 its ears and heard, Dixon's became the center of the 
 town, and a moving crowd suryeyed the house for 
 hours. Long before Hardy appeared, all his immediate 
 plans were known from Dixon ; he was then cheered 
 by the full street ; only those near enough to see him 
 well being mostly silent, impressed with something of 
 that strangeness of expression which made the sailors 
 at Kiao-Ohau whisper : " What a face ! " 
 
 London, therefore, expected him, without certainty 
 as to the hour. A considerable crowd waited at 
 Victoria ; but when at last it saw him, made no sign. 
 They looked for a very young man, with swift glance 
 and free air. They saw a man with stooping shoulders 
 and gray in his long hair ; and decided that this was 
 hardly he. 
 
 But one pair of eyes knew him under his disguise. 
 Old Bobbie Mason had been waiting all the evening at 
 the station, wondering why his boy nad forgotten him, 
 had sent him no line or word. When at last he saw, 
 he started with horror ; but he knew his own. 
 
 Outside, instead of the crowd of busy cabs. Hardy 
 saw a meager muster ; and his musing eye noted the 
 raw-boned look of the horses. As his carriage passed 
 through Buckingham Palace Road, a baked-potato ap- 
 paratus stood before the Palace, and he noted with a 
 pang the largeness of the crowd around it. The streets 
 were almost deserted. Even the policemen seemed 
 fewer. In a bye-street, near Oxford Circus, an old 
 woman walked, and behind her a cat, with tittle halts 
 and runs, followed persistently, sending out piteous 
 feeble cries to the night. 
 
 Old Bobbie, sitting there by his side, waited for a 
 caress of the once affectionate hand. But no caress 
 came. They drove onward in absolute silence. The 
 only words which John had spoken were the two : 
 "Well, Bobbie," at the station-platform. The old 
 man was frightened. 
 
 Once only, as John was moving off to bed, the old 
 butler broke out ; and he cried, with clasped hand : 
 
Before the Battle 257 
 
 " Master John — what — what — have they done to 
 
 you!" 
 
 And John answered : 
 
 " They have tortured me to death, Bobbie, if you 
 want to know." 
 
 And that was all. The rose-leaf lips were pressed 
 pretty tight now. 
 
 Early in the morning the Government knew what it 
 had to do, if it meant to keep its place. In a thousand 
 startling ways it learned that tne nation's will, this 
 time, had got to be done. 
 
 But the thing was officially impossible. Hardy was 
 nobody, officially. The ships' crews were complete ; 
 and it was anticipated that the main portion of the 
 fleet still at anchor would sail at noon. The Govern- 
 ment could not exactly telegraph to a Captain or a 
 Vice- Admiral, and say : " You must give up your 
 place to John Hardy, because he is a better man than 
 you." They were absolutely at their wits' end. 
 
 But the chief characteristic of the British race is its 
 nimble way. It actually does manage in the end. 
 At nine o'clock Captain MacLeod, once of the Jupiter, 
 now of the Royal Sovereign, was seized by " a sudden 
 illness " ; at half-past nine. Admiral Sir Nowell Sal- 
 mon, principal Naval Aide-de-Camp to the Queen, was 
 at 11a Cavendish Square; at ten. Lord Charles Beres- 
 f ord, upon whom, in the hour of peril, the supreme com- 
 mand had been imposed, telegraphed to the Committee 
 of National Safety, and also to the Admiralty, offering 
 to Hardy a joint command of the squadron : at half- 
 past ten Hardy was hasting in a special train toward 
 Portsmouth. 
 
 But he went under compulsion, not knowing why. 
 He had no theory of naval war. He had, indeed, won 
 a battle, but — he shrank a little from this prominence. 
 The truth was, he was more or less unconscious of the 
 clearness of his own eyes and the valor of his own 
 heart. It needed that the actual hard facts of a 
 situation should be before him before he could assume 
 the aggressiveness and the self-assurance of the hero. 
 
 When on the point of getting out from Cavendish 
 17 
 
258 The Yellow Danger 
 
 Square, he had cut from the newspaper bought at 
 Worthing the paragraph about the 500 Chinese. And 
 he had written the two following letters, the first to 
 Mr. Goschen at his private address : 
 
 " Dbak Sik, — I am just about to set out to fight in 
 the battle which you kindly allow me to attend. In 
 case I should get killed, I am writing this letter to 
 ask you if you will kindly send a ship, flying the English 
 White Ensign at her mast-head, under that the Blue 
 Peter, and under that the Union Jack, to the island of 
 Monte Christo, with orders to bring home what she 
 will find there. I believe you ^ will find that this will 
 come in useful to you in a few weeks' time. — I am, sir, 
 your obedient servant, 
 
 " JoHK Hakdy." 
 
 The second letter was to the Prime Minister. It 
 ran: 
 
 " My Loed, — I take the liberty to inclose you a slip 
 from a newspaper about some Chinamen who have 
 come to St. Petersburg, because I believe it is well 
 worth your attention. In my opinion, within three or 
 four weeks from now there will be some four hundred 
 millions of yellow men in Europe, and perhaps in 
 England, too. I have just come from China myself, so 
 I ought to know what I am saying. A very great man, 
 named Yen How, is the cause of all this. In my 
 opinion, the very best thing England could do would 
 be to withdraw at once from the Continent the armies 
 she has there. — I am, my lord, your obedient servant, 
 
 " JohkHaedy." 
 
 If ever man was shocked with fright, or started at 
 the keen spur of terror, it was the Prime Minister on 
 reading this note. 
 
 Now he understood some things which had puzzled 
 him, 
 
 News had reached England that some American 
 cruisers in Chinese waters had mysteriously ceased to 
 
Before the Battle 259 
 
 report themselves. Later had come the news that no 
 intelligence could be obtained of some Italian and 
 Austrian ships of war sent out to China during the 
 " Eastern craze." Merchant ships from Europe had 
 sailed round the Cape to the Far East, and their long- 
 delayed return was still awaited. It was known that 
 China and Europe were telegraphically disconnected. 
 
 These things, at another time, might have given to 
 Europe some hint of the actual facts. But during the 
 preoccupation of the war, not the remotest inkling of 
 the truth occurred to any one. China was a forgotten 
 land. The result of the great battle in the Hwang- 
 hai was still unknown in England — all was unknown. 
 Hardy was the first messenger from that silent, but 
 busy, Eastern world who had appeared for many a 
 mouth. 
 
 At the Hard a boat awaited him. He was taken on 
 board the Anson, which carried the Admiral's flag at 
 the main, and was received by Lord Charles Beresford 
 in his private cabin. 
 
 The cheery sailor took the hand of the grave-faced 
 one, and said : 
 
 " I congratulate you heartily, Mr. Hardy, on the 
 merited enthusiasm and confidence which you have 
 aroused in your countrymen, and I shall feel myself 
 honored by your collaboration." 
 
 And Hardy said : 
 
 " Thank you, my lord." 
 
 And, after some few words, they sat together, and 
 Beresford said : 
 
 " The facts, since you are ignorant of them, are 
 roughly these : the navy of Italy is practically intact. 
 Of her first-class battleships, two were sunk by Eiviera 
 forts, but about 130,000 tons of her 150,000 odd tons 
 in this line remain, with say 16 guns over 13 inches, 
 and, counting the whole fleet, 44 over 10. With the 
 names, tonnage, and armaments of the various ships 
 you are familiar, the two lost ships being the Re Um- 
 ierto and the Ruggiero di Lauria. France, on the 
 other hand, has lost heavily in the war ; her Toulon 
 squadron of eighteen armored ships, which she had 
 
26o The Yellow Danger 
 
 reduced by those sent to the first invasion of England, 
 was destroyed in the Bay of Algeciras, during an at- 
 tempt to pass through the Straits. A few antiquated 
 wooden tilings like the Colhret and the 8uffren, as well 
 as that rather lame duck, the Richelieu, still remain. 
 
 " Her Levant squadron, however, is mostly good for 
 fight ; there was a brush with our East Mediterranean 
 force, but the French turned tail, and were lost in a 
 mist after some mutual injuries. The majority of the 
 fifteen coast-defense iron-clads, moreover, are intact, 
 and 1 have no doubt will be dragged into this final ef- 
 fort. Altogether we have, I think, to reckon with a 
 contribution from France of, say 96,000 tons, and this 
 will include, I think I may say, the Brennus, the Sfax, 
 the Trident, the two three-masted contre-torpilleurs, 
 Voutour and Cosmao, the Amiral Duperre, the Levrier, 
 the cruiser Troude, the Marceau, and the Magenta. 
 Those, I think, are all I can be sure of. 
 
 " In the Baltic there have been four battles, one 
 British-German, one British-Eussian-German, one 
 Swedish-Danish-German, and the last Swedish-Eussian. 
 
 " On the state of affairs with regard to Baltic ships 
 I am unfortunately not so well informed. I very much 
 doubt if there remains to Sweden a single effective 
 ship of war ; but, if I am not wrong, we may expect to 
 to have do with a contribution from Eussia and Germany 
 combined of, say, 100,000 tons, one-half of which, I cal- 
 culate, will be battleship weight, and the rest cruisers 
 and torpedo flotillas. Austria will send her single 
 battleship and her 33,000 ton-weight in cruisers, mak- 
 ing altogether, with torpedo-boa.ts, say 40,000 tons. 
 Putting all these together, I have calculated, Mr. 
 Hardy, an opposition of 456,000 tons. 
 
 "Very well, now. Let us turn nearer home, and 
 see what force we have to oppose to this great armada. 
 Britain, I assure you, has had a hard and up-hill 
 fight of it. There lie around you ships recalled from 
 every quarter of the globe, except China, where, I 
 hear that you say, our squadron has gone to Davy 
 Jones. If an invading army wore .to descend from , 
 let us say, the planet Jupiter, they would find all our 
 
Before the Battle; 261 
 
 Colonies' tindefended. Happily our enemies are in the 
 same plight. Altogether we have at our command, in- 
 cluding available coast-defense ships, 156,000 tons, 
 just about one-third of the enemy's force ; and if these 
 figures do not fill you with a certain gravity, it is be- 
 cause you are a Briton and Mr. Hardy." 
 
 Beresford smiled as he concluded, leaning back his 
 chair ; Hardy, looking upon the ground, did not 
 smile. 
 
 After a minute Hardy said . 
 
 " I take it, my lord, that after this battle there won't 
 be any ships of war left anywhere ? " 
 
 " There will be the Japanese, Chinese, and American 
 navies," said Beresford, " and some things of Spain, 
 with some inconsiderable Portuguese and Dutch ships. 
 Europe will then have to fight with her Atlantic grey- 
 hounds." 
 
 Still Hardy did not smile. 
 
 "And what are our best ships, my lord ?" he said. 
 
 " Our best ships are good," replied Lord Charles 
 Beresford. "We have the Illustrious, the Hood, the 
 Anson, the Trafalgar, the Royal Sovereign, on board 
 of which you will bear the joint direction of the battle, 
 though, I am sorry to say, without a flag-captain ! also 
 the Centurion, the Nile, the Benbow, the Hero. You 
 will see in a few minutes for yourself. Not all the 
 most modern of the modern, perhaps — but all good 
 ships and true." 
 
 " There won't be much of them left after the battle, 
 my lord," remarked Hardy. 
 
 This was obvious. Lord Charles Beresford coughed. 
 And he said : 
 
 " I suppose not. But now — the case being as I have 
 explained to you, what are your ideas as to a plan of 
 battle, and so on ? " 
 
 For some time Hardy was silent, perusing the ground. 
 Afterwards he said : 
 
 " To be candid, my lord, I have no idea, not. a single 
 one. Or rather, I have One. " 
 
 " Very good, Mr. Hardy ; let me hear it, and we 
 will then confer together upon it." 
 
262 The Yellow Danger 
 
 " My idea is this, sir," said Hardy, " to ask you to 
 let me take a cruiser, or a pinnace, or something, and 
 go to the foreign fleet with a flag of truce to try and 
 persuade them, by hook or by crook, to go back again 
 to their own country." 
 
 " My good Mr. Hardy ! " broke from Lord Charles 
 Beresford's lips. 
 
 " You are astonished, my lord," said Hardy. " You 
 guess that I am as fond of a fight as any one, and you 
 did not quite expect to hear that sort of proposal from 
 me. But I make it seriously to you, and in doing so 
 I forget my own inclination, and even I forget the 
 glory of England. I am thinking of the good of the 
 ' whole world. The fact is, sir, I happen to know more 
 of the actual conditions of the present and the near 
 future than you do, and therefore see things in dif- 
 ferent proportions. I say to you, Lord Charles Beres- 
 ford, that mankind is at this moment in by far the 
 greatest fix in which it has ever been since the first 
 man stepped ; and how it is going to get out of it, God 
 only knows. You think you have been having a great 
 war in Europe, and so you have. But this little great 
 war of yours is not anything compared with what is 
 coming upon you, sir. Believe me, for I know, or I 
 would not say it. It has been man fighting with man 
 all the time, has it not ? But how if all the devils in 
 hell, myriads of them, my lord, suddenly break loose 
 upon you ? It would be an easy thing for four mil- 
 lions of yellow men, with a proper leader, to conquer 
 Europe in its present state. But it is not four millions 
 whicii are coming ; it is four hundred millions ; and 
 every single one of them a devil, as I say, vomited from 
 hell. I have just come from China, and that is what 
 I have to tell you, sir." 
 
 As Hardy ceased, he lifted his hitherto careless eyes, 
 and now there was a flash in them ; in the face of the 
 other was horror, query, incredulity. 
 
 There was a dead silence. Lord Charles Beresford 
 had of old been himself one of the preachers of 
 " The Yellow Danger " ; but he had preached it as a 
 theory, afar off. When he was told that it was here — 
 
Before the Battle 263 
 
 had come — it shocked and appalled him as though he 
 had never once heard of such a thing. 
 
 In the midst of the silence there was a knock, and- 
 the Admiral's Flag-Lieutenant entered the room. He 
 said : 
 
 ' ' The Indefatigable has steamed in, sir, and signals 
 that the enemy are now passing the Straits." 
 
 A chain of four British cruisers, going and coming 
 within signaling distance, the remotest keeping watch 
 upon the enemy, the nearest in touch with Portsmouth, 
 had been told off for this duty two days previously. 
 
 " We musb be looking alive, then," said Lord Charles. 
 " The words you have spoken, Mr. Hardy, are terri- 
 ble ; and the course you suggest seems to me one al- 
 most requiring the authority of the civil powers. But 
 now, you see, there is no time. I suppose I must take 
 upon myself the responsibility of acceding to your 
 views." 
 
 " I believe that England will approve our conduct, 
 sir." 
 
 " Good. At the same time I can't say that I have 
 much faith in the success of your expedition." 
 
 "I hope it will succeed, my lord. If it does 
 uot " 
 
 " Well ? " 
 
 " Then it will serve another end." 
 
 " What end ? " 
 
 " I shall have a good look at the enemy's formation, 
 forces, and disposition." 
 
 And at these words the eyes of the two men met. 
 
 And Lord Charles Beresford smiled. 
 
 And John Hardy, for the first time, smiled. 
 
CHAPTEE XXV 
 
 THE GREATER WATERLOO 
 
 The ships lay in harbor with fires banked and steam 
 at a quarter of an hour's notice. 
 
 The single signal " Weigh ! " went up from the Anson, 
 and ten thousand sailor-hearts went fluttering, as the 
 fat chain-links, like processions of slow-footed sea- 
 tortoises, came waddling clumsily in-board. 
 
 It was arranged between Hardy and Beresford that 
 the plan of advance which the latter had long since 
 determined upon should be put into execution and 
 maintained, up to the time of Hardy's visit to the allied 
 fleet. If, after the visit. Hardy desired to take over 
 the sole command, he would signal that fact through- 
 out the fleet. 
 
 At noon exactly the ships steamed out. At once the 
 news was flashed over all Britain, and an hour later the 
 churches of the land, in hamlet, town, and city, were 
 thronged with worshipers imploring the Almighty to 
 protect His Witness in the earth, and not to forsake 
 in the hour of her extremity that chosen Nation, His 
 Servant, which had proclaimed the greatness of good- 
 ness, and, as far as her poor striving eyes could see, 
 had loved Eighteousness, and had hated Iniquity. 
 
 The ships passed Spithead massed in four columns 
 in line ahead, flag and senior officers leading their 
 columns; Hardy at the head of the starboard line in 
 the Royal Sovereign and Beresford at the head of the 
 extreme port. Ships had stringent instructions to keep 
 their speed, and maintain an exact formation. Six 
 knots, eight knots, ten knots were signaled; and it 
 364 
 
The Greater Waterloo 265 
 
 was evident from the position of the ste&.m-cones that 
 every ship had steam in plenty. 
 
 It was a bright early-September day j but as often 
 happens on such days, a bluish mist, which was half a 
 mist and half a luminosity, delicately veiled the dis- 
 tance. 
 
 Off Selsey Bill the second link of the chain of look- 
 outs joined the fleet, an hour afterwards the third, and 
 half an hour afterwards the fourth. The last, having 
 come in at the rate of twenty-one knots, reported the 
 enemy oS Winchelsea, steering W. by S. in four lines 
 abreast, the last line consisting mainly of troop-ships, 
 and the whole occupying a vast breadth of sea midway 
 between the Prench coast at Dieppe and the English 
 at Winchelsea. In half an hour everybody of any rank 
 in either fleet had a glass at his eyes. 
 
 It was the head signalman of the Royal Sovereign 
 who first sent a thrill through his ship by reporting 
 that he could make out something to eastward ; and 
 five minutes later every glass could detect the enemy, 
 faint and toy-like in the vague haze as mirage, or the 
 other-world hues of soap-bubbles. The fleeis were then 
 twenty miles apart, and it was just after four, the day 
 being as bright and hot as ever. 
 
 Hardy, the glass at his eyes, said to a signal mid- 
 shipman, an old Britannia shipmate of his own age : 
 
 " I want No. 98. Have her signaled alongside at 
 once." 
 
 No. 98 was a quite new first-class torpedo-boat, the 
 fastest thing in the British navy, and the first of her 
 build. Only 130 tons in displacement, she yet had a 
 length of 160 feet, and an I.H.P. of 2800. She steamed, 
 or rushed, at the rate of thirty-three knots, and while 
 she was doing it her crew were not comfortable, and 
 the sea in all her neighborhood changed color. Hardy, 
 before he stepped aboard her, took the precaution to 
 drape himself from head to foot in oil-skins. 
 
 Away, then, in a few minutes, drove ~Ko. 98 at full 
 speed, swaying through a horrible vibratory heave of 
 her flanks, like a charger which has galloped all day, 
 and at nightfall he sprawls with drooped neck at the 
 
266 The Yellow Danger 
 
 inn-gate, the sweat recking on his rocking ribs ; so 
 drove No. 98, groaning for speed, seeming far too frail 
 for the power that pumped and travailed within her 
 rocking ribs. 
 
 Eastward she flew, a mere white specter of hurrying 
 foam ; and within this shroud of spray. Hardy, in his 
 oil-skins, lay fiat on his face, his left arm round an 
 upright at the extreme bow, a double spy-glass at his 
 eyes. From the masthead amidships floated a large 
 white flag. 
 
 As soon as No. 98 was seen to shoot ahead of the 
 fleet, Lord Charles Beresford signalled slow speed, and 
 the fleet proceeded at a mere crawl through the water, 
 this having been previously agreed upon. It was 
 Hardy's idea that the enemy were probably ignorant 
 of our exact forces, and that something might possibly 
 be gained, when the facts of the battle unfolded them- 
 selves, by maintaining this ignorance as long as might 
 be. Hence a nearer approach was for the present 
 avoided. 
 
 In thirty-five minutes Hardy was on the deck of the 
 allied Admiral-ship, the ship being the Andrea Doria, 
 and the Admiral, in virtue of seniority, Admiral Pre- 
 mesnil, the Grand Duke Alexis being second in com- 
 mand. 
 
 He was led, his face half enveloped in the throat- 
 flap of the oilskin, and the water streaming to his 
 feet, into the Admiral's quarters. Pr^mesnil, a tall 
 man, with gray hair, and a stately courteousness of 
 manner, sat opposite Hardy, supporting a thoughtful 
 brow on thumb and finger. 
 
 " May I ask, sir," said Hardy, "are you fairly well 
 acquainted with English ? " 
 
 " Fairly well, sir," answered Premesnil ; " and that 
 is not a confession, but a boast." 
 
 He bowed. Hardy bowed. 
 
 "Well, sir," said Hardy, " I come to you to make a 
 proposal of peace. But before I can say anything, I 
 must ask you to slacken your speed, so as not to ap- 
 proach too near to my fleet during our talk. Our fleet 
 is almost stationary. I ask the same of you," 
 
The Greater Waterloo 267 
 
 " It shall be done, sir. But first let us understand 
 who we are. I, as you guess, am the Admiral-in-Ohief 
 here : Admiral Premesnil. Who are you ? " 
 
 " I have the joint-command of the British fleet," 
 said Hardy, "in collaboration with Lord Charles 
 Beresford. My name is John Hardy. I speak for my- 
 self and my colleague." 
 
 " Might I ask — Hardy of Shoreham fame ? " 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 " Good. Then I shall at once comply with your re- 
 quest as to speed, and order you a glass of wine. You 
 have had a good drenching, I see." 
 
 The Admiral touched a button, and gave an order as 
 to speed. But Hardy declined the wine. 
 
 He put his brow on his hand, and he began to talk 
 slowly and gravely in his plain, strong Saxon, unfold- 
 ing to the Admiral why he was there, going into the 
 minutise of the Chinese character, prophesying in 
 simple English, but with the conviction and efEusion 
 of a Hebrew Seer, the doom of Europe. 
 
 He spoke for half an hour without interruption. 
 And when he was finished the Admiral sighed, for he 
 was weary, and was wondering what this all was about, 
 and when it would end. He did not believe a word of 
 the matter. 
 
 The thought occurred to him : " Can this be a 
 ruse to keep back the battle till darkness comes 
 on?" 
 
 His manner stiffened. He was narrow and tech- 
 nical ; he lacked both sight and insight. 
 
 "' And what are your proposals, sir ? " he said. 
 
 " I have made them ! " said Hardy. 
 
 " But not seriously — come now." 
 
 Hardy leapt to his feet, flushing. 
 
 " Do you reject them, then ? " 
 
 " In my own name, and in the name of my colleagues, 
 without consulting them, most decidedly — yes." 
 
 " Then, sir, we will fight you." 
 
 " Since nothing else remains, Mr. Hardy." 
 
 "I say you Ion jour, monsieur." 
 
 " Good-day, Mr. Hardy." 
 
268 The Yellow Danger 
 
 They bowed. Hardy passed through the door, his 
 orow yery pink, the Admiral following. 
 
 Again they bowed as Hardy passed down the ship's 
 side, and never met again. 
 
 Back tore No. 98 to her own fleet. Hardy lying at 
 her stern with the glass held steadily to his musing eyes. 
 
 To the surprise of the British, the torpedo-boat, in- 
 stead of. returning to the starboard column, made for 
 the extreme port, steering lor the Anson. 
 
 At this time Hardy, stung by the French Admiral, 
 and excited at the near approach of battle, was flushed 
 in face, and about him was something of his natural 
 look of youth. His blood was up. He had come into 
 contact with the realities of the case — the very reali- 
 ties to which his own inner nature was akin. Here 
 he was at home, among native things, which he could 
 manipulate without fail. His nature, as it were, rose 
 and buckled on its sword, feeling its force, not doubt- 
 ing its dowry. He was prepared now for any responsi- 
 bility. His soul recognized and acknowledged itself, 
 and his eyes were bright. He was a Hero. 
 
 As other men discover theories and apply them to 
 facts, so he, on contact with facts, evolved theories. 
 He had formed a plan of the battle. 
 
 He ran up to the Anson's side with alacrity. And as 
 he was hurriedly met by Beresford, he hurriedly said : 
 
 "These people will have nothing to do with peace, 
 my lord. The thing now is to beat them. 
 
 "I heartily agree, Mr. Hardy. Am I to understand 
 that, having seen their disposition, you are prepared to 
 take over the sole command ? " 
 
 " I am willing, my lord." 
 
 " Good ! And have you come to tell me that ? " 
 
 " No. I came to save you a Journey to my ship, as I 
 was already abroad from mine. What I want is a 
 meeting of all captains and commanders in your ward- 
 room at once. But it must be at once." 
 
 Beresford instantly turned, and sent a middy pack- 
 ing with the order ; the flags climbed up, and a flotilla 
 of forty-three hurried boats came converging over a 
 wide space of sea. 
 
The Greater Waterloo 269 
 
 They were soon on board, and gathered in the ward- 
 room. Beresford, half-rising from his chair, said : 
 "Mr. Hardy will speak on my behalf and on his own, 
 gentlemen," and sat down again. 
 
 Every one of those assembled eyes rested critically 
 upon Hardy as he rose, he in his oil-skins, they all in 
 uniform, prepared to pass judgment upon him as sea- 
 man, as general, as man. 
 
 Would he not hesitate, or blush, or strut, or stammer ? 
 Would he not show himself blatant, or timorous, or 
 crude, or uninitiated ? 
 
 They none of them felt absolutely sure of him. Only 
 Hardy felt absolutely sure of himself, standing on fact. 
 He rose with the self-assurance and the self-uncon- 
 sciousness of Cromwell, four-square to his place and 
 his hour. 
 
 This is what he said : 
 
 " We have not much time for talk, gentlemen, as 
 the enemy must now be approaching us at the rate of 
 eight or ten knots, and 1 do not want them to come too 
 near before I tell you what I think. Lord Charles 
 Beresford has calculated that they outweigh us by 
 three to one, and that is just about the truth. Now I 
 am not at all sure that you will all absolutely agree with 
 what I am going to say about that ; but, personally, I 
 am quite certain of my ground. They are three, I 
 say, and we are one. Well, suppose three men attack 
 me in the street, what would be the best thing, and 
 what would be the worst, which I could do ? The 
 best thing I could do would be to set my back against 
 a wall, face them, and try to drive away at them ; the 
 worst thing, would be to get in the middle of a triangle 
 formed by them. We agree, of course, as to that ; 
 and hence the horror which all military people have 
 of the phrase 'between two fires.' But surely, 
 gentlemen, with a ship it is different ! On land you 
 must not be too bold, for then you become rash ; but 
 on board a ship, I give it as my opinion that the rasher 
 you are, the better the chance you have ! Why, let me 
 ask you, ought I to try to get my back against a wall, 
 if three men attack me in the street ? There is no 
 
270 The Yellow Danger 
 
 other reason than this : that I have only got one face 
 and two hands. If I had three faces, and six hands, 
 the best thing I could do would be to get in the middle 
 of them, and try to finish them all off, before any two 
 could attack me in one quarter. Now a ship has four 
 faces — a bow, a stern, and two sides — and under each 
 of these a gallant number of hands. I believe now, 
 whatever the books on naval tactics may say, that you 
 will be on my side in this matter ; for one, of course, 
 must not go by books, where so much is at stake. 
 
 "But I do wish to convince you quite fully. 
 Let me point out to you, then, what you know, that 
 the modern battleship, as distinct from the old-time 
 ones, is a far more potent thing as an attacking than 
 as a self-defensive machine. The Camper down rammed 
 the Victoria as they were playing about together, and 
 down, with hardly a sigh, went the Victoria, like lead. 
 If you were to armor a battleship to resist the at- 
 tack of a 111-ton gun, that ship would sink without 
 troubling any one to fire the gun off. And what does 
 this prove ? It proves that if three ships attack one, 
 the best thing which that one can do is to turn three 
 faces simultaneously to those three ships, and batter 
 away at them with her hundred hands, making sure 
 that, not one, but four ships will have disappeared 
 when the smoke clears. In other words, the one ship 
 must get in the middle of the three. It is a question 
 of time. 
 
 " Of course, gentlemen, if a ship could float with 
 only one side, then it would be of great importance for 
 her to avoid getting 'between two fires.' But when 
 one side is broken, both sides sink, and it is of no 
 consequence whether or not the other side is broken 
 too ; while it is of consequence that that other side 
 should, before it sinks, be sinking an enemy's ship. It . 
 is a question of time. 
 
 " I hope I make myself clear. I am led to express 
 these thoughts to you, because they have just been 
 passing most vividly through my own head; and they 
 have been doing so in consequence of the sight I h?ive 
 had of the enemy's fleet. 
 

 
 ^r 
 
 vt- 
 
 -J 
 
 ••.-So- 
 
 • 
 
 ^ • 
 
 • 
 a _ 
 
 «■;.* 
 
 The Greater Waterloo 271 
 
 ' The arrangement of that fleet you already partly 
 know. The important point is this : that 
 their first and second lines abreast consist 
 of two rows of battleships, the first num- 
 bering ten, and the second nine. Now 
 these are arranged in echelon ; so that 
 you get a series of nine triangles with their 
 bases toward us, and their apex away 
 from us, as you see in this drawing which 
 I have made, marking the names of ships 
 as far as I could determine, or guess, 
 them." 
 
 A paper with a diagram was handed 
 round. 
 
 "JSTow, gentlemen, since we have just 
 
 nine battleships, we have it in our power 
 
 to make a dash into these nine triangles, 
 
 and fire away ; but in that case, every 
 
 second allied battleship in the front line 
 
 would be attacked by two, instead of 
 
 "^ ••• one, British ship ; and we really have not 
 
 ?■. the material to spare for these luxuries. 
 
 ». '"■ No : what I propose is that we spread 
 
 _.*' ourselves out, so that six of our battleships 
 
 shall occupy the whole length of the French 
 
 line abreast ; and in that case, as the diagram shows us, 
 
 our extreme starboard ship will find herself running 
 
 into a foreign triangle, base facing ; our second ship 
 
 into a quite distinct foreign triangle, apex facing ; our 
 
 third ship into a third foreign triangle, base facing ; 
 
 and so for the six ships, base facing and apex facing, 
 
 alternately. Thus our six ships will engage eighteen 
 
 distinct foreign ships ; and the foreigners will have one 
 
 ship left : and we shall have — three. 
 
 "Now that one left ship of the foreigners I wish to 
 have attacked by torpedo-boats No. 47, No. 53, and No. 
 98 at the same moment, the instant the battle com- 
 mences. They are to do nothing else till that one 
 ship is in the air. 
 
 " Well, with regard to our three battleships left, it is 
 chiefly to tell you what I think should be done with 
 
372 The Yellow Danger 
 
 them that I have called this hurried meeting. Gentle- 
 men, it seems to me, really, that a perfectly whole and 
 Bound ship, suddenly and unexpectedly entering a bat- 
 tle when it is more than half over, must be not only a 
 tremendous weapon in herself, but must necessarily be 
 the cause of a tremendous demoralization in the minds 
 of her enemies. Hence it is that I grudge the time 
 taken up by every word that I am now speaking. The 
 enemy cannot be quite certain of our numbers — they 
 do not know that we have these three ships. I there- 
 fore want these three, at once, to retreat westward 
 under forced draught till they see the smoke of the 
 battle, and then, making a detour, to get behind the 
 enemy's troop-ships, and dash among them from the 
 east. I have very good reasons for knowing that this 
 time, it is not a matter of supreme national importance 
 whether the foreigners land upon English soil or not ; 
 but still, we do not want the people of Britain to be 
 saying that they had a fleet, and it was not good enough 
 to clear the seas of foreigners. The three ships will 
 therefore worry among the troop-ships, sinking all they 
 can — on this clear understanding, that they be not 
 careful to destroy straggling ships, that they waste 
 little time, that they dash as soon as may be into the 
 general battle, and finish the destruction of the 
 enemy. 
 
 " The three ships which I tell off for this duty are 
 the Centurion, the Benbow, and the Hero. 
 
 " With regard to the method to be adopted by the 
 Six, the three which enter a triangle-base will, after as 
 much fight as possible without lowering speed in the 
 middle, pass through and ram the apex ; then if pos- 
 sible, and if need be, reform, return, and fight. The 
 three which enter their triangles by an apex, will ram 
 the apex, enter, and fight. 
 
 " One of the greatest horrors of modern sea-battles 
 I believe to be the danger we are all in of doing injury 
 to our own ships. But this time we shall be so spread 
 out, that nothing of that sort is likely to happen — to 
 battleships at least. But to captains and command- 
 ers of cruisers and composite vessels I commend that 
 
The Greater Waterloo 273 
 
 reflection. For they, passing into the second line of 
 the enemy, will have a thicker fight, which, I hope, 
 will be conducted on the same principles as those I have 
 enunciated for battleships. 
 
 " That is all I had to say, and now we must look 
 sharp, I think, especially those Three. I wish you suc- 
 cess and good-bye. After all, ships are dead things ; it 
 is not ships that fight a battle, but men ; and every one 
 knows that we have the right men. Nice steering, 
 dash, and plenty of quick thunder : that, I think, is 
 much. We ought to be able to destroy this foreign 
 fleet. I have seen their Admiral-in-Chief, gentlemen, 
 and he certainly did not look to me as if he knew much 
 about ships and flghting." 
 
 A low noise of laughter ran round the room. Already 
 the magic of Hardy's plain but dashing and fascinat- 
 ing personality had caught and won his colleagues. It 
 was impossible not to see by the faces around him that 
 he was approved. He possessed the faculty of making 
 men work with enthusiasm for him. 
 
 " What about the battle-word ? " said a captain, as 
 they turned to troop way. 
 
 " Suppose we say Trafalgar 9 " said Hardy. 
 
 " Trafalgar has been' already used three times dur- 
 ing the war," said Lord Charles Beresford. "I had 
 decided upon another, Mr. Hardy." 
 
 "What, my lord?" 
 
 " Shoreham," answered Lord Charles Beresford. 
 
 And a murmur of "Hear, hear," as the ofiicers 
 busily shook hands, spread half-way up the stairway ; 
 and cJack, a short while afterwards, knowing who now 
 led him, received the signaled word with high 
 enthusiasm. 
 
 By the time Hardy reached his own ship in No. 98, 
 the three appointed battleships were ofE to the west. 
 
 It was just three bells, first dog-watch ; and the day, 
 as if lingering to see, showed hardly a tendency to 
 darken. The allied fieet was now much more distinct- 
 ly marked on the horizon. The British had quite a 
 stripped appearance, prepared, to its mast-heads, for 
 battle. 
 18 
 
274 The Yellow Danger 
 
 As soon as Hardy reached his deck he ordered ten 
 knots to be signaled. And at once the two masses of 
 power began to approach rapidly, growing up upon 
 each other, marching over the insubstantial deep, to 
 meet. 
 
 It is impossible for even the coolest heart to be pres- 
 ent at the impending of a contest so august, without 
 a quickened beat, a thump of awe. Even to contem- 
 plate the thing from afar is horror. The weak flesh 
 shrinks. The forces that rush to horrid combat are 
 hardly of man — they stride out into the infinite, they 
 reach the supernatural, they become ghostly. Com- 
 monplace Jack suddenly finds himself face to face with 
 ineffable Hell. 
 
 They are ten miles apart — they are eight — ^they are 
 six. The heart seems jammed in the dry throat, and 
 the hands shake like reeds through which the hunts- 
 man's dog has flitted. The anticipation of the thing 
 is, if possible, a greater horror than the reality. 
 
 The five ships have pricked their course ofE, de- 
 bouching to port, and the three appointed torpedo- 
 boats are rushing like sword-fish still farther to port 
 upon the single doomed ship designated by Hardy. 
 Only the Royal Sovereign in the far starboard limb 
 maintains her straight course to eastward. Hardy is 
 in her conning-tower, and his eyes, alight with awe and 
 joy, are everywhere. 
 
 Signal after signal goes up from the Royal Sovereign. 
 The speeds on both sides intensify. She is five miles 
 from the two ships between which she means to run, 
 and she is the foremost of her own fleet. In two min- 
 utes she is four miles ; in two more three. How fright- 
 ful is her Silence. . . . ! If the earth's foot should 
 slip upon its course, and she were perceived to be sail- 
 ing slowly, yet with ever swifter and madder joy, to- 
 ward her native sun, just so the wild heart would beat, 
 and the blanched face be pinched. . . . 
 
 The ships are no longer mere toys one to the other. 
 They are two miles apart. Hardy waits, grandly pa- 
 tient. They are two thousand yards apart. . . . And 
 then the Royal Sovereign talks. 
 
The Greater Waterloo 275 
 
 Talks — and is answered. It is a single savage bark 
 9f Cerberus, the hell-dog, answered by two single sav- 
 age Cerberus barks — the talk o£ heavy guns. But be- 
 fore the sounds have passed in pallid flight over the sea, 
 there breaks forth a continued rolling row, like that 
 solemn roar of doom and deep-throated jabber of bub- 
 bering and thundering Etna, the mere intolerable tu- 
 mult of which throws the three crews into a sort of crazy 
 daze. It is the lighter guns which jabber. 
 
 John Hardy forgets Yen How and his tortures. He 
 is a youth again. A wild hilarity lights his gallant 
 eyes. 
 
 But now he is passing midway between the two ships, 
 and straight before him is the third. Not an instant 
 of that precious period passes unmarked by him. 
 Though his face, like all faces there, is a face of ec- 
 stasy, the back of his brain is cool as ice. 
 
 "Plenty of quick thunder," he had said — in his ro- 
 bust, Cromwellian way ! And as he passed by her, the 
 great Brennus reeled and plunged, with a sort of 
 tragic haste, from sight. 
 
 But now all the battle, over many a mile of troubled 
 sea, is rolled in smoke ; and nimble-treading clouds 
 pass in mysterious haste to and fro across the water. 
 From fifteen miles away to northward there comes a 
 great detonation, and the Italia is " in the air." The 
 three torpedo-boats detailed to attack her have been 
 sunk, but the sixth steel-needle waits half a minute 
 swinging between her screws, and bursts, and sends 
 her — flying. 
 
 Near by. Lord Charles Beresford on the Anson has 
 rammed the Lepanto at a triangle-apex, and run on 
 with sinking bows toward the Amiral Duperre and the 
 Oldenburg ; and these two he passes with such a rain 
 of wrath that not a single crew is left alive at their 
 unprotected guns. 
 
 Now, if never before, is proved the truth of Hardy's 
 saying, that the modern battleship is a destructive, 
 rather than a self-protective, engine. Even as he 
 gasps the sharp, short order " Eam ! " the two masses 
 of white cloud, within which are the Royal Sovereign 
 
276 The Yellcw Danger 
 
 and the Francisco Morosimi, coalesce ; they are both 
 tearing along at fifteen knots in nearly opposite di- 
 rections ; they close — they meet ; and there is nothing 
 on earth to which to liken the shocking Jar with which 
 those armored powers crash. 
 
 On both ships every living brain spins and faints ; 
 and before any one has recovered consciousness, the 
 Francisco Morosimi is wheeling furiously in a hollow 
 basin of sea, whose waters shoot and gurgle in cata- 
 racts above her leaning hiill. 
 
 All along the line of fifteen miles, from the Italia 
 "in the air " to the Francisco Morosimi, in the deep, 
 the tale of tragedy has accumulated ; and in three 
 minutes the charge is over, and the ships are firing 
 stern-guns. 
 
 Only three minutes — and at the end of that time, 
 one British battleship, the Illustrious, and four foreign 
 battleships, the Italia the Francisco Morjsimi, the 
 Lepanto, and the Admiral-ship, are no longer there ; 
 seven minutes later, and nine more foreign battleships, 
 with three more British, sink, without receiving fur- 
 ther injuries. Some of the crews of these last are 
 afloat in boats. 
 
 Two of the six British ships in tatters, and six of the 
 enemy in tatters, still float. Hardy slowly opens his 
 eyes, leaps to his feet, looks around, and orders his 
 helm to starboard ; for there is a wide clear space 
 about him. He is told, in reply, that it is impossible 
 to keep steam, as the water is rising in the stokeholds. 
 
 This only means that he cannot ram again, not that 
 the fight is quite over for him. The Royal Sovereign 
 creeps wearily round ; yonder to the northwest is a 
 still reeking ship, the Sfax, hardly moving ; and like 
 a dying lion, intent upon dealing a last rent to his 
 enemy, the Royal Sovereign, trailing her wounded 
 stern, drags herself painfully forward upon the Sfax. 
 
 The ships are alone, and the combat, dreadful be- 
 cause almost stationary, lasts five minutes. Neither 
 is fit for fight, yet neither will strike colors. The rain 
 of shells clash midway in the air, and burst in unison, 
 as if with clapping hands, and grand hurrahs of flame 
 
The Greater Waterloo 277 
 
 and sound. The ships are near ; and suddenly cries 
 Hardy: "Helm hard to port— hands prepare to 
 board ! " And as the Sfax discharges a last broadside 
 at nothingness, the high bow of the Royal Sovereign 
 creeps forward upon her quarter ; there is a small 
 crash and mutual shudder of the meeting ships ; and 
 the next moment, Jack, with Hardy at his head, is 
 swarming, cutlass in hand, with nimble impetuosity, 
 into the enemy's aft upper-deck. The feat is un- 
 expected ; the Frenchmen wince and die ; in a mo- 
 ment the British tar is everywhere, and his touch is 
 rough. A white-faced commodore rushes past Hardy 
 on the main-deck, crying : "We yield ! we yield !" 
 
 The stern of the Sfax sways and wobbles a little : 
 she feels the suction of the Royal Sovereign which has 
 quietly sunk beside her. 
 
 Hardy stills the tumult, orders the French flag to be 
 pulled down, and leaps to the conning-tower. He looks 
 abroad with keenly curious eyes over the sea. Around 
 him is a great dull roar, and the air is all of thin smoke. 
 T^o human brains can now altogether divine, much less 
 direct, the vast drama that is still progressing. Far 
 away, beyond the ken of vision, the battle is raging 
 between meeting cruisers, between torpedoes and 
 contre-torpilleurs, between shot and shell, ram and 
 barbette, in incalculable hurly-burly. But through 
 all this confusion there has run, and runs, a thread of 
 plan, on at least one side. Hardy, as far as he can see, 
 is well content. He waits and waits, with wildly 
 throbbing heart, for the appearance of his three 
 battle-ships. 
 
 As for himself, he is a prisoner. The Sfax has 
 neither screw, nor rudder, nor boat. 
 
 At last they come, hurrying from the eastward, 
 where they have been delayed by sinking the greater 
 part of the enemy's troop-ships — in line abreast. 
 Hardy's signalman has been busy among the French 
 flags, and when they approach within a thousand yards 
 of the Sfax, summoned by steam-siren, he signals them 
 to destroy, or capture, first the. five dismantled battle- 
 iahips which remain. 
 
278 The Yellow Danger 
 
 And with this order the battle is nearly over : the 
 mere apparition of the fresh ships has all but won it. 
 There is a renewed energy of firing which lasts from 
 four to five minutes. And then a gradual, and finally 
 deathly, silence grows upon the dun air and the callous 
 green sea-surface ; and night at last descends. 
 
CHAPTEE XXVI 
 
 THE YELLOW DAKGER 
 
 We, writing the history, have gone into detail, and 
 explained the means employed by Hardy in the winning 
 of this great battle. But the mass of the British 
 public, not looking narrowly into means, looking only 
 at the astonishing result, hailed the victory as a per- 
 plexing miracle of genius. 
 
 That even one of the British ships should return te 
 harbor was marvelous. But that three should return, 
 having in tow two Italian and one French ship, after 
 destroying the overwhelming remainder of the invading 
 force, this seemed to approach the incredible. 
 
 The three ships arrived at Portsmouth at eleven in 
 the night. They were the Nile, the Hero, and a 
 sloop, the Pelican. (The Benbow, the third of the 
 ships kept by Hardy in reserve, had been torpedoed at 
 the last moment.) They had on board, besides their 
 own crews. Lord Charles Beresford, Hardy, and a num- 
 ber of boat-loads of British and foreign sailors which 
 they had picked up. The three captured ships — the 
 8fax and two Italian gunboats, — all disabled, were 
 towed to Newliaven and left. The three British, 
 almost intact (the Hero had some central-battery guns 
 unshipped), proceeded to Portsmouth. 
 
 At midnight there was a sound of jubilee bells in 
 London, in Liverpool, and in every considerable town 
 in Britain. Watch-night processions, which showed 
 no intention of going to bed, filled the streets ; and 
 penniless Hodge at the door of the village ale-house 
 heard a rumor, and was glad. 
 
 379 
 
28o The Yellow Danger 
 
 Better times would come now ; hard Scarcity and 
 dreary outlook would be no more ; the great war was 
 over ; and the True Blue had won it. 
 
 But the real case was fearfully diflerent. The war 
 just practically ended was a preliminary : it was the 
 first-piece comedietta before the tragedy, and it was 
 put upon the stage by a great actor in order the better 
 to set ofE his own grandiose strutting and storming. 
 It was the streak of foam which foreruns the tidal- 
 wave. 
 
 If ever a man had a day of strain and toil it was 
 John Hardy that day ; with every breath his chest 
 wheezed in labor ; when he landed at Portsmouth at 
 eleven, his hands hung so heavy that he could hardly 
 stir them. His voice was gone. The sound of thunder 
 still sang in his ears. 
 
 Yet, even while preparations were being made for 
 a train to conduct him to London, he wrote, and had 
 sent off, a telegram. It was to the editor of the Times. 
 It said : 
 
 " Kindly reserve two columns for letter from me for 
 to-morrow. Will let you have manuscript by three 
 
 A. M. 
 
 " John Haedt." 
 
 At this message Printing-House Square rubbed its 
 tickled hands, and was prone to dance. The editorial 
 head grew dizzy with big anticipation. For copy at that 
 moment from John Hardy, two columns of it, was 
 copy indeed — and gratis ! It seemed too exquisite a 
 thing to be true. 
 
 "But what can it be all about?" wondered the 
 editor. 
 
 " A thrilling description of the battle ! " suggested 
 an inspired sub. 
 
 " Hardly that, perhaps," doubted the Chief. 
 
 One of the staff waited in Cavendish Square, which, 
 till far into the morning, was filled by an upper-class 
 crowd. A little before three the Times man drove 
 from Hardy's door with the precious copy written in 
 
The Yellow Danger 281 
 
 pencil ; and not till then did Hardy's head drop asleep 
 on the table where he sat ; part of the copy he had 
 scribbled in the train with half-closed eyes. 
 
 The letter contained no thrilling description of the 
 battle ; though it was thrilling enough, too, and made 
 the Tivies editor rub his eyes in a somewhat unusual 
 way. 
 
 Was the letter a stupendous hoax ? Or was it a 
 letter the publication of which would lift the Times to 
 a greater pitch of glory than was ever dreamed by 
 human editor in this world before. 
 
 The Times man was questioned narrowly. From 
 whom had he received the letter ? From Hardy's old 
 butler himself. There could be no mistake. 
 
 It appeared next morning, side by side with the 
 detailed description of the battle. And England 
 rubbed its eyes, too, as the Times editor had rubbed 
 his. 
 
 Hardy had spoken out clearly, careless, in his belief 
 in the British character, whether he threw the nation 
 into a state of panic or not. He told what was coming ; 
 he explained the motive with which the European war 
 had been brought about by Yen How ; he told of the 
 massacre, of the action of the Japanese fleet ; he 
 showed how there was not even the least possible 
 chance for Europe ; how England alone, for a time at 
 least, was sheltered by her sea ; and how this was the 
 chance of England to come forward and prove her 
 patriarchal heart, her imperial clemency, her mother- 
 hood of the world. He gave his reasons for thinking 
 that the fulfilment of his prophecy was near, impend- 
 ing, about to happen. And he wound up with a 
 series of numbered skeleton recommendations. They 
 were : 
 
 1. That the tiny remainder of the British fleet be 
 utilized to seize all the merchant-ships in European 
 ports ; and that these ships, together with all the 
 availalDle ships in the British mercantile marine, be 
 employed, with or without the consent of foreign gov- 
 ernments or individual owners, in bringing over to Eng- 
 land, and in taking to America, and to Africa, such of 
 
282 The Yellow Danger 
 
 the inhabitants of Europe as could and would seefe 
 shelter in those countries. 
 
 3. That America be invited to a League with Brit- 
 ain, having for its object the salvation of the white 
 races, and the extermination of the yellow. 
 
 3. That the armies of Britain be at once recalled 
 from the Continent. 
 
 4. That the government at once begin to make all 
 possible provision for the huge increase of population in 
 Britain which would result on the appearance in 
 Europe of the yellow men. 
 
 Such were the Times' two-columns, and under the 
 last was the name, John Hardy. 
 
 Of the sensation which this letter caused it is 
 impossible to give a real idea, for there is nothing else 
 to which to compare it. By noon copies of the paper 
 were being bought and sold for ten guineas. 
 
 At this hour thanksgiving hymns were being sung ; 
 and the name of Hardy was being made the text of a 
 thousand sermons. 
 
 After the battle of Shoreham, he had been instinct- 
 ively adopted by the race as its " darling " ; the battle 
 of the Channel made him definitely its hero ; his letter 
 made him its Leader. 
 
 He was at once elected a member of the Permanent 
 Committee of National Safety. 
 
 Not that there was no searching of heart, no doubt- 
 ing, as to this extraordinary letter. To many people 
 it seemed as wild as possible. The proof which Hardy 
 adduced to show that the Yellow Wave was near (if it 
 was coming at all) was his contention that Yen How, 
 having destroyed Europe by the European war, would 
 not be sufficiently silly to wait for Europe to recover 
 herself before his invasion. The argument was sound, 
 if the hypothesis was sound. But where were the signs 
 of his coming ? There was an "if." 
 
 On the whole, however, the nation had learnt to 
 trust him ; and trusting him, it stood aghast at his 
 awful message. 
 
 At this time, the people of Britain, if they had never 
 been so before, was genuinely a nation, as distinct from 
 
The Yellow Danger 283 
 
 a mob. They had suffered keenly together, resolved 
 and acted nobly together : and they had been welded 
 in the furnace-heat. By a Nation we mean a multifold 
 Man. It was remarkable, about this period, how large 
 an amount of attention was attracted by certain badly- 
 spelled letters written to the papers. Each man felt 
 himself verily part of the whole, and " the government 
 was upon his shoulder." It was no longer a nation of 
 shopkeepers — it was a nation of Councillors. " To be 
 made perfect by suffering " is even more true of com- 
 munities than of individuals. " Happy," it is said, "is 
 the nation which has no history " — but " nation " in 
 that phrase should be spelled "crowd." It is the 
 Marathons and Trafalgars which knit and nationalize. 
 At all events, Britain, now, with her largely decreased 
 population, was certainly knit and nationalized. She 
 could proceed from thought to action almost with the 
 spontaneity of a single brain and arm. In her hand 
 was the sword — but upon her brow sat Deliberation, 
 and the grave air of the Statesman. 
 
 This was all the more, and not the less, reason why 
 Hardy's announcements were followed by the wildest 
 dismay, the most unalloyed panic. For Britain, and 
 every Briton, felt that it was England, in the end, who 
 would have to dam the yellow wave, or sink beneath it ; 
 that it was she, and she alone, who must needs take up 
 the cross of the world, and, like the Christ of the 
 nations, with many an agony and bloody sweat, redeem 
 mankind. 
 
 Whatever else was true or false in Hardy's letter, 
 this, it was clear, was true : that, in the event of the 
 yellow wave. Continental Europe was powerless. 
 
 When there would be no eye to pity, and no arm to 
 save, it must, then, be the arm of England which 
 should bring salvation. And was it able . . . ? 
 
 There was the fleet of Japan, the fleet of China. 
 And if even there were not the fleet of Japan, neither 
 was there any longer a British fleet at all capable of 
 opposing the landing, even in open boats, of an endless 
 succession of innumerable armies on various parts of 
 the coast. 
 
284 The Yellow Danger 
 
 These reflections at once occurred to everj one. And 
 they had the same effect upon the mind, as if ,it had 
 been scientificalty announced that some fatal change 
 was about to occur in the composition of the atmosphere 
 of the earth. 
 
 It was felt, of course, that the yellow conquest could 
 not be an ordinary conquest, if it happened at all. 
 There was no question of conqueror and conquered living 
 together afterwards, and fraternizing, like Norman and 
 Saxon. The yellow conquest meant, naturally, that 
 wherever it passed, the very memory of the white races 
 it encountered would disappear forever. 
 
 At this dark thought the heart quailed ; and there 
 was Panic. 
 
 And at five o'clock of the day of the Timei two- 
 columns, the Pall Mall Gazette came out with the 
 following : 
 
 {From our own correspondent.) 
 By Anglo-American Cable Co. 
 
 New York. — TheiVew York Evening Posi publishes 
 to-day the report that a body of Thibetans (?) has 
 seized the Eussian railway between Kokand and Kras- 
 novodsk, together with the partially-dismantled for- 
 tress at Samarkand, and have finally appeared at the 
 east bank of the Caspian. Their number, probably 
 amounting to ten or fifteen thousand, has not been 
 definitely ascertained. The rumor originates, I un- 
 derstand, from an Evening Post correspondent at 
 Astrakhan, and comes via Odessa and Paris. 
 
 This item of news, meager as it was, was enough for 
 Britain. At once every one jumped at the right con- 
 clusion. Here, it was agreed, were " the signs of his 
 coming " — the first ! 
 
 As when a sudden comet lowers near the earth, ter- 
 rifying the heart of kings, prophesying Change to the 
 nations, and shaking pestilence from her "horrid lair" 
 — so, witli its growing certainty, did the British nation 
 cower at the drear future. Some one rediscovered the 
 
The Yellow Danger 285 
 
 telegram about the 500 Chinese at St. Petersburg, 
 and noised it abroad afresh. The bleak and dismal sky 
 lowered darkling. 
 
 At twilight the Prime Minister was sitting by John 
 Hardy's bedside, which two physicians had just left. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 THE THKBB GOSPELS 
 
 About the time when the three important personages 
 met at the inn, in the wood near Li^ge, Dr. Yen How 
 was deep in study from morning to night. On the 
 table before him, all round his feet, overflowing every 
 article of furniture in the apartment, were maps, 
 general maps, local maps, special maps, survey maps. 
 He had a goodly wide brain, and every village in 
 Europe, its position, its name, its population, and 
 every stream, and fort, and railway, and town, was 
 climbing into that brain, one after the other, with the 
 intention of staying there. And when he was finished 
 he knew how God had made Europe, and how man had 
 made it, and what was in it. 
 
 He knew also Asia. 
 
 While he was still pondering his maps, China was 
 already far on its march. The seizure of the railway- 
 line by " Thibetans" (?), reported in the Pall Mall 
 Gazette, had taken place four weeks before the news 
 reached IsTew York. The British army of India, after- 
 wards annihilated in Russia, had passed that way, and 
 left an easy task for the yellow pioneers. 
 
 Even before this China had begun to flow westward. 
 Yen How had found her a frozen stream ; and like a 
 frozen stream when the sun shines strongly, she had 
 moved at last under her steady heat, slowly, in trick- 
 ling rivulets, long before the crash of the dripping ice 
 and the billowing broad rush of the torrent. 
 
 Having waked China by the methods we have de- 
 scribed, how did he effect this irresistible Western ten- 
 dency, so mighty in its impulse at last, that an arm a 
 286 
 
Thj Three Gospels 287 
 
 million times stronger than Yen How's could not have 
 checked it, had he willed 'i 
 
 He did it by preaching, with the inspiration of Con- 
 fucius, only with a far greater success than Confucius, 
 his three Gospels of Greed, of Eace, and of Cruelty. 
 
 And in doing so, he remembered the density of the 
 skull which he had to inspire with ideas ; he was not 
 preaching even to Eussian mouiiks, but to men 
 still slower of understanding. To plow a fact into their 
 brains he knew that he must plow hard. But he was 
 quite equal to this. With his usual thoroughness he 
 said : " A hundred ways : and of these one will not fail." 
 At all events he had chosen the doctrines which the 
 Chinese were most apt to learn, and had, in fact, 
 already been taught by nature. And herein lay his 
 chief wisdom. 
 
 Just when the pressure of the new taxation crushed 
 heaviest upon the penurious poor of China, he collected 
 an army of 400,000, composed of men taken from each 
 of the regiments into which all the land of the Mon- 
 gols was now divided ; and this force he hurled into 
 two divisions across the Si-Kiang against Annam, the 
 ancient antagonist of China, and Burma. The horrors 
 perpetrated in these atrocious and totally unexpected 
 raids could not be described ; a great massacre re- 
 sulted, and the army amassed hoards of spoil, gathered 
 from many a Buddist vilidra and jeweled palace-gate. 
 And immediately on its return, the individuals who 
 composed it were redrafted, laden with booty, to their 
 former districts, to spread through every village in 
 China fairy-tales of gore and gold in foreign lands. 
 
 There was not, moreover, a drill-sergeant of the re- 
 motest squad of conscripts who did not become a mis- 
 sionary of Yen How, preaching for him the three glad 
 tidings of hell. 
 
 Many Chinese did not know that there was any 
 other land than China, nor had, till the Massacre, seen 
 a white man, nor known that there were such things as 
 white men. 
 
 Now they heard ; and the astonished ear was 
 charmed. 
 
288 The Yellow Danger 
 
 Could it be that beyond that land of pinched scarcity 
 which they knew, there was Another, in which feeble, 
 pretty creatures, resembling real men, lived in rose- 
 beds, and threw to one another balls of gold, and 
 made love on couches of eider-down and ivory ? And 
 if not, what was this rumor, these tidings of good, 
 coming strangely from afar, this new talk ? And this 
 new holiday of blood, and this new drilling, after four 
 thousand years ? And this new Movement, and this 
 new stirring of sap in the old, dead tree-trunk after the 
 long long changeless winter ? Surely the seasons 
 return ! and by wondrous miracle leaves are again on 
 the branches, and all is new ! There is, then, Spring 
 and joy in the world ? and not utter, ugly woe — ^four 
 thousand years of age ? Gold ? — and frail, white 
 limbs to be torn apart ? — and the blood of luxurious 
 kings to be quaffed by thirsty Chinamen in carved 
 goblets of alabaster ? — and cushions of embroidered 
 silk hanging in plenty for all among the lazy, rotting 
 melons on the far-ofE trees ? 
 
 Far into the dreamiest wilds of savage China, Mon- 
 golia, Thibet, came this message of blessedness, this 
 New Keligion of lust. And every citizen became a con- 
 vert, and every convert a zealot, and every zealot an 
 apostle. 
 
 And the more intolerable Yen How made China for 
 them with burden, and drill, and tax, the louder and 
 deeper swelled their cry to be led forthwith into this 
 promised land of plenty afar. 
 
 In the Commentaries of Csesarwe read of whole com- 
 munities packing, as it were, their trunks, leaving their 
 own land, and migrating in a body to some new territory. 
 It was this strange, wandering tendency which now 
 possessed the Mongolian race ; but instead of a tribe or 
 community on the march, the stars were to look down 
 and behold a nomad Empire. 
 
 This weird and, indeed, awful spectacle destiny had 
 held concealed in her womb ; for this, too, was to be 
 one of the acts in the drama of Man ; and in the ful- 
 ness of time it was evolved, and seen. 
 
 But no one knew better than Dr. Yen How that the 
 
The Three Gospels 289 
 
 Mongolian race in its passage across the old world 
 would meet with obstacle and pain — the weariness of 
 the march, the day's hunger, the fight in the street, 
 the rain of shot and shell at Metz, and Konigsberg, 
 and Paris, and Dover ; as for the Japanese section of 
 the race, he knew that Greed and Cruelty alone were 
 incentives sufficient to provide a steady impulse to 
 their native firmness and valor ; but as for the Con- 
 tinental section of it, he decided to hurl them forward 
 by an added impulse — the excitation of the instinct of 
 Eace. 
 
 In China this instinct took- always a religious form. 
 And hence Yen How had skilfully contrived to invest 
 his Massacre with something of the solemnity of a 
 Eite. In the cities round the coast, where the wliite 
 man had long been known and abominated, the mas- 
 sacre gave an impetus to racial animus, whicla perhaps 
 was capable of no further fury ; but, in addition, he 
 planned for China on the whole a religious mania in 
 connection with this very race-instinct, which he 
 counted upon to inspire it in the direction he willed 
 with the frenzy of the Crusader. 
 
 The religion of China consisted in the worship of 
 the dead ; and this worship took the form also of the 
 worship of the living, whenever the living happened to 
 be a reincarnation of the dead. On the belief in rein- 
 carnation, Buddhism and Confucianism were at one. 
 
 The living were reincarnations of the dead when 
 they were either proclaimed "to be so by the priests, or 
 when they were proclaimed to be so by the Emperor, 
 or — when they could work miracles. 
 
 Now Yen How could work the most astounding 
 miracles ; and he was proclaimed by the Emperor, and 
 he was proclaimed all over China by the priests, to be 
 the reincarnation of a dead man. And the dead man 
 of whom he was proclaimed to be the reincarnation was 
 — Confucius. 
 
 To begin with, he was made a Saint. 
 
 Then (at about the time when John Hardy joined the 
 Englishmen at Kiao-chau) began a remarkable trium- 
 phant passage through China of this great man and his 
 
 '9 
 
290 The Yellow Danger 
 
 enormous Court of dignitaries. In a grand religious fes- 
 tival lasting by Imperial Decree through a month, Yen 
 How was presented and hailed in temple and at praying- 
 mill, from Pekin to Lhassa, as the Heaven-descended 
 Leader of the Only Eace, come back, according to old 
 promise, to lead them to the conquest and fruition of 
 the world. His progress was attended with more than 
 Imperial pomp ; he was raised high on a throne of 
 royal splendor, and exhibited to the muttering and 
 kneeling people : the dazzled eye admitted him a god. 
 
 If in some mountain-dell of remotest China there 
 dwelt some benighted peasant who had never yet heard 
 the name of Yen How, the ruler, the driller, the op- 
 pressor, there was certainly not one now who did not 
 know of Yen How, the Reincarnate, the bringer of 
 glad tidings, the Head of his People. 
 
 Confucius was China ; and Yen How was Confucius. 
 He stood for the Eace. 
 
 Thus did he center in his own Person the whole 
 race-instinct and race-religion of the land. He as- 
 sociated the new creed of lust with the old of super- 
 stition ; and of both he was the embodiment and 
 Prophet. 
 
 He knew that principles must center in a Person 
 before they can lead nations by the nose, and fire them 
 to heroism and martyrdom. No stirring Mahomedan- 
 ism without Mahomet, and no strong Christianity with- 
 out Christ. But in thus making himself the sole guide 
 and motive-power to the whole people, the one center 
 of adoration and trust, he went a step too far ; he com- 
 mitted an error in tactics ; he did not take into 
 account every contingency. 
 
 For if the shepherd chance to perish what will become 
 of the sheep ? 
 
CHAPTEE XXVIII 
 
 THE YELLOW TERKOE 
 
 This was the very question which John Hardy, with 
 his sure eye for the main fact among ten thousand, 
 asked himself — 
 
 " If the shepherd chance to perish . . . ?" 
 
 At all events, it was the shepherd with which he, 
 personally, had to do. Between him and Yen How was 
 the tug of war ; and he knew it. 
 
 So, a week after the battle in the Channel as he lay 
 among his pillows, almost as white as they, he called 
 old Bobbie to him, and said : 
 
 " Bobbie, do you know anything about British regi- 
 ments and the dress they wear ? " 
 
 " Not much, I'm afraid. Master John," answered 
 Bobbie. 
 
 "Well, then, you will find out, please, and as soon 
 as possible — to-day. I want to know what regiment 
 
 it is whose privates wear " and he frowned in an 
 
 effort of recollection — " wear a scarlet uniform with 
 white facings, and have somewhere about them a 
 Prince of Wales' plume and a coronet. Yes, that is it. 
 Please find out ; and whether they are still in exist- 
 ence, and all about them." 
 
 The old servant bowed and went away. In his eyes 
 now was a perpetual wonder and reproach. The color 
 and taste of the world were changed to him ; some one 
 had meddled with his heart's delight ; Hardy had come 
 back, but the dazed old fellow could not find him. 
 
 Hardy was now recovering from an attack of asthma 
 which had brought him near to death. When he 
 
 291 
 
292 The Yellow Dangef 
 
 opened his eyes to renewed care and thought, Ae had 
 lost a week. The Chinese were in Europe. 
 
 He put out his thin hand and languidly lilted a 
 Times, and he saw the words "The Yellow Terror/' 
 and his hand fell helplessly ; and presently he lifted 
 the paper again, and he glanced at another place, and 
 saw the words — " It is this scream of the Chinese which 
 seems to inspire their victims witn some indefinable 
 new species of terror, never before . . . " ; and his 
 hand fell again. 
 
 But already, by the next morning, he could sit up 
 in bed to drink his cordial, and then he began to 
 study the week's events. His vitality was in reality 
 intense and tough, and the thread by which he clung 
 to life a strong one. He set to work to gather facts, 
 and he could work stoutly. 
 
 While the pile of papers was about him, old Bobbie 
 hobbled into the chamber. 
 
 " This, I think. Master John, is the name of the 
 regiment you want," said the old man, handing a slip 
 of paper. 
 
 On the paper was written — 
 
 "The Duke of Cambridge's Own (Middlesex 
 Eegiment). Eegimental Dist. : No. 67 — Hounslow." 
 
 "Well, Bobbie, and what about them?" asked 
 Hardy. 
 
 "The depot of the regiment is Hounslow, Master 
 John ; and their late history is this : the first line bat- 
 talion was in India at the beginning of the year, and 
 the second line battalion was drafted from South 
 Africa to join them a month after the commencement 
 of the war. Both of these, as far as is known, have 
 been destroyed in Kussia. The 3d and 4th (militia) 
 battalions have been fighting in North Germany, and 
 seem to be no longer in existence, except for some few 
 now in hospital at Chelsea, sir." 
 
 "And have you found out the names of those ?" 
 
 " No, Master John." 
 
 " Then do so at once." 
 
 He went on reading. The details had about them 
 a certain indefiniteness, and they were not voluminous ; 
 
The Yellow Terror 2^3 
 
 but he was quickly able to determine that the Chinese 
 avalanche was pouring in four main streams. 
 
 The 500 " Chinese" who had come to St. Peters- 
 burg " seeming poor," and were to be "sent back to 
 their own country," were not Chinese at all, but 
 Japanese ; and before they could be " sent back " they 
 had mysteriously scattered, and disappeared in the 
 general mass of Europeans. They were intended to 
 report to Yen How when the moment had come for 
 him, personally, to move forward toward Europe. 
 
 The Jehu of that wild four-horse chariot still sat far 
 back in his seat, the reins taut in his hands. The four- 
 fold van of his army was upon Europe, while its rear 
 was still upon Pekin. It stretched across the world. 
 
 Between those two mighty masses of mountains 
 which, like the ramparts of the New Jerusalem, have 
 locked in the Celestial Empire from contact, or 
 knowledge, or suspicion, of the vague world beyond, 
 they came. The Dead-sea lake, after old ages, was 
 amove, aflow. Through that mysterious land, which 
 the race-venom of the Mongol race has made a third 
 unknown Pole in the midst of the earth, crawled the 
 weird procession, the unbounded caravan. The wild 
 elephant and the mild-eyed zebu saw them with wonder, 
 and the summer monsoon went gadding with the 
 marvelous tidings toward the plain, and over the sea 
 to Africa, gossiping that there above, on the high flat 
 land, was a New Thing moving under the sun. The 
 sources of the Me-Kong, the Saluen, and the Irrawady, 
 which only the eye of the couchant tigress and of the 
 yellow man had seen, beheld their week-long passage, 
 and heard the creak of the cart, and the cry of the 
 camel, and the muling of a child at the breast. 
 
 They heard also the sudden scream with which the 
 Chinese laughed. 
 
 Never was so sloven and pell-mell an army ; never 
 so straggling, and lumbering, and clumsy an array ; 
 but never a power more eager, and more certain, to 
 reach its goal. 
 
 The Friant Division of the French Army, going 
 from Presburg to Austerlitz, once marched forty-five 
 
294 The Yellow Danger 
 
 miles a day for two consecutive days. But never a day 
 which did not see this far-spread host sixteen leagues 
 farther toward its aim. They could not be called in- 
 fantry, though millions, during great part of the way, 
 went on foot ; for the armored carts which Yen How 
 had provisioned, the presence of which spread out the 
 host from continent to continent, were the chief means 
 of locomotion, and continually changed their occu- 
 pants. There was, moreover, no care for life ; if a 
 man was ill, if he dropped out of the march like a bird 
 from the flight, he was left to perish, or to return. 
 
 The length of all the units of a single army-corps in 
 column of route was so unlike anything with which we 
 are familiar, that the figures are incapable of convey- 
 ing any idea of its vastness. If the corps could have 
 marched on a single road its length would have been 
 1300 miles, that is to say, the length of three Englands ; 
 and the entire corps would have taken thirteen days to 
 pass a given point. 
 
 This inconceivable worm of humanity contained 
 among its two millions of individuals women incapable 
 of walking a thousand yards, children bom since the 
 march began, old men, boys and girls of ten. 
 
 Each of these pilgrimaging masses of men was in itself 
 a nation, such as those of which Caesar writes, only 
 probably far vaster. Its members came, nearly all 
 from the same province, spoke the same dialect, had 
 been impelled forward by the same set of influences, 
 had been drilled by the same captains. Only its officers 
 were, in the main, Japanese ; and into the rank and 
 flle of each corps had also been drafted thirty thousand 
 Japanese, all men. 
 
 At the time when the five hundred scattered at St. 
 Petersburg, and Yen How, immediately afterwards, 
 received from them through Vladivostok and Nagasaki 
 the news that all Europe was ready to receive him — 
 there were already of these nomad nations a hundred 
 and forty on the march. 
 
 Some of these hosts (particularly those that 
 passed by the depression of the Jungarie Mountains, 
 along the course of the Irtish, where the central 
 
The Yellow Terror 295 
 
 plateau of Asia finds its Western gate) had need to 
 traverse tracts of desert country, bare of flocks, bare 
 even of forage for mule and camel. Even by these, 
 however, no widespread difficulty as to food and forage 
 was felt. "Whole districts of China had been left 
 bare, as though eaten up by human locusts, by the suc- 
 cessive corps which, as it were, bore the country away 
 with them. 
 
 Already, on the march, the soldiers of Yen How — 
 men who have lived upon skeleton scarcity from birth, 
 at the rate of some fraction of a penny per week — 
 began to taste the luxury of life. Not merely dried 
 vegetables, rice, salt and tea, he saw squandered around 
 him, but sausages, pressed meats, fresh meats. The 
 administrative convoys and regimental trains, intended 
 for the distribution of supplies to the troops covered 
 many a mile ; the administrative convoys being in 
 four echelons, two half-a-day's march in the rear of the 
 regimental trains, and the other two intended to bring 
 up possible additional supplies from the rear. Aux- 
 iliary convoys, also in four echelons, and containing 
 many hundred of vehicles, took up deposits of rice, 
 biscuits, and hay, made long before the commence- 
 ment of operations at cantonments which extended to 
 the farthest bounds of Chinese and Thibetan territory. 
 They also carried supplies of preserved meats and 
 forage, and followed the army-corps at a distance of 
 two days' march. 
 
 Each individual of an army-corps, besides, was com- 
 pelled to carry seven pounds of food in some utensil 
 corresponding to a mess-tin or haversack ; this to form 
 a reserve not to be touched, except when every other 
 means of supply should fail. 
 
 During the process of mobilization, each division of 
 infantry, and each army-corps headquarters, had 
 already vast collections of requisitioned herds of ani- 
 mals, from dogs to camels, sufficient for four days' 
 meat, but intended by the help of other provisions to 
 last for months. On the march, the cattle marched 
 between the advanced column and the main body of 
 the column. 
 
296 The Yellow Danger 
 
 It was grand with what smoothness the immeasura- 
 ble machine slid into motion as China began to flow in 
 earnest ; there was no confusion ; western army-corps 
 marched first, and then the next in order took up the 
 minuet of nomadism, all converging and diverging in 
 rhythmic involution and evolution, like the harmoni- 
 ously intertwining currents of a stream. In the week, 
 on the day, at the hour that Yen How designed, they 
 moved, they passed away. 
 
 Through all that breadth of Thibet between the 
 Himalayas and the Kuen-luns, on a level equal to the 
 height of Mont Blanc, they came pouring and blunder- 
 ing ponderously, fifty army-corps of them, some abreast, 
 separated only by short intervals of twenty or thirty 
 miles, a hundred millions of them, — and behind each 
 man a pigtail wriggling in haste. 
 
 Towards what do they press ? What vague blessed- 
 ness ? They do not know. They do not ask. When 
 the Pied Piper played his tune, all the rats of all the 
 cities went gaily in haste after him, entranced, they, 
 too, with wriggling tail, and whiskers cocked, and 
 vaguest prospect. Yen How is the Piper of these 
 prone, purblind, forward-shouldering multitudes of 
 nations — he himself a dancer to another piping. 
 
 Then, again, along the sources of the Irtish they 
 poured, and, one night, all round the inhospitable 
 steppe-like slopes which surround the lower level of Lake 
 Balkash, there camped another fifty army-corps, some 
 within sight of others, making by far the largest collec- 
 tion of human beings covering a similar area which 
 the stars had yet seen. And the next morning, and 
 during all that day and the next, army-corps after 
 army-corps, they moved, they passed away. 
 
 The first (Thibetan) fifty are southern and western 
 tribesmen, used to hard industry, short of stature, 
 their skin a clear yellow, almost of lemon. They are 
 from farthest Taiwan, from Fo-kien to Yun-nan, and 
 from Kwang-tung to Ho-nan ; and they pass between 
 the sources of the Yang-tse-kiang and the Mekong, 
 and between the Hwang-ho and the source of the Kia- 
 ling, climbing to the flat roof of the world through 
 
The Yellow Terror 297 
 
 colossal forests bordering on everlasting snows, where 
 glaciers and masses of angry water tear and pierce the 
 mountains, forming natural routes through the im- 
 passable. By the time they reach the high table-land 
 of many rains and rushing rivers and abounding lakes, 
 they find silent villages and deserted groves of the 
 mulberry. The Thibetans have already passed away. 
 And on through the stripped and empty land they go, 
 shouldering and trundling — a hundred millions — an(? 
 behind each man wriggles a pigtail in haste. 
 
 Then, by the caravan-route which passes from Pekin 
 through the Gobi desert north of the Southern Altais, 
 pass the second (Balkash) fifty. They are Kobdoans, 
 Northwestern Mongolians (so-called), and tribesmen 
 of the Chinese provinces north of the Hwang-ho (except 
 those of Kan-su, Shen-si, and Pechili) ; men of a 
 duskier yellow, as of weak-tea-and-milk, tall, and 
 nomads already by instinct and habit, not averse to a 
 further house-flitting — in plenty of company ! And 
 these pass . the sources of the Irtish to Balkash, and 
 thence go swarming down into the lowlands and desert 
 places round the Aral Sea, where Eussia had so 
 sweated and striven in vain. Across the Caspian they 
 will follow at the right hour the pioneering (Thibetan) 
 fifty. 
 
 Then there are ten corps (the smallest of the four 
 great branches), which, one by one, take the caravan- 
 route passing from Pekin north of the bleak and bare 
 Kuen-luns through all that rich agricultural region — 
 an oasis in a land of barrenness — which is traversed by 
 the Tarim river, beginning at Lob Nor, and ending 
 beyond Kashgar. They are from the teeming provinces 
 of Kan-su and Shen-si — twenty millions — behind each 
 man wriggles a pigtail in haste. 
 
 But the fourth main branch — Pechili, Korea, Kirin, 
 Manchuria, Eastern Mongolia — tarry long behind ; for 
 these are to travel swiftly, and in luxury — in Western- 
 civilization railway-trains ! Not till the last moment 
 before mobilization is the Kussian garrison at Vladi- 
 vostok shelled by Japanese ships, and Vladivostok 
 itself seized from land by Chinese soldiers. From 
 
298 The Yellow Danger 
 
 Vladivostok runs a railway to St. Petersburg ; and 
 outside Vladivostok harbor, while the shelling of the 
 forts is proceeding, waits a fleet of merchant-ships 
 crowded with many thousands of large-grade railway- 
 carriages, such as are required by the Kussian lines, all 
 manufactured at Nagasaki. And so to Vladivostok 
 come the thirty Western corps, the sixty millions, the 
 fourth great torrent of that disemboguing Nile. And 
 as the crowded trains move out westward from the 
 station, a shocking shrill scream of glee and terror 
 from two thousand throats — the shrill glee and terror 
 of a child in its first swing — fills all the air. It is 
 " the Chinese scream." 
 
 But how great a general is that little doctor ! This 
 large matter of his, which would have bewildered, and 
 abashed the genius of Csesar, is all clearly perceived 
 and calculated in his intellect of ice. When he thinks 
 of the world-magnitude of it all, he says "Poh !" 
 To Grod the world is a grain of dust ; to Yen How it is a 
 geographical globe : he metes it with a compass ; in a mo- 
 ment he walks about it. With what ease and thorough- 
 ness has his first thought — that thought which could 
 have occurred only to genius — been realized ! By a 
 few scratches of his pen Europe has been prepared to 
 receive him. " There will le no more Maxims there," 
 he had said to the Marquis Ito with screwed-up eyes ; 
 and there are no more Maxims there, or none worth 
 mentioning. To lead one's troops "along the line of 
 least resistance " — ^that being the first maxim of the 
 general, how great a general is this Yen in the first of 
 all creating a line of no resistance at all ! 
 
 But to guide that restive, rearing four-horse chariot 
 even over the levelest plain, — how iron-strong must be 
 the wrist of its Jehu, and how sublime his gallant 
 callousness. 
 
 This was his general plan : to connect himself 
 telegraphically with his armies, and personally to 
 direct their actions even in minute particulars. For 
 the peculiarity of these monstrous hosts was this : 
 that by means of their unimaginable numbers they 
 could, almost without effort, carry out works in a day 
 
The Yellow Terror 299 
 
 which no other army could dream of ever accomplishing 
 at all. Thus, the fifty Thibetan corps crossed the 
 Caspian from Krasnovodsk to Baku, with its carts, 
 transports, and stores, on huge towed rafts constructed 
 tvithin iwo days from materials which they carried 
 with them. So, also, wherever the first three great 
 branches passed, they were followed by as many lines 
 of telegraph as there were corps, just as the spider is 
 followed by the thread it spins. And in the center of 
 this web sat Yen How at Pekin. 
 
 Such was the general plan. His particular plan was 
 this : that the first line of Europe's defense should be 
 Germany ; for with exact foresight he calculated, 
 some months before the battle in the Channel that, in 
 almost any case, Germany would still have left some of 
 her army-corps. Eussia he meant to take by surprise ; 
 the Balkan Peninsula by surprise ; and both, he cal- 
 culated, would be incapable of serious opposition. 
 
 IntoKussia he would pour the sixty millions who 
 went screaming along the Vladivostok railway ; into 
 the Balkan Peninsula sixteen millions of the first 
 (Thibetan) hundred millions. The remaining eighty- 
 four millions of these were to be German, Swiss, and 
 Austrian. The two other branches, numbering alto- 
 gether a hundred and twenty millions, were to be di- 
 vided into thirty French, twenty Italian, ten Norwe- 
 gian and Swedish ; and because Holland and Belgium 
 had not been directly ravaged by the war, and Spain 
 only by the American war, he designed for Spain the 
 large number of thirty mir.ions, and for Holland, Bel- 
 gium, and Denmark thirty millions. 
 
 And at Pekin Yen How might very well have re- 
 mained, and directed all this with absolute exactness 
 and success, were it not that, at the back of the man's 
 brain, there lay this singular thought : that none of 
 the women of England must be killed ! — till he gave 
 the word. And he knew well that no earthly power 
 save his own strong, present, personal grip, could re- 
 strain his wild hordes, fresh from the gleeful slaughter 
 of Europe, from washing their hands in the blood of 
 every human female in Britain. 
 
300 The Yellow Danger 
 
 Therefore he took train at Vladivostok. 
 
 The difference between him and Hardy was chiefly 
 this : that with the race-instinct and race-hatred and 
 race-ambition of the Chinaman was mixed a personal, 
 private motive, stronger even than the race-motive. 
 Hardy, like the very greatest, was concerned only for the 
 world. 
 
 It is written in the Book of the Law of the Universe 
 that selfishness shall sooner or later be a source of weak- 
 ness. Whoever denies this has not gone deep. 
 
 The difference between Hardy and Yen How was 
 the difference between Wellington and Napoleon. The 
 latter, being more richly endowed, should have been the 
 stronger — and was not. 
 
 At the time when Yen How took train there was no 
 longer any country corresponding to what was meant 
 when one said "Russia." 
 
 As soon as the first contingent of the first army-corps 
 passed through the Urals north of Mount Iremei, its 
 first care was to destroy all telegraphic communication 
 between the locality and western centers. Up to this 
 moment not even a suspicion of what was coming had 
 occurred to any one on the Continent, for it was not till 
 the day after the first arrival of Chinese that the two 
 British forces in France and Germany received home- 
 ward orders. 
 
 On the very day of their arrival, the final battle had 
 been fought in France near Bar-sur-Seine with a 
 French loss of eighteen thousand ; and on the same day 
 the Emperor Wilhelm, rashly advancing with his staff 
 and an insignificant reconnoitering party too near the 
 British lines at Landsberg, was surprised by a troop of 
 mounted vedettes, and taken prisoner. 
 
 But when, on the next day, Lord Roberts invited 
 General Daubisson to a conference, and Sir Evelyn 
 Wood invited the freely-liberated Kaiser, the announce- 
 ments by the two British generals of their intention of 
 immediate withdrawal, and of its cause, was received 
 with mere amazed incredulity. The blow of the 
 thunderbolt was stupefying. The Continental leaders 
 did not fall to their knees and beseech the aid of their 
 
The Yellow Terror 301 
 
 British invaders ; there are tidings too large to find 
 room in the brain. 
 
 But even while the two conferences were proceed- 
 ing, what was to become known as the " Yellow Terror " 
 was already abroad— and fifty thousand Chinese had 
 settled in fifteen or twenty Ural villages, whose streets 
 were strewn with disemboweled dead. 
 
 And almost as fast as the news could spread westward 
 the Chinese spread westward also. 
 
 It was the strangest army of occupation. As soon as 
 an army-corps entered upon Eussian territory it scat- 
 tered and vanished ; it split up into divisions, and one 
 division went one way and one another ; and divisions 
 split up into brigades, and one brigade went one way 
 and one another ; and so the subdivision went on, 
 every regiment, every company, having its town or 
 village allotted to it by long-previous design. By the 
 time the first contingents of the second corps had 
 crossed the Volga at Syzran, there were probably not a 
 thousand Eussians left alive anywhere between Perm 
 and Astrakhan. 
 
 There was no fighting. Those that could fly or hide, 
 fled or hid. The rest heard the " Chinese scream," 
 and died. For every one that died two screams went 
 to Heaven — the scream of the victim and the scream 
 of his slayer. 
 
 Then spread " the yellow terror " — at first slowly, 
 then with the wings of the lightning. 
 
 In old Saxon times mothers frightened their crying 
 babes with the swiftly-whispered words : " The Danes 
 are coming ! " But the panic horror with which Europe 
 in a few days learned to receive the simple announce- 
 ment : ' ' The Chinese are coming ! " had no resemblance, 
 in its unutterable awesomeness, in its supernatural 
 affright, to any previous terror experienced by men. 
 
 The Black Death of the Middle Ages, which nearly 
 altogether emptied Europe, inspired no doubt an equal 
 tragic suggestion ; but it probably failed in something 
 of that staring, pallid, dry-throated^«wtc characteristic 
 of the Yellow Terror, chiefiy on account of the element 
 lOf the unknown and wholly novel in the Chinese 
 
302 The Yellow Danger 
 
 cataclysm, — on account, also, of the certainty of his 
 doom which pierced the heart of each European, — and 
 on account, thirdly, of certain hints of unutterable 
 horror which accompanied the rumors of the onward 
 sweep of the yellow wave. 
 
 The reign of hell which had followed upon some 
 Japanese victories during the Ohino- Japanese war was 
 well known in Europe. If China had fared so at the 
 hand of Japan, how would Europe fare at the hand of 
 China led by Japan . . . ? 
 
 Lamentation and a voice in Kamah, and a widening, 
 running shriek, swelling into a cry of such volume and 
 intensity as had never yet risen from earth to Heaven, 
 marked the middle of the month of September in 
 Europe. 
 
 Then came to pass, even to the utmost, that vision 
 in the Apocalypse "Woe, woe to the inhabitants of the 
 earth ..." 
 
 Among the millions that rushed westward in plague- 
 stricken panic and frenzied selfishness was the famous 
 duellist Bdrapol, who then happened to be at Cracow. 
 
 He made straight for Paris ; and on arriving at the 
 hotel in the Avenue Wagram where he always stayed, 
 he found awaiting him this letter : — 
 
 "Sir, — As I promised you, I am writing to seek you 
 out for the purpose of the little duel to which you 
 challenged me, the European war being now at an end. 
 I confess to you that this duel of yours and mine seems 
 to me a very absurd thing ; but still, a bargain is a 
 bargain. I am in a low state of health at present, and 
 quite unable to come to you, even if I knew where you 
 are to be found. But I write instead, so as to be able 
 to say I did not altogether break my word, and am 
 getting the letter to you at considerable personal 
 trouble. I hope you will receive it, and send me, when 
 you can, a reply. 
 
 " I am, sir, 
 
 " Your servant, 
 
 " JOHlf Habdt." 
 
CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 THE WEAK POINT 
 
 During the first part of that memorable Week of 
 accountable, yet strange, Night, when the darkened 
 sun and the quaking crust of the earth seemed to the 
 affrighted imagination of men surely to portend the 
 coming of the great and dreadful day of the wrath of 
 God, John Hardy's agents were hot on the trail of the 
 young woman whom he sought. 
 
 Three weeks previously, the old butler had brought 
 him a list of the men left in hospital of the Duke of 
 Cambridge's Own regiment, and as Hardy's eye ran 
 down the list, be saw a name which he had heard, 
 which was on the tip of his memory, yet which he had 
 been unable to remember. His eye lit up at the sight 
 of it. It was the name of the soldier John Brabant. 
 
 There was nothing miraculous in the fact that Bra- 
 bant still lived ; yet to Hardy it seemed nothing less 
 than a genuine miracle. Faith in the Divine formed 
 the groundwork and rock-bed of his simple nature : 
 and his eye continually searched for, and assumed, the 
 stealthy, busy Finger. 
 
 A day afterwards he was able to leave his bed, and at 
 once he hurried, muffled up, in a close carriage, to the 
 Chelsea Hospital, and the bedside of Brabant. 
 
 Brabant, as it happened, was dying from exhaustion 
 as the result of an amputation, and did, in fact, die a 
 few days later. He was, however, able to give the 
 address of the villa at which the girl Seward had been, 
 or was still (for he was not sure), a servant. 
 
 To Hardy, the one thing of paramount interest in 
 
 303 
 
304 The Yellow Danger 
 
 the world seemed to be to have this girl, whose initials 
 he bore branded on his breast, secure in his own keep- 
 ing. He had the instinct to lock her away in some 
 castle of absolute safety, and feed her every hour with 
 his own hands, lest chance or change should befall her. 
 
 That, at a time when the earth was travailing in 
 deathbirth, all should depend, one way or the other, 
 upon a London servant girl, was wondrously like the 
 way of Life. Things happen so— not " with vigor and 
 rigor," as Mr. Matthew Arnold very well says, but in 
 that f ast-and-loose fashion. When fate is not freakish, 
 she is unlike herself. The unprecedented is the 
 natural, and may be counted upon. Destiny is full of 
 novelties. 
 
 That a nerve in this particular girl should set a 
 nerve in Yen How a-tingling, and that Yen How's 
 tingling, spreading out beyond all limit into trans- 
 cendental rapture, should infect a whole planet with 
 tingling, — this was nothing more than the launching 
 of a battleship by the pressure of an electric button, or 
 the loosening of an avalanche by the rolling of a peb- 
 ble. In such surprises both Pate and Nature abound. 
 
 But Ada Seward was no longer at the Pattison Villa ; 
 all the information which could be gathered there was 
 the fact that she had a brother, a bicycle-smith, resid- 
 ing in Church Eoad, Chelsea, to whom she may have 
 gone after suddenly leaving the Pattisons. But the 
 brother declared that she was not there ; and either 
 he could not, or would not, give any further details 
 about Ada to the agents employed by Hardy. 
 
 It became clear that about the girl and her move- 
 ments hung some sort of mystery ; that something was 
 being concealed with regard to her. 
 
 Hardy commenced to seek her throughout England, 
 advertising in every paper, and setting to work the 
 best detectives. 
 
 If she were abroad ? If she were dead ? And if 
 Yen How knew it — had secret means of knowing it ? 
 In that case Hardy had no hope. 
 
 He remained in a state of brooding, morbid pensive- 
 ness. At night he sat long at table after dinner. 
 
The Weak Point 305 
 
 drinking much too freely, his right hand on the mouth 
 of the decanter, his left hanging heavy^ his head sunk. 
 In this way three weeks passed ; and still the girl 
 remained hidden. 
 
 Then came the memorahle Week of Darkness. 
 
 At this time the wild flood of migration from the 
 Continent was in full sweep. England had risen nobly 
 to Hardy's summons to offer herself as the City of 
 Refuge to the ill-fated peoples of Europe, and had 
 opened to them a large and pitying bosom, as a mother 
 folds her terrified child. 
 
 The merchant marines of all the still unswamped 
 nations, with the whole available merchant marine of 
 Britain, were engaged in the continual task of deporta- 
 tion. 
 
 But like " the pious pelican " which feeds her young 
 with the blood of her own torn breast, England fed the 
 stranger with her life. 
 
 The famine grew sore in the iand, even though the 
 self-governing colonies, at the first warning of the 
 facts, set stoutly to work to meet the demands upon 
 their feeding powers. 
 
 In Britain itself, quite suddenly, there sprang into 
 being the visible germs of a real Socialism. The ne- 
 cessities of the human race no longer admitted of 
 quibbling and compromise with the root facts of life, 
 and the root laws of God. It had been the custom 
 before the war to say, in a phrase so generally accepted 
 that it had passed into an axiom, that England "could 
 not feed herself ." The wild fancifulness of this asser- 
 tion (which might bring a smile to the lips of even a 
 child who seriously thinks of it) may be seen from the 
 arithmetical fact that England (or any ordinary piece 
 of land of similar size) can feed, not only herself, but 
 almost the entire population of the globe — under right 
 and natural conditions of life. Eor if a man, or a child, 
 unhampered by artificial customs, will set to work 
 with a spade and a hoe upon the ground, it is a fact 
 that a very small piece of fertile land — something like 
 a tenth of an acre — will supply him not only with food 
 to keep him continually munching, but with so much 
 20 
 
3o6 The Yellow Danger 
 
 more than he can eat himself, that he shall have 
 enough left over to give in exchange to some one else 
 who has spent his time in making boots and clothes, 
 and wishes to sell these in exchange for the surplus 
 corn and carrots grown by the first man. Now, on 
 the broad bosom of Britain, which is not niggardly, but 
 rich in alimentary bounty, there are 790,000,000 of 
 such pieces of land ; and 790,000,000 is much the 
 larger portion of the population of the earth. 
 
 England, therefore, if she be properly governed, can 
 quite surely feed not only herself, but the rest of 
 mankind as well. 
 
 This had been the "open secret" of social life, 
 preached through many a century by the singled-eyed 
 great ones — with their simple and discerning wit ! But 
 it needed nothing less than the inexorable compulsion 
 of Destiny to teach it clearly, once and for all, to the 
 whole race. 
 
 Meantime, in the absence of regulations, which in- 
 volve time for their accomplishment, the rich men, and 
 the not-poor men, of Britain came nobly forward with 
 proffered purse to the perishing millions. 
 
 American gold, too, streamed into England. Here 
 came the news that the immigrants from Europe were 
 being received with pitying effusions in that land of 
 hospitality. The terms of the league proposed by 
 Hardy were occupying the attention of the two Gov- 
 ernments, and nearing completion. 
 
 Meanwhile the only possible defensive measure 
 against the Yellow Wave on the part of England was 
 an intense activity at Chiswick, at Jarrow, at Chatham, 
 at Birkenhead, at Sheerness, at Portsmouth, at Pais- 
 ley, at Glasgow, at Newcastle, at Pembroke, at Sunder- 
 land, in every Government, in every private dockyard. 
 Thousands of men were requisitioned from remotely 
 allied trades to aid in the agonized work of building, 
 building, building. But Hardy, for one, smiled at 
 the idea that Yen How was going to be simple enough 
 to allow Britain time to build ships to beat him. 
 
 He, for his part, had set going another activity, 
 equally eager, and more to the point. 
 
The Weak Point 307 
 
 By direct suggestion to the First Lord of the 
 Adkiralty, he had singled out the men of the Eoyal 
 Naval Artillery Volunteers as the nucleus of force 
 which must now become the hope of Britain. 
 
 Though there was hardly any longer a Eoyal Naval 
 body of men, there still remained a considerable Eoyal 
 Naval Eeserve, when therefore Hardy designated the 
 Artillery Volunteers, Mr. Goschen, who alone was in 
 the secret of his plans, expressed surprise. 
 
 Hardy, however, persisted ; and the next day, by 
 proclamation, the members of the force were requisi- 
 tioned for service. At the same time a large addi- 
 tional number of volunteers sent in their names, to be 
 the commanding officers of the stationary drill-ships. 
 
 The members of this force, which had always, since 
 its formation by special Act in 1873, formed one of 
 the most exclusive clubs in the world, consisted only of 
 professional and business men, — doctors, bank-clerks, 
 solicitors, stockbrokers, authors, — who had regularly 
 left the desk, or the consulting-room, or the office, to 
 attend at least twice a month at gun, rifle, pistol, and 
 cutlass drill, until they attained the standard of 
 " efficients," — men who had cast oflE the orchided frock- 
 coat, completely sinking their social position, to put 
 on the blue working-dress of the simple blue-jacket -on 
 the yearly cruises in the gunboat, or the Saturday-to- 
 Monday cruise in the seamanship-practise schooner. 
 These men, belonging exclusively to the great middle 
 class, represented the very essence of the mood of 
 England. And it was with them that Hardy proposed 
 to set up the first dam to the Yellow "Wave. 
 
 He wanted 4000 of them ; and he got them. 
 
 The various drill-ships of the local brigades were 
 assembled at Portsmouth with tenders, and the work 
 of drilling and instruction went forward with unremit- 
 ting zeal, the 4000 and odd gentlemen who composed 
 this strange force subjecting themselves to the most 
 grinding discipline, sleeping in hammocks, swabbing 
 decks, cooking food, and cleaning guns ; opening, 
 above all, their already trained minds to the art of 
 fighting on moving water. 
 
3o8 The Yellow Danger 
 
 But when fhey asked one another why they were doing 
 all this, there was no forthcoming answer. They cer- 
 tainly were the men, but where were the ships ? 
 
 Hardy, in his jealousy lest his ships might be used 
 for purposes at all other than those for which he 
 designed them had kept his secret well. They were to 
 him like buried gold to the miser. He gloated over 
 the thought of them, over the loud bad language he 
 would make them talk, when that great hour came. 
 
 Meantime, he sat brooding often, sometimes des- 
 perately ill, sometimes with his hand resting for hours 
 on the mouth of the decanter, his sunken head crowded 
 with the busy fumes of wine. 
 
 And as he sat so one night — it was the Tuesday of 
 the Week of Darkness — something spurred within him, 
 and he sprang to his feet, and took his cap, and went 
 out into the stifling dark air. 
 
 His once gentle heart, though embittered and des- 
 perate, was not wholly dead. Under this sudden 
 impulse, wine-inspired, he jumped into a cab and drove 
 to Hampstead. 
 
 He stopped at the door of Miss Jay. He had now 
 been several weeks in England, yet had not seen her. 
 Why he now went he did not ask himself : some vague 
 motive worked in him to insult, or press, or smite her 
 in the face, — such was the tragic desperation of his 
 empty and callous heart. Love, tenderness, were far 
 from him now ; yet in the depths of his nature some 
 ungovernable cry in the dark, some fierce yearning 
 perhaps, spurred him toward the sister of his soul : 
 such subterranean throes occur in the dim places of 
 the hearts of men. 
 
 Her carriage drove up to the door as he entered it, 
 and he found her in evening dress in the drawing-room, 
 cutting the leaves of a book. War, and eclipse, and 
 the overthrow of the world, seemed to leave untouched 
 the reposeful tenor of this very modern young lady's life. 
 
 Here was the "morgue briiannique" in its very 
 ultimate demonstration. 
 
 " You are well again, then, Mr. Hardy ? " she said, 
 giving her hand, " I am so glad ! " 
 
The Weak Point 309 
 
 " Well or not, I am come to see you, you see." 
 
 He threw his cap one way and himself another, and 
 looked gloomily at her. 
 
 She, for her part, was shocked — at his aged eyes, his 
 wild aspect, the quite visible gray in his hair. Now, 
 at least, she recognized a grown man, and a master of 
 men. 
 
 For minutes of inward reflection there was silence 
 between them. He said : 
 
 "I told you I would come again, and come I am." 
 
 Her heart bounded. She answered : 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Have you got over all that about Art ? " This he 
 asked with a momentary gentle smile. 
 
 " No — not got over it " — the irony in her leaping up, 
 and smothering the pity: "not yet. A weakness of 
 that sort clings so to one. In the absence of a sun, one 
 works by lamp-light — which is all that remains." 
 
 " Well, I see you are still a mocker. But one cannot 
 always go on mocking." 
 
 " No, no. I do not mean, really, to mock at anything. 
 In reality, I am very sorry, and sad, at everything. " 
 
 "Is that so?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Well, I believe that, too. At bottom you are good 
 and kind." 
 
 " I hope so." 
 
 " That was why I came to see you, now. God only 
 knows why I came. You ought to have married me 
 when I told you. " 
 
 " Oh, as to that " she said. 
 
 " No, no, do not begin that again ! " he retorted 
 fretfully. " Can't you guess that I am changed in 
 mood, and everything ? All that is not for me any 
 more." 
 
 Somehow her heart sank ; and the sadness of au- 
 tumnal winds sighing among dead leaves smote its 
 chords. So wild a pity is in the world, and so bitter a 
 sob. 
 
 She said : 
 
 " I can see that you are changed, yes ; and I divine 
 
310 The Yellow Danger 
 
 that you are far from happy. What has been the 
 matter ? " 
 
 " Why should I tell you ? " 
 
 "There is no reason in the world, Mr. Hardy." 
 
 "You see, that is the way you talk to me !" he said, 
 regarding her fixedly under his eyes : " soon, when I 
 am gone, you will be saying to yourself, ' Well, it was 
 bitter of me not to love and comfort poor John Hardy 
 in his misery.'" 
 
 " Gone ?" she questioned, — "gone where to ? " 
 
 "Gone to God" — and in a lower tone — "gone to 
 Hell." 
 
 And now she rose, and in haste went to sit beside 
 him. And the pity of ministering angels was in her 
 Toice. 
 
 " Tell me," she said, " for you have come to me 
 feeling that I am your good friend, and you should 
 tell me." 
 
 " Ah, it is nothing," he said, and he flung himself 
 backward on the sofa where he sat. 
 
 " It must be very much since it has affected you so. 
 I heard something . . . but did not quite realize it. 
 You should — you should have come before." 
 
 " Come for what ? I tell you it is no good at all any 
 more ! " 
 
 " But you are too — too despondent. See — you say 
 you want my love and comfort — there is my hand 
 in yours, my friend. If you do not tell me your 
 trouble, that will mean to me that you do not — really 
 — care for me." 
 
 " Ah, I did, though ! I did!" 
 
 " And do — or you would not come. Can't you see 
 that ? You do still. So you must open your heart to 
 your friend." 
 
 He looked into her eyes, and they swam in tears. 
 His head lying back on the sofa-back rolled from side 
 to side. 
 
 " You are a good, kind girl," he said, " and I knew 
 that long ago. I had a kind of power to guess every- 
 thing that was in you. Why did you not — but it i§ 
 useless talking now. Let me go away." 
 
The Weak Point 311 
 
 "iTo, no — do not say that." 
 
 " Well, now, I call you wondrously good." 
 
 " Of course I am — of course. Can't you divine I — 
 naturally — do not wish you to go. You look so sad — 
 so worn with suffering. Why is that ? How is it ? 
 Ah ! I am so — I could not tell you. But you — tell me, 
 for I beg you, all your trouble." 
 
 " Well, well ... But to what end ? " 
 
 " Because / ask you ; and because I feel that it will 
 do you good to tell me." 
 
 She ought to have said, "Because it will redeem 
 you, and save you to tell me " ; for that was the truth. 
 
 And indeed, an impulse did then rise in John Hardy 
 to tell to Tier at least that history which he was hoard- 
 ing and hugging venomously in his breast, which he 
 had breathed to no living soul, save in one short sen- 
 tence, to old Bobbie Mason ; the history of those long 
 tortures — how the scream of a cat had been rent from 
 his twisting and beastialized soul — how he had cursed 
 the deaf ears of God — how, now, his poor nerves, tin- 
 gling in a chaos of jangling dissonance, like the wires 
 of some shattered instrument of music, represented all 
 the universe to him as a mere black nightmare crowded 
 with sighing winds and unutterable, dismal shapes of 
 woe — how, above all, his passion for vengeance had 
 settled within him into the cruel and wicked malice of 
 a fiend. 
 
 He had the impulse to tell it all out, and save his 
 soul ; and he said : 
 
 "Well — I will tell you — if your ears can bear it. 
 You know, do you not, that I went to China — but no, 
 no, no ! I am not a child. Miss Jay ! do let me get 
 away !" 
 
 And suddenly he had snatched his hand, had sprung 
 up, and was gone almost before the cry had leapt her 
 lips. 
 
 And she, for a long time, sat staring vacantly at the 
 floor, and did not go out that evening. 
 
 During that (Tuesday) night, the Japanese fleet, just 
 arrived in Europe, appeared in twos and threes along 
 the southeast coast. On Wednesday morning, England 
 
312 The Yellow Danger 
 
 heard the news that Hastings, Brighton, Worthing, 
 and so on to Bognor, had been reduced to heaps of 
 broken stone, some seven hundred people having been 
 killed. None of the muzzle-loading district coast- 
 defense ironclads had been left afloat. 
 
 That was on the Tuesday. On the Wednesday even- 
 ing Hardy received a small wooden box, bearing the 
 direction: "John Hardy, England." It bore no 
 stamps, and had evidently been brought from its origin 
 "by hand." 
 
 On opening it, he found a quantity of paper stuflBng ; 
 and, this being removed, a dry and shriveled, but still 
 evil-smelling, object, upon which had been stuck a small 
 oblong piece of paper. On the paper were three lines 
 of tiny, neat writing ; and the words written were 
 these : 
 
 " From Yen How to John Hardy." 
 
 " Heart of His Royal Highness Prince Heinrich of 
 Hesse." 
 
 Prince Heinrich of Hesse, as Hardy knew, was a 
 young child of eight. 
 
 Even while Hardy sat contemplating this object, a 
 private detective was ushered into his presence. He 
 came to say that, at last, by means of a confession of 
 her brother, he had been able to trace the whereabouts 
 of the girl Seward. 
 
CHAPTER XXX 
 
 THE CHINESE 8CKEAM 
 
 The French invasion was twofold, one-quarter of the 
 Italian Chinese crossing into the Gulf of Lyons to Cette 
 by towed floats, and so along the canal from Cette, 
 across the narrow part of France, to where the canal 
 meets the Garonne near La Reole, and thence to the 
 Gironde and the Biscay coast. This horde, with half 
 the French horde proper, making altogether twenty 
 millions, were to be British. 
 
 So it happened that, while the French horde proper 
 were pouring through Belgium by Verviers, Li^ge, 
 Namur, and Charleroi, pressing towards the practically 
 unfortified northern frontier of France between Mau- 
 beuge and Eocroy, at Hirson, five million Italian 
 Chinese had already decimated the western sea-board, 
 and had been organized into stores-collecting, and 
 barge, raft, lighter, and tug-collecting and constructing 
 brigades. 
 
 All behind these two invading hordes, what resistance 
 there had been was over, with the exception of some 
 half-dozen detached strongholds, whose garrisons were 
 gradually yielding to famine ; and everywhere to the 
 east and north of France, again with some exceptions, 
 was the unsparing pigtail. These exceptions were 
 Hungary, Turkey, Lapland, Finland. For in Europe 
 the Mongolian invaders found some twenty-seven mil- 
 lions of Mongolian inhabitants already there, and it 
 was one of the purposes of that great inventor and con- 
 summate statesman. Yen How, that these should be 
 left alive to form (the Hungarians especially) the 
 nucleus of a new civilization, which was to be neither 
 
 313 
 
314 The Yellow Danger 
 
 like the old Western, nor like the old Eastern, and like 
 nothing in the world save something which he, Yen, 
 had quite definitely mapped out in his own wide space 
 of brain. 
 
 The western sweep of the Yellow Wave had, in fact, 
 been slightly swelled by some hundreds of thousands 
 of European Turks and Magyars. 
 
 Near Charleroi was made what was practically the 
 last battle-field stand of Continental Europe. The 
 Elysee, with rash pride, had issued a manifesto to the 
 people of France, inviting all who could not fly to give 
 in their names as fighters at 'bureaux established in 
 various quarters of various cities. To this call 200,000 
 French youths and old men responded, an untrained 
 army, of which the last residues of the Reserve of the 
 Territorial Army formed the nucleus, set forth to hurl 
 themselves upon the infinite. 
 
 It was computed that each fighting European de- 
 stroyed, one way and another, thirty yellow men. But 
 could the arm of each, dead-weary of slaughter, have 
 destroyed three hundred, or three thousand, still the 
 effort would have been wasted. Over the carcases of a 
 thousand dead straggled a million living. To shoot 
 the vagabond Atlantic with cannon is a mockery of 
 one's self. 
 
 The garrison of Paris remained ; but the occupation 
 of the French capital, supposed to be impossible to any 
 other army, was, though bloody in its accomplishment, 
 not extremely difficult to this. 
 
 A corps and a half, making nearly twice the number 
 which, in its palmiest days, had inhabited the city of 
 light and joy, sat down along the northern valley of 
 the Seine, their lines occupying a length from the 
 Ach^res-Poissy railway-line to the Forlt de Bondy, 
 well beyond that outer ceinture of fortifications com- 
 posed of great strongholds such as Oormeilles, Francon- 
 ville. Cotillons, Montmorency, Domon. 
 
 The first care of the besiegers was to isolate the city ; 
 and in every direction, during one night, all the lines 
 of railwajr radiating from the center were blown up 
 along a distance of some score of yards. 
 
The Chinese Scream 315 
 
 Then at once, with light siege train, a brigade was 
 thrown forward, and an attack begun upon St. Ger- 
 main-en-Laye. 
 
 Precisely what was the thought of the French gen- 
 eral, what his ultimate hope, in making his determined 
 resistance is not known. But a determined resistance 
 he did make. Such had always been the splendid 
 desperation, the tragic pride, of France. 
 
 The Chinese, on their part, might very well have 
 drawn lines round the entire outer ceinture, and waited 
 there till all the cats and dogs of Paris and its villages 
 had been eaten ; but this no longer suited their mood. 
 The yellow man in his senses, is, indeed, afraid of 
 cannon. But the entire race was by this time no 
 longer in its senses ; here was a people dancing mad, 
 gorged with gore, flushed with victory, greedy of 
 agonies. Fear they no longer knew. To celebrate for- 
 ever a jubilee of devils in a scarlet world — to raise ever 
 higher monuments built of human corpses, and shriek 
 and dance around them — to live, to roll, to die in red 
 — this was their sole remaining instinct. 
 
 General Saussier, sitting at St. Cloud with his staff, 
 received telephonic message from St. Germain : 
 
 " Chinese are being mown down by thousands, but 
 still they come." 
 
 And half an hour later by telegraphic click-clack 
 from the mighty seven-battery Fort de Marly : 
 
 " Strong assault by Chinese. No. 2 redoubt carried 
 by gangways and scaling-ladders in teeth of guns. Loss 
 of enemy immeasurable." 
 
 And an hour later from St. Cyr : 
 
 " Chinese now swarming over glacis. Battery in 
 rear carried. Ammunition cannot, I fear " 
 
 No more. So southward and eastward spread the 
 tale of huge carnage, of steady, rapid advance. By 
 nightfall of the first day of siege, St. Germain, Marly, 
 St. Cyr, Versailles, Chatillon, had fallen. 
 
 It was on the next morning, at the hour when the 
 sun should have been seen to rise, that men were first 
 startled by a continuance of the darkness of the night, 
 
 The secret of this phenomenon was, of course, un- 
 
3i6 The Yellow Danger 
 
 known at the time. In England, presently, it was 
 given out by the scientists that some monstrous thing 
 had happened, probably in some region of the South 
 Sea — some unparalleled passion of Nature — which had 
 poured over the earth in inconceivable mass its scorias 
 and tufaceous particles and multiform volcanic ashes, 
 darkening the day. That some new properties were 
 present in the atmosphere could not be doubted ; for 
 at the same time an intolerable oppression settled upon 
 the chest, and, perhaps by reflex action, down sank the 
 spirits of men ; the minds of the children assumed the 
 garb of crape and sackcloth which the Mother had put 
 on ; and an awe, and a charnel horror, and a fear, 
 such as the heart had never yet known, gripped it now. 
 
 In England, it may be presumed, this unutterable 
 pall of gloom lay much less heavily upon the imagina- 
 tion ; for here the Chinese and their reign of terror 
 were a mere inconceivable nightmare, not a present 
 fact. But in England, too, the universal nerve felt 
 the strangeness and the thrill of that ghastly obscurity. 
 
 It was ghastly because it was not complete. Utter 
 gloom would have been more tolerable. Towards noon, 
 during all the week, the sun was not wholly hidden, 
 but appeared as a garish blotch of leprous lavender, 
 giving nothing that could be called light, making only 
 the darkness visible ; while, as if to vie in chromatic 
 hideousness, the moon appeared one night for an hour 
 as a black eye-socket, with a rim of pallid green ; and 
 then disappeared. 
 
 The sickly gloom of the daytime was just sufficiently 
 relieved to enable near objects to be discerned by the 
 troubled eyes, while distances were lost in unrelieved 
 blackness. 
 
 The event at Timor, by which the entire island was 
 destroyed, was of so extraordinary a character that 
 positively the whole planet, with the exception of some 
 parts of America, may be said to have been infected 
 by the catastrophe. Nagasaki disappeared, with many 
 of the inland towns of Japan ; a tidal wave inundated 
 a large tract of the Kimberley district of Australia ; 
 Vesuvius plumed her cones with a rufous fume of 
 
The Chinese Scream 317 
 
 Inrider red ; and old Mtna, purring and stuttering her 
 thunders, broke into strange and gruff garrulity. Over 
 Europe, from the Mull of Oe to the Urals, there was 
 an almost continuous, just perceptible quaking of the 
 ground, which nowhere broke into violence, nowhere 
 did damage, yet was remarkable for its menacing con- 
 tinuity, its unparalleled universality. 
 
 Not a breath stirred the air. 
 
 If beneath such a sky and upon such a'quaking earth 
 we could really conceive " the Chinese scream," we 
 should then really understand the speedy delirious 
 deaths of the few successful fugitives from Europe 
 during that week of apocalyptic woes. 
 
 At Auxonne, in the Place d'Armes, where there 
 stands a statue of Napoleon I., the whole remaining 
 population assembled on the irruption of the yellow 
 man, almost iilling the open space, and fell to their 
 knees with clasped hands, waiting. They only knew 
 the nearness of the Chinese (who always, and every- 
 where ran noiselessly, barefooted, or in soft shoes), 
 when the sudden Chinese scream at the glimpse of the 
 crowded victims burst upon their ears. 
 
 One of the terrors of this massacre, and of others, 
 was the uncertainty as to which sort of death any 
 given victim might die ; one of the horrors was, that 
 whatever death a Chinaman inflicted, he loudly imi- 
 tated with his lips, in an instinctive way, the nature 
 of the death. They came pelting in their swinging 
 run, into the Place at Auxonne, and as one lifted a 
 club to smite a head, he screamed inarticulately ; and 
 as the club fell, he cried " Shrash ! " And as another 
 caught a flying child by the heels, he screamed inar- 
 ticulately ; and as he swung the frail skull agaitist the 
 base of the statue, he cried, " Pop ! " And as another 
 aimed his pistol at a near man, he screamed inarticu- 
 lately ; and as the pistol went off, he cried "Bam I" 
 And as another seized a woman from behind by her 
 hair, he screamed inarticulately : and as he danced and 
 jumped upon her spouting abdomen, he cried " Wash ! " 
 
 A very large proportion of the populations of Europe 
 had been absolutely unable to fly : many had not had 
 
3i8 The Yellow Danger 
 
 time, when the Chinese were upon them ; many, with 
 infinite effort, had reached the coast to find no craft 
 there to bear them away. Eoughly speaking, about 
 one-half, calling upon the rocks and hills to cover 
 them, remained ; many, as at Auxonne, shut up in 
 fortified towns. For a time the darkness of day and 
 night enabled many to hide about the country ; but it 
 is doubtful if any considerable number could have owed 
 a final escape to this means. 
 
 At Epernay, half a regiment having entered the 
 town toward night — though between day and night 
 there was small distinction now — went marauding with 
 flaring torches into every house, searching for victims 
 and finding few. The streets were empty — the inhab- 
 itants had vanished. In this surprising famine of 
 blood the baulked hordes poked furiously about, like 
 tigresses robbed of their young. At last, a party fer- 
 reting around the entrance of M. Moet's cellars, dis- 
 covered the subterranean excavation which extends in 
 vast vaults some nine miles through the chalky rock of 
 this region. Hither for the most part the doomed 
 people, in unreflecting panic, had rushed, as into the 
 last hole left on earth to cover them ; and here like 
 rats in a trap they were caught. With thrilling 
 screams the Chinese, at the signal, ran swinging from 
 their scattered search about the town, toward Moet's in 
 the main street. It had been drizzling all the day, 
 and their feet were dabbled to the knees with the soft 
 clay of the neighboring hill of Montigny, of which was 
 made the Epernay earthenware ; so that within an 
 hour the long ramification of the ransacked excavations 
 were a mere filth of dabbled gore and mud. The 
 vaults, moreover, contained several millions of bottles 
 with from four to five thousand pipes of the best 
 champagne ; and here at this depth of forty feet 
 below the streets, in the midst of this gloom relieved 
 by rare lurid flares, there was transacted so red an orgy 
 of massacre, screaming lust, and sighing drunkenness, 
 so mixed a drama of filthy infamy and sabbatic Satan- 
 ism, as earth, and perhaps hell, n'ever saw. In the 
 manner of crime the yellow man is ingenious ; whatwr 
 
The Chinese Scream 319 
 
 cannot conceive, he can do ; so that where we end he 
 begins, his natural talent being for the grotesque and 
 the macabre. And when the orgy grew still for yery 
 surfeit, when there welled from him the sigh of perfect 
 peace, down dropped his head upon its pillow of flesh, 
 and his snoring breath fanned the hair of the naked 
 dead. 
 
 Simultaneously, the other wine-vaults of Epernay 
 were invaded ; and, above, too, the streets were strewn 
 with dead and drunken. The town was burned down 
 before the night was over, some thousands of China- 
 men perishing in the flames. 
 
 As for the Parisian corps and a half, fort after fort 
 of the outer ceinture glutted their monstrous batteries 
 with carnage, and yielded. At Meudon two gallant 
 companies of chasseurs a pied flung themselves down 
 an escarpment to hurl back an assault with scaling- 
 ladders ; they hurled back the assault, and were literally 
 trampled under foot by the swarm of on-coming mul- 
 titudes. Then it was the turn of Mont Valerien. 
 Bouviers fell, de Buc, Bois d'Arcis. At Satory every 
 siege-gun of the Japanese was uncarriaged, and the fort 
 was only taken by the sheer powerlessness of the great 
 guns any longer to keep range with their mangled 
 rifling. Issy fell. At Chdtillon the whole stock of 
 ammunition was exhausted in slaughter. Vanves fell, 
 Ivry fell, Montrouge fell. Nearer and nearer closed in 
 the inevitable crowding circle. The Chinese were at 
 St. Cloud, at Putoux, at Suresnes, and at Sevres. 
 
 Even while the war was raging round southern forts 
 they came screaming through the Porte de St. Cloud, 
 and went swarming into the Bois up the allee de 
 Longchamp, making for the Porte Maillot which gives 
 direct access to the cities. The iron-barred gate was 
 closed, and the foremost, pressed forward by the now 
 disorganized mob behind, fainted and perished in 
 the block. Still onward surged the crowd, trampling 
 itself in frantic, blind rage into a ghastliness of heaped- 
 up (Jeath, while the gendarmerie which lined the walls 
 sent whistling gusts of lead through the trees upon the 
 ever advancing hosts. Then a stream of Chinese 
 
320 The Yellow Danger 
 
 extricated themselves sideways, and with a half -run 
 to the right sought to make through the trees for the 
 fosse, and so for the "fortification." And as they 
 turned, they fell ; and others following, turned and 
 fell. And now, the whole current began to tend in the 
 way of those pioneers. Forward they are pressed, and 
 press, and fall ; but they fall ever nearer to the fosse ; 
 and now they are falling into it ; and down through 
 the wide, ever-filling ditch they press, treading upon a 
 carpet of dead flesh only ; and now there is no more 
 a fosse, but a level floor of bodies ; and across this they 
 rush, and attempt to climb, and fall ; and the level 
 floor is no more level, but slants upward to the parapet ; 
 and along this sure gangway of soft and sinking lux- 
 ury, this vast snake-nest of intermixing pigtails, they 
 press ; they run now they cannot fail : they gain the 
 parapet ; they screamed ; and Paris is Gomorrah. 
 
 The mystery of license to which, during all that week 
 of black horror, the chief of the cities of men was a 
 prey, can only be hinted here. It was well understood 
 that Paris was to be the capital of the new Chinese 
 world ; and it was therefore with a certain feeling of old 
 proprietorship that the Chinese entered it. They dealt 
 with the inhabitants as a man, returning from a long 
 journey, makes short work of an accumulation of rats 
 in his chief cellar. 
 
 They stormed in a solid body up the wide Avenue de 
 la Grande Armee, and also in two solid bodies, right 
 and left, just within the fortifications. Near I'Etoile, 
 stretching right across the breadth of the avenue, and 
 also across the Boulevard de Berthier, there were bar- 
 ricades of the Garde Municipale, and street-fighting, 
 and massacre, and mounds of trampled yellow corpses. 
 But the flood behind swept onward the flood before 
 with the inevitableness of the ocean-tide. Within a 
 few hours all that length of thoroughfare which the 
 Parisians called the " boulevards exterieurs " was oc- 
 cupied ; and the inhabitants were driven inward like 
 wild horses within a ring of prairie-fire. 
 
 Another host had entered south by the Porte d'lvry 
 into the 13th arrondissement, another from Montrouge 
 
The Chinese Scream 321 
 
 by the Porte d'Orleans into the 14th ; and now, Bwarm- 
 ing in their millions, they infested the ways and by- 
 ways of the city, its squares and its bedrooms, its 
 stables and its public buildings, with glad rage, with 
 prying Bacchic stare, with gaping mouth. 
 
 Here was the New Pekin. 
 
 The bony visage of the yellow man, in momente of 
 unbridled lust and mad excitement, is a brutal spec- 
 tacle. The countenance is a travesty ; the divine 
 image becomes a mask of hellish farce. It is as though 
 a panting skeleton played a comedy. There all is seen 
 — the nakedness of the passions, the bare, rampart 
 hidepusness : the face becomes an indecency. What 
 added to the frenzy of these riots was the fact that 
 among the invaders were sweating women, crazy with 
 heat and dust, and the instinct of blood, and the ulti- 
 mate wantonness of crime. 
 
 On the night of the entry, on each of the iron rail- 
 ings in the wide space of the Place de la Concorde 
 glared an impaled head. At the Invalides, in the cir- 
 cular pit where lies the tomb of Napoleon, there lay a 
 compact mass of bodies reaching to the level of the 
 railings ; and on this bed of mortality lay a score of 
 Chinese men and women in exhausted sleep. 
 
 Here, too, was subterranean massacre in catacomb 
 and egout. On the Quai St. Michel a body of fifty 
 Quartier Latin students stood waiting in proud, pale, 
 silent patience, holding hands, and died smiling. 
 
 While the city from La Villette to Boulogne was 
 still one shrieking Sodom, Yen How arrived in Paris. 
 
 Though eager to be away to the coast, he had come 
 hither to inaugurate a ceremony, which was to be 
 memorable. This was on the Tuesday of the sunless 
 week. 
 
 ~ He lost no time. He summoned to him at the Elysee 
 captains and generals of brigades, and commanded 
 them to make ready the people for the long-predeter- 
 mined Eitual. 
 
 To-day he was no more Yen How the General, he 
 was Yen How the Prophet-Priest. 
 
 He had with him the Ohiam, the hereditary high 
 21 
 
322 The Yellow Danger 
 
 priest, counting an Aaronic ancestry of a thousand 
 years ; he had with him a gorgeous retinue of bouzis ; 
 he had with him the idol of Quanheim, the Chinese 
 Virgin, sitting among cushions in rich robes — the idol 
 of Matsoa, who swam from a far country to China 
 through many seas in one night — the idol of Quonin, 
 Virgin of the North — the idol of Fe, the eagle-headed 
 joss — the idol of Minifo — the idol of many-handed PufEa 
 — many idols ; he had with him the books of Confucius, 
 and the books of Tansin ; and he draped himself in 
 the robes and solemn gauds of the Arch-Priest, that he 
 might inaugurate and set up in one central Temple of 
 the West the religion of the East. 
 
 He chose N6tre Dame. 
 
 And the work of torture, and infamy, and slaughter, 
 now nearly over, ceased ; and on that day the people 
 flocked toward the Cit§, and the ancient church of 
 Christ. 
 
 Never was assembled such a multitude within a city. 
 To lend the last impressiveness to the ceremony. Yen 
 How had ordained that these should be the sole public 
 idols, for the time being, brought over from China. A 
 Chinaman without idols is like an opium-smoker with- 
 out opium. This gorgeous ritual, therefore, was in 
 itself quite sufficient, once for all, to fix and establish 
 Paris as the center of the new Empire. In the earlier 
 hours of the day messages were everywhere flashed 
 over the Continent, and to China, stating the exact 
 hour of the Inauguration ; and at that hour, account 
 having been taken of differences of longitude, by far 
 the greater portion of the yellow race bowed its mut- 
 tering head, prostrated itself, and turned a jaundiced 
 eye to Heaven. 
 
 Yen How, with thick ivory ring on thumb, arrayed 
 in a blaze of color, was borne in open palanquin of gold 
 all along the Eue de Eivoli and by the Pont de I'Arcole 
 through the kneeling throng, preceded by thousands 
 of bouzis, bearing the majestic god Po, and the huge- 
 bellied, broad-faced Can. 
 
 The line of route was illuminated with the myriad 
 variegation of lanterns, as was also the interior of 
 
The Chinese Scream 323 
 
 Nbtre Dame. While everywhere, from Montmartre to 
 Montrouge, a noise of jangling bells rang through the 
 somber air. At the hour of the sacrifice, steaming 
 human heads were offered to Matsoa, as a variation on 
 the usual boiled heads of the pig. 
 
 In the tiny shrines which, on three sides, surround 
 the nave, where pricket-candlesticks and rich, religious 
 decor had long represented the rather foppish religiosity 
 of the Parisian "devote," were set up the statues of 
 grotesque and grinning josses. The Crucified gave 
 place to Fo, and the Immaculate to Quanheim. 
 
 The studied pomp of this memorable Hegira was 
 overwhelming in its effect. The prostrate multitudes 
 groaned in inward agonies of veneration ; and the God 
 of their veneration was, in reality. Yen How. 
 
 When the sacred books were opened and solemnly 
 presented, it was not forgotten that Confucius, who 
 wrote them, was mysteriously there, in carnal presence, 
 before their favored eyes. 
 
 He, for his part, the little doctor — even in that 
 grandiose hour of his triumph — smiled inwardly, as 
 usual. In all the sun and earth there was hardly heat 
 to melt that ice. 
 
 Only where the focussed rays of self touched the 
 secret spot, he warmed, and flowed, and felt. 
 
 The pageant of Inauguration was at two. By four 
 the broken Paris-Calais railway was repaired, and Yen 
 How with his retinue set off westward. 
 
 Already Paris presented a strange sight, apart from 
 the heaps of dead in the streets, and the bodiless heads 
 and arms with which the screaming Chinese played 
 ball. She looked Chinese. The Mongolian race, like 
 the English, can adapt itself readily. All the winding 
 length of the Eue du Faubourg St. Honors was, in two 
 days, bright with gauds and hues. Shops had been 
 appropriated by individuals, who made haste to find 
 pigments to daub the legend in characters which seemed 
 to grin. Lanterns were hung out. The gay city 
 assumed another tone of gaiety : vermilion on her 
 houses, and vermilion in her streets. 
 
 The work of blood recommenced. 
 
324 The Yellow Danger 
 
 At battered Marseilles, the Chinese, entering by the 
 Boulevard de la Madeleine, found a deserted city, filled 
 with the roar of the famishing animals at the Zoological 
 Gardens. Their only prey was the very aged, and a 
 number of nuns, medical men, and invalids, collected 
 chiefly at the New Hospital. In their squeeze to get 
 at these a number of Chinese were crushed to death. 
 
 At Lyons an incredible melee, made up of the mad- 
 men of the hospital of Antiquaille, of Chinese, and of 
 Soeurs de la Charity, raged for an hour through the 
 vast, straggling building. Beneath the Pont de la 
 Mulati^re there occurred a block of corpses which 
 spread gradually upward between the banks of the 
 Sa6r_e ; and this, within two days, aided by the stifling 
 heat of the stagnant and sunless air, resulted in a pes- 
 tilence among the invaders. At once the dying men 
 were seized with the instinct to rush northward toward 
 Paris, the home of the gods ; and it was only the 
 promptness of Yen How, who ordered the clearage 
 of the river, and the instant shooting of every sick 
 Chinaman, which prevented more widespread disaster. 
 
 At old Valence, where some failure of commissariat 
 — caused by the deportation southward of provisions, 
 and the voluntary destruction of the vineyards — had 
 occurred, there was scarcity f(ir a day, and food in 
 plenty the next. The low hedge that divides the yellow 
 man from omnivorousness was in Europe found to be 
 very low indeed — where the flesh of men is not yellow, 
 but pink, like the new-born mouse. At the first spur 
 of hunger, the hedge was leapt with an easy bound. 
 
 For a day hard scarcity ; the next, flesh in plenty — 
 roast and sodden, bake and stew. 
 
 Meanwhile, if there was a man in Europe who had a 
 strong will neither to be eaten when dead, nor tortured 
 alive at slow fires, nor shot with arrows, nor pierced 
 with bullets, nor pulped with the clubs which the 
 Chinese use for pounding rice — that man was the 
 duellist Edrapol. 
 
 Thrice had he been caught, and thrice he had 
 escaped. 
 
 He reached Dieppe, and for the second time withia 
 
The Chinese Scream 325 
 
 two days, he had no sooner reached his point of aim 
 than the irruption came. 
 
 He ran at the first breathless news down to the 
 basins ; and, with a crowd of hunted men and women, 
 saw the last little boat making her way, thronged with 
 people, out of the mouth of the outer basin. 
 
 He had forgotten, in his mad haste, both sword and 
 pistols ; and as he saw hope cut off by way of the sea, 
 his first instinct was to rush back, and get what was 
 like life to him — a weapon in his hand. 
 
 Even as he ran through the street, along which men 
 and women were rushing in wild-eyed distraction, he 
 heard the scream. It had reached Dieppe. 
 
 Edrapol stopped, and gazed crazily about. His big 
 soft felt hat was pressed back hard on his head ; the 
 long hanging ends of his white mustache shook. It 
 was not a mustache — it was a drapery. 
 
 Here was a stern end to an existence of pleasure ; 
 here an absence of all punctilio intruding itself upon a 
 life which had made punctilio its bride. The Chinese 
 Blew without " seconds," or ceremony ; though the 
 aggressors, they chose their own weapons. The trifler's 
 heart sank within him. 
 
 Round he leered, standing a moment in the third 
 position, as if to parry the tierce thrust — his hat pressed 
 hard back on his head. 
 
 The scream came from a side-street ; it was very 
 near : his inn was before him ; he flew forward. 
 
 He reached the deserted house, rushed up the stairs 
 to a room, and dropped to his knees before a portman- 
 teau. From his arsenal of weapons he chose a six- 
 chambered revolver and a dainty rapier. With these 
 in his hand he felt better. 
 
 He stood and listened, his beard, his whole body, 
 shaking. 
 
 In about a minute the place was filled with noise, 
 shouted gibberish, shrill laugh. Edrapol bolted his 
 door. 
 
 But it was soon discovered, and battered in with 
 clubs. About ten Chinese, hot, crazy, bent upon blood, 
 rushed in upon him, screaming. 
 
326 The Yellow Danger 
 
 But this time they reckoned without their host. A 
 man does not acquire a European reputation for 
 nothing. 
 
 Edrapol put his legs into the exact pose of elegance 
 suited to the occasion, and with the revolver in his left 
 hand and the rapier in his right, he began to kill scien- 
 tifically. Every shot entered the middle of a heart or 
 brain, and every stroke failed not to sever the intended 
 artery. The last pigtail dropped upon the writhing 
 corpses of his fellows, and Edrapol leant a little on the 
 handle of his dripping rapier, the model of grace. 
 
 It was near sunset then, about two weeks before the 
 dark time. 
 
 He crept from the chamber. The house was empty. 
 He found a recess in a wine-cellar, in which he hid till 
 three the next morning. 
 
 The house was then full of other Chinese, and the 
 corpses of white women ; but the living were as uncon- 
 scious as the dead, drunk with the orgy of the day, 
 Edrapol passed through them, and made his escape from 
 the town eastwards and southwards. 
 
 For a week he lurked in a little empty farmhouse 
 between Dieppe and St. Val6ry ; and then some Chinese 
 came to the farmhouse ; but Edrapol escaped. 
 
 For another week he seems to have dodged and 
 lurked about in that neighborhood, near the shore, in 
 the vain hope of somehow getting away in a ship. 
 But no ship came. 
 
 He was carrying about with him a piece of cheese 
 which he found at the farmhouse, and this, with occa- 
 sional autumn hedge-fruit, appeased his hunger. He 
 remembered the bonbons of Moissier with regret. 
 
 Unexpectedly, one midnight, walking along the 
 beach, he came upon a broken hut, and near it a 
 small seamy skiff, containing half an oar. He was 
 just able to move her ; and after three hours' work, 
 got her to the water's edge. 
 
 He put off in her, and as the water oozed in, he 
 baled it with his voluminous hat. When he was not 
 baling, he paddled. 
 
 His notion of reaching England in this fashion was 
 
The Chinese Scream 327 
 
 hopeless ; but the old duellist, the luxurious houle- 
 vardier, clung to life with the desperation of a pam- 
 pered woman. And he fell upon his feet where another 
 would have failed. 
 
 On the third morning, he was picked up, half dead, 
 by a small barque, almost in mid-channel. She was the 
 Conrad, which had borne Hardy to Nagasaki ; she was 
 then, for the first time, on her way to England. So 
 that, late that night, Edrapol's glittering fingers pulled 
 the patriarchal tassels of his mustache on Newhaven^s 
 broken wharf. And there he examined the edge of 
 his rusted rapier. 
 
CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 THE MEBTIKG. 
 
 As for the girl Seward, Hardy was told by his agent 
 that she occupied a flat in Bloomsbury, a flat rather 
 well furnished, where, with a servant of her own, she 
 lived alone. And, without five minutes' delay. Hardy 
 was in a carriage hurrying to the address given. 
 
 He doubted if this could be the girl he wanted. She 
 lived, certainly, under another name. And how came 
 Ada, the nurse-maid, to be flourishing in such a style? 
 Morbidly anxious as he was to have her safe and sure 
 in his own keeping, it hardly occurred to him that this 
 very opulence accounted for the reticences and hesita- 
 tions of her brother with regard to her. 
 
 But in twenty minutes he was sure. On a third floor 
 a servant led him into a smug drawing-room, and there, 
 on the wall, he saw an oval colored photograph : and 
 he recognized the slim bust, and the little Chinese eyes, 
 and the piquant Geisha-girl face, warm-yellow in tint. 
 
 At the door, the servant, a narrow-browed, mean-look- 
 ing creature, had told him that Miss Seward was away ; 
 and as he wished to speak further, she had asked him 
 within. 
 • Where, then, was Miss Seward? 
 
 She had gone away. 
 
 When? 
 
 Four hours before. 
 
 Where to ? 
 
 To Dover. 
 
 Was that certain ? 
 - Quite certain. 
 328 
 
The Meeting 329 
 
 But whatever had she gone to Dover for ? 
 
 That the servant could not say, or would not say. 
 
 But was Miss Seward coming back soon ? 
 
 The servant did not think so. Miss Seward had left 
 her sufficient money to keep her for some time. 
 
 Did the servant know much of Miss Seward's private 
 affairs ? 
 
 She knew something. She and Miss Seward were 
 very good friends indeed. Miss Seward sometimes 
 spoke of things to her. But, of course, she did not 
 know everything. 
 
 What did " everything " mean? 
 
 It meant nothing. 
 
 Then Hardy began to woo, to implore ; then to speak 
 of big matters ; to say that all this was important to 
 more than he could name. But the girl smirked, and 
 did not follow that flight. The last thing that oc- 
 curred to him was a bribe ; only in the final moment of 
 his despair did the thought flash through his mind. He 
 hinted at hazard a hundred pounds, and the promptness 
 of the response surprised him. 
 
 It was a large sum for a poor girl. 
 
 Yes ; and all he wanted to know was why Miss Seward 
 had gone to Dover. 
 
 She had gone in order to go over to France to the 
 little Chinaman who was in love with her. 
 
 And now it was the turn of the servant to be sur- 
 prised — at the swift energy with which Hardy vanished 
 from her eyesight. 
 
 He bore on his breast the initials of this girl, Seward; 
 she was his, his very own. 
 
 But he was in this dilemma : that things far more 
 momentous on their surface demanded his personal 
 presence where he was. It needed all the acumen of 
 his shrewd eye to determine which was the main fact 
 which must influence his conduct. 
 
 He drove to the nearest post-office, and telegraphed 
 to the Manager of the London, Chatham and Dover 
 Kail way. 
 
 There was at this moment not a hope left to Britain. 
 The Admiralty had chains of steamers, intercommuni- 
 
330 The Yellow Danger 
 
 eating with each other, and with the southeast coast, 
 whose task was to watch and to report. And the na- 
 tion now knew that on the morrow of this final-look- 
 ing, sunless Wednesday was due the horror of ultimate 
 overthrow — the going beneath the wave of the last 
 emerging rock of the old world. 
 
 Nor had the general mass of the nation the faintest 
 suspicion of any power in the earth which could save, 
 or even momentarily help, it. 
 
 If a heavenly host should appear in mid-sky wrapped 
 in flames of vengeance, then, perhaps, that surge 
 might be stemmed. But though the people were 
 now far from doubting the interest of the gods, their 
 reasons ws.-e the offspring of too advanced a period of 
 Time to await any such manifestation. 
 
 It was known that a wholly inconceivable number of 
 floating things of every kind were massed upon the 
 extreme northwest coast of France ; and that in their 
 passage over to England they would have one of the 
 finest war-fleets the world had ever seen to protect 
 them — against nothing ! 
 
 And now — in this hour of world-tragedy — the Brit- 
 ish people offered to the " Eyes that regard" a good 
 spectacle. The panic was gone. In such a place as the 
 City of London there was, of course, no business done ; 
 but everywhere else there was business done. Shops 
 were open ; post-offices were open ; the printing-press 
 throbbed. If a man met a man in the street, one 
 pallid lip spoke to the other pallid consciousness of the 
 dark weather, of a business matter, of a family affair 
 — of everything except the Chinese. The subject of 
 the Chinese in these last days was rather looked upon 
 as being in bad taste. The lower classes spoke of 
 them — but, in general, with splendidly curved lip. 
 With a sublime stoicism, with a regal disdain, Britain 
 waited for her overthrow. 
 
 Nearly every one made a point of going about his 
 ordinary work. 
 
 In the last resort, the lip remains. It is the final 
 retort of a noble man, of a grand nation, to destiny. 
 " The mind and spirit remain invincible. . . ." 
 
The Meeting 331 
 
 What could Britain do now? She could smile. 
 
 And by this her pallid smile in that hour, she proved, 
 in truth, her divine right to the Empire of the Earth. 
 
 Besides smiling, every man, and most boys, managed 
 to provide themselves with some sort of weapon, sharp 
 or blunt, dull or gleaming, which they laid quietly by. 
 
 A gentleman in Gray's Inn had for a week been 
 training a fine specimen of the British bull-dog to fly 
 at a Mongolian effigy set up in the gardens. 
 
 In reality, the arm of England was as strong as her 
 soul ; but she knew the strength of her soul, and did 
 not suspect the strength, of her arm. 
 
 Her arm was John Hardy. 
 
 At least he was the main muscle of it. He was as 
 much the West as Yen How was the East. 
 
 But what is this shadow that dogs his steps ? — some- 
 thing absurd, grotesque, yet terrible ? 
 
 At eight he had sent the telegram to the railway 
 company. At nine he drove once more from Cavendish 
 Square, leaving a host of orders with an almost per- 
 manent committee of naval men who now attended 
 upon him. And he had no sooner driven away, than 
 a man in wide sombrero was asking at his door if he was 
 at home. 
 
 In this man, Edrapol, there was not now, if there 
 had ever been, an atom of venom against Hardy. He 
 was merely the absurd slave of punctilio. In the view 
 of that frivolous old brain, nothing in the world could 
 compare in importance with the importance of an 
 affaire d'honneur, a delicate point, a shade of usage. 
 The thing first of all that a gentleman must do — in 
 every case — whatever happened — was to settle " a 
 delicate point." 
 
 Also, he knew the greatness of Hardy. And his 
 vanity was prone, the moment he found himself in 
 safety on English soil, to measure swords with him. 
 
 He knew, too, that soon the Chinese must be here 
 also, and then . . . what could be done? Voila une 
 affaire manqitee. Nothing could be more annoying to 
 a gentleman than an affaire manqvee. 
 
 It was clear that whatever he did must be instan- 
 
332 The Yellow Danger 
 
 taneously done. The morrow would, perhaps, not " do 
 his affair." 
 
 He took the broad hat from his long-haired white 
 head, and he bowed largely, as old Bobbie himself in- 
 formed him that Hardy was from home. 
 
 Edrapol asked whither he had gone, and the old man 
 said : 
 
 "To Dover, sir." 
 
 Edrapol asked no more. He had brought over on 
 his person a good sum in specie ; he had also rings on 
 his fingers worth money. He jumped into a cab, and 
 drove in haste away. 
 
 With that noble phlegm of which we have spoken, 
 things in England still, at this eleventh hour, ran, for 
 the most part, their usual course. Few people were 
 moving about, yet the trains went empty, and the show 
 of civilization continued when its reality was like a 
 spent heart, about to beat its final throb. 
 
 So that Edrapol found a longed-for train about half 
 an hour after Hardy's departure ; and both engines, 
 flying simultaneously through Kent, were " express." 
 
 As for Hardy, he reached Harbour Station in his 
 rocking train within an hour and twenty minutes from 
 his start. 
 
 He hurried to the Cross Wall, and there had no diffi- 
 culty in learning that the girl had certainly not hired 
 any local craft, nor started from Dover that day. Nor 
 had any craft left Dover eastward for some time. 
 
 The natural conclusion was that Ada Seward was still 
 in Dover. 
 
 Nevertheless, Hardy spied about the harbor for 
 some time among the steamboats, and pointed out one 
 to a blue-jacket named Brassey, who accompanied him. 
 Brassey was to arrange with her captain; have her fires 
 lit and banked; and Hardy scribbled a note to South 
 Eront Barracks, signing his name with the initials 
 P. C. N. S. ; it was a request for a small three-pounder 
 and ammunition, which he instructed Brassey to 
 mount for'ard on the designated steamer. He himself 
 hurried to the Eoyal Ship Hotel, followed by a train of 
 watermen, policemen, and residents, eager to serve him. 
 
The Meeting 333 
 
 Nothing was so certain as tliat, if the girl were 
 there, in a small place like Dorer, he would quickly 
 know it. In a faw minutes fifty men were dissecting 
 the town for him, and very soon he had the whole his- 
 tory of her stay in Dover; 
 
 She had put up for two hours at the Lord Warden 
 Hotel, and had then left it, taking her portmanteau 
 in a cab. In the small period of her stay she had made 
 herself singularly friendly with one of the chamber- 
 maids of the hotel, and confided to her the surprising 
 secret that she was about to set out for Dunkirk. The 
 cabman who took her away was found ; and he stated 
 that, having driven for some distance east towards St. 
 Margaret-at-ClifEe, along the high-road, his fare had 
 ordered him to turn down a by-road, leading directly 
 to the shore. His surprise was immense when, about 
 a mile from the Upper Foreland Lighthouse, which 
 was burning all day, she again ordered him to stop and 
 take down her trunk. He did so, laid it on the sands, 
 and was paid. The last he saw as he drove away was 
 the girl sitting on the box, with lonely outlook over 
 the dim sea. 
 
 Was there no ship in the offing? 
 
 There might have been ; he could not say. One could 
 not see many yards over the sea through the dark. He 
 was certain that there was no ship with burning lights 
 
 Here, then, was the last link : the chain ending at the 
 girl watching the drear sea from her box on the sand. 
 
 It did not, however, need a very vivid imagination to 
 conjecture why she sat there ; and in half an hour 
 after hearing the news, Hardy had the North Pier 
 Signal-Light dwindling into nothingness on his port 
 quarter ; and the Downs-trotter which bore him was 
 panting and quivering as she had not panted for many 
 a day. He calculated that the girl had, at most, an 
 hour's start of him. 
 
 As he passed out between the two piers, Edrapol ar- 
 rived at Priory Station, and began to make inquiries 
 for Hardy. After a time he heard the truth, but his 
 disappointment was solaced by the information that 
 Hardy would very likely return before morning. 
 
334 The Yellow Danger 
 
 At this time Ada Seward, borne in one of those safe, 
 but rather clumsy, Havre- Antwerp boats, was fifteen 
 miles or so on her way from the English coast. 
 
 Some months before this a singular adventure had 
 befallen the girl. 
 
 Walking along the street, she had been accosted by a 
 man— a Yankee, as she judged by his goat beard, his 
 lank lounge, and his talk. 
 
 He nodded with cool confidence to her, and he said 
 this : 
 
 " Well, young woman, I guess you are in luck's way 
 this time, anyhow." 
 
 In ten minutes he had left her, and leaving her, in- 
 sinuated £50 in Bank of England notes in her hand. 
 This, he explained, was only "to go on with " for a 
 day or so. 
 
 He was not the principal, he said, but only an agent 
 — " matter of business " — in which, to tell the God's 
 truth, he did not stand in so badly. But he was not 
 the principal in the deal : the principal she would see 
 on the next evening at the hour and place which he 
 named. 
 
 The " principal " was a large, pigtailed, silk-dressed 
 Chinaman- — a great man in his country. 
 
 All he wanted of Ada Seward was to be permitted 
 to buy her grand houses, and carriages, and footmen, 
 and downs, and luxuries. For this nothing, on his 
 honor, in return, save that she should be under his 
 eye, and obey him as a daughter. The Yankee acted 
 as go-between, and Ada thought she would like all this. 
 
 So, away now with Pattison's, and the nursery; and 
 shopping now all day for Ada at Peter Robinson's, the 
 carriage waiting outside. 
 
 She changed her name, breaking with her poor, but 
 proud, relations, who, in spite of her protestations, be- 
 lieved that her foot had slipped. Her brother tossed 
 back the gold she offered him into her face. 
 
 Then came proposals from the "principal." Ada 
 was wanted in China, where wealth, beyond all dream, 
 awaited her. She refused. 
 
 Now first she heard the name of Yen How in the mat- 
 
The Meeting 335 
 
 ter, and began to understand. That little doctor at 
 whom she had scoffed. . . . 
 
 Then came pressure, threats. But apart from the 
 pressure, and the threats, she understood now that she 
 had sold herself into slavery. She was subjected to a 
 most rigorous, unremitting surveillance, like an upper- 
 class woman in China ; and she had at bottom a rather 
 touchy, independent pride of character. Add to this 
 surveillance the pressure, the threats, and to these her 
 uneasy consciousness of her people's displeasure, ana 
 what she did may be guessed : she collected all the 
 trinkets about her, which now amounted to many hun- 
 dreds of pounds' value, and she ran away. 
 
 It was then that she set up on her own account in 
 the Bloomsbury flat. Already she was too much of a 
 lady to do without a servant. 
 
 She hid herself with such absolute craft, that neither 
 "principal," nor "agent," nor for a long time the 
 agents of Hardy, nor her brother, could find her. 
 
 It was on learning this flight that Yen How decided 
 that, whatever happened, none of the women of Eng- 
 land must be killed. . . . ! 
 
 Then, when the end was near, when it was certain 
 that England was doomed, a noble throe leapt into life 
 within this girl. She conceived the quixotic, but sub- 
 jectively fine, notion of sacrificing herself for her coun- 
 try. On condition that England was spared, she 
 would go to Yen. 
 
 And boldly breaking from her seclusion, she pre- 
 sented herself with this proposal before the " agent " ; 
 and agent and principal, in a room in Portland Street, 
 where the principal lived now in strictest retirement, 
 gloated over this thing. 
 
 And they two, with elaborate cautions and precau- 
 tions, made two voyages to the French coast, one with 
 the glad message in the girl's own writing, from which 
 they returned with Yen How's "come" ; and one to 
 arrange minute preliminaries of the meeting. 
 
 And thus it happened that in order to get to France, 
 Ada Seward sat alone on her box on the Foreland sands, 
 and looked across the sea. 
 
336 The Yellow Danger 
 
 Sh6 was genuinely confident that she was " saving " 
 Bom'dthing large and not very definite ; and, as she 
 stepped into the boat which quickly made its appear, 
 ance at the surf, the thought in her beating, yet bold, 
 heart was this : What a One am I ! 
 
 In order to lay his eyes once more upon this girl at 
 the earliest moment. Yen How was ready to fling to 
 the winds, or at least postpone, a world of affairs 
 which no head but his could surely organize. But 
 the momentum of events overpowered him. He could 
 not go. 
 
 He himself chose the safest-looking, tidiest, and 
 smartest of the smaller craft of which the Outer Har- 
 bour, the Commercial Dock, and the Naval Dock 
 were now one thickly crowded mass. 
 
 He had then been at Dunkirk two days, making the 
 Casino des Dunes his headquarters. But when he 
 looked abroad upon that once neatest of cities, and con- 
 sidered the heaped-up horror of its red streets, and the 
 whirling drama of mixed revel and warlike preparations 
 going forward within its walls, he knew that here, at 
 least, his bride could not come. 
 
 Standing, however, a little back from the Sea Baths 
 at Eosendael, two miles away, was a lonely villa, backed 
 by the desolate sand-dunes, and within ear-shot of 
 the continual rumoring of the shore. Here, at eleven 
 in the night, almost alone, restless, perambulating, 
 expecting, was Yen How. 
 
 He had rescued himself with a sort of stealth from 
 Dunkirk. 
 
 He was like some singer, the darling of the world, 
 who yet is the secret victim of drink ; and while the 
 plaudits still ring through the opera-house, he, in the 
 inmost recess of the green-rooms, has the tilting bottle 
 at his lips. 
 
 By midnight the lights of Dunkirk were well in sight 
 of the steamer which bore Ada Seward. The boat was 
 manned by Japanese, men in whom Yen How had 
 confidence. But she was unarmed. 
 
 She was traveling at her utmost speed, jind carried 
 only one light — a mast headlight. 
 
The Meeting 337 
 
 This fact made her outre, an object of observation ; 
 it was sufficient to hint her identity ; and behind hex, 
 straining every timber to catch her, came frotliing a 
 slightly faster boat. 
 
 So that when the boat ahead was perhaps not half a 
 mile from her anchorage opposite Eosendael, the boat 
 behind was five hundred yards only from the boat 
 ahead ; and it was then that the former sent a guess- 
 work shot, but a shot aimed by Hardy's own hand, into 
 the stern-works of the other. 
 
 The Japanase boat at once shot round, and went 
 steaming in a changed direction, rudderless. Con- 
 sternation reigned on her decks : over the sea came to 
 Hardy's ship sounds of shouted voices. 
 
 The girl, who had been lying on the red-velvet cabin- 
 cushions, rushed on deck. And as she reached it, 
 again she heard the boom of cannon, and screamed. 
 
 And all that happened from that moment during ten 
 minutes was a mere horrid whirl to her ; there was a 
 scampering of men, and yells, and everywhere a rush 
 of the sea, and a leap into a boat, and a singing in her 
 ears, and a smell like brimstone, and the flash of a 
 bull's-eye in her eyes. 
 
 Then she felt firmness beneath her feet, and presently 
 she was crying, half-lying back on cushions. 
 
 Hardy, sitting near, eyed her curiously for some 
 minutes of silence. Here was a force greater than a 
 100-ton gun, great as the moon and the tides ; old 
 Astart6 sobbing there in a dainty West-end bonnet — 
 the strong sex of Woman. 
 
 The presence of the girl, in his power at last filled him 
 with a certain calm. With her, he felt, he might win. 
 
 The sobs died gradually lower. And he said : 
 
 " You feel better now ? " 
 
 " Yes — thank you — sir," she answered jerkily. 
 
 Up to now she had not recognized him. 
 
 " Then I can talk to you. You understand, that it 
 was to get you that I sank the other ship ? " 
 
 "Me?" she queried, sitting up at once in wide- 
 awake interest. 
 
 " Yes. I knew you were going to Yen How, and I 
 
338 The Yellow Danger 
 
 wanted at all hazards to prevent jon. Whatever in- 
 duced you to act in that unworthy way ? " 
 
 " Which unworthy way, sir ? But stop, are 
 you " 
 
 " Yes — we have met before. But that is not the 
 point. Tell me, why have you been so foolish and 
 wicked, Ada ? " 
 
 " Oh, come now, this is a little too much, you 
 know ! " cried Ada. " Who are you ? And what right 
 have you to take me in this way ? / foolish and 
 wicked ? It is absolutely untrue ; and I don't think 
 you'd be ungentlemanly enough to treat a poor girl in 
 this way if you knew all." 
 
 " Well then, tell me all. And do not cry, because 
 that wastes time." 
 
 "Oh, it is all very well to talk in that way, sir !" 
 she answered saucily, though her heart misgave her 
 at the look of the face before her. "Who are you? 
 I am not aware by what right " 
 
 " But you are wasting my time. John Hardy is my 
 name, and I have the right of a man trying to serve 
 his country. Tell me now." 
 
 " Oh, John Har ! Well, you will excuse me, 
 
 won't you ? I was not to know that. But was it you, 
 then, all the time, at the music " 
 
 " Yes. Now tell, me." 
 
 " Why I was going, you mean ? Well, if it comes to 
 that, wasn't I going for the same reason which you say 
 — to serve my country, too ? " 
 
 "Is that really so?" 
 
 "It is, sir." 
 
 " And how ? " 
 
 " Well, since you seem to know about me and Yen 
 How — didn't he give me to understand that, if I came, 
 he would save England from the Chinese ? And isn't 
 that why I am going to him ? to make him keep his 
 army away from England ? " 
 
 At this exhibition of inherent confidence in her 
 power over Yen, this radical, unquestioning trust in 
 the might of her sex, a smile flitted through the brain 
 of Hardy, He said : 
 
The Meeting 339 
 
 " Then you are not wicked, after all ; but only 
 foolish. As I have you in my hands, and as I am going 
 to take you back to England, I will let you understand 
 Vhy. You are right in believing that Yen How is very 
 much attached to you ; that is so ; I know it well. I 
 believe that his attachment to you is as extraordinary 
 in its force as the man himself is extraordinary. Well 
 now ; but can you be so simple as to think that the way 
 to make use of this infatuation for the good of your 
 country is to come and put yourself in his power in 
 this fashion ? Supposing he even tried to keep his 
 armies from going over to England and killing us all, 
 he could not permanently succeed, you know ; and 
 supposing he succeeded, you have sense enough to 
 know, have you not, that England would be no good at 
 all with the rest of the world full of yellow men ? In 
 that case she had better go under, too, like the rest, 
 don't you think ? You would not care to live in such 
 a kennel, nor would I, nor any of us English. So, 
 you see, you are throwing away yourself for nothing. 
 But I, now, have a better card to play, I am thinking ! 
 Do you know that I have been searching everywhere 
 for you for weeks ? My idea was this : that this vast 
 Chinese people would be no good at all when confronted 
 with the harsh, steady, untiring frown of England and 
 America — provided we could only get their leader well 
 dead. That is the first thing to do. Yen How is the 
 weak point of all that great host ; and you, Ada, are 
 the weak point of Yen How. That is why I wanted to 
 have you safe in my hands all this time, so as to be 
 sure that you were there. If you are in England, I 
 have not a doubt that Yen How will come, like a fish 
 to the bait ; and if he comes, as sure as fire we'll catch 
 him. But if I let you go over to him in this way to 
 France, you see, don't you, how that would spoil 
 everything ?" 
 
 " I see, sir," said Ada. 
 
 " Well, now, in what we have got to do to-night you 
 can help us : we want to let Yen How know that you 
 are safe in England, and in my hands. He must not 
 have any doubt about that in his mind ; and as he is 
 
340 The Yellow Danger 
 
 expecting you, I suppose, in the ship I have sunk, ha 
 will have a doubt when she does not arrive, unless we 
 enlighten him. He will think, very likely, that you 
 are lost with the crew of the ship ; and that suspicion 
 may be enough to keep hira out of our hands. So, 
 then, I want you to tell me where, and under what 
 conditions, you were to meet Yen How to-night." 
 
 " I can hardly say exactly," she replied ; " he is in 
 a house by itself near the shore." 
 
 "Is he alone?" 
 
 " They told me that there was hardly any one with 
 him. " 
 
 " There is a single light just ahead of us in shore : 
 is that the place, do you know ? " 
 
 " It may be, sir ; I should think it would be. I 
 cannot say." 
 
 Hardy jumped sharply up, and called " Brassey I" 
 in a shout that made him cough. 
 
 Brassey at once appeared — a beardless, Cockney- 
 looking man. 
 
 " How far are we in ? " asked Hardy. 
 
 " About a quarter of a mile, sir." 
 
 " No lights on board showing ? " 
 
 " No, sir." 
 
 " Pick three men to go with you and me in the boat ; 
 ask if they can shoot at all, and give them the pistols ; 
 better look to youra and mine. Toll them to stop 
 speed. And find me at once, Brassey, a pair of scissors, 
 if you can."^ 
 
 On a side-table in the cabin were pens, ink, and 
 paper. Hardy sat and wrote a few words ; and almost 
 as soon as he had finished Brassey was at his side with 
 a pair of scissors. 
 
 Hardy at once hurried across to where Ada Seward 
 sat ; he muttered : 
 
 " If you do not mind — just one little lock. . . ." 
 
 Before she knew, he had clipped a tendril of her 
 light-reddish hair. 
 
 Hg returned now to the table, and enclosed the hair 
 with the scribbled sheet in an envelope, which he 
 directed: "Yen How, Europe." 
 
The Meeting 341 
 
 On the sheet he had written : 
 i " From John Hardy to Yen How. 
 \ "Hair of Miss Seward, who is in the safe keeping 
 of John Hardy, at 11a Cavendish Sq^uare, London. " 
 
 ^ few minutes later, wrapped to his ears in a long 
 black ulster, he was at the tiller of a boat making for 
 the shore. 
 
 The sea was calm and only a slow, rolling bruit from 
 the treaker-line informed with its murmurous mono- 
 tone the very drear and dark night. 
 
 The air was stagnant as the vapid atmosphere of 
 some dead world. It seemed pervaded by a certain 
 visible gloom. 
 
 In ten minutes. Hardy, with a spring, was upon 
 Chinese territory. The three men put ofE again a 
 little from land ; Brassey stationed himself on the wet 
 sand, instructed how to act in case of a preconcerted 
 signal ; alone Hardy moved forward. 
 
 He had in one hand the letter, and in the other a 
 pistol. 
 
 Yonder, shining steadily through the murky dark, 
 was a light, which seemed nearer than it was ; half a 
 mile along the east stretch of fine sand lay Eosendael, 
 but invisible, deserted. The noise of Dunkirk could 
 not be heard, but a blurred hint of luminosity marked 
 its situation. A stone's throw away, on the left, stood 
 a row of five bathing-machines. The upward-tend- 
 ing region of sand-hill and dune behind the villa was 
 lost in gloom. 
 
 Yet the near was not invisible. Hardy having passed 
 the broad band of level sand, was able to make his way 
 with tolerable precision among the knolls, and light, 
 uneven ground. Once he collided with a low back- 
 less bench, half sunken askew in a scraggy growth of 
 grass ; once and again he stumbled into a hole of sand. 
 
 The house was very far. It stood on a slightly 
 raised plateau of firmer ground, facing the sea ; and 
 the light seen from the sea was in an open window 
 near the ground. The villa was white, and small ; its 
 doors and windows Gothic. 
 
 He stole stooping to the window, and looked in. 
 
342 The Yellow Danger 
 
 The room, lighted by a lamp, was a species of salon. 
 On a chair in a corner burned a Chinese lantern. 
 
 From a window on the right side also he saw ooze a 
 radiance from within, and with cautious tread he ap- 
 proached it also. The casement was latticed, and 
 overgrown with chevrefeuille. But he was able to 
 observe that the room was gaudily decorated, tapestried 
 with green and crimson silk, in the center a spread 
 table, laden with fruit and plate of gold. A multitude 
 of colored lanterns made it a nest of variegated 
 glamours. And here, busy about the table, he saw two 
 richly-dressed Chinese. 
 
 He made the tour of the house, and saw no other 
 living thing. All was dead silence and stagnation. 
 He came back to the front window, dropped in the 
 letter directed to Yen How, and turned away. 
 
 His way now was downhill, and he walked faster, 
 with less precaution, swinging freely along. He had 
 gone on in this way for perhaps five minutes, when 
 he stopped suddenly short, all eyes and ears. He 
 had heard the distinct sound of footsteps near. 
 
 In two or three seconds the muzzle of a pistol was 
 at his forehead, and the muzzle of his pistol was at the 
 forehead of a man. 
 
 They peered closely into each other's face. 
 
 " Well, you do not fire, and I will not, " said the 
 man coolly. 
 
 He was not an Englishman — something in his into- 
 nation showed that ; yet he spoke English. 
 
 He had, in fact, recognized Hardy ; but Hardy did 
 not recognize him. 
 
 " It is agreed ? " the man said. 
 
 " Well. " 
 
 " Drop 5rour pistol. " 
 
 " You drop yours. " 
 
 " And you promise ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 There was a thud on the ground, and a moment after 
 another. 
 
 " Poh ! You have lost your chance," ^aid the man. 
 
 Then Hardy knew Yen. 
 
The Meeting 343 
 
 Even though it was a totally different Yen from 
 the pompous pigtailed Arch-Priest, the great Apostle, 
 who had been awaiting, with restless wanderings over 
 the dunes, his tarrying bride. It was Yen in simple 
 English clothes, with a hard felt hat over his bald fore- 
 head, and without queue behind. 
 
 The consciousness of failure, of folly, thrilled 
 through Hardy like a pain. 
 
 He had, in truth, lost the best possible chance. 
 
 " Well," he said after a minute, "and you have lost 
 yours too, Yen How." 
 
 "I will get you another time, boy." 
 
 " If I do not get you." 
 
 "Well, well," said Yen. 
 
 They had moved on a few steps — together. There 
 was silence in the darkness. Already in the two men 
 was working the strange law whose operation they were 
 to feel for long hours that night : the law which made 
 it next to impossible to them to tear themselves one 
 from the other. 
 
 Yen How hit upon the same half -sunken bench upon 
 which Hardy had stumbled. Hardy put his foot upon 
 it, and leant his elbow on his knee at one end. At the 
 other Yen How sat down. Below them was the un- 
 dulant spread of weed-patched sand, and the vague 
 noising of the sea. 
 
 Yen How, who was smojting, took the cigar from 
 his lips, and said : 
 
 " So you got away, after all ? " 
 
 Hardy did not answer. 
 
 "How did you get away?" asked Yen. 
 
 " God, I suppose, let me free, that I might strangle 
 you yet. Yen," said Hardy. 
 
 " Poh ! " said Yen How. 
 
 Minute after minute rolled by in a silence punctua- 
 ted by the faint puffing sounds of Yen How's lips — a 
 
344 The Yellow Danger 
 
 quarter of an hour, twenty minutes. Hardy was look 
 ing forth with wrinkled, speculative brow over the sea. 
 
 Yen How said : 
 
 " Did you have anything to do with the capture of 
 the nine ships ? " 
 
 " Which nine ships ? " said Hardy. 
 
 "The Japanese war-vessels." 
 
 "Go to Hell, and ask me no questions." 
 
 "I suppose it was your doing, boy." 
 
 " Perhaps." 
 
 " What have you done with them, then ? " 
 
 " I have them." 
 
 " Not in Europe — come now." 
 
 " How do you know that ? " 
 
 " I have searched." 
 
 " Europe is a good big place. Yen." 
 
 " Big, no. A green billiard-table, my son " 
 
 "With pockets." 
 
 " So you have got them — in a pocket — really? " 
 
 " I may. There is no telling." 
 
 " If you had, you would not try to make me think 
 that you had." 
 
 "Ah," said Hardy, of the two one fathom the 
 deeper. 
 
 Caught in a sort of fascination, in a feeble, flaccid 
 species of mutual mesmerism, they could not leave 
 each other. Intense hatred and intense love are, of 
 course, inverse forms of the same thing, and their 
 manifestation is the same — an instinct for contact. 
 A stab, a kiss — these are resultant varieties of the 
 instinct. Through a grating a dog and a cat will 
 maintain a mutual watch, lingeringly, for hours, averse 
 to part. Here was something of that sort — a warfare 
 and an attraction between a whale big as an ocean, and 
 an elephant, monstrous, four-headed, big as a continent. 
 
 And as all grand intensities are primal, elementary, 
 and resemblantto the passions of childhood, so the talk 
 of these great men was not altogether unlike the wrangle 
 between two bitter, lingering schoolboys, sitting on 
 
The Meeting 345 
 
 a bench, with lumps in their throats — fastened to- 
 gether, unable to part. 
 
 There were few words, and a long interval, and few 
 words, and a long interval. So a dark hour passed. 
 
 Hardy said : 
 
 "What a beast you must be. Yen, to torture a poor 
 boy like that ! What a sad beast !" 
 
 "Poh! You do not know anything. I had worse 
 in store for you than that, boy. " 
 
 " What a damned reptile for God to make ! " 
 
 " Abuse away. Your mind is not really first-class, 
 after all. You are the slave of old, popular surface- 
 ideas. A reptile is no worse than anything else, boy. 
 If he is stronger than other things, he is better than 
 them." 
 
 " Ah, well, if that were so, I should be glad, too. 
 Yen. There is not much to choose between us, now, 
 in that way." 
 
 " What, you are of the species, too, then ? " 
 
 "Something of that sort, perhaps — if venom makes 
 the reptile. It is your own fault. You have made 
 me like yourself. By the Lord, I warn you. Yen 
 How . . . ! " 
 
 " Poh ! it is a question of strength, not of venom. 
 You can be as venomous as you like. But what can 
 you do ? " 
 
 " Nothing perhaps ; and perhaps something." 
 
 " Suppose you had a fleet to beat me at sea. Do 
 you know how many I am sending over ? All at once ? 
 You can't dream. Twenty millions. What could 
 you do with them ? It would take you a year to 
 shoot them all. But suppose you did ; there will be 
 some more hundreds of millions left. You cannot 
 exclude the innumerable. What could you do with 
 them ? Be as venomous as you like, my son." 
 
 " Ten good men against a hundred million rats — I 
 bet on the men." 
 
346 The Yellow Danger 
 
 "Pohl I bet on the rats." 
 
 " Ou the side of the men — science." 
 
 "Science. What sort of science ? " 
 
 "The science of the gunmaker, of the tactician, of 
 
 the- 
 
 Well ?" 
 "Need I say it ?" 
 "Tes, say it." 
 "Of the— chemist." 
 
 And at the word Yen How started as though pricked 
 by a goad. He said nothing. 
 
 "But, after all, you are a fool, Yen." 
 
 " Ah. How so ? " 
 
 " Well, now, I suppose you are a learned sort of 
 dog. You know science I dare say ; you know history, 
 and on what trajectory the world has run so far. But 
 it seems to me — can it be that you have really never 
 caught a glimpse of the one big, fugitive Thing ? " 
 
 " And you, my son ? " 
 
 " Yen ! sometimes it hits me straight in the eyes 
 in one blinding flash of lightning — a momentary flash, 
 happily, for no staggering eyeball could bear it long." 
 
 " Ah ! And what is it you see ? " 
 
 " A tendency in the world — the hell of a current — 
 a secret design, Mr. Chinaman." 
 
 "Well, suppose I have seen it too, boy, or guessed 
 it ? Why call me a fool ? " 
 
 " Because this invasion of yours is not in accordance 
 with the tendency so far ; and the tendency is jolly 
 strong !" 
 
 " You think the tendency is English in feeling ; 
 and I say it is Chinese ; that's all." 
 
 " I'll swear it is not Chinese, Yen How." 
 
 "Well, I don't care. Tendency or no tendency. 
 Poh ! A tree has a tendency to grow, all the universe 
 is trying to make it grow — but how if / come with a 
 saw and cut it down, my son ? " 
 
 "If you cut it down, yes. But if it is older than 
 
The Meeting 347 
 
 that old sea there, and has in it the toughness of eter- 
 nities, and is as wide as the girth of the earth. . . ." 
 
 A murmur of contempt came from Yen How. But 
 his left eye glanced a moment upward at the darkened 
 heaven. 
 
 " But what is it you are doing here, my son ? How 
 if I have you captured now ? " 
 
 "You cannot. I have, help near. I could more 
 likely capture you." 
 
 " I would not bo easily captured, you know. But 
 what is it you want here, sir ? " 
 
 " I received your present of the child's heart. I 
 came to make you one in return. I have dropped it 
 inside the window of the house yonder." 
 
 "Ah, what present ?" 
 
 " The present of a lock of hair." 
 
 "Ah, yes. Is she safe?" 
 
 His voice dropped low, clandestine, wheedling. 
 
 "Yes, she is safe." 
 
 " On board your ship ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " I knew. I heard your cannon. You are a devil 
 for cannon, my son. But I do not look perturbed, I 
 think. A man like Yen How knows how to wait." 
 
 "Then wait." 
 
 "1 am waiting." 
 
 " It need not be for long. Yen." 
 
 " Poh ! a day or two." 
 
 "So soon ?" 
 
 " Meanwhile, if you do not want me to strangle you, 
 get off this soil." 
 
 " Yes — I must be going." 
 
 Another half-hour, and Hardy sprang suddenly 
 upright, a lank dim figure in his ulster. It was not 
 very far from morning, yet no sign of light. 
 
 " We shall meet again, then ? " he said. 
 
 " To-morrow, perhaps," answered Yen How. 
 
348 The Yellow Danger 
 
 "Or to-day." 
 
 " So true. It is morning now. Say to-day, perhaps, 
 then, boy." 
 
 " Well, to-day. ..." 
 
 One walked hurriedly away ; and the other, sitting 
 there in the dark, smiled aboTehis nose. 
 
 As for Hardy, he flung himself upon the cabin- 
 cushions of the steamer as she turned her bows west- 
 ward, and for four hours slept there, Ada Seward 
 asleep, too, on the opposite side. 
 
CHAPTEE XXXIL 
 
 " TO-DAT." 
 
 Suddenly, a breath, a murmur, a thrill, a word of 
 Life, ran like an electric wave through the length and 
 breadth of Britain. 
 
 By wondrous marvel there were once more solid 
 war-ships in Portsmouth port — ships friendly, belong- 
 ing to England, not made for England by English 
 hands, come from nowhere ! By wondrous marvel . . . 
 by the might of the Almighty God ... by His un- 
 speakable favor. . . . 
 
 With this miracle was coupled by the people, with- 
 out knowledge, by mere infallible intuition, the magic 
 name of Hardy. . . . 
 
 Early on the Thursday morning the wild rumor 
 spread, incredible, yet believed. And at once the entire 
 nation rushed into undoubting hope, gladly casting off 
 its gloom, smitten with new and strange assurance of 
 its high and world-wide destiny. And all the daily 
 private business of life now, for the first time, utterly 
 ceased, and men stood wondering to wait and watch 
 the throes, of Time, agape as though scribbled across 
 the sky in Sanscrit of everlasting red they beheld the 
 signature of God. 
 
 As for doubt, with rash fate they flung it quite 
 away. In England — once more — were ships ; and in 
 England, — once more— a Captain of ships. 
 
 At this thought a thrilling heat swept through the 
 blood of every British being. 
 
 And there was a rumor abroad that, besides these 
 
 349 
 
3 So The Yellow Danger 
 
 marvelous battleships — nine, it was said, and more — 
 there lay suddenly assembled that Thursday morning 
 in the inner harbor of Portsmouth, a quite unaccount- 
 able crowd of other ships, Atlantic greyhounds, Nord- 
 deutscher and Austrian Lloyds, Eoyal Naval Reserve 
 Merchant Cruisers, prodigious four-masters, tenders, 
 Scotch and Irish coastguard vessels, unarmored cruis- 
 ing ships, transports, colliers, trawlers, wooden mer- 
 chantmen of every build, thronging the harbor. 
 
 A great unseen ferment and movement, a wide busi- 
 ness of preparation, unknown to the general mass of 
 the nation, must have been going forward for many 
 days. But to what end the concentration of all 
 these promiscuous crafts? Clearly, not a fighting 
 end ! 
 
 At eight. Hardy stepped upon the Dover Cross 
 Wall ; and as if to show how with the awful and mo- 
 mentous is mingled the grotesque, and how "some- 
 thing infects the world," there, before him, on the 
 quay, stood a bowing, long-haired figure. 
 
 Hardy recognized him at once, and a sound of vexed 
 impatience started from his lips. 
 
 Edrapol tendered his shriveled card. Hardy did 
 not take it. He said : 
 
 " I know." 
 
 Edrapol was all bows. He said : 
 
 " I take this liberty, monsieur — sir. I find myself 
 without a friend to make me a small service in this 
 country. ..." 
 
 " Well, now, is it possible ? " said Hardy. 
 
 "You refer to ?" 
 
 " To your frivolity, monsieur." 
 
 Edrapol bowed. 
 
 "I am here in response to your letter, monsieur. 
 Between gentlemen " 
 
 " I have no time ! Is it that you still wish to fight 
 with me ? " 
 
 " The question is explicit, monsieur — sir. Can you 
 ask ? Am I not here to make you a favor, since you 
 were unable to present yourself with me ? Ruch terms, 
 between gentlemen " 
 
"To-Day" 351 
 
 " But you know, do you not, that it is not legal to 
 fight in that way in England ? " 
 
 Such a smile smiled SWapol ! 
 
 " Monsieur ! "he said reproachfully. 
 
 " Well, come now, I will fight you," said Hardy 
 suddenly. 
 
 Out swept Edrapol's arms, and down curled his com- 
 plying back. 
 
 "But not to-day, you understand." 
 
 " To-morrow — perhaps — the deluge ! " 
 • " I cannot help that, sir You are, I take it, a great 
 man for rules and ceremonies. Well, then, I keep you 
 to your rules. It is not, I presume, a usual thing in 
 your country to fight duels at a moment's notice ? 
 Well, then " 
 
 " But, monsieur " 
 
 " No. I have no time. I am going away to sea to- 
 day. If I come back safe, we fight at the first mo- 
 ment, as I promised. Even if you choose to meet me 
 at my landing-place, which will, I think, be Doyer, we 
 fight there. You will easily find me ; and I will 
 provide you with a second, and everything. If I return 
 at all, I shall be here by to-morrow week — nine days. 
 I think that is not beyond the usual interval which one 
 takes to arrange preliminaries, so you cannot complain. 
 I cannot stay longer. Bon jour, monsieur." 
 
 Hardy walked away, while Edrapol shrugged, look- 
 ing after him. With the girl, Seward, Hardy pro- 
 ceeded to the Ship Hotel. 
 
 He at once wrote a letter to old Kobert Mason, bid- 
 ding him come for the girl, recommending her to his 
 strict surveillance, and making certain monetary pro- 
 visions for her future. 
 
 He then despatched four telegrams : one to Ports- 
 mouth, announcing his coming ; one to the Admi- 
 ralty ; a third to a Dr. Fletcher of Harley Street, in 
 these words : " Send at once the things promised to 
 me on board Eirosahi " ; the fourth to one Henrik 
 Bjornson, a N^orwegian, living in Parliament Street, 
 Westminster, in these words : " Hope you will not fail 
 to be with me by noon," 
 
352 The Yellow Danger 
 
 He himself made his way without delay to Brighton, 
 and thence onward by the coast to Portsmouth, arriv- 
 ing there shortly before eleven. 
 
 Looking abroad from the Hard, the Cumber, the 
 quays of Portsea, the whole harbor seemed a mere 
 endless tangle of masts and rigging. 
 
 By this time the four thousand gentlemen who 
 formed Hardy's army of blue-jackets were distributed 
 among the nine new-arrived ships of war, the rank and 
 file partly furnishing their own former ofiicers, and 
 being partly officered by the remnants of the regular 
 service. 
 
 The entire still-living crew of the IpJiigenia — the 
 "' Hundred and Eighty" — were borne in the Hirosaki, 
 flagship. 
 
 We have not spoken of the doings of this gallant 
 cohort subsequent to their departure from Far Eastern 
 waters. 
 
 They had found at Hong-Kong some coal-ships which 
 they loaded, and brought forward in their wake. 
 Again they had stopped at Singapore, and doubling 
 the Cape, steamed by night, near by the African coast, 
 through the Straits of Gibraltar ; the garrison on the 
 Eock, at a loss as to their identity, concluding that 
 they must be Italian. 
 
 They were well provisioned in proportion to their 
 number, and well coaled ; so, passing south of Sardinia, 
 they steered northward to M. Dumas' uninhabited 
 island of Monte Ohristo (which is some twenty-five 
 miles distant from the nearest land), prepared for a 
 lengthy stay, there being two or three coves and bays 
 affording very good anchorage. 
 
 The steam-pinnace of the Jphigenia carried a small 
 quickfiring gun mounted on a pedestal for'ard ; and 
 Hardy, on leaving his men, gave instruction that any 
 craft which might come near enough to sight the fleet 
 should be chased by the pinnace, and, if not captured, 
 sunk. As a matter of fact, only three small Corsican 
 crafts were captured, and their crews retained at the 
 island. 
 
 Hardy himself left them in the Conrad, and at He 
 
" To-Day '■ 353 
 
 d'Elbe contrived to make terms with the padrone of 
 the Maltese speronare in which he reached England. 
 
 The Conrad he left behind, in order to serve as a 
 despatch boat. 
 
 Here, then, during some weeks, remained the 
 Hundred and Eighty under the lazy Italian sky, shoot- 
 ing goats, and looking to their ships and guns. The 
 Japanese whom they had with them they retained till 
 the end of their stay. 
 
 At last, with glad hurrahs, they saw the ship, flying 
 the agreed flags, which came to recall them ; and on 
 the fifth morning were at Portsmouth. 
 
 If it was true, as Hardy maintained, that it was men 
 and not ships which fought a battle, the ships being 
 only the tools of the men, then the Hirosaki was now 
 a great fighter. She was gallantly manned. 
 
 In addition to this, she was a wonderful tool : the 
 largest efEective-tonnaged ship that had ever been 
 launched anywhere ; the latest and most exquisite 
 product of the Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding 
 Company. 
 
 But with the fleet which we may call British col- 
 lected at Portsmouth the resources of Europe were not 
 wholly exhausted. Among them, arrived during the 
 night, were four ram-cruisers, a large corvette, two 
 ram-monitors, and flve torpedo gun-vessels from the 
 Netherlands, the remainder of Holland's armament 
 having been caught by the Japanese, or being with her 
 East Indian Navy ; there were also three small Nor- 
 wegian torpedo-vessels ; also, the first question asked 
 by Hardy at Portsmouth was this : "No sign yet of 
 the Spaniards ? " There was none : the reason being 
 that, as the entire home-navy of -Spain left her by 
 America lay at anchor in Lisbon harbor, together with 
 some Portuguese, they had been attacked by a Japanese 
 cruiser-squadron. Not one escaped without damage. 
 
 So rapid had been the course of events, that no ships 
 from across the Atlantic had yet arrived. It was not 
 until half-past eleven, that a great cheer was heard 
 raving vaguely on the ships assembled in the port : and 
 at once it spread up the harbor, re-echoing with uni- 
 23 
 
354 The Yellow Danger 
 
 versal acclamation. Three fast cruisers, flying the 
 stars-and-stripes, had arrived. They brought the news 
 that the whole American Navy was on the way — but at 
 a distance behind which made it certain that they 
 would be late for the battle. However, as the Ports- 
 mouth force passed down Spithead, they were joined 
 by a force of nine Spanish sail, mostly very small, con- 
 sisting of torpedo gun-vessels, all unarmored. 
 
 Thus in this new Armada, the Spaniard and the 
 Englishman, and the American, in strange neighbor- 
 hood, fought side by side. 
 
 There could be no doubt as to the day, or even the 
 hour, of the final forward step of the yellow races. 
 Already, at two of the previous night, it was known in 
 London that incalculable masses of men had put off 
 from Dunkirk, Calais, Boulogne, St. Val6ry, Treport, 
 Dieppe, all along that coast, borne mostly in flats with 
 single paddlewheel astern, in French-barge fashion — 
 the most elementary form of steam motion — requiring 
 from eighteen to twenty hours to attain the nearest 
 point of the English coast. 
 
 The front of this floating host must, therefore, be 
 upon British soil at some alinost calculable moment 
 during the afternoon. 
 
 They were, as a matter of fact, retarded by an event 
 which, though normal, came upon every one with the 
 effect of a surprise : the air, which for six days had 
 seemed settled in a thick stagnation, at about ten in 
 the morning — moved. A sensible breeze sprang up 
 from the N. W., driving the sea-surface in sharply- 
 lined ovals before it. 
 
 And at once there was a slight lightening of the 
 murk of the atmosphere. 
 
 Near noon a brief meeting of captains took place 
 at Government House. Hardy had little to point out, 
 except that the battle upon which they were about to 
 enter was with men of different, less nice, morale than 
 ordinary European sailors — clever apes — islanders, yet 
 real foreigners on board a western ship-of-war. He 
 tossed his hand, and added : " It is true they are flushed 
 with a consciousness of power, gentlemen, and are 
 
" To-Day " 355 
 
 greatly superior in metal and numbers. Bixt that will 
 not weigh too much with you." 
 
 He also said that when definite orders went abroad 
 on the impending of the contest, it was his will that his 
 purposes should be explained by captains and com- 
 manders to every person in the fighting fleet. 
 
 He also said that they would be wasting their 
 energies in this battle, unless one man, whom he had 
 reasons to think would be there, were killed or cap- 
 tured ; and he himself undertook to discover, without 
 fail, in which ship that man was borne. 
 
 Immediately a move was made by captains towards 
 their ships in the port, and a few minutes after twelve 
 the signal "weigh" went up. 
 
 At the same time a great bustle of preparation was 
 taking place within the harbor itself. Dark smoke 
 left particles of soot on flapping sail. A host of boats 
 flitted to and fro. Never did Gosport, Portsea, Ports- 
 mouth, Southsea, and the forts around them, and the 
 still harbor between them, hear so widespread a 
 rumor of rattling chains and hurrying feet, and 
 shouted God-speeds, and ordering voices. 
 
 Cumberland and Southsea Castle Forts hooted a 
 volley of blessings and farewells as the war-ship fleet 
 slipped down the flood-tide. A few minutes later the 
 nine Spaniards hove in sight. 
 
 The fleet was also augmented by the Hero, the Nile, 
 the Sfax, the two gunboats taken in the battle of the 
 Channel, patched up now, and three French composite 
 gun-vessels captured during a Mediterranean battle. 
 
 They made up a respectable fighting-power : the 
 nine captured ships being considerably the most power- 
 ful of the Japanese navy, and the Hirosahi the most 
 powerful of ships. 
 
 Yet it was only the audacity of Hardy that would, 
 with any hope, have led this force against, we will not 
 say the weight, but the numbers, opposed to him ; and 
 the havoc which overtook his comparatively little fleet 
 in the battle that followed would certainly, had his 
 judgment been absolutely cool, have been foreknown 
 to him — or perhaps was foreknown. 
 
356 The Yellow Danger 
 
 Since the year 1892 Japan had placed orders with 
 firms all over the world for a hundred and seventeen 
 new ships, making an aggregate of some hundred and 
 fifteen thousand tons, half to be completed by 1902, 
 and half by 1906. At the period of this new pro- 
 gram, she already possessed a very respectable navy, 
 and at the time of the outbreak of the European war, 
 more than one quarter of the new ships were already in 
 her hands. 
 
 Hardy therefore opposed a fleet of forty-three ships 
 all told (only eleven being ships of a high class) to a 
 fleet of one hundred and thirty-nine sail, including 
 the Chinese vessels, mostly of extreme modernity, and 
 high fighting power. 
 
 His main dependence at this time seems, as he said, 
 to have been upon the comparative morale of the two 
 crews. He commanded a fleet manned, except for the 
 Continentals, wholly by British gentlemen and Ameri- 
 can marksmen ; the enemy were imitators, acquainted 
 with tactics recommended in books, incapable, he con- 
 ceived, of originating, incapable of combating origi- 
 nality. He guessed, too, that small as was his force, he 
 happened to have a superiority in one weapon — not 
 in general a very reliable one — the torpedo. 
 
 Perhaps trusting to one or both of these things,he con- 
 trived to give the impression (though it is questionable 
 if he was as sincere as usual) that, on starting from 
 port, he was without suspicion that he might now fail 
 to account for Asia as he had accounted for Europe. 
 
 The breeze freshened, but the air, though lightened, 
 continued murky ; there was some difficulty in deci- 
 phering signals ; and to facilitate messages by trumpet- 
 call, the ships moved onward in close formation, the 
 Dutch to the extreme starboard, the Spaniards and 
 Americans to port. 
 
 Ten miles astern spread far the great mass of 
 merchant craft. 
 
 Alone sat Hardy in the Hirosahi conning-tower, her 
 flag-captain and stafE standing on the bridge. The 
 conning-tower stood on the after-part of the fore- 
 castle-deck, very strongly armored, and communicat« 
 
•' To-Day " 357 
 
 ing by a host of knobs, and an armored tube, right down 
 to the armored deck, and every part of the ship. 
 
 In that hour, so great a travail came upon this poor, 
 troubled soul, that he could hardly bear to live. Here 
 was the Gethsemane of the young man. All the Care 
 of earth burthened upon him : all the floods and the 
 waters of Destiny passed over him. He groaned ; the 
 forehead that rested upon his hand sweated great drops. 
 A year ago he had thought himself a simple Hamp- 
 shire sailor-lad — and see, now, with the cracking 
 thews of Atlas he must uphold the world ! " Oh, if it 
 be possible — if it be possible — " This old cry of passion- 
 ate agony rived through all his being. That he alone 
 should bear the whole, he — one frail back ; that he 
 should be the ordained to shriek in solitary travail with 
 the birth-pangs of the new Future that was to be, and 
 be rent to shreds and atoms by the eruption of his 
 monstrous ofEspring, this was piteous. To be a Sav- 
 iour, it seems, is no light matter : the Eedeemer from 
 Hell must himself traverse the flames. At all events, 
 the brain upon which what we call civilization now 
 depended was near to frenzy. That his toiling back 
 could bear the horrid mass at all proved the dazzling 
 splendor of the boy — but he writhed. The weight 
 was strong : his sinews creaked. Also, in that hour 
 of his gloom, his shattered nerves represented to him 
 the world which he upheld as a world black, draped in 
 crape. " Oh, if it be only possible . . ."again and 
 again, in groan on groan, he uttered his agony of 
 spirit, longing only to die, to die. And even as he 
 longed, he sprang up briskly, and he rang : 
 
 " Twelve knots ! " 
 
 A little S.W. of Beachy Head the fleet was joined 
 by the fast private yacht of a gentleman who Was acting 
 as scout. He went on board the Hirosaki, and was 
 conducted before Hardy. 
 
 The Japanese fleet, he said, were on the way be- 
 tween the Somme-mouth and the Sussex coast, but 
 very much spread out, not apparently expecting serious 
 opposition, and steaming at the rate of perhaps four or 
 fi.ve knots. A vast breadth of channel was parterred for 
 
358 The Yellow Danger 
 
 league on league with masses of barge-like craft, whieh, 
 if one might conjecture, were concentrating toward the 
 narrow part of the Strait. Their progress was very 
 slow ; but some were by now certainly not more than 
 nine or ten miles from the Kent coast. The gentle- 
 man had passed bo near to one mass as to see through 
 his glass a distribution of some sort of green pottage in 
 one barge, and what looked like a fight between two 
 Chinamen in another. He had not been fired at. The 
 boats were incredibly overcrowded. He had heard, he 
 said with a smile, that about 70,000 men were massed 
 upon Hastings, and that forty Maxims were in posi- 
 tion on the sea-front. 
 
 Shortly before four a scout of the enemy directed from 
 beyond effective range the rays of two search-lights 
 upon the British, and at once hasted back to eastward. 
 
 By half-past, the British made out a great bank of 
 cloud to eastward. The breeze had now freshened to 
 a moderately stiff" gale from the northwest. For the 
 first time for a week, hurrying dark clouds above were 
 visible • athwart a gloom of twilight. The sea was 
 curling into fore-running hollows before the British 
 stems, like backing pages, who, with bows and graces, 
 usher in the visitor. 
 
 John Hardy's brain, and heart, and life, was in his 
 eyes. He glared through his glass like a famished 
 wolf. 
 
 The bank of smoke quickly cleared ; he could discern 
 forms of ships — eight miles from him, a line abreast — 
 and moving, it was clear, rapidly. Legion was their 
 name. His eyes started and stared ; he muttered 
 with his lips. 
 
 He gazed for two minutes, crazily, hundred-eyed ; 
 then he started, and hissed a swift " By God ! " Then 
 he flew to the communications. 
 
 To be signalled to the fleet : 
 
 " Keep speed and formation. Use no torpedoes in 
 combat." 
 
 To his own engine-room : 
 
 " Full speed ahead ! " 
 
 The engines of the Hirosaki instantly quickened 
 
" To-Day " 359 
 
 their throb and complex turmoil. She forged forward. 
 Her best speed was nearly nineteen knots. She was 
 like an ugly, stout island in a hurry. 
 
 The wondering question went pervading his fleet — 
 was he about to fight the entire navy of Japan alone ? 
 Was he not rushing like the demented whom the gods 
 destroy into the very mouth of hell ? 
 
 The Hirosalci, we have said, was undoubtedly the 
 best engine of war that was ever devised and built. 
 She was armored with Harveyed nickel steel, and her 
 belt, which extended from stem to stern, was over 
 eight feet in depth, and nine inches thick throughout 
 engine, boiler, and magazine spaces. JSTow, above this 
 belt, her side to the height of the main-deck was 
 covered with 6-inch armor for a length of some 250 
 feet, enclosing two barbettes ; while at each end of the 
 belt there was a curved bulkhead fourteen inches 
 thick between the armored and main decks ; so that a 
 quite complete citadel, 250 feet long, was formed. 
 
 Her gun-casemates, moreover, were shielded both on 
 the inner and outer sides, so that their crews worked 
 under protection almost ideal ; while her barbettes, 
 circular in plan, were protected with 14-inch armor, 
 rising to a height of 4 feet above the upper-deck. 
 
 With such a tool of war something might be dared. 
 Nearer she went, plowing in impressive, squat haste 
 straight towards the middle of the interminable 
 Japanese line ; and while the rest of the British fleet 
 were still beyond effective range, a sudden rain fell from 
 the military-tops of two cruisers upon her decks. 
 
 The Hirosaki did not answer. 
 
 With ripped decks and annihilated boats, on she 
 went, straining her engines, every egress from the stoke- 
 holds closed by the devoted men who toiled like sala- 
 manders in her depths. 
 
 Within two minutes from the opening of fire, a shell 
 from the 32-cm. gun of the AMtsuschima (one of the 
 two ships at the point where Hardy aimed to break the 
 enemy's line) had burst tlirough the shield of the fore- 
 barbette, killed or wounded all its crew, and disabled 
 the turn-table. 
 
360 The Yellow Danger 
 
 And now a horror of wonder and consternation spread 
 among the crew of the Hirosaki — at her strange silence 
 — at her frenzied adventure. 
 
 Where was Hardy ? Was he stricken dumb ? Was 
 he dead ? Was he dancing mad ? 
 
 An ashen-faced London barrister in one of the port 
 casemates of the 6-inch quick-firers on the main-deck 
 gasped in a dry-throated whisper : 
 
 "He is dead !" 
 
 And Brassey of Kiao-Chau, ashen-faced also, gasped 
 in answer : 
 
 " Bah ! what are you talking about ? " 
 
 The engines roared, the sea whitened, the Hirosaki 
 walked grandly down an arcade of flame and smoke. 
 
 She had passed through the first line of the enemy 
 between two cruisers, the Akitsuschima and the 
 Hasidate, which she could have sunk by a mere snarl 
 of her broadsides. Yet she did not speak. 
 
 Before her came two more, the Ten-rio, and the 
 Takao ; and the two before and the two behind con- 
 centrated upon her their fires. 
 
 Every one looked to see her sink ; certainly, it was only 
 a question of moments — of how many moments the fire 
 continued from such close quarters. The outward ap- 
 pearance of the ship, by the time she reached the second 
 Japanese line abreast, was one of mere ruin and havoc. 
 
 The enemy were as astounded at her conduct as her 
 crew. But in a few instants they knew — they thought 
 that they knew. 
 
 Twenty or twenty-two cables behind the second 
 Japanese line came a ship of considerable size, alone — 
 that is to say, protected by the whole prseposited mass 
 of her navy. Yet she was a ship-of-war. 
 
 As soon as the Hirosaki emerged from the world of 
 coppery gloom into which she had passed, as it were, a 
 living thing, to come forth, but for her central citadel 
 and propelling mechanism, a dead — she turned her 
 bows upon this ship. 
 
 The ship was the Yoshi7io j though powerfully armed, 
 she was one of the ships called " unarmored " ; smoking 
 «ver a map in her cabin sat Yen How. 
 
" To-Day " 361 
 
 Hardy had reached him ! One well-directed shell, 
 one happy torpedo, and, beyond doubt, the yellow host 
 will be leaderless. . . . 
 
 And now, at last, the Hirosaki talks ; but she talks 
 in such a sorry, effete, and slip-shod manner, that a 
 whole crowd of Japanese captains who are already 
 hastening to the rescue of that one precious ship, 
 laugh in their conning- towers. Was there ever such 
 miserable aiming ? such false sight ? Not one of the 
 shots takes effect. The Yoshino keeps on her way 
 untouched. The rash Hirosaki has 1 an that appalling 
 blockade of flame in vain. And to complete ]ier 
 ignominy, immediately upon her first feeble effort, she 
 turns tail, and goes blundering in defeated flight to 
 the S.E. 
 
 She was evidently the flag- ship of the British, and 
 the fact that she had reserved her fire in her passage 
 through the fleet, and had then singled out, and fired 
 upon, the Yoshino, proved to the Japanese that the 
 British knew in which ship Yen How was borne, and 
 that their one and only object in fighting now was the 
 destruction of Yen How. 
 
 The one and only object of the Japanese must there- 
 fore be the protection of that one ship, the Yoshino. 
 
 It was in order that they might arrive at this very 
 conclusion, that Hardy had made his awful passage 
 through their fleet, had abstained from firing, — and 
 had fired upon the Yoshino. 
 
 It was his design that the enemy should be, above all 
 things, anxious to protect her. And he used the 
 Hirosaki for the adventure, because he knew well that 
 no other ship at his disposal could have continued on 
 her way forty seconds through that flaming avenue. 
 
 But the on-lookers slandered the Hirosaki's crew in 
 supposing them such very sorry gunners. The same 
 mind which had bid them fire had bid them miss. The 
 Yoshino was needed. 
 
 " The morale of the fighters ! " With the most 
 astounding precision Hardy seems to have divined it. 
 How much of his mind the enemy would guess, and 
 eJtactly where their guessing power would cease, he 
 
362 'The Yellow Danger 
 
 appears by some divine instinct to have known infal- 
 libly. A European crew, knowing the fame of Hardy, 
 and observing his present fatuity, might have surmised 
 some design, all the more appallingly rough and rude 
 in its results, in proportion to its consummate depth. 
 The Japanese simply read the surface of his mind, and 
 were proad of their reading. 
 
 They concluded that his main design was to destroy 
 the person of Yen How — and it was — they were right. 
 But his thoughts were as much beyond their thoughts 
 as the heavens are beyond the earth. 
 
 He goes careering to the S.E., and three very swift 
 cruisers that follow in chase he promptly sinks. 
 
 Yonder, at the front, the general battle has begun, 
 and a sound breaks out like the sound of ten million 
 rocks battering in rowdy degringolation down a wooden 
 stair reaching from the moon to the earth. And see 
 how, really, that is good for Hardy — native to the very 
 temper of his mother's womb — the sole rough music in 
 the universe which can make his large spirit dance ! 
 It would be hard now to recognize in him the gloomy, 
 cowering, burdened wight, who, half an hour ago, 
 groaned in the Hirosaki conning-tower. His exhilara- 
 tion is boundless ; his face is flushed. If it were pos- 
 sible, joy now would re-dye the hair which grief had 
 blanched. Here is his element, his day — great Thurs- 
 day — and he, once more, Saxon Thor, red-handed, 
 swinger of thunderbolts, tosser of linked lightnings. 
 The oil of gladness is on his head. He feels his arm, 
 his soul, his ordination. He knows that he cannot 
 fail. 
 
 He wheels : — the Hirosaki, left alone, is steering S. 
 — S.W.— W.— Then W. by N. What is left of the 
 European fleet, thirty-five craft, most of them already 
 gravely injured, have now changed places with the 
 Japanese, they being to the east, the Japanese to the 
 west of them. Both sides put their helms down to re- 
 form and change. Only a solid phalanx of twenty ships 
 remain in guard about the YosMno, which is slowly 
 forging ahead in her old direction. 
 
 The Hirosaki is signaling. The old starboard half 
 
" To-Day " 363 
 
 of ships are to follow her in single file ; the old port 
 are to watch evolutions of Hirosalci, and follow suit on 
 their side. 
 
 Immediately, the Hirosahi's bows turn a little to the 
 south of eastward. Nineteen ships follow her with 
 bows a little to the south of eastward. Sixteen ships 
 follow her with bows a little to the north of eastward. 
 At the utmost speed of the craft of lowest power they 
 steam away in these directions. 
 
 The yellow men discern that the white are flying. 
 Or is it not rather a mere feint to get at the precious, 
 guarded ship ? Yes, that is soon evidently it ! for the 
 two files of retreating ships turn south and north, and 
 then in wide curves westward. The Japs are after 
 them. 
 
 Between the Europeans are intervals of not more 
 than six cables. The crowd of Japanese come two 
 abreast, the nearest four about a knot astern of the two 
 hindermost Europeans. The Hirosalci leads now the 
 port European limb, the Hero the starboard. 
 
 The two hindermost Europeans in the two limbs are 
 the Duch corvette Van Galen, and the British-Japan- 
 ese battleship Fugi j these are the only direct combat- 
 ants, and are using stern-guns. In three minutes the 
 Van Galen dives, and the Fugi cranks and stops. The 
 British force is reduced to thirty-three. 
 
 So far not a single yellow ship has sunk. Eive, in 
 the first charge, have been disabled, the rest only seri- 
 ously injured by the destruction of unprotected crews. 
 Hitherto they are victors twice and thrice. 
 
 They gain upon the retreating squadrons. The 
 average of their speed is greater than that of the 
 Europeans. 
 
 Suddenly, after four knots from the start, Hardy 
 turns, and in a short outward curve comes back east- 
 ward. The starboard limb with a short outward curve, 
 follow suit. 
 
 And now it becomes quite clear to every one on his 
 side that, whatever his design, he is accomplishing it 
 at a murderous, a disastrous cost. For as the ships 
 come back, they present a long line of broadside to a 
 
364 
 
 The Yellow Danger 
 
 still greater length of Japanese broadside — at liorribly 
 close quarters ; and in the sudden, exclamatory, almost 
 momentary, outrage of hell-fire which burst from 
 both sides, the ships sink fast. The Yankee aim is 
 like Fate ; the gentlemen of England acquit themselves 
 well, with precision, with tympana that do not quite 
 burst, with brains that do not quite faint, with hands 
 that do not fail. In that loud squall of wrath they 
 
 '<-., 
 
 "d3 
 
 •"V 
 
 > 
 
 «0 
 
 N 
 
 -v- 
 
 M- 
 
 <^ 
 
 cO 
 
 [The arrows in the diagram will show the course he took, S being the re- 
 gion of his start, and the dots in the central part representing the twenty 
 ships round- Yen How.] 
 
 sent twenty Japanese and Chinese ships to their graves 
 in the two limbs ; and they themselves are nine the less. 
 The Japanese can afford the loss. Not they. 
 
 And now, in a minute — so fast do they tear along — 
 the hostile fleets are parted. The enemy, all very 
 near together, go on through the evolutionary curves 
 which the British have described, and come following 
 eastward. 
 
" To-Day " 365 
 
 They look now for a rush of the British upon the 
 guarded ship, ready to follow. But no rush comes. 
 The British keep on their way almost directly east. 
 
 A rush will come. But Hardy intends it to come 
 when the Japs are in a position to intercept and cut 
 him off. His thought, his patience, is far beyond their 
 divination. 
 
 On he goes, leading them grandly through the mazes 
 of that tragic, coiling minuet ; and they follow, hasting 
 gladly after him, triumphant, blind, fated. 
 
 The Pied Piper and his retinue . . . ! 
 
 His ships sink one by one. He is aware of it with 
 guilty disquiet. Will enough be left for his purpose ? 
 The falling out of each one by the wayside is to him 
 like the taste of the second death. 
 
 The Japanese follow, not gaining ground this time, 
 purposely keeping their distance, even increasing it, 
 waiting for the next curve to westward, and the disas- 
 trous swift broadside. 
 
 And round again goes Hardy, wheeling outward, 
 this time in a broader curve ; and outward wheels his 
 northern limb. 
 
 And once again clatters the sudden, exclamatory 
 outrage of hell-flre, bursting from both sides, and Hardy 
 comes out of it leaving behind him lour, and the 
 Japanese seven ships. 
 
 But the numerical strength of Hardy's remaining 
 ships by no means represents his real strength. He is 
 far weaker than he seems. Twenty-two floating craft 
 are still visible to his eye, but craft so broken and un- 
 done, that he knows them incapable of further serious 
 combat. Nearly ninety Japanese are as good for fight 
 as ever. 
 
 Once more he is running westward, and the enemy, 
 conscious now of easy victory, follow. 
 _ Westward — till his two foremost ships reach the po- 
 sitions marked A and A' in the diagram ; and then 
 hard to starboard races his helm. He goes driving 
 sharp and straight vrith straining engines for the 
 packed group of ships around the Yoshino. 
 
 This, then is " the rush " ! But the Japanese ships, 
 
366 The Yellow Danger 
 
 their foremost being the position marked B and B', are 
 nearer to the Toshino than the British — are in the ex- 
 act position in which Hardy, at the price of so much, 
 has led them by the nose in long twining dance ir 
 order to place them. 
 
 What they will now do, he knows with certainty : 
 they will cut him off. And, in fact, they turn sharply 
 inward towards the precious, guarded ship, in order to 
 intercept, and with one unanimous battery of their 
 entire navy, finish at once his small remainders. 
 
 And thus it has suddenly happened that the whole 
 yellow fleet is packed into a mere bundle of ships whose 
 crews can speak to each other, whose steersmen need be 
 cautious to avoid collision. 
 
 And when Hardy sees them so, — herded together by 
 his harsh and baleful forethought, — like sheep driven 
 into the penfold, — ^he knows that the yellow wave 
 is dammed, and the greatest of his works is accom- 
 plished. 
 
 He could shriek aloud with cruel glee. . . . 
 
 Abroad roams his eye over the sea at his sinking and 
 battered fleet. And as he looks he sees the founder- 
 ing of the JVile. 
 
 And swift, with concentrated fury, the massed 
 Japanese open fire upon his feeble residue. 
 
 At that moment the two limbs of the British are not 
 more than three hundred yards from the front of the 
 enemy. 
 
 And at that moment it is that an appalling, horrid, 
 unparalleled thing is happening to the Yellow Men. 
 
 Hardy has signaled to his ships to launch among 
 the crowding enemy every possible torpedo in his 
 fleet. 
 
 His prohibition to use torpedoes in the combat had 
 led his captains to expect some such final order. They 
 were well ready. 
 
 The torpedo was, of course, the most deadly of the 
 then instruments of war. If it exploded beneath a 
 ship, without fail it destvojedher. But precisely the 
 most deadly was also in general, the most unreliable 
 of weapons. In general it might be counted upon to 
 
" To-Day " 367 
 
 explode, not beneath an enemy's ship, but beneath a 
 friend's, or, more likely still, beneath nothing at all. 
 No serious tactician depended upon it. 
 
 In other words, it was not a good engine of aim at 
 a given target, for it usually missed the target. Its 
 course was more or less deflected by the waves — many 
 things happened to it. 
 
 It was left to the eye of Hardy to perceive that its 
 proper function was not one of aim at all toward a par- 
 ticular target, but one of loose direction toward a gen- 
 eral mass. Under such conditions, it might be counted 
 upon to annihilate in an instant all the assembled 
 navies of the earth. 
 
 Prompt upon his order, the restes of his fleet, shat- 
 tered as they were, were able to launch a ripping navy 
 of nine more torpedoes than there were crowding 
 Japanese and Chinese ships. The Hirosaki sent five : 
 one from a bow-tube above the water-line, four sub- 
 merged. All the other ships were ships with a varying 
 number of tubes. 
 
 Three exploded in mutual collision before they 
 reached the hostile fleet. 
 
 The rest arrived. 
 
 Men clapped and squeezed their hands upon their 
 ears in expectant horror. The sea began to start, and 
 rush and quake. A swift series of venomous, behe- 
 moth bangs — quichening into ever madder swiftness — 
 and bawling at last into a steady brooling roar of pas- 
 sionate volleyed thunder that seemed to proceed from 
 the very throat of Jehovah — rent the universal air, and 
 split the hearing of all about that sea. 
 
 In London, men, three-eared, lifted a listing hand ; 
 far over Europe the rumor of it was heard ; it was 
 heard in Paris ; it was heard in Brussels. 
 
 The British ships, shocked at each swift-recurrent 
 detonation, jerked and started in convulsive throes, 
 like dying fowl, upon the spasmic, kicking water — 
 started, and leapt, and dived, and foundered. And as 
 though in response to some vast upheaval of nature, 
 down upon the sea swept at once a passion of wind, and 
 a furious rain, and a black and total gloom. 
 
368 The Yellow Danger 
 
 Wide over the ocean the floating millions of yellow 
 men heard the staccato of that dread tumult. And 
 many a one imitated and repeated the sound with his 
 lips. 
 
 Pop, pop, pop, they went ; and pop, pop, pop, they 
 went. 
 
CHAPTEE XXXm. 
 
 THE " CRIME " OF HARDY. 
 
 It is not our business here to defend, what has been 
 called by leisured persons, sitting secure in their stiidies, 
 the " crime " of Hardy. 
 
 Napoleon, taking the " Laws of Heaven " into his 
 own hands, poisoned at Acre a number of his sick 
 soldiers to save them from tHe hands of a cruel enemy. 
 This, too, raised a cry, and was called "crime." 
 
 Another of that genus took upon himself to break 
 the old Sabbath, and this raised a cry ; but he did not 
 mind. 
 
 Personally, we believe that the Great Man has, 
 naturally and properly, these powers ; that what he 
 does is right ; that the King can do no wrong. 
 
 Having cleared the sea of hostile war-ships in that 
 world-tragedy in the Channel, Hardy found himself 
 confronted with the problem of an army which was 
 approaching a long line of English coast — not far off — 
 an army which was not so much an army as a locust 
 host. 
 
 "What was he to do with them ? 
 
 He could not set about and shoot them, for that, 
 supposing he had had a large fleet, would have taken 
 him a year, as Yen How said. Moreover, he had next 
 to nothing to shoot them with. 
 
 Possibly he might, by spreading out his vast merchant 
 fleet, armed with small guns, along the southeast 
 coast, have kept them ofE till they starved ; and this 
 was supposed by his captains to be the course he would 
 adopt. 
 
 24 369 
 
37o The Yellow Danger 
 
 But twenty million putrefying, derelict Chinese in 
 barges floating at random in the Channel fair-way for 
 the next year or two does not seem to have been after 
 his mind. And to starve them on the. open sea . . . 
 even his pitiless heart revolted from that. 
 
 Or, they might have been driven back to France ; or, 
 seeing that they could not land on England, they 
 might have returned to France on their owli initiative. 
 Bub Hardy did not wish them to . return to France, 
 thinking that there were already there a sufficient 
 number of millions to engage the energies of his 
 country for many a long day to come. 
 
 And so it happened that with the next morning's light 
 — for at last something resembling a sun was seen, 
 in spite of a furious gale of wind now blowing from 
 the northwest — a strange, new spectacle, somewhere 
 rather south of the latitude of Harwich, was seen — 
 an immense multitude of ships covering the entire 
 circle of sea, crawling painfully northward, each 
 one trailing behind her a long line of barges crowded 
 with men. 
 
 Hardy had the twenty millions in tow. 
 
 N"ot one had landed. To this diversion from their 
 purpose they had made practically no resistance. If a 
 Chinaman fired at the tug which came to secure his 
 barge, the. barge was promptly sunk by way of stern 
 example. Most were unarmed with fire-arms. 
 
 For many hours during the afternoon and night of 
 the battle thay toiled by the aid of search -lights, the 
 ships hadng rendezvous at the N. Foreland, where, at 
 about midnight, they congregated. 
 
 And now began the long, toilsome voyage north- 
 ward. 
 
 What made the sufferings of both whites and Chinese 
 worse, was the fact that, from the first bleak sunrise 
 to the last, a heavy wet sea was running in the direc- 
 tion of the gale, and the creaking and laboring ships 
 continually drenched their length in spray shipped 
 over the dipping bows. A monotonous, light rain fell 
 from the dark-gray and hurrying sky ; and wide over 
 the heaving, stale sea- water rolled down stretches of 
 
The " Crime " of Hardy 371 
 
 foaming sea-spue, as though the sea, sea-sick of itself, 
 spumed the vomit of its bitter old unrest adown its 
 own weary bosom. Through the cordage skirled in 
 many tones the gale ; and salt was in the weird sagas 
 that it skirled, and salt on the drenched decks, and 
 salt in the wet sea, and the world was made of winds 
 and brine. 
 
 Ever and again, a ship staggered through every 
 timber, and stopped, tugged from behind by a back- 
 ward swing of her ponderous following. Then on, 
 crawling, again. 
 
 Here the tail led the dog. 
 
 Ever and again, pop would go a stout hawser, and 
 away would go drifting to the S. E. the lessening 
 scream of a barge-load of Chinamen. 
 
 Northward, northward, in vast funereal procession. 
 And far yonder in the van of all — the HirosaM, shat- 
 tered-looking, butting, bulkily at the billows, as one 
 who has seen worse things, — and come through them. 
 In her cabin, which is crowded with wounded men, 
 sits Hardy ; and near him, in long colloquy, a man 
 named Henrick Bjornson, a Norwegian sea-captain, 
 who can shout broken English. What Hardy's deaf 
 ears cannot make out, the man writes. 
 
 Northward crawls the unspeakable procession. It 
 crosses the latitude of Hull, of Edinburgh ; it ap- 
 proaches the Norway coast ; it is at Bergen, at Chris- 
 tiansund. Always it crawls northward, and the Hiro- 
 saM, like the Pied Piper, leads. . . . 
 
 On the Tuesday foreday, the Hirosaki, in latitude 
 67° 48', slackened speed, and, while the dawning was 
 still gray and ineffably bleak, the stragglers of the 
 fleet came in. 
 
 Hardy had reached the grave-side now — the side of 
 the one grave which Europe ofEered him for the burial 
 of his dead. 
 
 Here and now a very great stress and sound of 
 stormy winds was abroad, struggling for the held-on 
 hat, blowing long ribbons of rope, and rolling before 
 it billows of the sea. 
 
 The HirosaM trumpeted a semicular formation, and 
 
372 The Yellow Danger 
 
 this for about an hour, from ship to ship, went trum- 
 peted, till it reached the outermost rings of ships ten 
 miles away. And in another hour and a half the 
 vastest curve of ships, stretching northeast and south- 
 west, that had ever been seen by an eye— the_ horns 
 looking like tiny toys to the center, and invisible to 
 each other — lay assembled, slowly steaming, or sailing 
 close-hauled. 
 
 The morning lightened, hut with ever a slow, and 
 drear, and raw melancholy. It was the morning of an 
 execution. 
 
 Hardy, with the flaps of an oilskin hat about his 
 ears, in oilskins to his feet, stood clinging to a roping 
 aft, facing the strong blast that loaded his breast 
 with spasms of violence, and struggled for the ends of 
 his flapping and quarreling skirts. And near him, 
 in oilskins, stood a tall, broad-bearded man, the sea- 
 captain Bjornson. 
 
 BJornson touched him. 
 
 Hardy said : 
 
 "Well ? " 
 
 Bjornson took out his watch, held it before Hardy's 
 eyes, put his mouth to Hardy's ears, and shouted : 
 
 "Itistivie!" 
 
 Hardy said : 
 
 " All right." 
 
 Already in the look of the water round, there 
 was something horribly outre. It seemed as if the 
 sea was getting calm — too calm for the wind that 
 blew. It acquired a certain pallid oiliness in its 
 heave. 
 
 Hardy called his trumpeter ; he said : 
 
 "Tell the captain of the Umbria that I want a 
 hundred and fifty Chinamen taken on board his ship — 
 at once." 
 
 And down the wind went his command to the neigh- 
 boring ship. 
 
 And in ten minutes this other : 
 
 " Ships to cast off barges, and follow flag-ship in 
 3ame formation, west by south." 
 
 At once the Hirosahi put her bow in this direction. 
 
The " Crime " of Hardy 373 
 
 The other ships, as their hawsers astern tightened on 
 their new course, slipped them. A thousand hawsers 
 slapped the sea. 
 
 The ships moved on. The barges remained. 
 
 But not stationary. They, too, moved — slowly — 
 glidingly — ^right in the teeth of the wind — northward 
 — all of them, over many a mile. 
 
 The barges fell into long strings, and patches, and 
 colonies, like trailing sea- weed, always, as they glided, 
 retaining their fixed relative positions. 
 
 The men in the barges saw surely that they moved. 
 But what moved them ? The crude early-morning 
 blast blew upon their most woful, sallow faces. 
 
 Their rate of motion, from moment to moment, 
 quickened. . . . 
 
 There was something now detestably baleful in the 
 aspect of the water. The great waves had died to a 
 glassy, heaving smoothness. Only, here and there in 
 irregular patches over the surface, broke out stretches 
 of vapid foam, or ghastly bubbles. And the ocean 
 went gadding, gadding northward. 
 
 This is the first mood of the Maelstrom. . . . 
 
 Then a wonder happened : A string of barges shot 
 suddenly askew, and went wildly hasting in a long 
 curve to the east ; and another string shot askew in a 
 western curve ; and in not more than a minute a 
 hundred thousand barges were flightily ranging in 
 curves of every shape and direction over the sea, fiying 
 a while — then slowly stopping — then flying oil in new 
 curves again. 
 
 Suddenly, all this motion ceased. The sea settled 
 into a lake-like stillness, except for patches of bursting, 
 simmering bubbles on its face. 
 
 But with the suddenness of the thunder-clap came a 
 change. The surface rapidly assumed a morose hue of 
 the deepest blue, a blue which was liker black. And 
 at once it began to heave itself up into waves, mountain- 
 high, which danced like the Merrymen in a swinging, 
 oscillatory, up-and-down jig, as if buoyed up by some 
 great submarine power which dandled, and tossed, and 
 danced them; And down the steep sides of these 
 
374 The Yellow Danger 
 
 cones of water poured the barges of the clinging, 
 staring, screaming men. 
 
 But now again," suddenly, the mood is changed — and 
 a Voice goes forth over the waters, a doleful sound of 
 the sea. The high dancing waves die down, and im- 
 mediately an awful wide change is taking place — a 
 rapid, intense reorganization of the whole sea-surface — 
 a breathless hurry and scurry of preparation for some 
 unspeakable drama of the deep. There are tracts of 
 black and choppy sea tumbling in roaring haste one 
 way, and tracts tumbling like herds of ten thousand 
 bellowing bisons another, as if flying across to takt 
 sides in some impending agony. And all at once tha 
 whole is over : and every wave, and eddy, and barge, 
 and flake of froth slips into the sweep of one mighty, 
 bawling, racing whirlpool. 
 
 Within the writhing uppermost ridge of this vast 
 circumference, invisible under a fierce white wrath of 
 shrieking spray, fly with a thousand wings the barges 
 of the yellow men, fly on even keel, fly uplifted, 
 spurned from the polish ebony of the dizzy basin of 
 water. And as they fly, the storm smothers their 
 gasping breaths, and lifts their hair. And as their 
 speed intensifies to the droning sleep of the spinning- 
 top, their queues stiffen and rise horizontal like dart- 
 ing serpents ; and twenty million straight and fluttering 
 pigtails, keeping ever their distances, race in narrow- 
 ing whorls towards a bottomless, staggering abyss, 
 that yawns, six furlongs broad, within the central 
 space. 
 
 Six miles away, his glass at his eyes, stands John 
 Hardy, musing. . . . 
 
 Opposite Christiansund,the Hirosahi and the Uinbria 
 were very near together ; and here a change of crew 
 took place ; the entire crew of the Uinbria tranship- 
 ping into the Hirosahi, and one hundred and thirty of 
 the HirosaM's crew going over into the Umhria. 
 
 These hundred and thirty consisted exclusively o^ 
 " Hundred-and-Eighty " men of ;^i^o-Chau fame. 
 
The "Crime" of Hardy 375 
 
 It was a mysterious proceeding, incomprehensible to 
 Umhria men, but readily comprehensible to some of 
 the "Hundred and Eighty/^ These had sworn an 
 oath. 
 
 On board the Umh'ia were a hundred and fifty 
 Chinese. 
 
 Murray (he of the Diary) took over with him to the 
 Umbria a small packet which he had received from 
 Hardy's hand— which Hardy, in his turn, had received 
 from a Dr. Fletcher of Harley Street. 
 
 The packet contained some hypodermic syringes, and 
 three vials, containing a thick dark-gray liquid. . . . 
 
 The Hirosaki then continued on her southward way ; 
 but the Umhria put in at Christiansund. 
 
 There, on the strand near the town, shortly before 
 morning, they landed two of the hundred and fifty 
 Chinamen. In the right forearm of each of these 
 two men was a tiny needleprick ; and as they went 
 walking toward the town, an ink-black spot appeared 
 on the cheek of each, and a black froth ridged their 
 lips. ... 
 
 The Umbria then continued her voyage, which 
 lasted two weeks. She stopped at Copenhagen, at 
 Konigsberg, at Stockholm, at St. Petersburg. And 
 wherever she stopped, she landed two Chinamen with 
 black spots on their cheeks, and a black froth at their 
 lips. ... 
 
 She continued her voyage. She stopped at Amster- 
 dam, at Boulogne, at Bordeaux, at Genoa, at Con- 
 stantinople, at Odessa, at seventy-five European 
 ports. At each she left two Chinamen with needle- 
 pricks in their forearms. 
 
 " Well, well, Brassey," said Hardy in the Hirosaki 
 cabin, his arm flung spasmodically round the neck of 
 Brassey, who had remained with him, " well, well, 
 boy. I was once — I was once — different from this " 
 
 His arm dropped heavily. Then suddenly, he pushed 
 Brassey violently on the breast. 
 
 " Go away — go away — sir," he cried. 
 
376 The Yellow Danger 
 
 And in an instant his arm dropped heavily again, hia 
 chin on his breast. 
 
 He was no longer sane. His hand was thicker than 
 itself with brother's blood. His final hour of darkness 
 and tragedy was hasting to meet his life. All his sky 
 was an ink of clouds. Now again he tarried, cowering, 
 in Gethsemane. 
 
 He no longer slept. Now he roamed the cabin like 
 a wild man : now he sat still and languid, his head 
 on his hands, his eyes having in them the senility 
 of old people's. Every five minutes he bent double in 
 paroxysms of moist coughing. Always the sailor, 
 Brassey, was by him. 
 
 The Hirosaki arrived at Dover on the Friday evening 
 at seven. A red brand of fever was then on Hardy's 
 brow. 
 
 He was taken through the crowd in a close carriage 
 to the Lord Warden Hotel. The news was fiashed 
 abroad that he had arrived, and all the bells of Eng- 
 land gladly lilted and welcomed his coming. Hardy 
 could not hear them. 
 
 For him was neither joy nor sleep. Doctors were 
 summoned, but Hardy would not see them. 
 
 He threw himself on a bed ; but rose again and 
 paced the chamber in shirt and trousers and socks to a 
 late hour. 
 
 A.t eleven there was a ring. Brassey, who was in an 
 ante-room received a card at the door from a servant, 
 but said there was to be no admittance of any sort that 
 night. 
 
 Hardy appeared suddenly at the inner door of the 
 ante-room ; he said : 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 Brassey handed him the card, and Hardy looked at it. 
 
 " Ha ! ha ! ha ! " he laughed at once. " My friend 
 Edrapol ! Ha ! ha ! ha ! Edrapol, my old friend 1 " 
 
 He had wholly forgotten Edrapol. 
 
 Behind the ruins of St. Mary's Church, northeast 
 of the town, at two that morning — they fought. 
 
The "Crime" of Hardy 377 
 
 Here the strong, prone will of Hardy had asserted 
 itself. He had insisted, and could not be withstood 
 by Brassey. Edvapol's second was a sailor from the 
 Hirosaki, Hardy's was Brassey ; and the weapons used 
 were Hirosaki swords of Japanese design. 
 
 A full moon shone. Yonder on the footpath leading 
 from the East Cliffs waits a carriage, which has been 
 coachmanned by Brassey. 
 
 It is a barbarous duel. There is no doctor there. 
 Positively only four men are in the secret. 
 
 They take places, sword in hand, stripped to their 
 shirts. The seconds take their places too. There are 
 two Admiral Colomb ship-lanterns. 
 
 This is a duel without venom on either side. In 
 one mind there is the mere prone desperation of an 
 hour of tragic gloom ; in the other a mere coxcombish 
 pleasure at finding once more a sword in his hand, and 
 an antagonist before him. 
 
 Only two hearts throb as though they must burst the 
 imprisoning bosom — the hearts of the seconds. The 
 hearts of the principals are cool, though Hardy's body 
 burns with fever. 
 
 The moment comes. Hardy coughs ; Edrapol waits. 
 Then the swords lift and cross. 
 
 And now ensues a three minutes' contest between 
 the most exquisite conceivable science on the one side, 
 and the shrewdest, quickest wit on the other. 
 
 Briskly ply the complex, gleaming steels, with feint 
 and thrust and parry, in tierce and quarte and stac- 
 cado, stab and hew — to the infinite surprise of Edrapol, 
 who finds here a man that can fight, and is glad. 
 
 He braces himself to the matter, Edrapol. He rises 
 a la hauteur of his antagonist. But rise as he may, 
 the fame of great Edrapol is henceforth stained, and 
 his sleeve — with a thin trickle of blood. 
 
 He flushes somewhat, Edrapol. It is necessary, 
 then to couper court ? He rises to a still greater height. 
 Among the long white hairs of the famous man plays 
 the night wind. 
 
 Then there is the sudden "Ah ," and the limp 
 
 failure, and the strong contrast of red on white, and 
 
378 The Yellow Danger 
 
 the sword clattering to the ground. The steel ot 
 Edrapol is in Hardy's bosom. 
 
 The next morning Britain learned with woe and ter- 
 ror that he was wounded. He lay at the Lord Warden 
 Hotel, and was unconscious ; but as to the wound, it 
 was not dangerous. So ran the bulletins. 
 
 But by the next night he was tossing in acute hyper- 
 pyrexia, and was delirious. Miss Isabel Jay had hur- 
 ried to his side in almost crazy scare, and about his 
 apartment waited two royal ladies. In one of the 
 anterooms of the suite sat old Mason, stricken to death, 
 swaying his decrepit body from side to side. 
 
 Half-hourly bulletins were issued by the royal 
 physicians. 
 
 At one time during the second night. Hardy seems 
 to have gone back in imagination to the period of his 
 tortures, uttering fearful screams, and exhibiting signs 
 of the most abject terror. But toward morning, he 
 became calmer under the influence of opiates. 
 
 About noon, Miss Jay's hand being then firmly 
 gripped in his, he said quite coolly : 
 
 "A good strong coffin of Harveyed nickel steel 
 dropped into the middle of the Channel. ..." 
 
 And there stopped. I^or spoke again till some three 
 hours afterwards, when, lifting up his right arm, he 
 cried in a loud voice : 
 
 " By the Lord, I warn you, Yen How . . . ! " 
 
 After this the delirium appeared to leave him. He 
 sank into a quiet sleep, which, however, was made omi- 
 nous by a throat- rattle, and the venous transparency 
 of his far-sunken eyelids. 
 
 The nation waited on in a bitterness of suspense, 
 humbling before the Almighty in anguished prayer for 
 his life, but for his life. . . . 
 
 But at seven in the evening the end came. Hardy 
 suddenly woke from his feeble slumber, jerked his 
 body upright on the bed, as if an answer to some 
 official summons and roll-call, screamed a sharp 
 " Here I " and gasped, and died. 
 
The " Crime " of Hardy 379 
 
 His Oalyary was not heroic — without "vigor and 
 rigor." 
 
 That the great man of England should perish by the 
 hand of an impossible, very-foreign professional duel- 
 list, here was the very irony of Destiny. But so it 
 was. 
 
CHAPTEE XXXIV 
 
 THE BLACK SPOT 
 
 With the death of Hardy the minuter detail of our 
 chronicle must end. 
 
 The results of his malignest act of enmity against 
 the yellow race — results far surpassing in horror and 
 vastness those of any of his other acts — he did not live 
 to witness. 
 
 It is certain that he could never have expected so 
 widespread a result from the distribution of the in- 
 jected Chinamen about the European coasts, foj the 
 simple reason that he did not know of Yen How's in- 
 auguration of the Yellow Gods at Paris, which inau- 
 guration was the chief cause of the universality on the 
 Continent of the new Black Death. 
 
 As soon as an idol-less Chinaman was griped by the 
 malady, or even saw the black spot on a neighbor's 
 cheek, his first instinct was to rush toward the one 
 place of hope — the temple at Paris. And as he rushed, 
 he went spreading far and wide that winged plague, 
 that more putrid Cholera, dissipating it among thou- 
 sands, who, in their turn, rushed to infect wide mil- 
 lions. Within three weeks Europe was a rotting 
 charnel-house. 
 
 But there came a check to the spread of the malady. 
 It was effected partly by the bullet, and partly by fire. 
 From every army headquarters troops were drafted 
 abroad by the Japanese generals, with the mission of 
 shooting down every plague-infected person. Entire 
 towns were surrounded by armies, and then burned with 
 all they contained. Over Europe these great holocausts 
 380 
 
The Black Spot 381 
 
 mixed the solemn flares of their funeral fires with the 
 running shrieks of massacred millions. China had 
 turned her glutted sword upon herself ; and on the 
 earth was heard the wails, and seen the smoke, of 
 Tophet. 
 
 Yet in the course of some five months the plague 
 was over, the flames died down, the massacres ceased ; 
 and still the white races found themselves confronted 
 with the long, enormous task of clearing out of Europe 
 over a hundred million yellow men. 
 
 The work was only made possible by the fact that, 
 immediately on taking possession of a country, each 
 Chinese army of occupation had, as we have explained, 
 split itself up, become demobilized, and filled the towns 
 and villages like ordinary settlers, after slaughtering 
 those of the inhabitants whom they found there. 
 
 But in each of the old European countries a nucleus 
 of the great nomad hosts had been ordained by the 
 forethought of Yen How to retain their organization ; 
 and these, provided with headquarters, staffs, and gar- 
 risons, remained as standing armies, using the military 
 centers and apparatus of the nations they had dis- 
 placed. In Kussia there remained three million yellow 
 soldiers ; in Germany and Austria, four ; in Prance, 
 two ; in Italy, one ; and Scandinavia some thousands. 
 These ten millions would, but for the plague, have 
 numbered seventeen millions. 
 
 And it was with these ten that the two English armies 
 withdrawn from France and Germany at the moment 
 of the irruption, together with the white races of the 
 New "World and Australia, had to do. 
 
 The United States had no army worth mentioning ; 
 alone of nations she had, however, that spirit of in- 
 telligent audacity which, by a species of swift magic, 
 can turn her every citizen, not merely into a soldier, 
 but into a general. And now she was roused : a wave 
 of ineffable indignation, of high enthusiasm, of tender 
 brotherhood, passed over the land. Into all the centers 
 of enlistment, thousands upon thousands of volunteers 
 poured each day. Before the end of the plague, tliree 
 army corps of 100,000 men each had been shipped from 
 
382 The Yellow Danger 
 
 New York, Boston, and Philadelphia in detachments of 
 twenty or thirty thousand raw levies, bringing vast sup- 
 plies of field-stores, horses, ammunition, and cloth- 
 ing. The New World was coming back to save the 
 Old. So far off and unguessable are the meanings of 
 Destiny. 
 
 The six millions of Canada and the six of Australia 
 sent out each a hundred thousand of their sons ; and 
 the fleets of the states of South America, forgetting 
 their mutual jealousies, conveyed an army of mixed 
 races, numbering eighty thousand, to the shores of 
 Britain. England became the rendezvous of the white 
 world. 
 
 Still, at the beginning of the four campaigns, all 
 these contributions provided an army of less than a 
 million, with which to confront ten millions of yellow 
 men. 
 
 The ten millions, however, were divided into five 
 war-hosts. To fight their combination would have 
 been impossible ; to destroy them in detail not so 
 hopeless. 
 
 The great brain which could have welded, and 
 wielded, and led them, by sure, infallible common- 
 sense, to certain victory, was dead. 
 
 The main white army fought in Germany : it con- 
 sisted of the British forces withdrawn from France 
 and Germany, and was led by Kaiser Wilhelm. (AVil- 
 helm, having refused to leave the Fatherland on the 
 Chinese irruption, had been seized by the members of 
 a conspiracy initiated by Count Caprivi ; the gallant 
 man had been taken hound to a ship, and brought over 
 to England. To him was given the command of the 
 most seasoned division of the invading armies.) 
 
 The French division was led by Lord Wolseley in 
 person, with General Miles as second in command ; it 
 consisted solely of the small standing army and the 
 new levies from the United States ; Australians and 
 Canadians combined followed Lord Eoberts to Cron- 
 stadt ; and the Latin races of South America were led 
 by Sir Evelyn Wood into the Bay of Naples. 
 
 The same general system of tactics was adopted by 
 
The Black Spot 383 
 
 each of these armies — the tactics of Fabius : ill-armed, 
 unskilled, and inchoate, as were the hosts with which 
 they fought, those hosts were still overwhelming in 
 number, desperate in temper. The idea of the white 
 men was to wear them out by galling sorties and 
 swift retreats ; to demoralize and undermine them by 
 strategic subtleties, harassing attacks, and untiring 
 maneuvering. 
 
 The campaigns, accordingly, were long-drawn; The 
 setting sun of the century was already on the point of 
 disappearance when, simultaneously, in Lombardy and 
 at Moscow, the last armed mob of yellow men in those 
 countries scattered to the winds. 
 
 But through all that space of plain from Waterloo 
 to Quatre Bras, the conflict between the small army, 
 now an army of veterans, and the large army, now not 
 so large, was still at issue. And in the flat-lands round 
 Stralsund, Wilhelm, with his English, was hard put 
 to it to maintain a footing. 
 
 It was here that the great crowning event of that 
 world-drama of the yellow deluge transacted itself, on 
 the 35th of August, 1900. 
 
 It was toward four in the afternoon : a dull, hot day, 
 which made the outposts on both sides rely rather upon 
 their ears than seek to penetrate with the eyes the 
 marsh-mists that enveloped the plain. 
 
 The Kaiser, in harmony with long-tried tactics, had 
 organized that morning a Reconnaissance Corps, speci- 
 ally drafted from the wings of his army, for the pur- 
 pose of hurling it in a well-timed sally upon the ad- 
 vance lines of the Chinese. The division consisted of 
 the Seaforths, the 1st Eoyal Dragoons, the Royal Irish 
 Regiment, and other troops of the -first class ; cavalry 
 and infantry being supported by nine batteries of 
 Horse Gunners. The corps rested till the afternoon 
 on the seaward slopes, somewhat toward the left of the 
 line of fortifications. The rank, chill mist thickened 
 from hour to hour. 
 
 The division consisted of not more than 30,000 in- 
 fantry and 5,000 sabers, a body not too unwieldy for 
 agile movement and ready retreat, yet large enough to 
 
384 The Yellow Danger 
 
 leave motionless behind it ten times its number of pig- 
 tails. 
 
 Soon alter four it went moving rapidly over the plain. 
 It was commanded by Lieutenant-General Henderson 
 of the Buffs. 
 
 The Chinese army, at this time, was not without dis- 
 cipline of a kind ; it had seen fire, and stood it, and 
 returned it with effect. It had become a genuine in- 
 strument of war. 
 
 The alarm that the white men were upon their center 
 was no sooner given than the advance ranks put them- 
 selves in a position to receive the onset of the English ; 
 and when a hot fire from all arms came pouring into 
 their midst, they only wavered slightly ; by the time 
 the white infantry had come into moderately close con- 
 flict with the front ranks, a battery commanding their 
 advance from a rising ground near by was plowing 
 them with shrapnel. 
 
 And a few minutes afterwards, a rally in the yellow 
 front ranks was effected by three of their vast regi- 
 ments hurrying up from the main body. 
 
 A colonel of the 2d Life Guards, clearly perceiving 
 now that the advance had been too rash, that retreat, 
 in spite of the mist, must mean mere havoc to the 
 whole corps, pointed frantically at the battery, shriek- 
 ing above the din, "Guards! those guns must be 
 taken ! " And, with sabers waving, the regiment went 
 careering for the guns. 
 
 Before they reached the foot of the hill, they were 
 mown down almost to a man. 
 
 The Reconnaissance Corps, now inextricably involved 
 with the enemy, seemed cut off from hope. But a 
 dragoon> who had been despatched to warn head- 
 quarters of the position of affairs, met two regiments 
 of infantry hurrying up at the double, and soon learned 
 that fighting orders had been passed all along the 
 British lines. Wilhelm had resolved upon a decisive 
 blow there and then. 
 
 The motif ot this mad-looking step lay in a despatch 
 which he had just received by sea from Lord Wolseley. 
 By a supreme stroke of tactics, originating from his 
 
The Black Spot 385 
 
 second in command, the Commander-in-Chief's Texas 
 rangers and Colorado bushmen had accomplished at 
 Waterloo an appalling rout of the enemy, leaving seven 
 hundred thousand dead on the field. The Belgium- 
 Germany railway lines were in his hand : he was on the 
 Eoint of setting out to augment the forces round 
 tralsund. 
 
 Wilhelm thereupon made a calculation of rates and 
 distances, and partly in the hope of relieving the in- 
 tangled Eeconnaissance Corps, with rash faith in his 
 lucky star, and eager once more to whirl his own saber 
 in the air, he resolved, late and dark as it was, to give 
 instant battle. 
 
 It was like the attack of an eagle upon an elephant. 
 
 "With splendid suddenness his whole army hurled 
 itself forward. The onset was dashing, impassioned, 
 gallant, but desperate. The Chinese front lay along a 
 length of ten miles, and precisely because every attack, 
 at every point, made by the British was snccessful, 
 therefore their destruction was the more certain. 
 Everywhere they were surrounded. While the battle 
 was still desperately raging, night fell. 
 
 Already there lay on the plain, of the British 20,000 
 dead, and of the yellow men 300,000. 
 
 At eight the whirl and uproar of battle was still un- 
 abated ; and the heart of the Kaiser misgave him, as 
 he looked from a mound through a night-glass at the 
 wheeling scrimmage in which the 1st Dragoons were 
 desperately seeking to extricate themselves from the 
 trampled death, and the furious tornado of life, around 
 them. From far away through the night there came 
 to him an occasional unanimous scream of ten thou- 
 sand parching throats — sure sign of some finished vic- 
 tory of the yellow man. 
 
 But either he had calculated well, or the tendencies 
 of the world were on his side. 
 
 Away back, nearly as far as Franzburg, a party of 
 wild horsemen, with knees jammed into the ribs of 
 horses without saddles, come scampering through a 
 brigade of astounded yellow men, which stood awaiting 
 fighting orders. They are white men come pelting 
 
386 The Yellow Danger 
 
 from nowhere, born far where the sun sets : the 
 farthest East and the farthest West have met. 
 
 And, presently, the wide storm of clattering, spatter- 
 ing hooves come thundering in overwhelming torrents, 
 in thousands and hundreds of thousands, in heaped-up, 
 ever-succeeding accumulation, like rivers of rushing 
 sound. Their impetuosity cannot be checked, because 
 the wind cannot be checked ; and they attack in the 
 rear ; and each of them is a general. 
 
 And now the eyes of Wilhelm, noting wide confusion 
 from afar, lighten ; and strange raving rumors and 
 growths of sound come to his ears from out of the dis- 
 tant dark. And within fifteen minutes, the millions 
 of the yellow men, hurried inward from front and rear, 
 are no more an army, but an astounded rout, flying 
 from nothing upon death, caught in error and delusion, 
 bewildered, blind, and panic-struck. They cast away 
 their weapons in a horror of haste, they trample them- 
 selves to death in purposeless fury. Never on the 
 earth was half such an extravagance of carnage in 
 similar space, such an excess and waste of slaughter, 
 such a lanaliU of death, such a frenzy of inMee. The 
 white men, drunk with blood, become mere beasts of 
 prey, chopping at flesh in feeble, exhausted ecstasy. 
 The night grows old, and still they hunt, they track ; 
 they slip in moving lagoons of gore, and fall, and faint ; 
 and die trampled, careless ; or rise, and hunt, and hack. 
 The battle degenerates into a debauch of hell. . . . 
 
 And with the morning light the plain of Stralsund, 
 viewed from the summits of the low hills, is like a saf- 
 fron ocean of stagnant putridity, whereon twist and 
 coil, feeding on the ancient slime, myriads of jet-black 
 snakes. Here in Armageddon — the last great agony of 
 struggle between the white man and the yellow : the 
 Act is over. 
 
 But only the Fourth Act. The earth remains ; 
 Spring, and the joy of life, and the intensities of the 
 pulse, will return. Let us look a moment, four months 
 later, at a great Assembly in the Albert Hall at Lon- 
 don. It is on what, properly speaking, is the third 
 day of a new century — the 3d of January, 1901. 
 
The Black Spot 387 
 
 Far up the tiers of galleries human heads throng in- 
 distinctly, incalculable as leaves in Valombrosa. The 
 great circle of the hall is gay with drooping flags ; the 
 platform is draped with them : the flags of two nations, 
 which yet, by a mystery of Destiny, are forever one. 
 
 About the building the people of the two nations 
 throng all the streets, knowing that this day is a 
 Hegira of the world, such as has not yet been. And 
 orators emerge above that sea of heads, and there are 
 huzzas, and wide tendencies and motions, precisely 
 as when through the innumerable forest the breezes 
 run tittering in torrents of rumors. 
 
 But within, on the platform, the President of the 
 American States is sitting, and beside him the Prime 
 Minister of England stands speaking : and sometimes, 
 so solemn and world-wide is felt to be the occasion, that 
 the spoken words have in them something of the strain 
 of prophecy : 
 
 "This reshipment, then," he says, "of the rem- 
 nants of the yellow men to their natural home being 
 now well on the way toward completion, we are faced 
 by the task of rehabilitating and administering that por- 
 tion of the earth, which, since authentic history, has 
 played the greatest part in its events. Once more to 
 us of these modern days comes forth the command : 
 Go forth and replenish the earth, and be ye fruitful, 
 and multiply. Happily, the task before us is made far 
 less complex by the extraordinary event of which our 
 eyes have been the witness. In the complexity of the 
 nations, who, before that event, contended for the 
 possession of the earth, there had come to be a certain 
 madness, an impossibility of solution, a Babel of pur- 
 poses. Never on any eternal basis could Peace — the 
 first essential to that predicted ten-thousand-years of 
 Man's upward march — have been established. Now 
 our way — most marvelously, if you will think of it — 
 has been made plain before us. One all-dominant race 
 has been so clearly marked out by Destiny to renew 
 and administer the earth, that no impulse to contra- 
 dict the fact will arise in any other : a race divided, 
 indeed, into two portions, yet so essentially one, as to 
 
388 The Yellow Danger 
 
 resemble not so much two brothers, as two arms of the 
 same body. If the configuration of the map of the 
 world has shown it to be convenient to hand over to 
 the Western branch of that race the administration of 
 the continent of Asia, while the Eastern exercises its 
 special sway over Europe and Africa, it is not that any 
 bargaining has been found necessary between us, as 
 though the left arm should envy the right. Bather 
 has our thought been of the immense difficulties which, 
 whatever convention be made, must now necessarily 
 lie in both our paths. Yet not to that near and ardu- 
 ous future, but to the farther and fairer time which, 
 surely now, lies ahead, let us all look. The centuries 
 are not ended — the years of Destiny will unfold them- 
 selves. The Apostle John, being in the Spirit on the 
 Lord's Day, predicted that Time shall Be No More ; I, 
 standing before you on the threshold of this late new 
 Era, predict that Time shall Be. I foresee that the 
 relative positions of the Suns shall change ; and the 
 Sword of Orion shall curve into a Pruning-hook, and 
 between the Virgin and the Lion there shall grow hoar 
 — a rapprochement. Viewed from this mood, the race 
 of man seems but to have begun its course ; yet not so 
 immature is its history but that it has had space to 
 exhibit, if never before, then now, the fact of some 
 Secret which informs it, and some Wind which wafts it. 
 It moves — it moves ! The dreams of the poets were 
 not extravagant enough ; see, the world overtakes 
 them, and surpasses them ! to-day, already we see the 
 strange accomplishment of that vision of yesterday : 
 
 " When the war-drums throbbed no longer, and the battle- 
 flags were furled 
 In the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World. ..." 
 
 THE END.