could lick him from China to Cheltenham was irresistible, so I resisted it. He knew the case better than I did, so there was nothing for it but honesty.
“I don’t know. But it could have a damned good try. If Bruce had warning, now, by a messenger he trusted …” I hung on that for a moment, and he nodded “…Šhe’d have two weeks to garrison before Lee arrived. In which case you can wish Lee luck, because by God he’ll need it!”
If you’ve ever seen a fat Chinaman holding four aces, you’ll know how he was staring at me as he envisaged the delightful prospect of Lee disgraced, himself supreme – the deliberate sacrifice of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Taiping lives, and the certain loss of Shanghai to the Taiping cause forever, were mere trifles so long as Jen-Kan won his political battle over Lee.17 Suddenly he gave a little crowing laugh, and filled my glass.
“You confirm my conclusions exactly!” cries he. “Lee will certainly be defeated before Shanghai. Of course, in contriving this I am compromising myself most dangerously, but I know Mr Bruce will be discreet; he and H.M. Government have much to gain from an enlightened control in the Taiping movement. The steamships order, for example, need not be affected by our brief mutual hostilities at Shanghai, which will soon be forgotten. Britain can resume her policy of neutrality, and left to ourselves we shall defeat the Manchoos.” He raised his glass to me. “Your own immediate profit should be considerable – you will be the hero who brought the momentous warning that saved Shanghai. I drink to your further advancement, my friend.” He smacked his liver lips and leaned back, blinking up at the sunlight filtering through the fronds overhead. “I foresee happy times.”
He had it all pat, the fat, grinning, ruthless scoundrel – but, d’you know, I can’t say he was a whit worse than any other statesman of my acquaintance, and a sight jollier than most. I asked when I would go.
“Tonight,” says he, “it is all arranged, with complete secrecy. I shall easily conceal your absence until the appropriate time, two weeks hence, when I will send word to Lee – who should be at Chingpu by now – that his advance to Shanghai can begin.” He giggled and took another mammoth swig of port. “Your escort will take you as far as Chingpu, by the way, where by all accounts your friend Mr Ward will be in the vicinity. But you will keep well clear of Chingpu itself. Lee would not be pleased to see you.” He turned to grin at me. “We know what you will tell Mr Bruce of the Heavenly King (regrettable, but there it is), and of the Loyal Prince Lee … I wonder what you will say of Hung Jen-Kan?”
“That he drinks port at the wrong time of day.”
He choked on his glass. “You intend to ruin my reputation, in fact. Ah, well, I am sure Mr Bruce will receive an honest account from you. The fact that it will be totally misleading is by the way.” He heaved another of his mountainous sighs.
“You imagine I act out of unscrupulous self-interest; true, all revolutionaries do. They agitate and harangue and justify every villainy in the name of high ideals; they lie, to delude the people, whom they hold in contempt. They seek nothing but their personal ends – my only defence is that my ends are modest ones. I seek power to see the revolution accomplished; after that, I have no wish to rule. I want the biggest library in China, and to visit my cousins in San Francisco, and to read the Lesson, just once, in an English country church.” He began to shake with laughter again. “Tell Mr Bruce that. He won’t believe a word of it. Oh, and you will not forget to mention the steamships? An order worth a million, remember – whatever happens with Lee.” He looked like a contented pig. “As Superintendent of Trade, Mr Bruce will not overlook the importance of the almighty dollar.”18
I hadn’t arrived at Nanking in any great style, but it was Pullman travel compared to the way I went, under hatches on a stinking Yangtse fish-barge, with two of Jen-kan’s thugs for company. I daren’t show face until we were well away from the city, white fan-quis being as common in those parts as niggers in Norway; not that I’d have been hindered, but Jen-kan might have had awkward explanations to make if it got about that Flashy was heading east ahead of time. So we spent a day and night in the poisonous dark and came ashore somewhere on the Kiangyin bend, where two more thugs were waiting with ponies. Farther down, the river was infested by gangs of Imp deserters and bandits (no doubt the Provident Brave Butterflies were spreading their wings, among others), and while the land to the south was swarming with Taiping battalions, Jen-kan had reckoned we’d make better and safer time on horseback, taking a long sweep to come in by Chingpu, where Frederick T. Ward’s foreign legion was preparing to have another slap at the Taiping garrison.
I don’t remember much about that ride, except that I was damned stiff after months out of the saddle, but I know we raised Chingpu on a misty dawn, looking down from a crest to the town, perhaps a mile away. It was wooded country, with paddy here and there, and many waterways – you could see the little mat sails beetling along among the dykes, ever so pretty in the pearly morning light; it would have been quite an idyllic scene if there hadn’t been the deuce of a battle going on round Chingpu’s high mud walls.
We’d heard the guns before we came in view, and they were banging away splendidly, wreathing the walls and gate-towers in thick grey smoke, while dead to our front great disorderly lines of men were advancing to the assault. To my astonishment I saw they were Imps, straggling along any old how, but in the van there was a fairly compact company in green caps, and I knew these must be Ward’s people. Without a glass I couldn’t make them out clearly, but they were holding together well under the fire from the walls, and presently they were charging the main gate, while the Imp supports milled about and let off crackers and waved banners in fine useless style.
Farther back, behind the attackers, were more Imp battalions by a river-bank, with a gunboat blazing away at nothing in particular, and about a mile away on my right was a low hill on which a couple of banners were flying, with a number of mounted men wheeling about and occasionally dashing out to the attacking force. Gallopers; the hill must be the attackers’ head-quarters, so it behoved me to make for it. I was just pointing it out to my escort when there was a tremendous pandemonium from the plain before the town, the boom of guns and crackle of musket-fire redoubled, the crimson Taiping banners were waving wildly along the walls, and suddenly in the smoke-clouds before the gate there was a great glare of orange light followed by the thunderous roar of an explosion.
That was Ward’s lads mining the main gate, and as the smoke cleared, sure enough, one of the supporting towers was in ruins, and green caps were surging into a breach as wide as a church. At this the Imps, seeing their side winning, set up a huge halloo and went swarming in to join the fun; in a moment the whole space before the breach was choked with men, while the supporting lines, throwing disorder to the winds, crowded in behind, blazing away indiscriminately – and that should have been the end of Chingpu. What the attackers had forgotten, or didn’t know, was that they were assaulting a stronghold commanded by Loyal Prince Lee. They were about to find out, and it was a sight to see.
All along the front wall it was like an enormous football scrimmage; there must have been hundreds trying to get to the breach, and more arriving every second. On the side wall nearest to me there wasn’t a single attacker, and now a banner waved on the battlements, a side-gate opened, and out came a column of Taiping red-coats, trotting orderly four abreast. They streamed out, hundreds strong, rounding the front angle, and went into the attacking mob like a scarlet thunderbolt. At the same moment, from the other side of the town, a second Taiping column completed the pincer movement, the black silk flags went up, and within five minutes there wasn’t a living attacker within quarter of a mile of Chingpu, and the whole Imp rout was streaming back
