Gentlemen Rovers Part 6

Though the Manchu dynasty of China, to which he gave an additional half-century of existence, has fallen, the soldiers of the new republic continue to invoke his spirit as that of a G.o.d of battles, and the priests of Confucius still burn incense before his tomb.

The story of how this adventurous American youth recognized the splendid fighting material into which the Chinese were capable of being transformed; how he took that material and heated and hammered and tempered it into a serviceable weapon, and gave that weapon a keen cutting edge; how, with a force which never numbered more than six thousand men, he broke the backbone of a rebellion which turned China into a shambles; and how his battalions came to be known, in the annals of time, as the "Ever-Victorious Army," forms a chronicle of courage and thrilling incident the like of which can not be found in history. If the almost incredible exploits of Ward have escaped the notice of our historians, it is because, at the time they took place, Americans were too intent on the business of their own great slaughter-house to be interested in a similar performance going on, in much less workmanlike fashion, half the world away. Though British writers slightingly allude to Ward as "an obscure Yankee adventurer," the officer who succeeded him, General Charles George Gordon, merely completed the work which his predecessor had begun, and built his military reputation on the foundations which the American had laid. Though the name of Frederick Townsend Ward holds but little meaning for the vast majority of his countrymen, it is still a name to conjure with in that country which he saved from anarchy.

Though a youth in appearance and in years, Ward was a seasoned veteran long before he set out on his last campaign. Before he was five-and-twenty he had had enough experiences to satisfy a dozen ordinary men. Coming from New England seafaring stock, it was only to be expected that a pa.s.sion for adventure should course through his veins.

From the time he donned short trousers he dreamed of a cadetship at West Point, and a commission under his own flag. But it was destined that his military genius should profit another country than his own, and that he should fight and die under an alien banner. His father, a stern old merchant captain, held that there was no training for a boy like that to be had in the school of the sea, and so, when young Ward was scarce half-way through his teens, he was packed off aboard a sailing-vessel bound for the China seas. By the time he was twenty he held a first mate's warrant, and had paid for it with three long voyages. Joining Garibaldi's famous Foreign Legion, he saw service under that great soldier in the war between the Republic of the Rio Grande and Brazil.

Afterward he helped the young Republic of Uruguay to defeat Manuel Rosas, the Argentine dictator. At the outbreak of the Crimean War he obtained a lieutenant's commission in a regiment of French zouaves, and followed the tricolor until the Treaty of Paris brought that b.l.o.o.d.y campaign to an end. Turning his steps toward Latin America again, he joined William Walker in his ill-fated Nicaraguan adventure, and after that leader's execution in Honduras he offered his sword and services to Juarez, and helped to win for him the presidency of Mexico. With the triumph of Juarez, peace settled for a time upon the western hemisphere, and Ward, finding no market for his military talents, was driven by financial necessities to take up the occupation of a ship-broker in New York City. But the shackles of trade soon proved intolerable to this man of action. He was like a race-horse harnessed to a milk-wagon. Though his talk was of cargoes and bottomry and tonnage, his thoughts were far away, on those distant seaboards of the world where history was in the making. At the beginning of 1859, the only country in the world where fighting on a large scale was going on was China, which was being devastated by the great Taiping Rebellion. In the spring of that year Ward, unable to longer resist the call to action which was forever sounding in his ears, turned the key in the door of his New York office, saddled his horse, and, unaccompanied, rode across the continent to San Francisco, where he booked a pa.s.sage for Shanghai. It was no random adventure which he had undertaken. He had laid his plans carefully and knew exactly what he intended doing. Nor did the magnitude of his project dishearten him. He had set out to save an empire, and he intended to win fame and fortune in doing it.

The conditions which prevailed in China between 1850 and 1863 can be compared only to the French Reign of Terror, or to the rule of the Mahdi in the Sudan. About the time that the nineteenth century was approaching the half-way mark, a Chinese schoolmaster named Hung-siu-Tseuen, inflamed by the partially comprehended teachings of Christian missionaries, had inaugurated a propaganda to overthrow the Confucian religion, and incidentally the reigning dynasty. There speedily rallied to his banners all the floating scoundrelism of China. In 1852 the rebel hordes had moved into the province of Hunan, murdering, pillaging, and burning as they went; advanced down the Kiang River to the Yang-tse, down which they sailed, capturing and sacking the cities on its banks.

Making Nanking his capital, the rebel leader a.s.sumed the t.i.tle of Tien w.a.n.g, or "Heavenly King," and proclaimed the rule of the Ping Chao, or "Peace Dynasty," which, with the prefix Tai ("great") gave the rebellion its name, Taiping. w.a.n.g's great hordes of tatterdemalions, flushed with their unbroken series of successes, gradually overran the silk and tea districts, the richest in the empire, threatened Peking, and advanced almost to the gates of Shanghai, carrying death and destruction over fifteen of the eighteen provinces of China. Perhaps it will give a better idea of the magnitude of this rebellion when I add that reliable authorities estimate that it cost China _two billion five hundred million dollars, and twenty million human lives_. By the autumn of 1859 such of the imperial forces as remained loyal had been whipped to a stand-still, and the European powers having interests in China had their work cut out to defend the treaty ports; the rebels were undisputed masters of all Central China; the rivers were literally choked with corpses, and the smoke of burning cities overhung the land. The atrocities committed by order of the Taiping leader shocked even the dulled sensibilities of China. On one occasion, six thousand people, suspected of an intention to desert, were gathered in the public square of Nanking. A hundred executioners stood among the prisoners with bared swords, and, at a signal from the w.a.n.g, slashed off heads until their arms were weary, and blood stood inches deep in the gutters. Ward had indeed chosen a good market in which to sell his services.

Through an English friend in the Chinese service, Ward obtained an introduction to Wu, the Taotoi of Shanghai, and to a millionaire merchant and mandarin named Tah Kee. The plan he proposed was as simple as it was daring. He offered to recruit a foreign legion, with which he would defend Shanghai, and at the same time attack such of the Taiping strongholds as were within striking distance, stipulating that for every city captured he was to receive seventy-five thousand dollars in gold, that his men were to have the first day's looting, and that each place taken should immediately be garrisoned by imperial troops, leaving his own force free for further operations. Wu on behalf of the government, and Tah Kee as the representative of the Shanghai merchants, promptly agreed to this proposal, and signed the contract. They had, indeed, everything to gain and nothing to lose. It was also arranged that Tah Kee should at the outset furnish the arms, ammunition, clothing, and commissary supplies necessary to equip the legion. These preliminaries once settled, Ward wasted no time in recruiting his force, for every day was bringing the Taipings nearer. A number of brave and experienced officers, for the most part soldiers of fortune like himself, hastened to offer him their services, General Edward Forester, an American, being appointed second in command. The rank and file of the legion was recruited from the sc.u.m and offscourings of the East, Malay pirates, Burmese dacoits, Tartar brigands, and desperadoes, adventurers, and fugitives from justice from every corner of the farther East being attracted by the high rate of pay, which in view of the hazardous nature of the service, was fixed at one hundred dollars a month for enlisted men, and proportionately more for officers. The non-commissioned officers, who were counted upon to stiffen the ranks of the Orientals, were for the most part veterans of continental armies, and could be relied upon to fight as long as stock and barrel held together. The officers carried swords and Colt's revolvers, the latter proving terribly effective in the hand-to-hand fighting which Ward made the rule; while the men were armed with Sharp's repeating carbines and the vicious Malay _kris_. Everything considered, I doubt if a more formidable aggregation of ruffians ever took the field. Ward placed his men under a discipline which made that of the German army appear like a kindergarten; taught them the tactics he had learned under Garibaldi, Walker, and Juarez; and finally, when they were as keen as razors and as tough as rawhide, he entered them in battle on a most astonished foe.

The first city Ward selected for capture was Sunkiang, on the banks of the Wusung River, some twenty-five miles above Shanghai. In choosing this particular place as his first point of attack, Ward showed himself a diplomatist as well as a soldier, for it was one of the seven sacred cities of China, and to it had been wont to come thousands of pilgrims from the most distant provinces, to prostrate themselves in the temple of Confucius, the oldest and most revered shrine in the empire. Its capture by the Taipings and their desecration of its altars had sent a thrill of horror through the imperialists, such as was not even caused by the loss of the great metropolis of Nanking.

Ward, who appreciated the necessity of winning the recognition and confidence of the higher authorities, well knew that the regaining of this sacred city would endear him to the religious heart of China as nothing else could do. But Sunkiang, with its walls twenty feet high and five miles in circ.u.mference, and with a garrison of five thousand fanatics to defend those walls, was no easy nut to crack even for a powerful force well supplied with artillery. The idea of its being taken by Ward and his five hundred desperadoes was preposterous, unthinkable, absurd. He first tried the weapon he had so painstakingly forged on a July morning, in 1860. Just as his European critics in Shanghai had prophesied, the attack on Sunkiang proved the most dismal of failures.

His stealthy approach being discovered by the Taipings, he was greeted with such a withering fire upon reaching the walls that, being without supports, and perceiving the hopelessness of the situation, he ordered his buglers to sound the retreat.

But Ward was one of those rare men to whom discouragements and disasters are but incidents, annoying but not disheartening, in the day's work. He spent a fortnight in strengthening the weakened _morale_ of his force, and then he tried again, making his onset with the suddenness and fury of a tiger's spring just at break of day. Slipping like ghosts through the grayness of the dawn, Ward and his men stole across the surrounding rice-fields, and were almost under the city walls before the Taiping sentries discovered their approach. As the first rifle cracked, Ward and one of his lieutenants raced ahead with bags of powder, placed them beneath the main gate of the city, and lighted the fuse. Like an echo of the ensuing explosion rose the shrill yell of the legionaries, who dashed forward like sprinters in a race. Instead of the gates being blown to pieces as they had expected, they found that they had been forced apart only enough for one man to pa.s.s at a time--and on the other side of that door of death five thousand rebels waited eagerly for the first of the attackers to appear. "Come on, boys!" roared Ward, his voice rising above the crash of the musketry, "We're going in!" and plunged through the narrow opening, a revolver in each hand. Hard on his heels crowded his legionaries. Though they were going to what was almost certain death, such was the magnetism of their leader that not a man hung back, not a man faltered. Before half a dozen men were through they were attacked by hundreds, but, so deadly was the fire they poured in with their repeaters, they were able to hold off the defenders until the whole attacking force was within the gate. Then began one of the most desperate and unequal fights in history. The key to the city was the howitzer battery, which was stationed on the top of the ma.s.sive main gate, forty feet above. Up the narrow ramps the legionaries fought their way, five hundred against five thousand, hacking, stabbing, firing, at such close range that their rifles set fire to their opponents'

clothing, driving their bayonets into the human wall before them as a field-hand pitchforks hay. Wherever there was s.p.a.ce for a man to plant his feet or swing his sword, there a Taiping was to be found. The pa.s.sageway was choked with them, but they sullenly gave way before the frenzy of Ward's attack as a hillside slowly disintegrates before the stream from a hydraulic nozzle. Ward was wounded, and his men were falling about him by dozens, but those that were left, mad with the l.u.s.t of battle, fought on, until with a final surge and cheer they reached the top, and the position which commanded the city was in their hands.

Then the Taipings broke and fled, some to be overtaken and slaughtered by the legionaries, others throwing themselves into the streets below.

Bayoneting the rebel gunners, the howitzers were turned upon the city, raking the streets, sweeping the crowded walls and house-tops, and leaving heaps of dead and dying where Taiping regiments had stood before.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Come on, boys!" shouted Ward. "We're going in!" and plunged through the narrow opening, a revolver in each hand.]

For four-and-twenty hours Ward and the exhausted survivors of his legion, without food and without water, held the gate in the face of the most desperate efforts to retake it. Then the Chinese reinforcements for which he had asked tardily arrived, and Sunkiang was an Imperial city again. The American had taken the first trick in the great game he was playing. It was at fearful cost, however, for of the five hundred men who followed him into action, but one hundred and twenty-eight remained alive, and of these only twenty-seven were without wounds. In other words, the casualties amounted to _more than ninety-four per cent of the entire force_. Ward had ridden out of Shanghai a despised adventurer to whom the foreign officers refused to speak. He returned to that city a hero and a power in China. The priesthood acclaimed him as the saviour of the sacred city; the emperor made him a Mandarin of the Red b.u.t.ton; the merchants of Shanghai voiced their relief by adding a splendid estate to the promised reward of seventy-five thousand dollars. His reputation would have been secure if he had never fought another battle.

Leaving Sunkiang heavily garrisoned by imperial troops, Ward withdrew to Shanghai for the purpose of recruiting his shattered forces. Such a glamour of romance now surrounded the legion that Ward was fairly besieged by European as well as Oriental volunteers. Shortly after the capture of Sunkiang, Ward had occasion to visit Shanghai with reference to the care of his wounded. While riding through the streets of the city he was arrested by a British patrol, and despite his protestations that he was an officer in the imperial service, was hustled aboard the flag-ship of Admiral Sir James Hope, which lay in the harbor, and was placed in close confinement. In reply to his inquiries he was told that he was to be tried for recruiting British man-o'-war's-men for service in his legion. Though the arrest was high-handed and unjustified, there seemed no immediate prospect of release, for the American consul-general refused to interfere on the ground that Ward, by taking service under the Chinese government, had forfeited his right to American protection; the imperial authorities were powerless to take any action; while the British were notoriously fearful of the dangerous ascendancy which this American might gain if his successful career was permitted to continue.

The only hope for Ward--and for China--lay in his escape. A friend perfected a plan of flight. While visiting Ward, who was confined in an outside cabin of the flag-ship, with a marine constantly on guard at the door, he synchronized his watch with that of the cabin clock, and whispered to the prisoner that he would be in a sampan under his cabin window at precisely two o'clock in the morning. Taking off his coat and shoes that he might be unhampered in the water, Ward sat on the edge of his berth with his eyes on the face of the clock. Just as the minute-hand touched the figure II, Ward made a dash for the window and sprang head-foremost through the sash, for the windows of the old fashioned men-of-war were much larger than the ports of modern battle-ships. He had hardly touched the water before he was pulled aboard a sampan, which disappeared in the darkness long before the flag-ship's boats could be manned and lowered. This daring exploit enormously increased Ward's prestige among both Chinese and Europeans, with whom the British, as a result of their insolent and overbearing att.i.tude, were intensely unpopular. Some days later Admiral Hope sent a message to Ward requesting an interview, and, upon Ward a.s.suring him that he would no longer recruit his ranks from the British navy, the old sea fighter became his strong partisan and friend.

With his ranks once more repleted, Ward made preparations for a second venture. This time it was the city of Sing-po toward which he turned; but the Taipings, getting wind of his intentions, secretly threw an overwhelming force into the place under a renegade Englishman named Savage. Ward was without artillery with which to breach the walls, and, after several desperate a.s.saults, in leading which he was severely wounded, he was forced to retire. Ten days later, regardless of his wounds, he tried again, but this time he was taken in the rear by a Taiping army of twenty thousand men, his little force being completely surrounded. So certain was the rebel leader that the famous general was within his grasp, that he consulted with his officers as to what methods of torture they should use upon him. But he was a trifle premature, for Ward struck the Taiping cordon at its weakest point, fought his way through, and reached Shanghai with a loss of only one hundred men. His secret agents bringing him word that the powerful force from which he had just escaped was to be used in the recapture of Sunkiang, Ward, by making night marches, slipped unperceived into that city. When the Taipings attempted to carry it by storm a few days later, instead of meeting with the half-hearted resistance which they had grown to expect from Chinese garrisons, they were astounded to see the helmeted figure of the dreaded American upon the walls, and were greeted with a blast of rifle fire which swept away their leading columns and crumpled up their army as effectually as though it had encountered an earthquake.

Dangerously weakened by half a dozen wounds, Ward was reluctantly compelled to go to Paris in the fall of 1860 for surgical attention.

Back at Shanghai again at the beginning of the following summer, he found that the Taipings, emboldened by his absence, were flaunting their banner within sight of the city walls. From end to end of the empire there existed an unparalleled reign of terror, the rebels now having grown so strong that they demanded the recognition of the European powers. Ward, meanwhile, had become convinced that the true solution of the problem lay in raising an army of natives, rather than foreigners, for not only was the supply of Chinese unlimited, but his experience had shown him that there was splendid fighting material in them if they were properly drilled and led. When he asked permission of the imperial government to raise and drill a Chinese force, therefore, it was gladly granted.

An opportunity to put his theories regarding the fighting capabilities of the Chinese to a test soon came. Learning that a force of rebels, ten thousand strong, was advancing in the direction of Shanghai, Ward sallied forth from his headquarters at Sunkiang with two thousand five hundred men, struck the Taiping army, curled it up like a withered leaf, and drove it a dozen miles into the interior. Pressing on, he captured the city of Quan-fu-ling, which the rebels had garrisoned and fortified, and with it several hundred junks loaded with supplies. Throughout these actions his Chinese displayed all the steadiness and courage of European veterans. That he showed sound judgment in pinning his faith to natives is best proved by the fact that from that time on he never met with a reverse. His motto was "Cold steel," and his tactics would have delighted the old-time sea fighters, for, appreciating the fact that few Oriental troops are capable of remaining steady under a galling long-range fire, he invariably threw his men against the enemy in an overwhelming charge, and finished the business at close quarters with the bayonet.

Moving up from Sunkiang with a thousand of his men, Ward joined a combined force of French and British bluejackets, who had with them a light howitzer battery, in an attack on Kaschiaou, just opposite Shanghai, which was the city's main source of supplies, and which the rebels had seized and fortified. Using the contingent from the war-ships as a reserve, Ward and his Chinamen did the work alone, carrying the stockades by storm and capturing two thousand rebels, as a result of which the enemy fell back from the neighborhood of Shanghai. So strongly impressed were the British officers with the behavior of Ward's soldiery that Sir James Mitchel, the commander-in-chief on the China station, strongly urged that the task of suppressing the rebellion be placed in the American's hands, and that he be empowered to raise his force to ten thousand men. A few weeks later Ward received an imperial rescript acknowledging his great services to China, and appointing him an admiral-general of the empire, the highest rank that the emperor could bestow. With this came the authority to recruit his force to six thousand men, and its baptism, by imperial order, with the sonorous and thrilling t.i.tle of _Chun Chen Chun_, or the Ever-Victorious Army.

As the barometer of Ward's fortunes steadily rose, that of his native country began to fall, the dark cloud of secession hanging threateningly over the land. It has been said of Ward that he denationalized himself by marrying a Chinese wife and adopting a Chinese name, but there is no doubt that it was only his stern sense of duty which kept him at the task he had undertaken in China when the guns of Sumter boomed out the beginning of the Civil War. He immediately sent a contribution of ten thousand dollars to the Union war fund, however, with a message that his services were at the disposal of the North whenever they were required. At the time of the _Trent_ affair, when war between England and the United States was momentarily expected, and the British in China had laid plans to seize American shipping and other property in the treaty ports, Ward effected a secret organization of American sympathizers and prepared to surprise and capture every British war-ship and merchant vessel in Chinese waters. In view of his success in equally daring exploits, there is good reason to believe that he would have accomplished even so startling a _coup_ as this.

While recruiting his army to its newly authorized strength, Ward did not give the Taipings a moment's rest. He kept several flying columns constantly in the field, attacking the rebels at every opportunity, cutting up their outposts, harrying their pickets, breaking their lines of communication, and demoralizing them generally. One day Ward would be reported as operating in the south, and the w.a.n.g would draw a momentary breath of relief, but the next night, without the slightest warning, he would suddenly fall upon a city a hundred miles to the northward and carry it by storm. By such aggressive tactics as these Ward struck fear to the heart of the Taiping leader, who saw the despotism he had built up crumbling about him before the American's smashing blows. It was said, indeed, that the mere sight of Ward's white helmet in the van of a storming party was more effective than a brigade of infantry. With a thousand men of his own corps and six hundred royal marines he attacked and captured Tsee-dong, a walled city of considerable strength, and cleared the rebels from the surrounding region as though with a fine-tooth comb. The town of Wong-kadza was in the possession of the Taipings, and Ward decided to capture it. General Staveley, who had succeeded Sir James Mitchel in command of the British forces, offered to co-operate with him. It was agreed that they should rendezvous outside the town. Ward reached there first with six hundred of his men. Without waiting for the British to come up, he ordered his bugles to sound the charge, and after a quarter of an hour of desperate fighting he carried the stockade, and the rebels broke and ran, Ward's men killing more of them in the pursuit than they themselves numbered. When General Staveley arrived a few hours later he was chagrined to see the imperial standard flying over the city and to find that the impetuous American had done the work and reaped the glory. The allied forces now pressed on to the Taiping stronghold of Tai-poo, which was held by a strong and well-armed garrison. While the British engaged the attention of the rebels in front with a fierce artillery fire, Ward and his Chinamen made a detour to the rear of the city, and were at and over the walls almost before the garrison realized what had happened.

The Ever-Victorious Army now numbered nearly six thousand men. It was well drilled and under an iron discipline; it was fairly well armed; it was magnificently officered; it was emboldened with repeated successes.

The man who was the maker and master of such a force might well go a long way. That Ward dreamed of eventually making himself dictator of China there can be but little doubt. Louis Napoleon, remember, climbed to a throne on the bayonets of his soldiers. By this time the American soldier of fortune had become by long odds the most popular figure in the empire; the army was with him to a man; he possessed the confidence of the great mandarins and merchant princes; and he had to his credit an almost unparalleled succession of victories. Dictator of the East! What American ever had a more ambitious dream and was within such measurable distance of realizing it? It is no exaggeration to say that, had Ward lived, the whole history of the Orient would have been changed, and China, rather than j.a.pan, would doubtless have held the balance of power in the Farther East.

In April, 1862, Ward, the Viceroy Lieh, and the French and British commanders held a council of war in Shanghai. Ward suggested a plan of campaign designed to break the Taiping power in that part of China for good and all. Briefly put, his scheme was to capture a semicircle of cities within a radius of fifty miles of Shanghai and the coast. This would result in the rebels being held within their own lines by a cordon of bayonets, and, as they had utterly devastated the regions they had overrun, would mean starvation for them. Thus cut off from the seaboard, Ward argued, they would be unable to obtain ammunition and supplies, and the rebellion would soon wither. The series of operations was carried out as planned, Ward's corps being reinforced by three thousand French and British. It ended in the capture, in rapid succession, of the cities of Kah-ding, Sing-po, Najaor, and Tsaolin. In every case Ward insisted on being given the post of honor; he and his Chinamen, who fought with an appalling disregard for life, carrying the defences at the bayonet's point, while his European allies covered his advance with artillery fire and supported his whirlwind attacks. Leaving garrisons barely large enough to hold the captured cities, he pushed on by forced marches to Ning-po, which was a large and strongly fortified city. Twice his storming parties were driven back. The third time the men, exhausted by the continuous fighting in which they had been engaged and the long marches they had been called upon to perform, momentarily faltered in the face of the terrible fire which greeted them. Instantly Ward ordered the recall sounded, formed them into line within easy rifle-range of the city walls, and calmly put them through the manual of arms with as much precision as though they were on parade, while a storm of bullets whistled round them, and men were momentarily dropping in the ranks.

Then, his men once more in hand, the bugles screamed the charge and the yellow line roared on to victory.

Ward gave his last order to advance--he had forgotten how to give any other--on September 21, 1862. With a regiment of his men he was about to attack Tse-Ki, a small fortified coast town a few miles from Ning-po.

With his habitual contempt for danger he was standing with General Forester, his chief of staff, well in advance of his men, inspecting the position through his field-gla.s.ses. Suddenly he clapped his hand to his breast. "I've been hit, Ed!" he exclaimed, and fell forward into the arms of his friend. Very tenderly his devoted yellow men carried him aboard the British war-ship _Hardy_, which was lying in the harbor, but the naval surgeons shook their heads when an examination showed that the bullet had pa.s.sed through his lungs. "Don't mind me," whispered Ward.

"Take the city." So Forester, heavy at heart, ordered forward the storming parties. That night the great captain died. The last sound he heard was his Chinamen's shrill yell of triumph.

With extraordinary solemnity the dead soldier was laid to rest in the temple of Confucius in Sunkiang, the most sacred shrine in China and the very spot where he had established his headquarters after his first great victory. His body, which was followed to the grave by imperial viceroys, European admirals, generals, and consuls, and Chinese mandarins, was borne between the silent lines of his Ever-Victorious Army. By order of the emperor his name was placed in the pantheon of the G.o.ds. Temples to commemorate his victories were built at Sing-po and Ning-po, and a magnificent mausoleum was erected in his honor in Sunkiang. In it the yellow priests of Confucius still burn incense before his tomb. In all his history there can be found no hint of dishonor, no trace of shame. He was a great soldier and a very gallant gentleman, but he has been forgotten by his own people. To paraphrase the lines of Matthew Arnold:

"Far hence he lies, Near some lone Chinese town, And on his grave, with shining eyes, The Eastern stars look down."