The Story of General Gordon Part 4

On the way the messenger met some of Ching's soldiers, who wounded him and tore up Gordon's message. The rebels then allowed Gordon to be his own messenger; but on the way he met more of Ching's men, who seized him, because, they said, he was in company with rebels, and kept him prisoner for several hours.

When at last he got away and reached his own men, he sent a body of them to protect the house of Nar w.a.n.g's uncle. General Ching arrived just then. Gordon, furious with him for the looting and bad behaviour of his men, fell on him in a perfect storm of rage, and Ching hurried off to the city.

He sent an English officer to explain to Gordon what had happened, but this officer said he did not know whether the w.a.n.gs were alive or dead.

He said, however, that Nar w.a.n.g's son was in his boat, and that he would be able to tell him.

"My father has been killed," said the boy. "He lies dead on the other side of the creek."

Gordon crossed the creek in a boat, and on the banks lay the dead bodies of the w.a.n.gs, headless, and frightfully gashed. Li Hung Chang and General Ching had broken their promise, and Gordon's. The guests of the banquet of Li Hung Chang had been cruelly murdered.

Many were the excuses that the Chinese Governor had to offer; many were the reasons that he gave for breaking faith so shamefully.

But to none of his excuses or reasons would Gordon listen. It is said that, in furious anger, he sought Li Hung Chang, revolver in hand, that he might shoot him like a dog. But Li wisely hid himself, and Gordon sought him in vain. He wrote to Li, telling him he must give up his post as Governor, or Gordon and his army would attack all the places the Chinese held, retake them, and hand them back to the rebels. His anger and his shame were equally great.

Li Hung Chang did the wisest thing that then could be done. He sent for Halliday Macartney, a wise and brave English officer, and a friend of Gordon's, and asked him to go to Gordon and try and make peace between them. Macartney at once got a native boat with several rowers, and started for Quinsan. It was the middle of the night when he arrived, and Gordon was in bed. Very soon, however, he sent Macartney a message, asking him to come and see him in his room. Macartney went upstairs and found Gordon sitting on his bedstead in a badly lighted room. When Gordon saw him, he stooped down, drew something from under his bed, and held it up.

"Do you see that? Do you see that?" he asked.

Macartney stared in horror, scarcely able, in the dim light, to see what it was.

"It is the head of Nar w.a.n.g, foully murdered!" said Gordon, and sobbed most bitterly.

Halliday Macartney found it impossible then to get Gordon to forgive Li for his treachery. For two months Gordon remained in quarters, while inquiries, made at his demand, were being made about the death of the w.a.n.gs.

During this time the Chinese Government gave Gordon a medal that only the bravest soldiers ever received, to show how highly they valued his services as general. The Emperor also sent him a gift of 10,000 taels (then about 3000 of our money) and many other costly gifts. When the treasure-bearers appeared in Gordon's quarters, bearing bowls full of gold on their heads, as if they had walked straight out of the Arabian nights, Gordon, believing the Emperor meant to bribe him to say no more about the murder of the w.a.n.gs, was in a white-heat of fury. With his "magic wand" he fell on the treasure-bearers, and flogged the amazed and terrified men out of his sight.

Although the Government gave Gordon a medal for the way in which he had fought, it was Li Hung Chang who took all the credit for the taking of Soochow.

He published a report telling how the army under him had taken it. But while Gordon was under a daily fire of bullets, and daily ran a hundred risks of losing his life, the wily Li, who sounded so brave on paper, was safely sitting in Shanghai, miles away from the besieged city.

Gordon had much cause for anger. There seemed every reason why he should not forgive Li, and why he should leave China and its people to the mercy of the rebels.

But Gordon had learned what it means to say "Forgive us our trespa.s.ses." And not only that, but he had taken the sorrows of the unhappy people of China into his heart. Whatever their rulers might do, he felt he could not desert them. He must free them from the cruelties of their oppressors, the Tae-Pings, before he went home to his own land.

In February 1864 Gordon again took command. From then until 11th May he was kept constantly fighting, and steadily winning power for the Emperor of China.

On 10th May Gordon wrote to his mother: "I shall leave China as poor as I entered it, but with the knowledge that through my weak instrumentality upwards of eighty to one hundred thousand lives have been spared. I want no further satisfaction than this."

On 11th May Gordon took Chanchufu, the last great rebel stronghold, and the rebellion was at an end. "The Heavenly King" killed his wives and himself in his palace at Nankin, and the other rebel chiefs were beheaded.

Before Gordon gave up his command, the Chinese Government again offered him a large sum of money, but again he refused it. But he could not well refuse the honour of being made a Ti-Tu, or Field-Marshal, in the Chinese Army, nor the almost greater honour of being given the Yellow Jacket. To us the giving of a yellow jacket sounds a foolish thing, but to a Chinaman the Yellow Jacket, and peac.o.c.k's feathers that go with it, are an even greater honour than to an Englishman is that plain little cross that is called "The Victoria Cross," and which is given for valour. Gordon accepted the yellow jacket, as well as six magnificent mandarin dresses, such as were worn by a Ti-Tu. "Some of the b.u.t.tons on the mandarin hats are worth 30 or 40," he wrote. A heavy gold medal was struck in his honour and given to him by the Empress Regent. It was one of the few belongings he had for which Gordon really cared a great deal, and presently you will hear how he gave even that up for the sake of other people.

The Chinese Government told the British Government that Gordon would receive no rewards from the Chinese for the great things he had done for their country, and asked that his own Queen Victoria would give him some reward that he would accept. This was done, and Major Gordon was made a Lieutenant-Colonel and a Companion of the Bath.

Not only in China was he a hero, but in England also. Gordon had saved China from an army of conquering robbers, "first"--it was written in the _Times_--"by the power of his arms, and afterwards, still more rapidly, by the terror of his name."

Li Hung Chang was ready to do anything that the hero wished, and so, before he said good-bye to his army, Gordon saw that his officers and men were handsomely rewarded.

It was not wonderful that his army had learned to love him, for even the rebels who feared his name loved him too. They knew that he was always true and brave, honourable and merciful.

Of him one of the rebels wrote: "Often have I seen the deadly musket struck from the hand of a dastardly Englishman (tempted by love of loot to join our ranks) when he attempted from his place of safety to kill Gordon, who ever rashly exposed himself. This has been the act of a chief--yea, of the Shield King himself."

All England was ready to give "Chinese Gordon" a magnificent welcome when he came home. Invitations from the greatest in the land were showered upon him.

But when, early in 1865, he returned, he refused to be made a hero of.

"I only did my duty," he said, and grew quite shy and ashamed when people praised and admired him. He would accept no invitations, and it was only a very few people who were lucky enough to hear him fight his battles over again. Sometimes in the evening as he sat in the fire-light, in his father's house at Southampton, he would tell his eager listeners the wonderful tale of his battles and adventures in the far-off land of paG.o.das.

And to them not the least wonderful part of what they listened to was this, that the hero who was known all over the world as "Chinese Gordon" was one who took no credit for any of the great things he had done, and who was still as simple and modest as a little child.

CHAPTER IV

THE "KERNEL"

Had you lived thirty-five or forty years ago at Gravesend, a dirty, smoky town on the Thames near London, you might have read chalked up on doors and on h.o.a.rdings in boyish handwriting, these words--

"G.o.d BLESS THE KERNEL."

And had you asked any of the ragged little lads that you met, who was "The Kernel," their faces would have lit up at once, while they told you that their "Kernel" was the best and bravest soldier in the world, and that his name was Colonel Gordon.

For six years after he left China, Gordon was Commanding Royal Engineer at Gravesend, and these years, he said, were "the most peaceful and happy of any portion of his life."

His work there was done, as all his work throughout his life was done, with all his might.

When he first took command he was worried by the amount of time that was wasted as he rowed from one port which he had to inspect, to another, in a pair-oared boat. He put away the pair-oared boat and got a four-oared gig, and soon had the men who pulled it trained to row him in racing style. They might sometimes have waited for hours on the chance of Colonel Gordon wanting them, but the minute his trim little figure was seen marching smartly down to the jetty, there was a rush for the boat. Almost before he was seated, the oars would be dipped and the men's backs bent as if they meant to win a boat race.

"A little faster, boys! a little faster!" Gordon would constantly say, and when he jumped ash.o.r.e and hurried off to his work, he would leave behind him four very breathless men, who were proud of being the crew of the very fastest boat pulled in those waters.

The engineers under him he also trained never to lose any time,--always to do a thing not only as thoroughly and as well as possible, but as quickly as possible.

He would land at a port, and run up the steep earthworks in front of it, while his followers, many of them big, heavy men, would come puffing and panting after him.

One of his friends writes of him, "He was a severe and unsparing taskmaster, and allowed no shirking. No other officer could have got half the work out of the men that he did. He used to keep them up to the mark by exclaiming, whenever he saw them flag: 'Another five minutes gone, and this not done yet, my men! We shall never have them again.'"

The old-fashioned house, with its big old garden, which was Gordon's home during those six years, saw many strange guests during that time.

"His house," says one writer, "was school, and hospital, and almshouse in turn--was more like the abode of a missionary than of a Colonel of Engineers."

In his working hours he worked his hardest to serve his Queen and country. In the hours in which he might have rested or amused himself, he worked equally hard. And this other work was to serve the poor, the sick, the lonely, and to give a helping hand to every one of those who needed help. The boys whose work was on the river or the sea, and the "mud-larks" of Gravesend, were his special care. Many a boy who had no work and no right home, he took from the streets, washed, clothed, fed, and took into his house to stay with him as his guest. When he had found work for those boys, either as sailors or in other ways, he would give them outfits and money, and start them in life. For the boys who were being sheltered by him, and for others from outside, he began evening cla.s.ses. There he taught them, and read to them, and did all that he could to make them Christian gentlemen. His "Kings" he called them, perhaps remembering the many Kings or "w.a.n.gs" who ruled in the Tae-Ping army.

A map of the world, hanging over his mantelpiece, was stuck full of pins. Some one asked the meaning of this, and was told by Gordon that they marked and followed the course of his boys on their voyages. The pins were moved from point to point as the boys sailed onward. "I pray for each one of them day by day," he said.

Soon Gordon's cla.s.s grew too big for his room to hold, and he then began to have a cla.s.s at the Ragged Schools. The mud-larks of Gravesend needed no coaxing to go to "The Kernel's" cla.s.s. Here was a teacher who did not only try to teach them to be good and manly, and straight and true, and _gentle_ men, but who, when he taught them geography, could tell them the most splendid and exciting stories of countries beyond the seas, where he himself had fought in great battles. He never _preached_ at them, or looked solemn and shocked, but made them laugh more than any one else ever did, and had the merriest twinkle in his kind, keen eyes, that were like the sea, and looked sometimes blue, sometimes grey.

He found out one day that what his "Kings" most longed to do was to go up to London to see the Zoo. No sooner did he know it than every plan was made for the little campaign. He himself could not leave his work, but he got some one else to take them, saw them safely off with their dinner in baskets, and welcomed them back in the evening to a great strawberry feast.