The city had withstood its besiegers for a long time. The guns on the
mountain had poured down shot, the guns on the north and on the south
had battered the old walls. The walls had crumbled and fallen. The
walls were old and they had been considered picturesque for so long
that it was as if they had forgotten the sturdy virtues of their
youth.
Through the breaches came the soldiers. Tribesmen they seemed of the
old days of the Grand Khan.
The soldiers were thinking. They were not accustomed to thought. Was
it true, ran their thoughts, that their leader had promised that there
would be no looting? He had promised, this they knew, that there would
be no looting after he entered the city. What was the meaning of that
“he”? Did it mean the army or did it mean the general? Did it mean the
soldiers? There was the rumor that the general could not leave his
present quarters for three days. Rain, or snow, or ice, or drought
prevented. What was the meaning of that? Did it mean three days of
fine, bloody looting?
The soldiers entered the city. Like the tribesmen of the Grand Khan
they poured in. Through one gate, through two gates, through three
gates they came. It was a sullen business and silently did they press
forward. They had not made up their minds about those three days. They
were not sure about the general. Perhaps he was playing one of his
grim jokes. Was he, perhaps, already within the city? He had promised
before many that there would be no looting. The foreigner, the
Jesus-religion man in black clothes, had stood beside him. It was hard
to tell, where foreigners were concerned, how much to believe.
Foreigners were an unusual sort of people. Most of them did not look
dangerous, but any one of them might have power. It was one of the
inexplicable things about foreigners that one could never tell the
amount of power a foreigner had by the amount he used. To have power
and not use it, to have rice and not eat it—strange men these
foreigners.
The soldiers poured into the city. Like the tribesmen of the Grand
Khan they came; but not like the tribesmen of the Grand Khan. The loot
and the fun were before them, yet they restrained themselves.
The soldiers were yellow and clad in yellow, and they poured through
the gates as the yellow Yangtsze pours between its banks. Silver and
silks were before them, but the hand was withheld from the knife and a
sullen silence was around them.
Some one began it. There came a curse and an answer, a taunt and a
gunshot. So it began.
Here was a shop boarded, bolted, and locked. A crowd of soldiers
gathered before it. They demanded that the shop be opened. No reply
came from within. The demand was repeated and emphasized with a blow
of a rifle butt against the boards. Still there was no reply. More gun
butts fell upon the boards and they began to creak and snap. A scared
man within began to dicker for life, property, and family. He paid and
paid high—for nothing. The shop was broken open. Stripped and
wounded, the man was sent down the street. His goods became the
playthings of the soldiers. His wife lay above, outraged and stabbed.
His daughter was in the hands of other tormentors. At the command of
the soldiers, his son began carrying his father’s goods and piling
them as the soldiers directed. There was a look of death upon the
boy’s face; he was sick and weary. The soldiers demanded more silver.
The boy knew there was no more. He knew that his father had paid it
all to save the family. He was so sadly sure he would not look. The
soldiers cut him down and went their way.
There was a ricksha coolie who had sunk frightened against a wall in a
side street. He had hidden his family, but he, himself, had come forth
from hiding in the hope of much work and large pay. With quaking knees
he had pulled loads of loot for the soldiers. At last the horror had
overcome him and here he cowered against a wall. He was called but he
could not move. He knew that he could not pass down the bloody streets
again. The call was repeated and still he did not move. They shot him
as he lay and took his ricksha from him. That street also, a little
street and a quiet one, had its spreading mark of red.
A poor barber lay trembling upon his bamboo bed. He had no family and
few friends. Why had he not run away? He lay thinking and thinking but
he could think of no good reason. As he lay thus they came upon his
shop. Down came the boards. He paid them all his savings, a pitifully
small sum, and they demanded his wife and children. They killed him
because he had neither the one nor the other. “For,” said they, “no
honest man is without a family.”
There was a girl of eighteen whom the soldiers seized. Guile or
temporary insanity prompted her to play her part as if with pleasure.
She smiled on them and shrugged her shoulders most coquettishly. She
bandied jokes with them and made advances. A petty officer accepted
her advances and, later, had her beaten to death. The soldiers
approved. “These people must be taught,” said they, “that modesty is a
woman’s duty.”
For two days the riot continued. For two nights there was no sleep but
the sleep of death. The moans of the women, the groans of the men,
fire and fresh alarms made sleep a thing that seemed years away. The
city was red and the blood flowed. Loot and the lives of men, silver
and the bodies of women, these things did the victors take as is old
custom in China. Then came the third day and the general.
The foreigner in black clothes, the man of the religion of Jesus, had
lived through these two days and two nights. “One can never tell,”
said the soldiers, “what power these foreigners have.” “That is the
foreigner’s house,” said the soldiers, “let it alone.”
The foreigner had lived through the two days and the two nights, but
he had not slept. He had been thinking of the promise of the general.
“There will be no looting after I enter the city”—these were the
general’s words and the man who had spoken them had not yet entered.
As a joke the speech was not bad, but too much blood and no sleep
spoils the taste for jokes.
The general entered with an important noise of trumpets. Where he rode
the looting stopped. He seemed weary, however, and did not ride far.
The smoke of the many fires may have hurt his eyes. The day may have
been too hot. In any case the general seemed discreetly weary and
discreetly blind.
The man of the religion of Jesus came to the general. His words were
to the point. “Is this the way you keep promises?” he asked.
The general did not like directness and he did not care to argue.
“There is no looting,” he said, and with a smile he pointed down the
street.
“There is looting everywhere except before your eyes.”
“There is none,” said the general. It was characteristic of him to
add, “What there is must be stopped.”
“By whom?” asked the foreigner.
“Take one hundred men,” said the general, “go up and down in the city.
If you see looting or outrage, cut off the guilty man’s head. As for
myself, I have seen none.”
The foreigner hesitated, but thoughts came to him of the last two
days. If he did nothing, who would act? Opportunity seemed to him
duty. So in despair and rage he agreed and at the head of his hundred
he set out.
They came suddenly to a corner where a soldier was searching a dead
man’s clothes. Here was guilt so plain no proof was needed. The man
was quickly sentenced and in another moment his head was off.
“Justice,” said the foreigner to himself, “must upon occasion be
swift.”
They came upon a house where a widow and her young daughter lived. The
house was small and until now it had been overlooked. A noise of
scuffling caused the foreigner to look within. The younger woman lay
bruised and naked upon the floor, the mother was still struggling with
her assailant. Two heads fell and the foreigner smiled. “Payment,”
said he to himself, “is a thing dear to the Lord. Here two have paid.”
The hundred and their leader came upon a half-crazed soldier who was
trying to run up a narrow street with two mattresses which he had
stolen. The mattresses brushed the sides of the buildings upon the
narrow street so that, as the man’s load struck gate or door-post upon
the one side or the other, the man reeled as a drunken man does. They
caught him and made him kneel upon those very mattresses. The hundred
went on and the man’s head was left resting softly upon the stolen
goods. The mattresses were becoming red. “The blood of justice is red
also,” said the foreigner.
Thus did the man of the religion of Jesus and his hundred make
progress through this city of great suffering.
They seized a soldier carrying a woman. She was groaning. He protested
that he was carrying her to shelter. The man had earrings and a chain
in his belt. The woman’s ears were bleeding. The good knife descended
and again punishment found guilt.
They went on and as they went there came a great joy into the heart of
the foreigner. “These people,” said he to himself, “are children and
they need a lesson. By God’s help they shall have it. Many lessons are
hard but many must be learned.”
They seized an old soldier who was picking up the trinkets that had
been dropped before a jewelry shop. He swore that he had robbed no
man, but the man in black decided against him and off came his head.
As the hundred passed on they sent fear before them and left a trail
of red justice behind them. The joy burned brighter in the heart of
the man in black. “Have I not talked to these people of the justice of
God?” said he to himself. “Now they are seeing it. Now they will know
it to be swift and terrible. A knife with a keen blade, a judge with a
clean heart, these things this people needs.”
They came upon two soldiers who were quarrelling over the division of
a sable coat. Each had an end and the altercation was proceeding over
the outstretched garment. They protested that they had bought the coat
not two hours before and that they had paid for it. One begged
piteously for his life, but the man in black shook his head.
So the expedition of the hundred became a thing of blood and more
blood. The heart of the man of the religion of Jesus was filled with a
grim ecstasy. It seemed to dance within him. “Am I not,” he chanted to
himself, “a messenger of the Lord to a sinful people? With what
measure they have measured, have I measured unto them. As they have
pitied others, so have I pitied them. Blood must flow, for blood alone
can cleanse. Blood alone can cleanse.”
A young soldier was caught as he climbed the stairs of a small house.
He was brought into the street and told to kneel. “I have heard of
your Jesus and his forgiveness,” he said; “now I know.” He knelt with
a sort of dignity, the dignity that death brings to the brave, and his
head fell.
His words struck through the blood fever to the heart of the man in
black. For a second he closed his eyes and when he opened them again
he saw with his old clearness. He knew that blood is blood and shame
came over him.
He sent back his hundred, saying: “Go. I have done wrong.”
He came to his own house and to his own small room where a crucifix
hung above the bed. He knelt and remained for a long time with his
eyes fixed upon the figure. The words, “Father, forgive them,” came
from his lips as from the lips of a stranger. For two days and for two
nights he had not slept. He sank slowly to the floor and lay still
before the quiet figure on the cross.