Mandibul set off with four men on a scouting expedition to assess the gravity of the situation.
The militias of three provinces, regiments of the line and a regiment of tiger warriors from the Imperial Guard, under the orders of the Mandarin of the Fifth Cardinal Point—a former general well-known for his exploits in the Taiping War91—were prepared to meet the barbarian attack courageously. Their position had been well-chosen; in order to penetrate into the central provinces it would be necessary to make a long tour through the mountains and the terrible Gobi Desert, or pass over their bodies.92
The arrival of the barbarians had been signaled; the Chinese advance positions, having been judged too exposed, had been pulled back toward the main body of the army. The militias on the wings occupied a series of arid small hills; the depths of the gorge and the road itself were guarded by the line-regiment and the tiger warriors.
Sukiu had been abandoned by its population. Our friends found the gates open, only guarded by old pairs of boots suspended from the fortifications. Farandoul explained the custom to his men; in China, whenever a mandarin fled the town entrusted to his care, the population, if it were content with his administration, gave him a new pair of boots and took away his old ones in order to hang them above the main gate in solemn testimony.
Our friends took advantage of the solitude of the town to prepare themselves for their confrontation with the Chinese army by means of a good meal and a nice siesta. The wheelbarrow drivers not wanting to take the risk, the mariners got them drunk, promised them yet another marvelous wage-supplement and finally, to calm their fears, tried to make them proof against bullets and arrows by means of armor-plating, formed by four large shields attached in front, in rear and to the sides. When everything was ready, taking advantage of a fit of bravery on the part of the drivers, they climbed on to the wheelbarrows, hoisted the sails and set off rapidly under the impulsion of a brisk breeze.
Two kilometers from Sukiu, an infernal noise struck the mariners’ ears; it was the Chinese army getting ready for the anticipate attack.
It took more than a quarter of an hour to come within sight of the enemy. On the higher ground, the Chinese militiamen were beating their shields in rage and brandishing their terrible swords. Gongs and drums were resonating like thunder. In the advance positions, the roaring tiger warriors and the heroes of the line were waving images of flamboyant dragons, mounting a terrifying fantasia. Fortunately, the wheelbarrow drivers could scarcely see any of this from behind their armor plating, or their courage might perhaps have failed. The breeze blew; they went forward like lightning; the mariners readied their weapons, hatchets and revolvers.
“Charge!” cried Farandoul, when they were 100 meters from the enemy.
The soldiers of the line, armed with wheel-lock muskets, had been exciting the wicks of their fuses for half an hour—now the moment had come. “Fire!” cried the officers.
The wheels grated, and finally turned; the wicks came down and—bang! bang! bang!—the detonations burst forth…but the wheelbarrows had already passed by and the mariners were engaging with the guard’s tiger warriors.
The Mandarin of the Fifth Cardinal Point was there, urging the tigers to carnage. What a mêlée! Launched forwards with violence, the sail-barrows had ploughed through the fist ranks and were cutting through the regiment at various points. Our friends, standing up on the wheelbarrows, were belabored by the hatchets, sabers, pickaxes and six-pointed spears of the brave tigers. They had only to follow the furrows that Farandoul and Mandibul were tracing through the Chinese ranks. Mandibul’s driver, seized by curved picks, fell into the power of the tigers, but Tournesol was able to gather him up and throw him on to his own barrow, almost unhurt.
The Mandarin of the Fifth Cardinal Point, seeing that things were going badly for the tiger warriors, sounded a rallying-cry and hastened to support of the heroes of the line with fusillades from the flank and the rear. To plant the props in the ground, load, prime and support the arquebuses, to light the wicks, excite them and make the wheels turn was, for the heroes of the line, the affair of a moment—which lasted seven minutes!
“Fire! Fire!” cried the mandarin, waving his swords.
Too late! The wheelbarrows were out of range; only one stray bullet struck the rearmost driver on the shield protecting his back.
The passage was forced! The rearguard of the Chinese army continued to wave its shields and beat its gongs; the heroes of the line sent a few more volleys along the road and the tiger warriors licked their wounds. The Mandarin of the Fifth Cardinal Point, considering that he was, after all, still master of the battlefield, hastened to send a triumphant dispatch to Peking.
V.
The news of the extermination of the barbarians by the Mandarin of the Fifth Cardinal Point having spread throughout China, our friends’ journey was untroubled by any further incidents. They calmly descended the course of the Blue River on the track of the white elephant—which was quite easy to follow, for the pirates, like everyone else, believed that the mariners, exterminated by the tiger warriors, could not trouble them now. The region possessed horses, but as the sail-barrows had proved themselves, they decided to continue their route in that kind of vehicle for as long as the wind did not turn around. They gained ground on the elephant thieves, who were no more than five days ahead of the brave mariners—another five days of fatigue, and the objective would be attained!
“Where are they going?” Farandoul wondered. “To the great temples of Nanking, no doubt, to sell the bonzes the elephant of which they have already heard so much. We must try to catch them up beforehand.”
After a journey of 55 days, still traveling in the sail-barrows, our friends arrived within a few league of Nanking, only a few hours behind the pirates. At the last moment, however, when they only needed one final effort to reach their goal, the wind abruptly veered south-south-west. In less than a quarter of an hour the wheelbarrow-drivers’ accounts were settled and all of our friends, provided with good horses, were able to continue on their way.
Dusk fell. The cavalcade, launched at top speed, ate up the road; the feverish ardor that animated the mariners was communicated to the horses by persuasive spur-thrusts. This breathless ride had been going on for two hours when Farandoul gave voice to a loud cry. Less than 500 meters ahead, a confused mass of men and horses was distinguishable in the first rays of moonlight. The troop appeared to have halted on the bank of the river.
Farandoul signaled to his friends to halt, concealed them in a fold in the terrain and set forth on foot to investigate, only taking the Siamese interpreter with him.
Their absence was brief. The company was indeed that of the pirates. Hidden in the tall grass, they had been able to get close enough to the bandits to overhear their conversations.
Our friends tried in vain to pierce the darkness, in order to pick out among the horses and the tents the elephant for which they had been search for so long. They circled around the clump of trees sheltering the pirates, but in vain. The white elephant was not there.
The conversation of two lanky individuals informed them of the reason for this absence. The bandits had already concluded a deal; the elephant had just been purchased by the bonzes of a great pagoda on the opposite bank of the Blue River, and a junk from the bonzery had come with great ceremony to fetch the sacred animal, while the leader of the pirates eagerly set his hands on the price of the sale. In fact, Farandoul and the interpreter could still see the junk’s large sails a quarter of a league away on the river. Without losing a minute, they returned to the place where the mariners were waiting for them.
Farandoul’s plan was simple. They had to get to the river without being seen, take possession of a few boats, and follow the junk. In the vicinity of Nanking the Blue River is no less than seven or eight kilometers wide. On the two banks, where towns and villages are closely clustered, there are also numerous rich bonzeries. It was for one of these bonzeries, on the right bank, that the junk wi
th the white elephant was bound. They had to find out which one as soon as possible, in order to carry off the sacred animal that very night, without leaving the pirates time to repeat the trick they had pulled off in Kifir.
Three large boats discovered in a little bay accommodated all the mariners. They set off in the direction taken by the junk and soon had the joy of catching sight of it. It was already three-quarters of the way across; they had to make haste.
A superb pagoda flanked by a high 15-story tower rose up on the right bank; that was the objective of the voyage. Suddenly, the mariners saw signals exchanged between the junk and the pagoda. The entire bank appeared to be in joyful celebration; rockets burst in the air, and hundreds of lanterns were bobbing in the distance.
The exhausted mariners finally came ashore not far from the pagoda, just in time to see the white elephant make a processional tour of the buildings, to the sound of music that was as unharmonious and sacred as possible. After pausing at every corner of the bonzery, the elephant was led to the great tower, still with the same ceremony, and carefully locked in.
Then the crowd dispersed and the bonzery gradually fell silent.
The mariners, hidden on a little hill overlooking the bonzery, had not missed a single detail of the scene.
At about 2 a.m., when all the lights had gone out and the darkness seemed to Farandoul to be sufficiently profound, the mariners emerged from their hiding-place one by one and crept with infinite precaution to the wall of the pagoda.
There was a ditch to cross and a high defensive wall to scale; that was soon done. As soon as they had descended into the sacred enclosure the mariners opened a gate to prepare their retreat.
An observer placed at a window in the tower would then have been able to see two long black serpents slithering through the long grass, one to the right and one to the left. The one to the left was Farandoul and his men, creeping towards the tower—but what was the serpent to the right? The men composing it suddenly came to an abrupt halt; they had noticed Farandoul and his sailors.
The latter, tranquilized by the silence of the pagoda, had not seen anything. Having arrived near the door, hidden from all eyes by the shadow of the tower, they came to their feet with a single movement. They had a long piece of wood with them—a beam picked up in the ditch. They lifted it together, holding it like a battering-ram, ready to launch themselves at the door that the bonzes had locked. Breaking down the door would, it is true, wake up the monastery, but once in possession of the elephant, the mariners reckoned on making a quick getaway.
At the sight of these preparations, the men of the second serpent quickly moved backwards and hid themselves in one of the pagoda’s outbuildings.
It was a solemn moment.
“One…two…three!” said Farandoul. One the word three, the beam, swung by 36 arms, struck the door violently. A terrible crack was heard, and the broken door groaned on its hinges.
“One…two…three!”
The beam returned with frightful force, almost staving in one of the panels and tearing away a hinge. A loud rumor was audible in the convent; lanterns were on the move. It was necessary to get the job done quickly.
“Come on!” said Farandoul. “One last strike! One…two…three!”
This time, it seemed as if the shock of an earthquake had just broken the ground. A crack reminiscent of the shearing of a mountain resounded, accompanied by whistling sounds. The entire tower, with its balconies, its bulging roofs, its dragon-formed gutters, its colonettes and its 15 stories, came down on the backs of its invaders and the sacred elephant!
A gigantic heap of debris now covers the ground in the place where the superb tower stood. The bonzes, having recovered from their initial terror, howl lamentations in front of the ruins of what had been glory of their pagoda. The crowd becomes denser; soldiers who have come running try in vain to bring a little order to the chaos.
But how has such a monumental tower been able to crumble under the blows of a wooden beam maneuvered by only 20 men? What is the reason for this inexplicable collapse?
Alas, our unfortunate friends, arriving in the dark, had not been able to reconnoiter the monument they were attacking, or they would have employed another means than brutal effraction to get to the elephant. The 15-story monument, now scattered on the ground as shapeless debris, was none other than the famous Porcelain Tower, the glory of the Canton region, the marvel of China!93
That alone suffices to explain the fury of the Chinese. What a dreadful event, a monumental sacrilege! The Porcelain Tower smashed by barbarians! Lying in little pieces like a million broken plates!
Alas, the authors of this act of involuntary vandalism, our poor friends, are doubtless dead, crushed beneath the wreckage. The white elephant must also have perished!
The Chinese work with a feverish ardor to clear the rubble in order to recover the corpses and to take revenge upon them for the damage.
It was only after 18 hours of continuous effort that the 700 or 800 workers obtained their first result. The body of a mariner and the end of the beam that had served to commit the crime appeared beneath the debris. The mandarin in the blue hat directing the search had the body transported to a shed, where physicians perceived that the man was merely unconscious, with bruises of no great consequence covering his body.
“Put him in chains,” said the mandarin.
Another 16 hours sufficed to finish the work and collect the inert bodies of all our friends. The seamen, the interpreter, Mandibul and Farandoul were brought in succession to the floor of the shed, where doctors in spectacles awaited them. They were all alive! Their unconsciousness was only caused by lack of air and bruises.
When they opened their eyes, it was to see that they were bound by heavy chains and guarded by fearsome-looking tiger warriors.
Meanwhile, the Chinese were still digging in vain, trying to find the body of the white elephant….
“What about…the white elephant?” Mandibul murmured, in a feeble voice.
“I saw it,” Farandoul replied. “It should be safe. Our beam, as it broke through the door, struck it from the rear and launched it into the opposite wall. The tower crumbled…perhaps the elephant went through the wall…before the fall. Perhaps it has saved itself!”
Indeed, the Chinese were beginning to despair of recovering the sacred animal. Farandoul’s inductions were correct. The white elephant, launched by a violent blow from the beam, had gone through the wall like a bullet a mere second before the collapse, while the tower was swaying before falling. Bewildered and furious. it had been about to run straight ahead when the men of the second troop, who were none other than the pirates, abruptly surged forth, seized it as it passed, and fled with it before the arrival of the bonzes.
Meanwhile, the mandarin with the blue hat, Tsi-tsang, after 40 hours of labor, had established the complete disappearance of the white elephant. He gave the order to transport the authors of the crime, under escort, to the prison in Nanking.
Farandoul and the mariners were beginning to recover from their long period of unconsciousness; they were suffering greatly from the many bruises they had sustained, but, in the terrible situation into which they had been thrown, such petty troubles were of no account. The Siamese interpreter had a smattering of the learned language, and had repeated to them several conversations between the mandarin and his officers, which did not bode well.
The officers had been inclined towards an immediate execution on the scene of the crime, but the mandarin had announced the intention to proceed by due legal process—first to exact payment for the damage, if that were possible, and then to regulate the affair with great ceremony.
It is not in terms of the comforts they provide that the prisons of any country in the world usually excel, so you will not be surprised to learn that, on their arrival in Nanking prison, our friends found themselves very badly lodged, very disagreeably treated and so ridiculously nourished that their brains were soon working overtime on plans for e
scape. They had, however, been given the honor of a special building at the back of a courtyard, and the no-less-great honor of a guard of tiger warriors, not to mention other attentions ordered by the mandarin Tsi-tsang, to wit: six kilos of iron on the feet of each man and a first-class cangue—which is to say, an enormous piece of wood provided with a hole for the head—on his shoulders. The mandarin, judging these precautions sufficient, left them at relative liberty; they could walk in the courtyard with their irons, or sleep sitting up with their cangues propped up on a few stones, as they pleased.
It was only after a week of this charmless existence that our friends were brought before the terrible mandarin in the blue hat. Their case, already dark, had taken on an even blacker hue during that week, politics having become mixed up in it. Tsi-Tsang’s enemies at the court in Peking had profited from the disaster of the Porcelain Tower to accuse the mandarin of administrative weakness, and to put the blame on the incompetence of his police—so Tsi-Tsang had decided to exact a dreadful vengeance for the crime in order to silence his detractors, by means of one of those striking tortures that surprise and captivate the imagination.
In spite of a thorough search, the white elephant had not been found; the accused had therefore to answer for “the dreadful demolition of the Porcelain Tower, ornament of the flourishing province of Kiangsu, and the theft by breaking and entering of a sacred animal from a thrice-holy pagoda”—crimes not previously envisaged by the laws of the Celestial Empire.
The mandarin Tsi-Tsang was assisted in his solemn audience by four other mandarins, with yellow and red hats, four officers, and four learned men fulfilling the office of clerks of the court. A guard of tiger warriors kept the populace as far away as possible from the noble judges.
The Adventures of Saturnin Farandoul Page 46