He directed his hard stare at the Commander, British Forces, and the Chief Inspector of Police.
“General, the troops’ll go in, if necessary. Chief Inspector, the police’ll maintain civil order and back up the troops.”
“Further instructions, Sir?” asked the aide-de-camp.
“I want detailed recommendations from all departments. Medical Department to survey emergency facilities. Marine Department to report on capacity to move civilians, if necessary. Agriculture and Fisheries to assess food supplies. Wheatley, Sekloong, Way, and Hotung, we may need additional funds. And, of course, our commerce must be maintained.”
Sir Frederick Lugard then brusquely restated his strategy: “That’s it, then. Turn ’em out and burn ’em down!”
June 10, 1909–September 11, 1909
Joss-sticks smoldered in red-and-gold shrines before the shop-houses whose steplike roofs marked Bonham Road’s steep ascent. The air was behazed over ramshackle stalls that purveyed goods ranging from black-cloth tunics and thick-soled cloth shoes through rice, meat, and vegetables to earthenware cooking pots and credible copies of three-hundred-year-old vases manufactured two weeks earlier. The rising tendrils of smoke bore the musky scent of incense Heavenward. Behind the padlocked gates of their mansions on neighboring Seymour Road, the wealthy burned groves of votive candles and joss-sticks in enamel altar furniture. The poor offered incense and prayers to garish lithographs of the God of Plague.
All Hong Kong was terrified by the sudden onset of the Forty-eight-Hour Disease, but the crowded Western District above the Canton Steamer Wharf swirled in mass panic. Rich or poor, almost every household had already been visited by the God of Plague, and death itself had already stricken every fourth family. Men, women, and children scurried through the streets as frantic as ants threatened by a brush fire, though less rational than those insects. Elderly women hobbling on bound feet to the illusory shelter of overcrowded tenements collided with coolies fleeing toward the harbor with all their possessions tied up in cloth bundles. Old gentlemen gathered together as if their pooled wisdom could turn aside the scourge of Heaven, but the impromptu parliaments disintegrated as abruptly as they assembled. Conferring gravely one moment, the groups of elders were splintered by terror the next.
A procession of Buddhist monks in yellow vestments trudged through the swirling mass. Eyes downcast, the shaven-headed votaries chanted monotonous sutras in corrupt Sanskrit none understood. A file of gray-robed Taoist priests debouched from an alley, their clashing cymbals, tinkling bells, and wooden clappers further inflaming the throng’s terror. Pleading for mercy to the same vengeful Heaven, the rival holy men ignored each other.
Long hair matted, eyes glowing in his black-grimed face, an emaciated beggar capered down the cobblestone road. His teeth flashed in a tigerish grin, and his tattered, filth-encrusted cloak swirled to the rhythm of his wild jig. The throng initially divided before the solitary dancer. But first two, then five, and soon tens followed the madman, and hundreds of respectable artistans were dancing in hectic gaiety.
Mary Sekloong shuddered at the manic quadrille and clutched the arm of her brother-in-law who was her lover. His lips close to her ear, Harry Sekloong shouted: “Whither thou goest—but this is no place for you.”
“And for you, Harry? I couldn’t let you come alone.”
Mary sensed a pattern in the crowd’s apparently aimless milling. Some were retreating behind the walls of dwellings that had for years sheltered them from typhoons, marauders, and tax collectors. Though their homes harbored mortal peril, they instinctively sought those familiar refuges from a hostile world. Laden with their portable possessions, others were pressing downhill toward the docks. The scheduled steamers were still departing for Canton one hundred and five miles away, their superstructures black with terrified human beings. Gold and silver coins tarnished by years of hoarding were pressed on the captains of trading-junks that did not cast off until their heavy-laden decks were only inches above the choppy green water.
Fleeing was as senseless as retreating behind walls, since Canton, the metropolis of South China, was as severely afflicted as Hong Kong. Dr. George Parker suspected that the pestilence had been introduced into the Colony by rats leaving the lighters that carried rice from Canton. Nonetheless, the Chinese fled unthinking to the Motherland.
The throngs drew aside from six stocky British infantrymen in scarlet tunics, who tramped up the steep street. Men whispered that the “red-backed foreign devils” carried the Forty-eight-Hour Death in their cartridge pouches. Mothers hid their infants under their jackets. They knew that foreign doctors would scoop out their babies’ eyes to make magical potions that would protect the “western people” from the God of Plague. Some men warned that the hairy barbarian warriors had come to loot the few treasures of the oppressed Chinese and to snatch away Chinese corpses to manufacture other potions.
The infantrymen’s scarlet tunics glowed like gouts of blood among the drably attired Chinese. An officious subaltern had ordered his men into parade uniform to render them more imposing, but had actually succeeded in rendering them more frightening. Mary saw with relief that the soldiers’ Lee-Enfield rifles were slung. Some officer had been fore-sighted enough to prohibit their carrying their weapons at the menacing port-arms. But the soldiers feared the Chinese as much as they feared the plague or the Chinese feared them. Pervasive fear made the atmosphere explosive, despite the heavy, damp heat.
Two infantrymen poked their rifles into open rice sacks, which spilled their granular white contents onto the pavement before a clapboard stall. Mary shuddered, and her fingernails dug into Harry’s arm. Six sleek brown rats as large as rabbits scampered from the open stall. Their long whiskers were cocked arrogantly, and their obscenely hairless tails trailed on the grime-encrusted cobblestones. A single shot fired at the rats shocked the panicky throng into frozen immobility. A mustached corporal struck up the smoking rifle with an oath. The two Sekloongs watched in dismay as the corporal methodically struck eight Bryant and May matches and tossed them into the stall. Ignoring the angry owner’s protests, a private prodded the cursing man with his rifle.
Orange flames from the dry boards shot fifteen feet into the still air, and a fusillade reverberated as successive segments of the bamboo poles supporting the flimsy structure exploded. Blue kerosene flames soared high, and greasy smoke settled upon the throng.
The soldiers set eight stalls afire, and streams of rats poured into the street. Women shrieked as the crowd battled in frenzy to draw clear of the rats. Smoke-stung eyes streamed tears, and the bright afternoon sun was blotted out by gray smoke-clouds. Bonham Road was transformed into a Brueghel scene: terror, fire, rats, and smoke maddened the keening throng.
Huddled in a doorway, Mary tasted the copper flavor of terror.
“But the rats …” she exclaimed. “They’re escaping.”
“Can’t shoot them,” Harry answered heavily. “Can’t shoot them without hitting the people.”
Urchins wielding poles and clubs darted into the gray-brown mass of rats that flowed like a living river toward the harbor. The rats squealed in agony, and the cobblestones were littered with mangled carcasses, bright-red blood and yellow-green guts spilling from matted fur. Some injured rats dragged themselves forward, while others tore at their own wounds. But the stream flowed on relentlessly. The rats were themselves too terrified to stand and rend their maimed fellows.
“Let’s go, Mary,” Harry urged. “Nothing we can do here.”
“Hey, Missus, Mister,” a ruddy-faced sergeant demanded. “You speak the lingo? I’m ordered into the big houses. And they’re locked tight as drums.”
“What’re you looking for?” Harry asked.
“Damned if I know, Sah,” the sergeant answered. “Sick ’uns, I suppose, and rats, they say. Don’t need no more rats. Never saw so many rats in all my born days.”
A sallow boy with a pinched face sidled up to Harry and tugged at his sleeve.
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“Oi, Sin-sang, lay-ah, lay-ah. Wang Dai-yen uh-kay yau ho-daw bing-yen,” he whined. “Say, Mister, come along, come along. Lots of sick people in Big Man Wang’s house.”
“How do you know, son?” Harry asked.
“I work for Big Man Wang. For ten cents and a bowl of cold rice a day. But eighteen hours everyday: ‘Ah Dzai do this, fetch that, carry this.’ Big Man Wang’s a monster. He ran away to Canton, and Tai-tai’s dying. He doesn’t hold with doctors. They cost too much.”
“What’s all the jabber, Mister?” the sergeant demanded.
“The lad says he knows a house with many sick and dying,” Harry responded. “His master wouldn’t have a doctor in.”
“Well, that’s my orders. Tell him to show us where, Sah.”
The urchin led them down a lane so narrow they were forced to walk two abreast while their shoulders brushed the high brick walls on either side. He stopped before wrought-iron gates with two Chinese characters scrolled above them: “Wang Lü—Wang Residence.” Corrugated-iron sheets behind the grillwork guarded the compound’s privacy, and festoons of heavy chain clasped by three ponderous padlocks secured the gates. A bellrope dangled on the brick wall.
Only distant tolling responded to the sergeant’s repeated tugging. The gates remained blank and unmoving. At the sergeant’s nod, two privates attacked the gates with rifle butts. The wrought-iron buckled, but did not break.
“Stand back,” the sergeant ordered, unslinging his rifle.
Holding the muzzle two inches from a padlock three times the size of a fist, he fired. The shots reverberated in the narrow brick-walled alley, and acrid cordite mingled with the kerosene-saturated smoke. After three shots the padlock disintegrated in a shower of bright metal.
“O’Hara,” the sergeant said, mopping his sweaty face. “Next one’s yours.”
A snub-nosed private wearing a look of perpetual good humor stepped forward. He fired five shots before the remaining padlocks fell apart, allowing the soldiers to unravel the tangled chains. The gates swung open under the repeated blows of rifle butts, but no sound within responded to the din without.
Inside the twisted gates, an ornamental pool surrounded by bright porcelain flower-pots dominated a shaded courtyard. Seven giant goldfish floated, white bellies upward, on the cloudy surface. Beyond, tile-roofed pavilions ascended a terraced hillside, which was bright with azaleas in flower.
“Don’t go in.” Harry grasped Mary’s arm. “It’s no place for you.”
“Perhaps I can help,” she insisted. “The boy said there were women inside.”
Harry followed her into the antechamber of the mansion. The conventional furnishings were typical of a wealthy merchant’s reception hall: a blackwood table inlaid with mother-of-pearl patterns, chairs with painted porcelain plaques set into their high backs, hanging scrolls with black-brushed couplets extolling familial solidarity and filial piety.
A young man in a silk long-gown sprawled across the table, sightless eyes glaring in his blue-tinged face. A puddle of bilious yellow-green matter on the tiled floor swarmed with iridescent blow-flies. The air was heavy with a sickly-sweet stench compounded of vomit, feces, urine, rotting rice, and the feral reek of rats.
Mary retched, but followed the soldiers despite Harry’s restraining hand. The phlegmatic riflemen strode through the maze of rooms and courtyards in awed silence. The mansion would normally have resounded with the cacophony of Cantonese jests and quarrels, but the only sound was the high-pitched bark of a prize Pekinese. The dog’s golden-brown hair swept the filth-splattered floor. His bright eyes and nervous movements showed vigorous health. O’Hara stopped to pat the Pekinese. The dog snapped, and O’Hara snatched his hand away with an oath. His heavy boot lashed at the small animal. Mary stifled a protest, struck by the horror of the dog’s angry defense of his blasted household.
The intruders penetrated to the innermost courtyard after five minutes. The women’s quarters were protected by a round moon-gate, its massive wooden doors studded with brass nailheads. The wooden beam that barred the doors lay on the ground, and the doors stood ajar.
A wrinkled crone in black trousers and white tunic hobbled into the courtyard. She was almost bald; the gray hair above the intelligent walnut face had been pulled back into a tight knot for more than half a century.
“Tai-tai, ngo ho …” she said in Cantonese, oblivious to Mary’s un-Chinese features. “Madam, I am so glad someone has come. The master fled to Canton three days ago, taking the servants, the children, and his concubines. My mistress, the chief wife, lies ill within, and I dared not go out to seek help. I am Ah Ying. I have been her amah since she was an infant.”
A slender Chinese woman in her early forties lay on a high black-wood bed in the dark-curtained chamber. Her pale skin was taut over her high cheekbones, and her eyes glittered with fever. Ah Ying had tended her mistress lovingly, though she, too, could have fled. The light coverlet was freshly washed, and a damp cloth lay on the lady’s forehead. She gazed at them blankly, and a delirious gabble welled from her cracked lips.
“Get her out to hospital.” The sergeant’s voice was low in the presence of imminent death. “That’s my orders. Then the medical johnnies can decide. Fumigate the place or burn it.”
Surprisingly gentle, he tucked the coverlet around the wasted figure. Ah Ying sprang at him, protesting fiercely.
“Say the lady’ll get good care.”
Harry added his own hollow assurances that the foreign doctors would cure the mistress Ah Ying had possessively served all her life. The maidservant hobbled about the bedchamber packing toilet articles and garments into a small red-leather case.
Mary glanced around the shaded bedchamber, unable to look upon either the doomed lady or the old amah’s wracking grief. She stiffened in shock, and her legs trembled. A still figure in white tunic and black trousers lay curled on the floor in the far corner. The plump, dimpled hands showed that the girl had died young. Three sleek rats rooted in the raw, red flesh that had been her face. A gray film veiled Mary’s eyes, and her head whirled. She felt Harry’s arms around her.
A somber procession wound through the narrow alley. The sergeant carried Ah Ying’s mistress, and the weeping amah soothed her lady with soft endearments. The privates were silent, and their feet dragged. Harry supported Mary, though she protested that she could walk by herself. Moving as slowly as a funeral cortege, they returned to Bonham Road.
The street was a kaleidoscope of violent motion and deafening uproar. Scarlet knots of soldiers wanly backed by khaki-clad Chinese policemen in white sun-helmets fended off a screaming crowd, which swung bamboo poles and hurled filthy ordure. A brick struck a young lieutenant on the temple, and he fell to the cobblestones. His angry sergeant ordered his men to load and aim. A captain countermanded the order just as the rifles were leveled. The scattered scarlet figures slowly drew together, clearing a way through the hysterical mob with rifle butts.
The half-company, fifty-three strong, retreated down Wing Lock Street toward broad Des Voeux Road. Cobblestones, pots, filth, and shouted imprecations pursued them.
“Murderers. Mother-rapers. Red-coat foreign devils. Whore’s spawn. Thieves and killers. Bring black death and steal our bodies. Turtle-egg bastards who steal our women. Rape your mothers.”
Dr. Moncriefe ordered Mary to bed within the security of Sekloong Manor on the pest-free Peak. When she protested that she had merely felt giddy, he cut her off acerbically.
“’Twas no ladylike swoon, young woman,” he said. “You fainted dead away—and with good reason too. That was a daft thing to do in your state. I’ve no time to waste with you. There are dying people out there. You’ll stay in bed and not trouble me.”
Lassitude overcame Mary. Her objections were half-hearted, as was her insistence upon returning to the offices of J. Sekloong and Sons, which had become the center of relief activities. She felt she must help the victims, but she was revolted by the misery concentrated in the foo
thills and narrow plains 1,500 feet below.
She could understand the mindless anger of the bewildered, ignorant crowd at the soldiers sent to succor them. She knew why the superstitious Chinese had stoned the “red-backed foreign devils,” whom they believed spread the plague and abducted the sick. But the enraged, blood-engorged faces, their open mouths shouting obscenities, alternated in her dreams with the macabre tableau in the bedchamber of the Wang mansion. Revulsion overcame reason, and she despaired of such a wilfully perverse people. She even shrank from the smiling solicitude of her own amahs. Only the fierce tenderness of Ah Sam could ameliorate her revulsion from all Chinese, and she regarded even Ah Sam with occasional suspicion.
By late June, Mary began to move around the Small House, but she tired easily and was glad to return to her bed. Her will was so enfeebled that she hardly protested when Sir Jonathan decreed that her children must retreat with Lady Lucinda to plague-free Shanghai.
“You’d go too,” he said. “But Moncriefe won’t hear of your being moved. Damned if I know what’s the matter with a healthy young girl like you. He mumbles about shocks to the nervous system.”
“I’ll be back in the office in a week,” Mary insisted with a brief flash of spirit.
“We’ll see,” Sir Jonathan placated her. “But I want you to stay out of this. It’s becoming very unpleasant.”
To her own surprise, she made good her promise. By the first week of July, she was again traveling by Peak Tram to the dingy offices in St. George’s Building. Dr. Moncriefe had reluctantly assented.
“She’ll do herself more harm fretting at home,” he had conceded. “She can go back if she doesn’t overdo it.”
The pestilence raged unabated. During one tragic twenty-four-hour period, 168 corpses were counted. On “normal” days, the death carts collected fifty to sixty corpses. Mary was appalled by the devastation that had occurred during her own illness. It was no exaggeration, but a simple statement of fact: Hong Kong was dying, the pulse of the civic organism slowing to a weak tremor intermittently convulsed by feverish spasms.
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