Robbie Taggart

by Michael Phillips

  “Mr. Taggart,” said Wallace, “I have a request to make of you.” His voice was uncharacteristically hesitant, perhaps because he wondered if, after what had occurred with Drew, a request might be out of place. He continued, however, “Tomorrow morning I must go to Hangchow. It will require me to be absent from the mission for two days. Mr. Coombs will remain here, as there are several calls he wishes to make, and some of these may take him some distance from home—”

  “I’ll be happy to act as chaperone to the mission,” put in Robbie almost jovially.

  “That is kind of you, of course,” responded Wallace, “but that has already been taken care of—Ying and one of Chang’s sons have agreed to attend to the mission. I was hoping rather that you would accompany Mr. Coombs.”

  “Me . . . to do what?” replied Robbie, taken by surprise at the request. “I would think that one of your local converts would be better suited to the task.”

  “This is the busiest time of the rice cultivation season, and they cannot be spared from their fields. I think you will find it a gratifying experience.”

  Robbie hesitated, then glanced at the younger missionary. “Is this agreeable to you, Mr. Coombs?” Even as he asked the question, he wondered if this had been the cause of his silent mood lately.

  But Coombs replied firmly, “I would be honored.”

  So it was settled. Of all things Robbie would never have expected to do, he would soon be attending an itinerant preacher on his rounds through the Chinese countryside!

  38

  The Young Missionary

  The old run-down junk was certainly no Sea Tiger.

  It was, in fact, no bigger than the clipper’s long-boat, though it did have a small cabin in the center where the single mast was located with its bamboo sail. Robbie hadn’t realized how much he missed the water until he felt the junk’s deck beneath his feet. He fell to work with a will, familiarizing himself with the simple rigging, making ready the small sail for hoisting, and doing all the other tasks of a shipman’s pride. No matter that this was a lazy little river scarcely 70 feet across that the locals called a stream. To have a deck beneath his feet again felt like coming home after a week in a desert.

  He found himself whistling a merry tune, just like in the old days:

  You jolly sailors list to me,

  I’ve been a fortnight home from sea,

  Which time I’ve rambled night and day,

  To have a lark on the Highway.

  Listen you jovial sailors gay,

  To the rigs of Ratcliffe Highway.

  He thought fleetingly of the Sea Tiger. How grand it had been when she ran “with a bone in her teeth,” her sails swelled and the beams creaking with the strain!

  He sighed, saddened to think of her now lying dead at the bottom of the China Sea. A twinge of anger rose in him at the memory of Pike, who had apparently betrayed her to that fate. He hadn’t thought of the skipper in a long time. He wondered if thoughts of his father’s old wooden-legged friend would continue to plague him, taking from him some of the pleasure of his essential love for the sea. Yet even as the memories came back, he recalled that the days aboard the Tiger had not been all sweet. No, the “old days” extended further back than that—so far, in fact, that he began to wonder if they had really ever existed at all.

  A shout from Coombs, who was standing on the dock, jarred his thoughts back to the present.

  “This is the last of the gear, Mr. Taggart,” said the young man as he hoisted a bundle aboard.

  Well, thought Robbie, this little excursion promises to be about as eventful as a walk across Hyde Park. Coombs’ mood had remained withdrawn; he had said less than a dozen words it seemed since they had met at dawn. It was too bad. Otherwise there might have been promise of, if not an adventure, at least a diversion from the mission.

  Coombs swung aboard, and immediately set about stowing away the gear. He paid Robbie little attention. Robbie stood with his foot propped up on the thwart of the junk, his arms folded, able to take an amused look at the situation. He had seldom encountered such a serious creature as this young man was turning out to be. His bearing could not have been more in contrast with Wallace’s self-assured intensity. Coombs seemed more to harbor the intensity of a boy trying very hard to please, so hard that no room was left in his life for anything else.

  For Coombs’ part, he did indeed feel that he had a great deal to prove with this sojourn in China, and thus it was little surprise that he tried so hard to please and felt so frustrated from being kept, as he thought, out of the decision-making process. From an affluent Birmingham banking family, his parents were perplexed at his announcement at the age of fifteen that he had given his life to Christ. They hardly knew what the words meant, but it most certainly sounded like the sort of thing one should keep quiet about. They convinced themselves that the best course of action was to ignore his burst of religious fervor, certain the “spell” would soon pass. What was their mortification when, six months later, he further announced that he had been “called” to become a missionary to China.

  Mr. and Mrs. Coombs had scheduled an examination by the family physician, and even contemplated locking their son in his room until the whole business was forgotten. His father had always entertained hopes of his athletically built son entering Cambridge and distinguishing himself on the rugby field, and later doing the same thing in his own bank, or perhaps in a law practice. But now the fool lad wanted to throw his life away. It was unthinkable! But Thomas was an only child, and his parents could not long rave against him. They did, however, make it clear that China was no place for a gentleman, which he would find out on his own soon enough, and come home with his tail between his legs. How much better, they reasoned, not to have to learn the hard way.

  But young Coombs had been determined to follow what he perceived as the Lord’s leading, since the moment it had come to him at a service in which Dr. Isaiah Wallace, visiting from China, was the main speaker. His call was a true one, and no less so because of Wallace’s moving presentation. Coombs became determined to serve with the doctor, and to distinguish himself, as his father would have said—whether pleasing God, or validating his own existence in the eyes of his parents. At his tender age who could have told for certain?

  Now he had been in China a mere six months, and the twenty-one-year-old missionary was working hard, perhaps to accomplish both goals. Not only did he have to prove himself to his parents, but he also had to make his hero and mentor, Isaiah Wallace, proud of him. The five years of missionary preparation, including an intensive course in Chinese, had not come easy for Thomas. His bent was indeed more toward the athletic than the scholarly, but at the same time he was determined to serve his God in the capacity to which he had been called, no matter what it took.

  And it seemed he was now required to drag this sailor along with him as some kind of bodyguard! He was a grown man; how could he serve God if he were continually treated like a child? Yet nagging even more at Thomas’s mind was the fear that Dr. Wallace seemed to have little faith in him, and might never feel confident to give him the chance he deserved. Six months seemed to young Thomas Coombs as an eternity, plenty of time to have become self-sufficient in his particular sphere of mission work. On occasion Wallace had remarked that he was coming along fine, but apparently the words held different connotations to each man.

  When the doctor had told him of his plans to go to Hangchow, Coombs had exultantly thought that at last this would be his moment to prove himself on his own. But then almost on the heels of the announcement came the doctor’s declaration that the trip upriver would have to be cancelled in favor of the business in Hangchow. Coombs had argued fervently, at least to the extent he dared with the great man, and did succeed in convincing him that the commitments upriver would be broken only at a severe cost. “We have shaken off the watchdogs that have been oppressing us,” argued Coombs. “We cannot put this tour off any longer without seriously impairing our ministry.” Then th
e notion of Mr. Taggart’s involvement had come up.

  “But he knows less than I of the country or the language!” argued Coombs. “What possible assistance can he provide?”

  “He can handle the junk,” returned Wallace.

  Coombs actually thought he was trying to be amusing.

  “I can manage the boat well enough,” he said.

  “‘Pride goeth before a fall,’ Thomas,” admonished the doctor.

  “Sir, I don’t mean to be prideful, but I long for more responsibility. I feel that with God’s help I can handle it.”

  “In time, Thomas, I have no doubt that you will,” answered the doctor, “but you must have patience. The ways of God take time, not the least of which is our inward preparation for His work in and through us. You must trust the schedule I have set for you.”

  “Then let me hire a villager,” pleaded Coombs. It was especially degrading to be told that Taggart had to accompany him, for it was obvious that his only function was to act as a nursemaid.

  “I believe Taggart will be more suitable,” replied Wallace; then, rubbing his chin thoughtfully, he added, “and I have other reasons for wanting Mr. Taggart to go along with you.”

  “May I inquire as to what those reasons might be?” asked Coombs, not a little timorously.

  “For his own sake, Thomas. I believe this opportunity has been ordained by our Lord, for I do not think Mr. Taggart would agree to join us on one of our expeditions of ministry unless he was needed. And I think he will gain a great deal from seeing the gospel spread in this manner. So, Thomas, look upon this as a mutually beneficial excursion. The Chinese are not our only mission field, you know. God sent Mr. Taggart to us for a purpose. And we must be prayerfully faithful to sharing the truths of God with him as well.”

  39

  Through the Waterways

  Coombs had resigned himself to the doctor’s orders and had tried to take a positive attitude, but thus far had been too stubborn to offer much friendship in Robbie’s direction. He now picked up the last bundle on deck to stow it in the cabin. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Robbie watching him. Suddenly he felt both guilty and foolish for his actions and his self-centered attitude. He was supposed to be a witness for Christ to this man who was, to all appearances, unsaved. Yet what kind of an impression must he be making?

  Coming back out of the cabin, he cleared his throat as if that were his personal signal to take a new approach to the day.

  “I believe we’re ready to cast off, Mr. Taggart,” he said. “Are you willing to handle the vessel?”

  Robbie smiled. This was just what he had been waiting for. Quickly he loosed the rope from the dock pilings and pushed off into the current. A gentle southeast breeze helped guide them up Chai-chiang, the Little Stream, for some distance. Eventually they would meet one of the many canals that crisscrossed the region, and from there they would make their way to one of the tributaries of the Yangtze.

  Once the yard was hauled to get the best from the breeze, Robbie stretched himself out and, with one hand on the tiller, lay back to enjoy himself. After all, the scenery was new and marvelous, and with the pagoda roofs and straw-hatted Orientals along the shore, he could easily imagine that he had escaped to another world—as indeed he had. He tried to forget the mission and imagine that all he needed to do was think about having a good time, in a world where his only care was deciding which tune to sing next. He might even be able to forget the glum missionary sitting opposite him.

  Actually, Coombs was gradually doing much better. At that moment he was searching in his mind for some pleasant conversation to pursue with his new companion, even if he had to rely on facts he had learned from a textbook to make a beginning.

  “You will soon see the Grand Canal,” he finally said, his tone congenial. “It was built in 608, during the Sui Dynasty.”

  “Why did they build it?” asked Robbie.

  “Contemporaries of the emperor, Yang-ti, accused him of merely trying to indulge his own comfort so he could travel more easily from the northern capital at Peking to the southern in Hangchow. Not to mention for the purpose of bleeding off southern tax grain to feed the imperial capital and army.”

  “I should think it would have been a rather useful bit of architecture,” commented Robbie, glad for the apparent improvement in the missionary’s disposition.

  “Well,” answered Coombs, “most of his critics were Confucian scholars, and there is perhaps nothing more alien to the Confucian way than progress. We still encounter that mind-set. But I suppose they had a point, when you compare the canal’s usefulness with its cost. It was all done by forced labor. Hundreds of thousands of workers were brought in—at one point there were a million laborers. Even women were conscripted when the number of men fell short. But despite the critics of the time, the canal does remain one of the primary transportation and communication routes in the country.”

  “You seem to know a lot about this country,” said Robbie. “You speak the language quite well, too, though I didn’t think you had been here that long.”

  “I hardly do the language justice,” answered Coombs, “and half the time it seems I unknowingly insult a native because I have used the wrong intonation. When I first arrived, I thought my four years of study had been for nothing.”

  “Four years! Why, you must have been a boy when you started.”

  “I was fifteen when I received God’s call to come to China.”

  “Hmm,” mused Robbie. “That was the age when I struck out on my own.”

  “That’s when you went to sea?”

  “No, I didn’t discover the sea until I was eighteen—late in life. Most of the blokes my age had already been at sea half their lives. It’s not that unusual to find boys of ten or twelve aboard ship.”

  “You must have had an exciting life.”

  Robbie scratched his head thoughtfully, as a rather novel idea occurred to him. “Your own life hasn’t been dull either, I’ll warrant,” he said, then paused.

  Since he had first encountered these folk at the mission, he had thought of them only as religious people—conservative and uninteresting for the most part. Now it suddenly dawned on him that perhaps they were different than the characters of his mental stereotype. The spirit of adventure must run high in persons like these who were willing to risk everything, even their lives, for a cause in which they believed in a far-off land—as high as for any sailor. They had broken away from the normal patterns and steered their own personal course for exotic lands, fraught with dangers and uncertainty and sacrifice. All at once Robbie looked across to Thomas Coombs in a new light. He too was an adventurer!

  “And what does your family think about your chosen profession?” he asked at length.

  Coombs laughed. It was one of the more abandoned laughs Robbie had yet heard from the serious young man. “They think I’ve gone absolutely insane!” he replied. “Though I think it is more the missionary part that troubles them than me being an adventurer in China. Had I come here as a diplomat or a merchant, I’m sure they would have been quite proud.”

  “They don’t follow your beliefs?”

  “It is difficult to judge one’s own parents,” answered Coombs, knitting his brow together as he considered how best to answer the question. “I suppose one might say that they believe similarly, but with a different intensity. They think I have gotten quite carried away. They see belief as something to hold in your head, so to speak, but not to ever do anything about. But perhaps that is your opinion also. That seems to rather be the norm in today’s world.”

  The breeze had been gradually shifting to the port, and as Coombs posed his query, Robbie had to jump up and reset the yard. While he hauled at the lines he thought about the young man’s words. He had indeed thought that very thing on a number of occasions. He wondered if the present occasion called upon him to be so honest with his companion, notwithstanding the growing sense of camaraderie that seemed to be developing between the two who were s
uch strangers to one another only an hour before. But why not be open and honest, thought Robbie to himself? Such a practice had never failed him before.

  “As a matter of fact,” said Robbie, settling back into his place by the tiller as if there had been no interruption to their conversation, “I have thought that. Though perhaps not in strictly the same sense. I suppose people who try to push their religion off onto others rub me the wrong way.”

  “We are not pushing anything, Mr. Taggart,” replied Coombs. “We are merely following the Great Commission issued by our Lord Jesus Christ himself, to go into all the world and preach the gospel. The response of another—any man or woman: Chinese or Englishman, banker or sailor, rich or poor—is something which rests entirely with that man in his own heart. We are merely proclaimers, not arm-twisters. The choice whether to follow Jesus in belief rests with each individual alone.”

  “But you must admit that many in your position do try to stuff it down anyone’s throat who’ll listen,” said Robbie, a bit taken aback by Coombs’s sudden burst of enthusiasm.

  “I suppose you’re right. And if you didn’t know me and my own motives, you might accuse me of the same thing,” replied Coombs. “But you see, Mr. Taggart, I have found Life! I have discovered something greater than my mother and father or anyone else was able to give me. What kind of man would I be if I kept the way to that Life to myself?”

  “I never thought of it like that,” said Robbie. He could see how this young man’s parents might have questioned his sanity. And yet at this very moment, there was something very, very sane in his countenance, especially in his eyes. They were neither wild nor crazed. They were sincere and earnest, to the point of being compelling. Robbie said nothing, but looked away, pretending to be occupied with the tiller.

  The conversation did not again approach that probing theme. A somewhat tricky stretch of water absorbed their attention for a time, and after that the talk focused on more mundane topics. By midday they had traveled in excess of fifteen miles upon various waterways. On and off they had met with much traffic and activity on their course, but now they merged with a quieter, backwater stream where a village soon came into view. Coombs announced that they should make for the stone moorings and make their craft fast there. While Robbie maneuvered the junk to the dock, Coombs began filling two rucksacks with supplies—mainly books, tracts, and food.