The Black-Bearded Barbarian by Mary Esther Miller MacGregor (latest books to read .TXT) 📕

It was a wonderful wedding-journey and it brought a double blessing wherever the two went. Their experiences were not all pleasant. One day they traveled over a sand plain so hot that Mackay’s feet were blistered. Another time they were drenched with rain. One afternoon there came up a terrific wind storm. It blew Mrs. Mackay’s sedan-chair over and sent her and the carriers flying into the mud by the roadside. At another place they all barely escaped drowning when crossing a stream. But the brave young pair went through it all dauntlessly. The wife had caught something of her husband’s great spirit of sacrifice, and he was always the man on fire, utterly forgetful of self.

For two years they worked happily together and at last a great day came to Kai-Bok-su. He had been nearly eight years in Formosa. It was time he came home, the Church in Canada said, for a little rest and to tell the people at home something of his great work.

And so he and his Formosan wife said good-by, amid tears and regrets on all sides, and leaving Mr. Junor in charge with A Hoa to help, they set sail for Canada. It was just a little over seven years since he had settled in that little hut by the river, despised and hated by every one about him; and now he left behind him twenty chapels, each with a native preacher over it, and hundreds of warm friends scattered over all north Formosa.

He was not quite the same Mackay who had stood on the deck of the America seven years before. His eyes were as bright and daring as ever and his alert figure as full of energy, but his face showed that his life had been a hard one. And no wonder, for he had endured every kind of hardship and privation in those seven years. He had been mobbed times without number. He had faced death often, and day and night since his first year on the island his footsteps had been dogged by the torturing malaria.

But he was still the great, brave Mackay and his home-coming was like the return of a hero from battle. He went through Canada preaching in the churches, and his words were like a call to arms. He swept over the country like one of his own Formosan winds, carrying all before him. Wherever he preached hearts were touched by his thrilling tales, and purses opened to help in his work. Queen’s University made him a Doctor of Divinity; Mrs.

Mackay, a lady of Detroit, gave him money enough to build a hospital; and his home county, Oxford, presented him with $6,215

with which to build a college.

He visited his old home and had many long talks of his childhood days with his loved ones. And he was reminded of the big stone in the pasture-field which he was so determined to break. And he thanked his heavenly Father for allowing him to break the great rock of heathenism in north Formosa.

He returned to his mission work more on fire than ever. If he had been received with acclaim in his native land, his Formosan friends’ welcome was not less warm. Crowds of converts, all his students who were not too far inland, and among them, Mr. Junor, his face all smiles, were thronging the dock, many of them weeping for joy. It was as if a long-absent father had come back to his children.

The work went forward now by leaps and bounds. Mackay’s first thought, after a hurried visit to the chapels and their congregations, was to see that the hospital and college were built.

All day long the sound of the builders could be heard up on the bluff near the missionaries’ houses, and in a wonderfully short time there arose two beautiful, stately buildings. Mackay hospital they called one, not for Kai Bok-su—he did not like things named for him—but in memory of the husband of the kind lady who had furnished the money for it. The school for training young men in the ministry was called Oxford College, in honor of the county whose people had made it possible.

Oxford College stood just overlooking the Tamsui river, two hundred feet above its waters. The building was 116 feet long and 67 feet wide, and was built of small red bricks brought from across the Formosa Channel. A wide, airy hall ran down the middle of the building, and was used as a lecture-room. On either side were rooms capable of accommodating fifty students and apartments for two teachers and their families. There were, besides, two smaller lecture-rooms, a museum filled with treasures collected from all over Formosa by Dr. Mackay and his students, a library, a bathroom, and a kitchen.

The grounds about the college and hospital were very beautiful.

Nature had given one of the finest situations to be found about Tamsui, and Kai Bok-su did the rest. The climate helped him, for it was no great task to have a luxurious garden in north Formosa.

So, in a few years there were magnificent trees and hedges, and always glorious flower beds abloom all the time around the missionary premises.

But all this was not accomplished without great toil, and Kai Bok-su appeared never to rest in those building days. It seemed impossible that one man should work so hard, he was in Tamsui superintending the hospital building to-day, and away off miles in the country preaching to-morrow. He never seemed to get time to eat, and he certainly slept less than his allotted four hours.

A great disappointment was pending, however, and one he saw coming nearer every day. The trying Formosan climate was proving too much for his young assistant, and one sad day he stood on the dock and saw Mr. Junor, pale and weak and broken in health, sail away back to Canada.

But there was always a brave soldier waiting to step into the breach, and the next year Kai Bok-su had the joy of welcoming two new helpers, when the Rev. Mr. Jamieson and his wife came out from Canada and settled in the empty house on the bluff. Yes, and in time there came to his own house other helpers—very little and helpless at first they were—but they soon made the house ring with happy noise and filled the hearts of their parents with joy.

There were two ladies now to lead in the work for girls and women. Their sisters in Canada came to their help too. The young men had a school in Formosa, and why should there not be a school for women and girls? they asked. And so the Women’s Foreign Missionary Society of Canada sent to Dr. Mackay money to build one. It took only two months to erect it. It stood just a few rods from Oxford College, and was a fine, airy building. Here a native preacher and his wife took up their abode and with the help of Mrs. Mackay and two other native Christian women they strove to teach the girls of north Formosa how to make beautiful Christian homes.

And now to the two missionaries every prospect seemed bright. The college, the girls’ school, the hospital, were all in splendid working order. Mr. and Mrs. Jamieson were giving their best assistance. A Hoa and the other native pastors were working faithfully. God’s blessing seemed to be showering down upon the work and on every side were signs of growth. And then, right from this shining sky, there fell a storm of such fierceness that it threatened to wipe out completely the whole north Formosan mission.

CHAPTER XI. UNEXPECTED BOMBARDMENT

An enemy’s battle-ships off the coast of Formosa! During all the spring rumors of trouble had been coming across the channel from the mainland. France* and China had been quarreling over a boundary-line in Tongking. The affair had been settled but not in a way that pleased France. So, without even waiting to declare war, she sent a fleet to the China Sea and bombarded some of her enemy’s ports. Formosa, of course, came in for her share of the trouble, and it was early in the summer that the French battle-ships appeared. They hove in sight, sailing down the Formosa Channel or Strait one hot day, and instantly all Formosa was in an uproar of alarm and rage. The rage was greater than the alarm, for China cordially despised all peoples beyond her own border, and felt that the barbarians would probably be too feeble to do them any harm. But that the barbarians should dare to approach their coast with a war-vessel! That was a terrible insult, and the fierce indignation of the people knew no bounds.

Their rage broke out against all foreigners. They did not distinguish between the missionary from British soil and the French soldiers on their enemy’s vessels. They were all barbarians alike, the Chinese declared, and as such were the deadly foe of China. This Kai Bok-su was in league with the French, and the native Christians all over Formosa were in league with him, and all deserved death!

*War in 1844.

So hard days came for the Christians of north Formosa. Wherever there was a house containing converts, there was riot and disorder. For bands of enraged heathen, armed with knives and swords, would parade the streets about them and threaten all with a violent death the moment the French fired a shot.

In some places near the coast the Christian people dared not leave their houses, and whenever they sent out their children to buy food, often a heathen neighbor would catch them, brandish knives over the terrified little ones’ heads and declare they would all be cut to pieces when the barbarian ships came into port.

Every hour of the day and often in the night, letters came from all parts of the country to Dr. Mackay. They were brought by runners who came at great peril of their lives, and were sent by the poor Christians. Each letter told the same tale; the lives and property of all the converts were in grave danger if the enemy did not leave. And they all asked Kai Bok-su to do something to help them.

Now Kai Bok-su was a man with great power and influence both in Formosa and in his far-off Canada, but he had no means of bringing that power to bear on the French. And indeed his own life was in as great danger as any one’s.

He wrote to the Christians comforting them and enthusing them with his own spirit. He bade them all be brave, and no matter what came, danger or torture or death itself, they must be true to Jesus Christ. He went about his work in the college or hospital just as usual, though he knew that any day the angry mob from the town below might come raging up to destroy and kill.

The French had entered Kelung harbor and the danger was growing more serious every day when Mackay found it necessary to go to Palm Island, a pretty islet in the mouth of the Kelung river. It was almost courting death to go, but he had been sent for, and he went. He found the place right under the French guns and in the midst of raging Chinese. Some of the faithful students were there, and they were overcome with joy and hope at the sight of him. He gathered them about him in a mission house for prayer and a word of encouragement. Outside the Chinese soldiers paraded up and down. Sometimes indeed they would burst into the room and threaten the inmates with violence should the French fire. Kai Bok-su went on quietly talking to his students. He urged them to be faithful and reminded them