Adventure Magazine Cover, October 1911 — page 46: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

992 in New York who swear that Ward’s extra- ordinary Chinese career was what they would have expected. A few months after his return to New York in 1858 he tired of the sordid hum- drum again, especially as Wall Street had quickly stripped him of-his meager cash reserve, and he accepted a commercial mis- sion to Mexico. It was afterward revealed that, having closed that transaction, he accepted a commission from Juarez and fought for awhile against bandits and insur- rectos. He resigned as capriciously from that service as he had enlisted in it, and made his way from Chihuahua to San Francisco with a bag of doubloons, whence he sailed for China. A big, burning, over- powering thought had now obsessed his brain, which had for years been hungering to find the open gateway of some great enterprise- that would astonish the world. He, too, like Hung Su Tsuen, dreamed dreams and blazed with prophetic confidence. WARD COLLECTS HIS ‘‘ARMY”’ NOt disconcerted by Tah-ke’s cold recep- tion, he took things into his own hands. He had enough money to hire a small force of rapscallions, native and foreign, the kind that infest an Oriental seaport like rats, and among them a few deserters from the British military and naval forces, who knew something about drill. The most im- portant of these acquisitions was James Burgevine, a North Carolinian adventurer, who had severed allegiance to the “ Heav- enly King.” Tah-ke had sold to Ward for a bagatelle a batch of condemned muskets and bayonets which armed this ragged and unreliable battalion. Ward and Burgevine whipped them into shape not only by camp drill but by skirmishing with the Taipings at every opportunity, for from their cities of Sung Kiang and Sing Poo, only two or three days’ march from Shanghai, the rebels made constant irruptions. Ward’s primary object was to inspire his men with confidence in him and in them- selves. He lived on the country and when he captured Taipings he converted them into recruits instead of refusing quarter as was the habit of the Imperialists. Very soon the exploits of Ward’s irregulars began to make a buzz in the foreign clubs and counting-rooms. He had created his own standing and when he went again to Adventure Tah-ke that worthy received him with low salaams. He went straight to his mark like a bul- let, with the manner of one dictating, not accepting, terms. He proposed a formal contract, which Tah-ke was to negotiate with the Futai of Shanghai. Ward was to have $100,000 from the Government for every city he captured, of which $25,000 was to go to the Chinese partners. He was to have the first day’s looting, after which’ the captured place would be turned over to the Imperialists. One captured city, however, it was stipu- lated, should be garrisoned by himself as a personal headquarters, subject only to his oath of allegiance as a Chinese subject. The American General, for so hencefor- ward we must call him, had already fixed his eye on the important city of Sung- Kiang, one of the seven holy places conse- crated in tradition as sacred to Confucius. When it had been carried by the Taipings amid scenes of unspeakable butchery the shock to the religious heart of the Empire had been more appalling than the thought of the twenty thousand people who, after terms of surrender had been granted, had been massacred till the very gutters ran with blood. Possession of this great shrine, Ward estimated, would do more to give him permanent standing than any other single achievement. Tah-ke was pledged to finance Ward for: one year, furnishing him with arms, ammu- nition and stores, within a certain limit of cost which the other thought would suffice. The singular contract was duly signed by all three parties and sealed in the presence of witnesses, one of whom told the writer the details of the transaction. Within a month Ward led his first expe- dition against Sung Kiang, which was gar- risoned by about 5,ooco Taipings under the command of an Englishman named Gar- diner, an ex-officer of the British army. The attack failed, with serious loss to Ward’s 500 assailants. ~ THE CAPTURE OF THE HOLY CITY ()*E thing, however, had happened which proved of vast import tohim. He had taken a rebel prisoner of some rank, who confessed to him that one of the bastions had a choked-up subterranean sallyport. If he could make a secret entrance through CO MICLOOKS CO