CHAPTER 73 NEVER A DULL MOMENT
(Somerville) Mother's intention had been to return to Yeung Kong in the late summer of 1922, but towards the end of May we heard from David that he was in hospital in Timmins, Ontario. He had just completed his second year in Engineering at McGill University and had taken a job with the Timiskiming and Northern Ontario Railway on a survey in preparation of an extension of their line from Cochrane to James Bay, following the course of the Abitibi River. Shortly after joining the party, however, he cut his knee cap when sharpening a stake. The cut did not appear serious, but the head of the party immediately sent him out by canoe for treatment at the hospital in Timmins. The trip took a couple of days and by the time he reached Timmins the cut had become infected. The doctor sewed up the cut, which naturally made drainage impossible, and the infection spread both up and down the leg. David wrote at first cheerfully, but after a few days he told us he was in great pain and felt that the treatment he was receiving at the hospital was wrong. As soon as we heard this, Mother and I decided that we should go to Timmins and left immediately.
On our arrival we found David in worse condition than we had been led to believe. He was running a high temperature and the wound had begun to discharge both above and below the knee. Yet the doctor did nothing about it and all the matron of the hospital (a Roman Catholic Sister) could recommend was prayer. Against the protest of the doctor we determined that we should bring David to Toronto without further delay, and did so by the next morning's train. The 24 hour journey was a serious ordeal for him and when we finally got him to the Toronto General Hospital, the doctors found the infection had travelled from groin to ankle. Tubes were inserted, but in the days before antibiotics it took a long time to reduce the infection. Indeed the first time he was allowed to leave the hospital was for Christmas dinner. My future wife, Mary Fleck, was taking her medical training at the hospital at this time. She visited David frequently and did much to keep up his spirits.
(Helen) I had come south to Yeung Kong in 1921 to be with Dorothy when Mother returned to Canada. It was during the summer of 1922, that the second Chinese baby arrived. One morning when we were at breakfast, some women came to the door and said: "We've been given this baby to drown. It's such a nice little baby that we didn't want to drown it. Will you take it?" So we sent it to the doctor to see if it was healthy. It hadn't even been washed; it had been born at cockcrow and brought to the door at breakfast time. The doctor tidied it up and we took it. She was named Tien Chei ("Heaven's Gift") after Dorothy ("Gift of God").
After Mother's return to Canada, Father became increasingly lonely without her. In the summer of 1922 he returned to Canada and went with her back to Port Hope.
(Christopher) I left Kuling during the autumn of 1922 and went down to Yeung Kong to help with the work, my father being away in Canada. Conditions around Yeung Kong were very unsettled and the brigands were very bad. Large bands of them used to roam the country, stealing and burning and carrying off people for ransom. That winter they got bold enough to attack Yeung Kong itself. There were quite a few Government troops in the city and they put up a certain amount of good fight. The brigands made their attacks chiefly from a point outside the city walls about opposite our house, which was on Nam Moon Gai (South Gate Street). Many refugees came to us for shelter and we built barricades with boxes of books across the front of the "T'ing", or living room which had an open front facing the city wall.
We were reading in the Psalms in our morning reading at that time and the refugees in our house all attended. We were about at the 31st Psalm and as the days went by we had the 32nd, 33rd, 34th and other Psalms before us. These seemed to fit so well: for instance, note Psalm 31:21, "Blessed be the Lord: for He hath showed me His marvellous loving kindness in a strong city". And Psalm 31:24, "Be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thine heart, all ye that hope in the Lord". And Psalm 33:16 to 19, also Psalm 34:7, "The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him and delivereth them", and other Scriptures. We had some of these verses written out in large Chinese characters on red paper and pasted up outside on either side of our door, as is the custom in China. I believe these posters gave a certain confidence in the true God to many.
The battle grew fiercer and at last our garrison decided it was time they left. The brigrands were massed opposite the South Gate, so the soldiers collected what they could carry and went quietly, after dark, to the North Gate and departed. Soon the rumour came to us that all our garrison was gone and I decided to go and see if this were true. I found the street leading to the North Gate littered with various articles that our soldiers had thrown away in their haste to get away, just like the army of the Syrians in II Kings, Chapter 7.
The scaling ladders of the brigands were placed against the city wall exactly opposite our house. My sisters, our old cook and I sat at the closed door, as we supposed our house would be the first one they would come to when they got into the city. We had a good watch dog who would usually bark furiously if a stranger came near the house. We prayed to the Lord to keep the dog quiet, that he might not attract the attention of the robbers, and we prayed that they might pass by our door. It was not long till we heard feet coming down the path from the wall, and as they got near the house we could hear the loud whisper, "Mo pa. mo pa!" (No fear, no fear!). The dog did not bark and not a soul touched our door; they rushed along down the street to the South Gate, to open it and let their comrades in.
Meanwhile the old cook prepared tea and when in course of time they came beating at our door we opened at once and begged them to come in and "Yum cha" (drink tea). But they politely excused themselves, on the ground that they were too busy. Our old landlord was one of the wealthy men in the city and one of the first they would seek, so he came to us and hid under the bed in the innermost room. It was not long till we could see fires being started in various parts of the city and again we resorted to prayer, and again the Lord heard and answered.
When we first came to Yeung Kong from Canada we had to have some furniture made - cots for the children, etc. - and my father and I went down to the street where most of the carpenters were located and quite at random went into one of the shops and ordered what we needed. When I returned alone from Kuling one of the brothers said to me one morning: "I'll take you out to visit the Christians". I had learned to know and love them during the few months I had been there when first I came, so it was very pleasant to renew our acquaintance. After a bit we went down to the street where the carpenters were and in due course to the very shop where they had made our children's cots. I said to the brother: "I did not know this carpenter was a Christian when we bought the furniture from him". He replied: "No, he was not, but do you remember when you paid your bill you gave him a copy of `The Traveller's Guide' in Chinese? He read it and became a Christian and came up to ask to be baptized. Now he is one of our most trusted Christians". What an encouragement!
Christopher returned to Kuling in April, 1923, where his fourth child, George Christopher, was born on 8 May 1923. Then his father and mother, having spent nearly a year in Toronto and Port Hope, returned to China. Christopher went to Japan to meet them while Dorothy and Helen, with their two Chinese babies, stayed in Kuling with Jean. Christopher returned to Kuling with his father and mother. Shortly afterwards Dorothy returned to Canada to care for Aunt Dora and Helen accompanied her father and mother south to Hong Kong en route to Yeung Kong. However, at Hong Kong they heard that there was fresh fighting in Yeung Kong and had to spend a month waiting. Eventually they got back to Yeung Kong in the early autumn of 1923.
(Helen) That was the time we travelled with a party of nuns, headed by the Mother Superior, a very large, stout person visiting from New York. The nuns occupied the women's cabin, which could be reached only by crawling through a hole under the table in the main cabin and dropping a distance of about three feet. In the morning the Mother Superior emerged, like a cork out of a bottle, saying firmly: "I shall never travel on a junk-ship again!"
On reaching Yeung Kong we found that there were disturbances all round it and at one time they thought the city was going to be besieged again. The house was filled with refugees. Father and Dr. Dobson went out to interview the opposing generals. Anyway, the place settled down and they went on with their regular work all that winter.
In June Somerville was married. We did not know the exact day, but about 2 a.m. Mother awoke with them much on her mind. She prayed earnestly for them. Later we found that was just the hour they were being married.
I have a vivid mental picture of Mother sitting quietly on a low chair in the "ting" - the open sitting room - with her Bible on her lap. She read and meditated much and occasionally dropped words of great wisdom. She could not speak Chinese, but she spoke by kind words and looks and worked by her prayers. Father and Dorothy had learned the language and had a school and Sunday School in addition to meetings. Then we had "The Factory". The women all had to help support their families. They used to do handwork connected with idolatry, but had to give this up when they were baptized. So we had them do embroidery. Some of them could do lovely work, mostly on the native hand woven grass linen. Then we sent it to Canada and different ones were very kind about selling it. But it was a great labour drawing out the designs for them. The older women used to twist the hemp into thread and then we called in a weaver and he would make up about 100 yards of cloth at a time.
The Summer of 1924 we went up the river in the Gospel houseboat and managed to reach for the first time the city at the headwaters, Wong Nai Wan. We distributed tracts and preached in many market towns and villages on the way back. But after returning to Yeung Kong Father was taken very ill with malaria and finally Mother wrote to Christopher to come down from Shanghai. In Hong Kong he purchased a comfortable iron bed. We had only one bed; the rest of us slept on canvas cots or Chinese bed boards - very uncomfortable when ill. But Daddy insisted upon Mother sleeping in the bed. Christopher came overland and sent the new bed by sea. On the way it was captured by pirates, but eventually reached us*. It was such an unheard of thing for any cargo seized by pirates to be recovered, that the merchants of Yeung Kong would not let us pay any freight, or any charges for the expense of rescue. "It was on account of your bed that your God protected all the cargo", they said.
* See "Tales From the Middle Kingdom".
(Christopher) The day after I arrived Helen came. down with typhoid fever. The doctor said that she would never have survived except for Mother's careful nursing. He said that they must not continue to sleep on the ground floor of the house, so she was carried out to the summer house in the garden and I took the roof off the house and proceeded to build an upstairs, adding a chimney. This was the first chimney of its kind in Yeung Kong and I watched it being built, brick by brick, because when the chimney had been built at the Roman Catholic nunnery the workmen had failed to make an opening into it from the fire place and the smoke had filled the room. The Willis chimney drew perfectly.
Dorothy came back from Canada, and just before Christmas Mother and Father and Helen went out to Hong Kong by junk. Helen went on to Canada and Mother and Father returned to Yeung Kong.
(Helen) When I landed in Vancouver on Christmas day, 1924, David met me there. He was on his way out to Hong Kong, and was there for two or three years: during 1925 as advertising manager for the China Mail, and then accountant with a Hong Kong construction company.
Christopher had moved his family from Kuling to Nanking, and they had hoped to start work in a town of inland China. But when he returned to Nanking from Yeung Kong there was increasing trouble in China, and they decided to move to Shanghai. He hoped to be able to carry on the book room work there which he had started in Kuling. They had very little money, but the Lord gave him the verse "I have commanded the ravens to feed thee there" (1 Kings 17.4) The family stayed a month at the Missionary Home, and its head, Miss Spurling, provided him with a little room, about six foot square, for a book room. One of the young brothers from Yeung Kong, Chung Chun Lai, came up to help him. And so the Christian Book Room began at 3 Quinsan Gardens in January, 1925. And "having obtained help of God" it "continues unto this day".
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