Throughout the next year, rumors continued to spread about what the British were up to on Burma’s border with India. On Sunday evening, May 23, 1824, the rumors turned to fact. A fleet of British warships sailed upriver to Rangoon and bombarded the city. After a brave fight, the locals abandoned the city, and a British captain raised the Union Jack over the docks. Great Britain and Burma were at war!
At first the Burmese people in Ava didn’t believe that foreigners had entered their country. Then they decided they had but it was all part of a clever trap. The great Burmese army could not be defeated! What must have happened, they told one another, was that the army had lured the British far upriver so that they could be captured and used as slaves. Indeed, many officials in Ava began putting in “orders” for slaves. One man requested “six white strangers to row my boat.” Another woman commented that she would like two or three white men because she had heard they made intelligent servants. The Burmese were unable to grasp the truth of the situation: A power existed in the world that was greater than the king, their Golden Ruler. As the days passed, however, the Burmese came to understand that the British were powerful and meant business. A gloom settled over the kingdom.
About this time, Adoniram heard some disturbing news: Henry Gouger had been arrested and interrogated. The Burmese had found some maps among his belongings, simple sketches he had drawn to help him find his way around Ava. To the Burmese officials interrogating him the maps were evidence that Henry Gouger was a spy. Worse, the officials also found receipts showing that Henry Gouger had paid Adoniram several large sums of money, implicating Adoniram as a co-conspirator.
Of course, Adoniram was no spy, and neither was Henry Gouger. What had really happened was that Henry Gouger had helped Adoniram get money from the Baptist mission fund in the United States through the bank that Henry dealt with in Calcutta. Adoniram knew that the Burmese officials would not believe this. As far as they were concerned, he was a spy. He waited to see what would happen next.
On Tuesday, June 8, 1824, Adoniram and Ann were just about to sit down to dinner together when the door to their house burst open and twelve Burmese men surged inside. Adoniram put down the bowl of curry he was carrying to the table and stepped forward. “What is it you want?” he asked, glancing around quickly to make sure Ann stayed behind him.
A man carrying a large black book glared at him. Like the eleven other men, he had a spot the size of a silver dollar tattooed on each cheek. Adoniram realized grimly that the distinctive mark on the faces of these men meant only one thing: The men were the dreaded Spotted Faces, criminals who should have died for their crimes but who were spared to become the executioners and thugs who ran Burma’s prisons. Many of the Spotted Faces also had their crimes tattooed on their foreheads or chests. The spots on their cheeks made it impossible for them to escape from the hell they created for themselves and their prisoners.
“We have come for the teacher,” snarled the man with the book.
“That’s me,” replied Adoniram, marveling at how calm he managed to sound.
“You are called by the king,” said the man.
Fear gripped Adoniram. Being called by the king was the Burmese way of placing a person under arrest. Immediately the group of Spotted Faces pounced on Adoniram and punched him to the ground. Adoniram felt a thin cord being wrapped around his arms above his elbows and then yanked tight. He let out a gasp of pain as the cord ripped through his skin. He felt blood seep through his shirtsleeve.
Ann sprang forward. “Stop,” she begged. “Don’t hurt him. I will give you money.”
Adoniram groaned at what he heard next.
“Take her too,” barked the chief Spotted Face. “She is foreign also.”
Adoniram struggled to his knees. “Don’t take her unless her name is written in the book,” he pleaded, fearing Ann would not survive more than a few nights in a Burmese prison, especially since she had just found out she was pregnant again.
The Spotted Face grunted and turned his attention back to Adoniram. With a final twist of the cord, he ordered him dragged outside and off to the courthouse. As Adoniram stumbled out the door he could hear Ann crying behind him. The pain of the cords biting into his skin was excruciating for Adoniram, but nothing like the pain he felt inside at having to leave Ann alone without protection.
Half walking, half dragged, Adoniram arrived at the courthouse, where the governor of Ava stood waiting for him. He had no trial, no opportunity to ask why he was there, only a verdict. “Guilty,” declared the governor. “Send him to Let-may-yoon.”
Let-may-yoon meant the Death Prison. It had the reputation of being the most vicious prison in Burma, and as he rumbled along in a cart toward the prison, Adoniram wondered how he would survive there.
The head Spotted Face of the prison stood waiting for Adoniram at the gate. “Welcome, my son,” he said, his malicious smile revealing a row of broken yellow teeth. Adoniram cringed as he noticed the words tattooed on the man’s bare chest: Loo-that, murderer. “We are one big happy family in here,” he continued. “Everyone calls me ‘Aphe.’”
Adoniram tried to nod, but Aphe meant father, and he could think of no one on earth less like a father than this man.
“Come with me. I have a surprise for you,” said Aphe, pulling Adoniram out of the wagon. He then commanded a Spotted Face with his ears cut off to take him to a huge block of granite in the center of the prison yard. There Adoniram had three pairs of fetters riveted closed around his ankles.
“Try to walk now,” laughed Aphe, “and see how far you get.”
Adoniram obediently stood and took a step. The fetters pulled at his ankles, causing him to fall flat on his face in the dust.
The courtyard erupted into laughter. “Take him to his cell,” ordered Aphe when he finally stopped laughing.
Adoniram found himself being dragged again, this time down a musty corridor until he was finally dumped in a windowless cell.
After the door closed behind him, Adoniram twisted the fetters so that they did not cut into his skin. He then looked around the cell. His eyes had not yet adjusted to the darkness, but he could sense other prisoners in the room. He could smell them, too. The stench of human waste and rotting flesh was overpowering. Finally he began to make out some shapes in the darkness, and then the shapes slowly became the outlines of people he knew. Henry Gouger was lying against the far wall, and the Scottish sea captain he had once met, Captain Laird, was slumped over in the corner. Neither man spoke.
Others were in the room too, about fifty people in all, mainly men, but a few women. They were all spread around on the teakwood floor of the cell. Some of the other prisoners groaned softly, and one or two mumbled Buddhist prayers.
As the tiny amount of light that filtered into the cell from the outside gave way to darkness, Adoniram wondered what night would be like in the cell. It turned out to be worse than anything he could have imagined. About an hour after Adoniram was dumped in the cell, the door creaked open again, and Dr. Price was thrown inside. Aphe and two other Spotted Faces followed him in. Adoniram watched in horror as they lowered a bamboo pole from the ceiling and hooked each prisoner’s fetters to it. Then they hoisted the pole into the air until it was four feet off the ground. Adoniram lay with the others, half hanging from the pole. His feet were four feet in the air, with only his shoulders and head touching the floor.
Aphe chuckled to himself. “That will keep you all safe for the night,” he said as he lit the oil lamp in the middle of the room. “Sleep well, my children.” With that he turned and marched out of the cell. One of the other Spotted Faces slammed the door shut behind him and locked it.
Now that the prisoners were sure they were alone, they whispered to each other long into the night. The Burmese man to the right of Henry Gouger told them how he had seen foreigners being tortured and beaten to death. Adoniram learned from Henry Gouger that he had spent two weeks in stocks before being thrown into the cell and that King Bagyidaw had declared all foreigners to be spies. It seemed only a matter of time before they would all be dead. After a few hours in the wretched cell, Adoniram began to hope that death would come quickly.
Finally the cell fell silent except for an occasional groan and the rustling of rats as they scurried between the rows of dangling prisoners.
Adoniram tried not to think about what might be happening at home. Had Ann been arrested? Was she strung up in some other cell right now? And what about the New Testament he had just finished translating? It was in a drawer of his desk. It would surely be burned, probably along with the whole house. Slowly Adoniram’s thoughts became as hopeless as the human misery around him. He wondered whether all his efforts in Burma had been for nothing.
The following day went much as Adoniram had expected it would. Aphe came in early in the morning and lowered the bamboo pole. The prisoners were all unhitched from it and taken out in small groups for a ten-minute walk around the courtyard. It was the only time Adoniram saw daylight that day. The stench of human waste, along with that of decaying flesh, made going back into the cell almost unbearable.
The cell had another smell, that of of rotting food. The Spotted Faces did not provide any food for the inmates of the jail. Those without family or friends on the outside to deliver food to them were doomed to die of starvation. On certain religious days, though, Buddhist women would bring ngapi and rice to the prison to give to the prisoners. Ngapi, a fish paste, smelled bad enough when it was fresh, but after it had been wrapped in banana leaves and “saved” for a week or two, it stank beyond description. Many prisoners kept a stack of leaves smeared with ngapi stacked against the cell wall, though Adoniram could not believe they ate it without gagging.
It was two days before Ann came to visit him. She arrived with food and an order from the city governor written on a palm leaf that allowed her to enter the prison. Adoniram had lost much of his strength, and he half walked, half crawled to the doorway. He wondered what Ann would say when she saw him. In all their eleven years of marriage, Ann had never seen him look or smell so foul.
Through the bars in the door, Adoniram could see Ann silhouetted against the wall. When she saw him, she buried her head in her hands and sobbed.
“Ann,” he said weakly, “thank God you are all right.”
Ann looked at her husband and forced a smile. “I’ll find a way to get you out of here,” she said. “I already have the city governor working on your behalf. And I brought you some food.”
They talked quietly for a few minutes until a Spotted Face ordered Ann to leave immediately. Ann’s pleas made no difference, nor did the order from the governor permitting her to be in the prison.
Adoniram watched hopelessly as Ann was roughly escorted to the gate. He wondered whether he would ever see her again.
Chapter 16
Oung-pen-la
Ann visited Adoniram whenever she could persuade the Spotted Faces to let her into the prison. Each visit made Adoniram more concerned for her safety. Burmese officials had ransacked the house, removing anything of value. Ann had anticipated they might do this, and so she had buried some gold and Adoniram’s complete translation of the New Testament in the garden. The gold could stay there forever, but the paper on which the translation was written would soon rot. The translation had taken years to painstaking work to complete, and Ann asked Adoniram what she should do to keep it safe.
Adoniram thought for several days about what to do with the translation. He had no friends on the outside he could trust. They were all in prison with him. Even if he did have friends he could trust, he would not put them in such danger. To be found with foreign documents would mean certain death for a Burmese person. In the end, Adoniram asked Ann to sew the pages of the translation into a pillow—not just any pillow, but the lumpiest, dirtiest pillow she could find—and bring it to him. That way he could have the translation under his nose at all times, and with any luck the pillow would be too repulsive for even the greediest Spotted Face to want.
