They were midway through the third verse of the hymn when Hudson noticed Captain Bell slip a pistol into his belt. Hudson crawled after him as he made his way across the deck. He caught up to him just as he neared the forecastle, where the crew had taken refuge. When they saw the captain with his revolver, they squashed themselves together further in the tiny space. They would rather be shot than forced out of their refuge.
“Let me talk to them,” Hudson yelled over the roar of the sea.
Captain Bell nodded, and Hudson crawled into the forecastle. He raised his voice above the fury of the storm. “Men, the only hope is for us to get the masts overboard. We will help you; our lives are in as much danger as yours. Get out and help us save the ship.”
The men did not move. They were as paralyzed by fear as the left side of Captain Bell’s face.
Hudson gestured for Captain Bell to leave his gun in his belt, and then he crawled back to the saloon and explained the situation to the missionary men. Together they committed themselves to God and one by one crawled out of the saloon, keeping their heads down against the wind.
The missionaries fanned out across the deck, holding onto the metal rings embedded in the deck that were used for lashing down cargo. With one hand on a ring, they began to hack away at the rigging. Each man worked alone. First they freed the main mast and jettisoned it over the side; then they moved towards the stern of the ship and set to work on the mizzen mast.
Seeing the men of the China Inland Mission risking their lives to save the Lammermuir, members of the crew began to regain their courage. They crawled out from the forecastle and joined in the effort to save the ship.
Finally the mizzen mast fell free and was washed over the side of the ship, and the men made their way back to the saloon.
While on deck, they’d been unable see each other because of the spray and water that deluged the ship. They did not know whether anyone had been washed overboard, and they waited anxiously to see who returned. One by one the missionary men and the crew made their way into the saloon. Miraculously, not one person had been swept overboard. But the storm was not yet over, and after a quick prayer of thanks, every man and woman aboard took his or her turn manning the bilge pumps. The men and women pumped all night to keep the water that washed in through the holes in the battered deck from sinking the ship. As morning approached, the winds began to die down. By the time the sun rose, the angry sea that had almost claimed the Lammermuir was calm.
Five days later, broken and maimed, the Lammermuir limped up the Hwang-poo River into Shanghai. Curious onlookers crowded onto junks to see the ship. When they saw how damaged she was, they were amazed she’d made it to port. The crew and passengers told the story of how they had come so close to death, only to be saved when everything seemed hopeless. Other sailors shook their heads when they heard no lives had been lost and no one had been badly injured during the storms. Another ship, which had traveled the same course as the Lammermuir, arrived in port the following day. Its shredded flag flew at half staff. Out of a crew of twenty-two, only six had survived the storms. The other sixteen crew members either had been washed overboard or were buried at sea after being killed in horrific accidents during the storms.
After the Lammermuir docked, Captain Bell allowed his passengers to stay on board for a few days until they could make arrangements for somewhere to live. There had never been enough hotels in Shanghai, and Hudson knew that none of the other missionaries in the city would have enough rooms for eighteen adults and four children to stay in, not to mention space to store their printing presses and hospital equipment.
The following day, the members of the China Inland Mission, newly arrived in China, prayed hard that God would provide a solution to their need for accommodation. Against all odds, God had brought them this far unharmed. They knew He would not let them down now. Somewhere there was a place for them to stay, and God would lead them to it.
Chapter 14
The Work Begins
The new missionaries of the China Inland Mission did not have to wait long for God to answer their prayers for accommodation. The first missionary to come aboard the Lammermuir to welcome them to China was William Gamble, of the American Presbyterian Mission. William Gamble had been living in Ning-po at the same time as Hudson, and they had become friends. Now he was excited to be welcoming his old friend back to China.
William Gamble was the printer for the American Presbyterian Mission, and he had recently moved from Ning-po to Shanghai to set up a new printing press. He had bought a large warehouse close to the old city to house the new press, but the printing equipment had been delayed. So his warehouse stood empty. When he found out the new missionaries had nowhere to stay, he insisted they use his warehouse for as long as they liked while they arranged the permits they needed to move inland. The warehouse would be more than big enough for all of them and their equipment and supplies. The next day, the group joyfully unloaded their belongings from the Lammermuir and moved into the warehouse.
After drying out their wet belongings and washing all of their clothes and bedding, it was time for them to get down to business. Hudson hired a barber, who shaved the front of each man’s head and wove a false queue into the hair that was left. Next the group were all outfitted with Chinese clothes. As they emerged from the warehouse onto the street, a collection of both foreigners and Chinese stopped to look and laugh. The men, in particular, had a difficult time keeping their pants pulled up and not tripping over the curled-up ends of their new shoes. There was even an article in the Shanghai newspaper about the new China Inland Mission. In the article, the writer called them the “Pigtail Mission.”
To many foreigners in Shanghai, the behavior of the new mission was both un-British and un-Christian. Missionaries from other organizations often crossed the street when they saw someone from the China Inland Mission approaching. They wanted nothing to do with such a weird group of people.
All of this caused some of the new missionaries to wonder whether wearing Chinese clothing and having a Chinese hairstyle was the right approach. But Hudson reminded them they would be leaving soon for the interior, where they would meet multiplied thousands of people who had never seen a white person before. “Do you want to be remembered for the strange Western clothes you wore, or for the message of salvation you preached?” he asked them. The new missionaries could see his point and spent more time practicing how to roll up the sleeves of their tunics and eat rice with chopsticks.
Three weeks after arriving, the paperwork was complete, and the China Inland Mission had permission to leave Shanghai for Hang-chow. Before they left, several missionaries from other groups came to talk to Hudson. They told him he was crazy. How could he encourage nine unmarried women to venture into the interior? Didn’t he know that in all of China, there was not one unmarried woman working away from the five treatyports?
Hudson did know, and as they spoke he thought back to Brighton Beach and all God had shown him there. He would do all he could to keep the women safe, but God had called them, and each woman knew the risks involved.
William Gamble had grown attached to the missionaries staying in his warehouse. He was sad to see them go, and he did not want to take the rent money they insisted on paying him. He came to the dock to see them off. It was a beautiful, moonlit night when they boarded the junks that would take them a hundred miles up the Hwang-poo River to Hang-chow. William Gamble helped them aboard, and before waving goodbye, he left a small package on the seat of the last junk. When the package was opened, it contained all the rent money they had paid him for use of the warehouse and a note that read, “For the good of the mission.”
The junks floated silently out onto the river, past the docks, where the Lammermuir was still tied up undergoing repairs. The crew had been looking out for the missionaries, and when they saw them, they begged Hudson to come aboard for one last service. By the light of the moon, the missionaries clambered up the rope ladder over the side of the ship onto the familiar deck of the Lammermuir. Hudson preached a short sermon on the foredeck, and they sang some hymns together. Mr. Brunton asked if he could travel upstream with the party for a few days, and Captain Bell gave his permission. So with one more member than when they had started, the group reboarded their junks. As they floated out on the river, the crew and the missionaries sang together “Yes We Part, But Not Forever,” the same hymn that had annoyed so many of the crew when they first heard it on the East India Company dock in London. Now they themselves were singing it as loud as they could, not caring what the sailors on nearby ships thought.
Mr. Brunton traveled with them for three days, and Hudson baptized him in the river before he returned to the Lammermuir in Shanghai.
The trip to Hang-chow was very slow, and it was four weeks before the junks finally docked there. The city of a million people was as beautiful as Hudson had told everyone it would be. Although heavily damaged during the Taiping Rebellion, it had been mostly rebuilt, and there were lots of lakes and open fields in and around the city.
Just as in Shanghai, there were few houses to rent in Hang-chow, but after several days, Hudson managed to find the perfect place, that is, if you used a lot of imagination. The house at number One New Lane was one of those buildings that had not been repaired after the Taiping Rebellion. It had enormous holes in its walls, and what was left of the walls was caked with mud. But the house was also huge. It was a two-storied building and had over thirty rooms. Hudson could immediately see the possibilities. There would be a hospital and dispensary downstairs and living space upstairs. The house also had a courtyard with a beautiful rock garden and pond where the children could play safely.
The team set about quietly repairing the house. They knew most of the people in the city had never seen a foreigner before, and they didn’t want to scare them. So they left the windows open and curtains undrawn most of the time so their neighbors could see what they were doing. Soon they had little groups of Chinese people watching them eat rice and vegetables with chopsticks and swat the flies away with large grass fans.
Slowly, the people peering in through the windows got braver. They hung around the doorway and finally ventured inside. One or two curious people opened up a sea chest to see what was kept inside. They turned the handle on the clothes wringer and pretended to feed clothes through it like the foreign women did. A few of the braver ones examined the women’s long hair, which came in strange colors: white like a silk worm’s thread or brown like hemp rope. They looked into the foreigners’ blue and gray eyes, and they laughed at their long, bumpy noses. They rubbed freckles to see if they were painted on, and came to the conclusion that although the foreigners had some unfortunate deformities, they were not all that different from themselves.
News of the friendly foreigners spread through the city. Before long the house on New Lane was a hive of activity. The hospital opened, and soon over two hundred patients a day were coming to receive medical care. Tsui, one of the converts from the Bridge Street church in Ning-po, joined the team. He spent his days preaching and talking to the crowds that came to the house. After particularly difficult operations, to remove cataracts, for example, Hudson would take a break by singing hymns and playing the harmonium. The patients loved it. Hudson would sing at the top of his voice and then climb on top of a desk and preach his heart out. Life was never dull at the house on New Lane.
