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Updated: June 8, 2025
The Fukien, a merchant steamship, was now lying in Tamsui harbor. She was to run to Hongkong and back directly. If Mackay would only take that trip, his physician urged, the sea air would make him new again, and he would return in a short time and be ready to take up his work once more. It was that promise that moved Mackay's resolution.
Nestling at its feet were little villages almost buried in trees. Slowly the ship drifted along, passing, here a queer fishing village close to the sandy shore, yonder a light-house, there a battered Chinese fort rising from the top of a hill. And now Tamsui came in sight the new home of the young missionary. It seemed to him that it was the prettiest and the dirtiest place he had ever seen.
Darkness had almost descended when he rode into the village and stopped before a small grass-covered bamboo dwelling where the cook-preacher lived. For years the people here had looked for Kai Bok-su's coming, for years they had talked of this great event, and for years their preacher had been writing and saying as he received his reply from the eager missionary in Tamsui, "He may come soon."
On the second Sabbath of February, 1873, just one year after his arrival in Tamsui, the missionary announced, at the close of one of his Sabbath services, that he would receive a number into the Christian church. There was instantly a commotion among the heathen who were in the house, and yells and jeers from those crowding about the door outside. "We'll stop him," they shouted.
And the British consul down in his old Dutch fort at Tamsui laughed heartily over the letter, knowing all about Kai Bok-su and the sort of fort he was building. So, in spite of all opposition, the little church rose steadily up and up until it was crowned with a tiled roof and was ready for the worshipers.
But just as they expected the roar of guns to open, there sailed into Tamsui harbor a vessel that flew a different flag from the French. Mackay, looking at her through a glass, made out with joy the crosses on the red banner of Britain!
Nevertheless he thought the custom one he could turn to good account, and before long he was trying it himself. He had such a wonderful memory that he never forgot anything he had once read. So the scholars of north Formosa soon discovered, again to their humiliation, that this Kai Bok-su of Tamsui could beat them at their own game.
But every time he returned to his work at Tamsui from one of these tours, it was borne in upon him more forcibly every day that his faithful assistant who was left in charge, could not long shoulder his work. Mr. Jamieson was fighting a losing battle with ill health. The terrible experiences during the war year, the hard work, and the trying Formosan climate had all combined against him.
There was a suspicion of moisture in the eyes of the older missionaries as they turned back to prepare for their own journey southward. "God bless the boy!" said Dr. Dickson fervently. "We'll hear of that young fellow yet, Ritchie. He's on fire." The news was soon noised about Tamsui that one of the three barbarians who had so lately visited the town had returned to make the place his home.
Up and down the length and breadth of north Formosa, seeming to be in two or three places at once, went Kai Bok-su, during this time of reviving after the war. He would be in Kelung to-day superintending the new chapel building, in Tamsui at Oxford College the next day, in Bangkah preaching a short while after, and no one could tell just where the next day.
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