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Updated: May 16, 2025
At length leave was given him to send his interpreter, escorted by two Taepings, to summon his own bodyguard, and to take an order to another part of his force to seize the Futai and hold him as a hostage for the safety of the Wangs. The interpreter was attacked on the way by Imperialists, who wounded him, and tore up Gordon's letters.
Had Masupha not been thus convinced, Gordon's death was decided on, and never in the whole course of his career, not even when among the Taepings on the day of the Wangs' murder in Soochow, nor among Suleiman's slave-hunters at Shaka, was he in greater peril than when exposed by the treacherous proceedings of Sauer and Orpen to the wrath of Masupha.
During eighty days the siege went on; but the Taepings were then compelled to admit that they were as far from success as ever. They had suffered very considerable losses, including another of their Wangs, the Western King, and although it was said that the loss of the Imperialists was larger, they could better afford it.
Soon he had many followers, who not only obeyed him as their king, but who prayed to him as their god. He called himself a "Wang," or king, and his followers called him their "Heavenly King." He made rulers of some thousands of his followers most of them his own relations and they also were named Wangs, or kings.
As to Li Hung Chang's offer, sent by Macartney, to sign any proclamation Gordon chose to write, saying that he was both innocent and ignorant of the murder of the Wangs, he would not even listen to it.
Unfortunately all these efforts were thrown away, for on the 4th December, during a banquet given at Mow Wang's palace, the other Wangs had fallen upon and murdered that chief, who would have resisted with all his force their projected surrender of the place.
His "Kings" he called them, perhaps remembering the many Kings or "Wangs" who ruled in the Tae-Ping army. A map of the world, hanging over his mantelpiece, was stuck full of pins. Some one asked the meaning of this, and was told by Gordon that they marked and followed the course of his boys on their voyages. The pins were moved from point to point as the boys sailed onward.
From him he learned what had happened in a few words. All the Wangs, his father among them, had been taken across the river on the previous day, and there cruelly murdered; their heads had been cut off, and their bodies left lying on the bank. Speechless with horror, Gordon set off at once for the place of the murder, and found the nine headless corpses lying as they had fallen.
If the widow comes back suddenly, I'll tell her I came to look for my big hair-pin, that I lost it while I was at dinner." "All right, go ahead, only of course we must remember we're borrowing the thing, not stealing it, for the Wangs have always been good friends to us, and then, too, we have just dined with them."
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