Beiyang Dream

Chapter 79 Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!

March 8, 1891, 4:07 PM.

The Luo family's East Enclosure Building, three stories high, northwest corner, machine gun emplacements.

Hans Müller heard the creaking of the wooden stairs when his fingers were resting on the Maxim cooling water sleeve. He turned his head and saw Chang Desheng crouching down and crawling in, his braid still covered in wall dust, his short blue clothes wrinkled.

"Commissioner!" Sergeant Muller snapped to attention and saluted.

Inside the fortifications were two apprentices from a Chinese school, Liu Youwen and Luo Shigui. They paused for a second, then, mimicking the Germans, raised their hands and called out in Hakka Mandarin, "Lord Chang!"

Chang Desheng gave a perfunctory salute and glanced around at the fortifications.

He personally selected this location three days ago. After observing and measuring for a long time, he finally made the decision: "This is it. The firing arc covers one-third of the rubber drying area and faces the north gate."

But now that a real fight has broken out, problems have arisen.

The window in this corner tower was too small, so the machine gun emplacement was crammed in the middle. A German and two apprentices, the three of them, stood there, completely blocking the window he wanted to use for observation. Chang Desheng cursed inwardly.

"Machine gun," he said in German, "move one meter to the right."

As the commander-in-chief, personally directing the movement of a machine gun... How is this the same as that "Chang Moumou"?

Chang Desheng suddenly thought of the story of the "Niangxipi" from later generations, while Müller, without saying a word, immediately called Liu Aniu and Luo Agui. The three big men worked hard and moved the Maxim, which weighed 27 kilograms (not counting the tripod), about one meter to the right. Müller even took out a tape measure to measure it, and then moved it back a little... He said one meter, and that was it, emphasizing precision.

Chang Desheng immediately occupied the half-window that had been vacated. Now, he could see everything clearly without binoculars.

The rubber drying yard was right beneath their feet, barely eighty yards wide. A dense, dark mass of people was surging in through the open north gate of Xiaolanfang, like ants carrying food. Bare-chested tribal soldiers, brandishing machetes and flintlock pistols, charged forward, howling. The blue uniforms of the royal guards appeared and disappeared in the crowd, their blue quickly swallowed up, but Chang Desheng knew they were there: they were the supervisory team, forcing the tribal soldiers to serve as cannon fodder at gunpoint.

Further away, outside the north gate of Xiaolanfang, two Napoleonic 12-pound cannons were already deployed. Gunners were unloading solid shot from ammunition carts. Chang Desheng squinted and counted—at least twenty boxes. Enough to blast the Luo family compound into a sieve.

What about the refugees?

He glanced to the right. Along the streets and alleys on both sides of the walled village, Chinese refugees from Pontianak were scrambling and stumbling into the depths of the town. Old men were pulling children along, women were carrying bundles, and strong young men were bringing up the rear with old-fashioned muskets. Although they were in a sorry state, they were finally safe.

By this time, the soldiers at the forefront had closed to within thirty paces of the walled tower. Some fired flintlock pistols at the tower; with a "bang," the lead bullets struck the stone wall, sending sparks flying. Many others were shouting and cursing, in Malay and Dayak, in a language Chang Desheng couldn't understand, but he could guess the meaning: kill all the Chinese, rob money and women.

Chang Desheng spread out his left hand.

My palms were sweaty and sticky.

almost.

He mentally calculated the number of soldiers surging into the rubber-drying area—a dense, dark mass, at least two thousand. He couldn't wait any longer. If he waited any longer, the soldiers would smash down the gates of the compound; if he waited any longer, those two Napoleon cannons would start firing.

"Sergeant Muller!" Chang Desheng turned his head and shouted so loudly that he startled himself.

"Yes, Mr. Commissioner!" Hans Müller answered loudly.

"Fire."

There was no "prepare" or "follow my orders." Just a set of words.

Müller quickly got into position. Then, he gripped the handle tightly with his right hand, pressing his thumb down on the firing lever on the Maxim's back handle.

"Hiss hiss hiss hiss hiss hiss"

That noise was so damn jarring!

Chang Desheng didn't cover his ears—he had forgotten.

The deafening sound was like two fists slamming into his ear canals, causing his eardrums to throb with pain. At the same time, tongues of fire consisting of hundreds of bullets per minute spewed from the muzzle of the machine gun.

Through the smoke, Chang Desheng saw six tongues of fire—no, six continuous whips of fire—pulled out from the six firing ports of the three surrounding buildings and fiercely lashed into the dark mass of people at the rubber drying field.

That's no longer a war.

That was the harvest.

The eastern edge of the rubber drying field.

Amin, 23, a hunter from the Dayak longhouse upstream of Pontianak, was crouching low as he crept forward.

At noon today, he stormed into a silk shop in Pontianak and hacked the sixty-something-year-old Chinese owner to death with a machete. The old man, even in his dying moments, clutched a beautiful bolt of silk so tightly his fingers were clenched. But Amin still managed to steal the shop's most valuable items: three bolts of silk, a bag of silver dollars, and several jade pendants of unknown material. He stuffed all of these into a heavy blue cloth bundle he had stolen, which he slung over his shoulder.

I feel so reassured.

Three seconds after the machine gun fire began, the head of the royal guard soldier to Amin's left, holding an 1871 rifle, suddenly exploded. Not from a bullet, but from an explosion! It was like a ripe watermelon being smashed by a hammer, red and white splattering all over Awang's face.

Amin was stunned. He licked the splatter on his lips; it was salty and a little fishy.

Then his survival instinct overwhelmed everything. He reacted quickly, turned and ran, fleeing towards the north gate he had come from.

But the North Gate has become a gateway to hell.

Those who escaped to the door first were cut down as if by an invisible scythe, lying down in droves. Corpses piled on top of each other, quickly forming a "mountain"—a real "mountain of corpses" made of flesh and entrails. Fresh blood gushed out from under the "mountain of corpses," overflowing the bluestone slabs and forming a dark red "sea of ​​blood."

Amin knew something was wrong and quickly stopped. He heard the continuous hissing sound behind him getting closer and closer, like the Grim Reaper sharpening his knife. He turned to look at the wooden fence on his right. Many people had the same idea as him: to climb up using both hands and feet, which was obviously the only way to survive. Amin had been good at climbing trees since he was a child. He threw away his flintlock pistol—that thing was now less useful than a fire poker—and, carrying the heavy bundle on his back, ran towards the fence, then leaped up it in a few bounds.

I had only climbed halfway up when a burst of gunfire erupted behind me.

This time it's rifles. A volley of rifles fired by the 1888 Commission.

The soldiers who had climbed the fence with him fell down like ripe fruit. Out of the corner of his eye, Awang saw that the man on his left had a gaping hole in his back, and the man on his right had half his head gone.

"Don't shoot! Sir! Don't kill me!" Ah Wang shouted in broken Hakka, the only phrase he knew that Chinese people could understand. But the gunfire didn't stop.

Today, I haven't forgiven him. Chang Desheng's order was: Don't kill him alive.

Because he wanted to ensure that the Luo family could establish absolute control over Pontianak in a short period of time.

Amin climbed over the fence and fell onto the muddy ground. His bundle came apart, scattering silk, silver coins, and jade pendants all over the ground. He didn't pick them up; he got up and ran. Then he crashed headfirst into the barbed wire.

What does it feel like to run shirtless into a barbed wire fence? Amin knows now. Countless barbs pierced his chest, stomach, and thighs; he was like a butterfly stuck in a spider's web. He screamed and struggled, but the more he struggled, the deeper the barbs pierced him.

"Not the living! Only the dead!"

He heard Chinese people shouting in a language he couldn't understand. Then he was struck in the back by a heavy hammer—no, not a hammer. It was a bullet. An 8mm rifle bullet entered his back, exited through his chest, and brought out a cloud of blood and half a lung.

Awang hung from the barbed wire, his eyes glaring at the scorching Southeast Asian sun. In his final moments, he thought: "The Chinese in Xiaolanfang... why are they so fierce?"

Before the harvest began in Changdesheng, Sultan Abdul Rahman of Pontianak was standing thirty yards behind the two Napoleon 12-pound cannons, striking a pose reminiscent of "Rapolon."

His military advisor, van der Kemp, stood to his left, directing the gunners in Dutch: "Solid shot! Load! Aim at that central compound."

Then they heard the noise.

It's that kind of continuous "da da da da da..." sound.

Sudan and Kamp both turned their heads at the same time.

Eight hundred yards ahead, on the top floor of three Hakka walled buildings, six firing ports were flashing continuously. It wasn't a fleeting flash of light from a gunshot; it was a continuous, rhythmic flash.

"What...what is that?" the Sultan murmured in Dutch.

Kemp's face turned ashen. He had served in the Dutch East India Army for twenty years, rising from second lieutenant to first lieutenant. He had fought in the Aceh War and had seen hand-cranked Gatling guns, but those things required four people to crank, had a rate of fire of at most three hundred rounds per minute, and were prone to jamming.

Judging from the sound, these rounds are firing at a rate of at least 500 rounds per minute. And they're firing continuously; they've been firing for 20 seconds and they're still firing.

"Maxim..." Kamp's voice trembled. "Could it be... a Maxim? The Maxim machine guns the British only equipped themselves with last year?" "Where would the Chinese get machine guns?!" Sultan screamed, his voice shrill like a woman's. "Who gave them to them? The British? Or... the Qing Dynasty?"

Kemp remained silent; his mind was a jumbled mess.