“We will go to the honourable Hing Fai,” said Wang, “and get him to lead us against our common enemy.”
The whole crowd, lusting and thirsting for blood, surged to the house of Hing Fai, calling on him as their deliverer. Hing Fai was partly drunk, and in a state of recklessness born of his misfortunes. The clamour of the rabble had its effect, and, arming himself with a sword, he led the rabble against the mission-house with shouts and the glare of many torches. The gates of the mission compound were closed, as the noise of the crowd had already penetrated the mission, and they feared the intrusion of disorderly persons, imagining that some drunken carousals had taken place in the neighbourhood. The gate was soon broken down by Hing Fai’s orders, and someone slew the aged gate-keeper. The sight of blood roused the lust of killing in the famished and misery-stricken crowd; headed by Hing Fai they rushed through the compound, hacking and maiming the terror-stricken Chinese servants, straight to the missionaries’ house. The Rev. Jones stood in the lighted doorway, his arms upheld as though commanding silence; but Hing Fai, blind with rage, rushed forward and cut at his head with his sword. The missionary fell, and was kicked and clubbed into a shapeless mass of flesh. Lamps were overturned, doors dashed open, and upstairs was found Mrs. Jones praying wildly and screaming with fear; twenty knives were plunged into her as she knelt, and the now frenzied rabble hacked, smashed, and kicked everything in the house, spreading a ghastly ruin over all. Then arose a quick alarm of fire. An overturned lamp in the hall had set the wooden house in a blaze; the stairs were already ignited, and the rush of the rabble to descend caused them to fall. A frightful scene now ensued: the house was well alight, the stairs were gone, and a leap from the upper landing meant leaping into hell. Hither and thither the murderers rushed, trying to find some means of escape. Wang, the beggar, had already rushed down the stair before it was destroyed by the flames, but Hing Fai remained above in an atmosphere already becoming intolerable; he rushed to a window, cutting down two or three in the way with his sword, and leapt out. Others remained and suffered an awful death in the blazing house.