"Pack up your things after you finish, we are going to Lingao. [No pop-up novel website]"
"Really? Master." Dermot said excitedly, "I heard that the Australians in Lingao built many churches and monasteries."
"No, not many, just three or four."
“Will they allow me to paint a mural for the church?”
"Of course, I don't think they will refuse." Jin Lige thought, he was a simple person who only wanted to paint.
Although both Gelanzani and Father Comange assured the small missionary group that the Australians welcomed them to missionary work and were very friendly to the priests. They will certainly be entertained warmly. But Jinlige's confidence began to waver once he arrived on Australian soil.
Not long after the Jesuit ship entered the Qiongzhou Strait, it was stopped by an Australian patrol boat and underwent inspection. Father Trigg found that even though the war was over, there was still a tense war atmosphere throughout the strait. It is estimated that the armed crusade wanted by the Ming Dynasty government has not yet been completely concluded.
The priest explained his identity and purpose of coming to the Australian soldiers who boarded the ship for inspection in Cantonese vernacular. He also showed Jesuit certification documents and President Gelanzani's personal letter. However, the Australian officers on the ship seemed not interested in any of this. The attitude is very cold. Father Trigg recited a prayer silently. It seems that Father Ruohua’s statement that the glory of the Lord has shone all over Lingao is exaggerated. It is no easier to spread the gospel of the Lord here than in other places in China.
"You follow the patrol boat forward." The officer ordered the sailors on the boat. As he spoke, several soldiers took control of the steering position and key parts of the ship.
The ship sailed towards Lingao under the escort of the patrol boat. The strait was still empty. There were no other ships sailing. Only Australian ships hung blue and white flags in the strait, proclaiming their rule in the strait. right.
Their boat was "escorted" by two single-masted patrol boats to Bobu Port. What happened next was simply bizarre and dizzying.
Father Trigg and his entourage had not yet recovered from the surprise caused by the giant iron ship, the train on the dock, and the steam crane. A group of sailors with rifles with bayonets had come to surround them. No matter how loudly he declared that he was an emissary of the Society of Jesus, he came to serve the church here. The soldiers turned a deaf ear and pushed and pulled them into a huge building. Here the priest was forced to separate from his companions and underwent a long and dizzying interrogation alone.
The interrogator spoke excellent Italian - but the pronunciation and vocabulary were a bit odd. When he learned that Father Trigg was from Flanders, he immediately changed his language to German and expressed his regret that he only knew High German.
"You don't have to adapt to my language. I can speak Italian and High German is no problem." Father Trigg thought to himself that the so-called "erudite" and "versatile" Australians were indeed true.
The other party's polite remarks were in sharp contrast to his interrogation. He was asked many questions over and over again, some of which were asked again and again. Including some personal questions that he originally didn't want to talk about were also asked in this way.
Father Trego had crossed himself for an unknown number of times now. He chanted ** silently in his mouth. Although he comforted himself with the greatest patience a Christian should have. But the treatment in front of him was beyond his imagination.
"Is this suspicion or torture?" he asked himself secretly. At the same time, he couldn't help but worry about his partners.
The exhausting questioning finally came to an end, as suddenly as it had been delivered, when two men in tunics with strange muskets hanging from their belts led him out of the room and through a series of corridors and stairs. .
In the gloomy corridors and stairs, light comes from the glass skylights above. Every door in the corridor is closed, with red numbers written on the doors.
Even though every door is closed. He could still hear something crackling in a rhythm, and vague dictation. The shrill bells kept ringing - he didn't know what it was. It wasn't the church priests ringing the bells, but a fierce, tense and sharp sound. Passing through a corridor, there are large windows. He glanced out the window and saw the bay in the distance, as well as the ship that carried him to Lingao, and the coolies were unloading the cargo.
Somehow, Father Trigg had an ominous premonition. He feared that he would be taken to a secret room and executed secretly.
If so, he has never even confessed. I wonder if they would allow a brother to confess for him? When he began to recite the penitential prayer silently, he found that he had walked out of the back door and was in the middle of a square under the sun. His companions were also here, each with a confused expression. The two men with short guns on their waists disappeared like ghosts, and another group of soldiers with live ammunition escorted them into an open space surrounded by a circle of iron fence, with rows of low houses standing in the middle of the open space. When Father Trigg was pushed into one of the houses, he only had time to see a sign with three Chinese characters for "Quarantine Camp" hanging on the lintel.
The tune from the whistle echoed through the rooms of the quarantine camp. Father Trigg disliked the music. Although he had never heard of Verdi, the strange music still disturbed him.
The rectangular room is large and can sleep 12 people judging from the number of bunk beds. The room was clean and tidy. But there were only five people from the mission inside at the moment. Brother Cecilio, the priest loved this pious and respectful young man very much. This young and pious preacher knelt on the straw mat, clutching the rosary tightly in his hand, and his lips were trembling and turning white. But John Dermott had been looking at the huge iron frame on the other side of the bay in fascination at the window.
"It's incredible," he exclaimed. "It's impossible that such a slender structure could be built so high without any support."
And the nigger brought by Weiss Lando was sitting on the rotten straw near the door. After enjoying the incredible health and quarantine services of the Australians, even his usual stupid face showed confusion. expression. After he arrived at this room, he searched in vain for a long time - the priest knew that he must be looking for food.
Finally, there is the source of the whistle. Wes Lando, the attaché assigned to him by the Jesuits, always wants to appear aristocratic, but it is obvious at a glance that he is an out-and-out soldier with a humble background. The guy spread the blanket on the straw mat, leaned half against the wall, and lay comfortably in the corner, playing a little tune. He seemed indifferent to the situation in front of him.
This is a dangerous man, the desperado Father Trigg said to himself. What frightened him even more was that Lando was a very suspicious heresy suspect. This was not only because of his strange behavior and remarks from time to time in Macau, but also when he was forced by the Australians to take off his clothes and take a shower just now, he caught a glimpse of Weiss's bare back and the weird patterns tattooed on it made the priest almost think I saw the devil incarnate. He began to secretly complain about the heretic who was the entourage sent to him by Gelanzani. He had already made a judgment in his mind about Weiss Lando: a heretic pretending to be pious, or perhaps worse, a cultist.
It's really boring here, Weiss thought while playing another song. They had been confined in the house for two days, and the four white men had said no more than five sentences to each other. The priest's chanting voice in the corner became lower again. If Verdi's Triumphal March made him restless, then The Merry Widow could be regarded as an authentic ditty.
Weiss watched with schadenfreude as the priest struggled to control himself and not show his sullenness. He was scared, Weiss Lando thought. Everything the Australians, or rather the Chinese in Lingao did, scared the two missionaries to death. In comparison, the red-headed Irishman was better off. As for the somewhat nervous young monk, the forced physical examination frightened him out of his wits and he almost fainted. Father Trigg has been crossing himself ever since he saw the so-called "Holy Ship" at Cape Lingao. Of course, given his level of knowledge, it is not surprising that he thought it was the product of the devil.
The priest did not notice the smile on his face at the sight of the tall ship. Weiss liked the familiarity and intimacy that the "Holy Ship" brought to him. In another world, he and his companions had boarded a Polish freighter that looked the same old and worn out many times in the past few years. , transporting tons of arms and ammunition to Sierra Leone and Congo.
There was a lot of noise outside the window. Someone was shouting loudly: Lando didn't understand Chinese, but he knew that the rhythmic roar was the password. He could see a large empty field on the other side of the barbed wire outside the window: a group of people wearing identical gray homespun clothes - in the eyes of the monks, this was not clothes at all, just a bag on their body, their heads had been shaved Naked, wearing straw sandals, he was practicing formation under the stick of an Australian soldier.
At first he thought these people were new recruits, but after seeing them old and young, men and women, Lando gave up this idea. Obviously this is just a daily military exercise, the purpose is nothing more than to force these poor people to obey discipline and form a conditioned reflex of absolute obedience to orders.
"This is really a typical example of a totalitarian country." He commented in his mind and turned over on the straw mat, trying to change into a more comfortable position. There was something hard in the pocket that hit my waist. It was a cigarette case. Weiss really wanted to take out an Australian cigarette and take a few puffs. He swallowed the urge along with his saliva. v! ~!
