"Pack up your things when you're done. We're going to Lingao."
"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 is a simple person! He just wants to paint.
Although Father Gelanzani and Father Comange assured this small missionary group that the Australians welcomed them to preach, and they were very friendly to the priests and would certainly receive them warmly. However, the confidence of Jinli Pavilion did not start from the moment they arrived.
The Australian territory began to falter.
Not long after the Jesuit ship entered the Qiongzhou Strait, it was stopped by an Australian patrol boat and inspected. Father Trigg found that even though the war was over, there was still a tense atmosphere of war in the entire strait. It is estimated that the Ming Dynasty government wanted
The armed crusade has not yet been completely concluded
The priest used Cantonese vernacular to explain his identity and purpose to the Australian soldiers who boarded the ship for inspection. 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 was very cold. Father Trigg recited a prayer silently. It seemed that Father Lu Ruohua's statement that the glory of the Lord had shone all over Lingao was exaggerated. It was no easier to spread the gospel of the Lord here than in other places in China.
"You move forward with the patrol boat." The officer ordered the sailors on the ship. As he spoke, several soldiers controlled the position of the rudder 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.
After their ship 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 over to surround them. Regardless of whether he
How loudly announced that he was an envoy of the Jesuits and was here to serve in the church. 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 be alone.
He underwent a lengthy interrogation that made him dizzy.
The interrogator spoke excellent Italian - but his pronunciation and vocabulary were a bit strange. When he learned that Father Trigg was from Flanders, he immediately changed to German and expressed 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 Australians' "erudite" and "versatile talents" are 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. Some personal questions that he originally didn't want to talk about were also asked in this way.
Father Trigo had crossed himself on his chest several times and was silently reciting scriptures. Although he comforted himself with the utmost patience that a Christian should have, the sight in front of him was
This kind of treatment 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 partner.
The exhausting questioning finally came to an end, just as suddenly as when he had been brought there, 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.
.
There are gloomy corridors and stairs, with light coming in from the glass skylights above. Every door in the corridor is closed, with red numbers written on the doors.
Even though every door was closed, he could still hear something crackling in a rhythm, and vague dictation. The sharp ringing kept ringing - he didn't know what was going on.
What it was, it wasn't the church priests ringing bells, but a fierce, tense and sharp sound. When passing through a corridor, there were large windows. He glanced out the window and saw the bay in the distance, as well as the cargo ships.
The coolies were unloading the ship that I had arrived at.
Somehow, Father Trigg had an ominous premonition. He fearfully thought that he would be taken to a secret room and executed secretly.
If so, he hadn't even confessed! I wonder if they would allow a brother to confess for him? When he began to recite the prayer of confession silently, he found that he had walked out of the back door and was in a square under the sun.
In the middle, 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 fences.
Inside, there were rows of low houses standing in the middle of the open space. When Father Trigg was in one of the houses among the prisoners, he only had time to see a sign with three Chinese characters for "Quarantine Camp" hanging on the lintel.
The whistled music echoed in the rooms of the quarantine camp. Father Trigg disliked the music very much. Although he had never heard of Verdi, the strange music still disturbed him.
The rectangular room is large, with enough bunk beds to sleep 12 people. The room is clean and tidy. But there are only five people from the mission in it at the moment. Brother Cecilio, the priest is very fond of this pious and respectful young man.
Moreover, this young and devout preacher was kneeling on the straw mat, holding the rosary tightly in his hand, his lips were trembling and turning white. But John Dermott had been looking at the huge lake on the other side of the bay in fascination at the window.
of iron frame.
"This is incredible," he exclaimed, "such a slender structure with no support! It can be built so high! This is simply impossible!"
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.
After he arrived in this room, he searched in vain for a long time - the priest knew that he must be looking for something to eat.
Finally, there was the source of the whistle. Wes Lando, the attaché assigned to him by the Jesuits, always wanted to look aristocratic but at a glance it was clear that he was an ordinary soldier with a humble background. This guy spread his blanket on the straw mat and leaned half against the wall.
, lying comfortably in the corner and playing a little tune. He seemed to be indifferent to the situation in front of him.
This is a dangerous person, a desperado! Father Trigg said to himself. What frightened him even more was that Lando was a very suspicious heretic suspect. This was not only because of his strange behavior and remarks from time to time in Macau.
, and just now when the Australians forced him to take off his clothes and take a shower, he caught a glimpse of Weiss's naked back and the weird patterns tattooed on it, which made the priest almost think he had seen the devil incarnate. He began to secretly blame Jelanza
This attaché sent to him by Ni was a pagan, and he had already made a judgment in his mind about Weiss Lando: a pagan pretending to be pious, or perhaps worse, a cultist.
It's really boring here, Weiss changed a song and thought as he played. They have been confined in the room for two days, and the four white people have said no more than five sentences to each other. The priest in the corner is chanting
His voice dropped again, and if Verdi's Triumphal March made him restless, then The Merry Widow was a truly obscene ditty.
Weiss watched with schadenfreude as the priest tried his best to control himself and not show his sullenness. He was very scared, Weiss Lando thought, what the Australians, or rather the Chinese in Lingao, had done had brought the two of them to a standstill.
The missionary was frightened to death. In comparison, the red-haired Irishman was better. As for the somewhat nervous young monk, the forced physical examination scared him out of his mind and almost passed out. Father Trigg has been there since
After Gao Jiao saw the so-called "holy ship", he kept crossing himself - 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 attendant's face when he saw the tall ship. Weiss liked the familiarity and intimacy that the "holy ship" brought to him. In another world, he had spent the past few years
He and his companions had boarded a Polish cargo ship that looked equally dilapidated many times to transport 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 the large empty field on the other side of the barbed wire outside the window: a group of people wearing exactly the same gray clothes.
Homespun clothes - in the eyes of the monks, this was not considered clothes at all, just a pocket on the body. These people had their heads shaved, wore straw sandals, and were 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 having sex, Lando gave up this idea. Obviously this was just a daily military training, and the purpose was nothing more than to force these poor people to obey discipline.
Form a conditioned reflex of absolute obedience to orders.
"This is really a typical example of a totalitarian country." He commented in his mind. He turned over on the straw mat and tried to change into a more comfortable position. There was something hard in his pocket that hit his waist. It was a cigarette.
Box. Weiss really wanted to take out an Australian cigarette and take a few puffs. He swallowed the cigarette together with the saliva.