were on in front
their carts were attacked by robbers; but the Chinese lad--an
ugly imp--kept them off with his gun. When they drew near
Paoting-fu they sent on with the lad the two carts and their
tired horses, which had now carried them for three weeks without
the break of a single day, and they hired a fresh cart in which
they thought to ride to Tientsin. But with the boy gone they had
no interpreter, and in their impatience, 'their new driver'--to
quote our traveller's own words--'got rather crossly dealt with.'
They stopped near Paoting-fu for the night. Early next morning as
they were washing they heard the gates of the inn open and the
rumble of cartwheels. They guessed what was happening. 'Half
stripped as I was, I rushed out and saw our cart bolting away. I
ran for a mile after it, but had to come back and hire another
with which we got to Tientsin--more than fourteen days over our
leave.'"

From this pleasant but uneventful occupation Gordon was summoned to a
scene where important events were in progress, and upon which he was
destined to play what was perhaps, after all, the most brilliant part
in the long course of his remarkable career. His brother puts the
change into a single sentence:--

"On the 28th of April 1862 Captain Gordon left the Peiho and
arrived at Shanghai on 3rd of May, and at once dropped into the
command of a district with the charge of the engineer part of an
expedition about to start, with the intention of driving the
rebels out of a circuit of thirty miles from Shanghai."

By the end of March 1862 the Chinese Government had sufficiently
carried out its obligations to admit of the withdrawal of the force at
Tientsin, and General Staveley transferred the troops and his quarters
from that place to Shanghai, where the Taeping rebels were causing the
European settlement grave anxiety, and what seemed imminent peril. The
Taepings, of whose rebellion some account will be given in the next
chapter, were impelled to menace Shanghai by their own necessities.
They wanted arms, ammunition, and money, and the only means of
obtaining them was by the capture of the great emporium of foreign
trade. But such an adventure not merely implied a want of prudence and
knowledge, it could only be attempted by a breach of their own
promises. When Admiral Hope had sailed up the Yangtsekiang and visited
Nanking