Oung-pen-la (1825)

C H A P T E R X X

Oung—pen-la

[ 1825 ]

URING Nancy and Adoniram’s last meeting, the walls of the little hut which gave them privacy had also prevented their seeing certain events quietly taking place juSt a few feet away. In those minutes of the Judsons’ seclusion, the seven other Europeans had been hastily removed from the inner prison and led to the familiar granite block in the yard. Here their fetters had been struck off and they had been tied together in pairs by ropes at the waist. The rope between each pair was long enough to allow a Spotted Face assigned to the task to handle it like reins, using his spear as a goad. Coupled in this manner they had been driven like cattle, while passing Burmans looked the other way, out of the prison gates to the building which served as courthouse. Thus they were already beyond the Death Prison and out of sight up the street when Nancy emerged from the hut in response to the governor’s urgent message which had so alarmed Adoniram.

As soon as the stockade gate closed behind her a Spotted Face rushed inside the hut, dragged Adoniram by one arm into the yard, expertly stripped off all his clothing except his shirt and trousers, took his shoes, hat and bedding, struck off his fetters, and hurried him off to the courthouse after the others, where he was coupled with Laird.

Command of the four pairs of men was now handed over to the Lamin Wun (today, “Lamaing Wun”: Commander of the Lamaing area). While he led the way on a horse, the Spotted Faces drove the prisoners on foot.

They had been in prison eleven months. No one who had known them when they entered could possibly have recognized them when they left. Their hair was matted, their eyes hollow, their bodies skin-covered skeletons clothed in rags so greasy and tattered their original purpose could nor even be suspected. They could scarcely hobble.

It was the hot season, the temperature over a hundred, the blazing sun directly overhead. Adoniram was ill. He had been unable to eat that morning. To make matters worse, his obsessive nicety about his personal appearance had led him to persist in wearing shoes in prison although the Others had discarded theirs long before, and his feet were as tender as when he entered, whereas theirs were at leaSt a little toughened. Within a few score yards bliSters formed on his soles, in a few yards more these burst; from then on, each step was made on a raw wound.

At the end of half a mile the little procession reached the bridge across the Mootangai. Adoniram looked over the side. At this season most of the bed was dry and full of rocks. It was at least a thirty-foot drop down to them. Up the long, hot road beyond the bridge—itself a torture ending no one knew where or when—- waited the iron maul, the ax, the knife or the cord.

Adoniram turned to Gouger, who was just behind him. “Gouger,” he urged, “the parapet is low. There can be no sin in our availing ourselves of the opportunity.”

But Adoniram was coupled to Laird, and Laird, a big sturdy man who would have to go with him, was a fatalist convinced that death would find him when it was ready; he would not seek it. And in any case, the moment soon passed for the guards prodded them on. But for that moment, Adoniram was ready to destroy himself, sin or no sin.

From the bridge the road led over a parched desert of sand and pebbles, searing hot. Within minutes the soles of every prisoner’s feet—not only Adoniram’s—were covered with blisters which burst as soon as they formed. Only Gouger was relatively immune. The youngest, and fully recovered from his illness of a few months ago, he had eaten a good breakfast. Now that his first panic was over, he actually began to enjoy the view of the Irrawaddy in the diStance and the forested Sagaing hills on the Other side.

Before they had gone a mile, the Greek Constantine collapsed. He was an old man with a tendency to fatness, and the sinews of his legs had contracted and hardened. When he fell on the hot gravel, the guards tried beating him with their Spears, then pricking him with the points. This worked for a little way, but finally he merely lay where he fell, his hands clasped over his head in supplication. The guards dragged him a while with the rope, while the rest of the procession went ahead. But this was too much work, and finally they sent for a cart.

By the end of the second mile Adoniram was almost as far gone as Constantine. The soles of his feet were now nothing but raw flesh. Once, when they stopped for water, he begged the Lamin Wun to let him ride the horse for a mile or so. The Lamin Wun did not even deign to reply. In desperation Adoniram asked Laird to let him lean on his shoulder, to ease the unbearable pain of putting his feet on the ground. The goodhearted Laird agreed, but after a mile found the burden too much. It was all Laird could do to carry himself.

Adoniram was ready to follow the example of Constantine, when one of Gouger’s old Bengali servants came running up. He had heard the prisoners were being driven to Amarapura and had followed at full speed to be near his master when he died. With one look he took in Adoniram’s difficulty. He ripped his turban from his head, tore it into four pieces, and bound up Adoniram’s feet with two of them. It was a difficult job, because the procession was nor allowed to stop even for this act of mercy. The Bengali next performed the same service for Gouger. Then he returned to Adoniram and offered him his shoulder the rest of the way.

At Amarapura, the exhausted party stopped. They had marched only four miles—nor a long walk for healthy men, but one that had drained the last bit of energy from the prisoners. Soon a solidwheeled cart creaked up with Constantine. He was in a coma. In an hour or so he died.

Amarapura was as far as the Spotted Faces went. The prisoners were turned over to a new set of keepers, who told them they still had four miles to go: they were to be put in a prison at Oung-pen-la, a country village. But even the direst threats could not get the prisoners off their feet. They were ready to die where they were. The guards, not being Spotted Faces, finally decided to stay in Amarapura overnight. The prisoners crawled into an old shed. Here the Lamin Wun’s wife, who had come from Ava out of curiosity, found them. The sight of them aroused her sympathy and she secured some tamarinds and sugar. They could not thank her. They merely ate, and collapsed again on the floor of the shed—all except Gouger, who found himself a shelter under a cart by the side of the road.

When morning came, the youthful Gouger was the only one who could take even a step. If life depended on walking, they would have to die here.

Eventually the new guards procured a cart and the Lamin Wun’s wife mercifully saw that the prisoners had some boiled rice before they started off.

The journey was slow. It was two o’clock before their vehicle with its squeaking solid wheels covered the four miles to the prison at Oung-pen-la, about a quarter of a mile outside of the village. It was a lonely place on a grassy plain, once a rice field. The prison, the only building in the vicinity, had been deserted for years. Its bamboo-and-thatch roof had fallen in long since. It lacked a door. A row of stocks running the length of the interior stood up inside like stumps of rotting teeth. Once there had been a stockade around the building, but now only a few drunkenly leaning posts remained of it.

As in most Burmese buildings, the floor stood four or five feet above the ground. This floor was still in place, and the space beneath was solidly packed with dry faggots, which were the only new—looking objects about the building. The prisoners puzzled over this in a tired way until someone remarked what a strange place this was to Store firewood.

Then they remembered. They had heard a rumor in Ava that they were to be taken Out and burned.

Back in Ava, Nancy, frenzied with despair, had been making arrangements to follow the prisoners.

After the governor had spoken the ominous words, “Take care of yourself,” he had been unwilling to let her go into the streets. He advised her to wait in his yard until night. When darkness fell, he ordered a cart for her. She took this to the house by the river, where she loaded it with two or three trunks, the medicine chest and a few other valuables. Maung Ing and the one remaining Bengal servant promised to look after the house for her. Late that night she deposited the trunks in the governor’s house. Outside, she found Gouger’s servant, the one who had followed the prisoners. He had returned to tell her Adoniram was alive at Amarapura, and that the prisoners were to go on the next day to a village beyond it, he did not know where.

She spent the night in the little bamboo hut in the governor’s premises with little Maria, now three months old; the two Burmese children, Mary and Abby Hasseltine; and Koo-chil, the Bengalese cook. In the morning she managed to obtain a pass, rent a covered boat, and with the children and the cook set out up the river to Amarapura. Near Amarapura they landed and she found a cart in which she placed her little party.

It was two miles from the landing to the government building at Amarapura. The day was blazing hot. The cart pitched like a bucking horse. Its wheels stirred up thick clouds of choking dust. The tired children cried continually.

At the government building Nancy learned that the prisoners had gone on to Oung-pen-la. The cart driver refused to go any farther. After another hour in the blazing sun—while Nancy held the wailing Maria in her arms — Koo—chil managed to find another cart. The city governor supplied a guide, and off they creaked to Oung-pen-la.

It was dusk when Nancy arrived at the decrepit prison. The prisoners, still chained two and two, were huddled in a little patch of shade under the remains of an old projecting piece of roof. Eight or ten Burmese were busy on top of the building, trying to repair the fallen thatch with palm leaves.

Nancy left the cart and, with Maria in her arms, hurried to the prisoners. Adoniram, almost dead, looked up at her dully. “Why have you come? I hoped you would not follow. You cannot live here.” And he relapsed into a stupor.

Nancy looked around her. She had no food. There seemed no place to buy any. There was no shelter for the night.

She asked one of the jailers if she could put up a little bamboo shelter near the prison. He refused. It was not customary. Shc pointed to the children. Could he possibly find her a place to Stay until morning? Perhaps tomorrow she could look for a place to live.

The jailer took pity on her. His own house was a little distance away. It had only two rooms. His family lived in one. The other was half full of grain: she could have that place. Here Nancy took the children. Koo-chi] heated water. There was no tea, and this was all their supper. They went to sleep that night on mats spread over the floor and the piles of grain.

Meanwhile the prisoners’ feet had been put in the stocks. They had already concluded that they were not to be burned soon, else why would the jailers be repairing the roof? The next day they learned, to their relief, that the firewood had been stacked under the jail to prevent their escaping through the rotting floor.

It was full dark, when, to their surprise, they felt the stocks slowly rising into the air, carrying their feet with them. Somewhere out of sight, behind a wall, the guards were snickering over a great joke. In a moment they realized what it was. Their feet were being hoisted up by the stocks as they had been in the Death Prison, by the bamboo; but the mechanism was worked from the outside, where the prisoners could not see it. They were used to spending the night in this position, but not to what happened next. In the darkness mosquitoes swarmed off the stagnant rice field and settled on the raw soles of their feet, with torture that was excruciating. After a while the guards took mercy and lowered the stocks enough for the prisoners to fan away the insects with their hands.

Thus they spent the first night.

The next day things began to organize themselves. Koh-bai, the chief jailer, a surly man but no Spotted Face, let the prisoners go outside to enjoy the air on the “veranda” of the prison. The first morning Gouger was the only one able to get to his feet and take advantage of the privilege, but the omen was good.

A friend of Price’s brought cold rice and vegetable curry from Amarapura for the prisoners’ breakfast and Nancy and the children received some. There was no market, but Nancy felt confident she could buy at least rice in the village. Other things might be procured somehow. Adoniram was unable to stand up, but she did not think he would die. She was most worried by the fact that the girl Mary Hasseltine, Nancy’s only helper, was down with a fever, and breaking out with spots which suggested smallpox. A little before noon Gouger’s faithful baker appeared from Ava with a bag of biscuits and some salt fish. Henceforth he nor only brought biscuits himself two or three times a week from Ava, but as before earned money to provide other necessities. The food problem was solved.

The first week passed. Nancy’s fear that Mary Hasseltine had smallpox was realized. Nancy herself had been vaccinated in America, but of course the children had not. Considering what to do, she finally decided to take the risk of inoculating Abby and little Maria from Mary before she had become too infectious. She had heard of such a thing and thought she might as well try it, as both children were sure to catch the disease from Mary sooner or later. The jailer’s wife saw what Nancy was doing with the needle and asked Nancy to inoculate her children too.

Mary Hasseltine developed an extremely bad case of smallpox. For a long time she was delirious and almost covered with pustules. Maria’s inoculation was not effective. But Abby and the jailer’s children had the disease so lightly that their play was hardly disturbed. Nancy became known all over the village as a wonderworker. Soon nearly every village family had brought its children to Nancy for inoculation. Hoping for the best, she pricked them all with the needle and told them to be careful of their diet. Luckily, no bad efl’eCts followed. But after another week or so, little Maria caught the disease from Mary, and had it nearly as seriously.

While Nancy was caring for smallpox, arranging for food, inoculating the village children and running back and forth from village to prison, the situation of the prisoners was slowly improving. They had lighter chains, no vermin, water for washing, less abuse, and fresh air. When a new stockade had been completed around the prison yard and Koh-bai realized his charges were not dangerous, he let them hobble about outdoors during the day.

The prison also received a new prisoner, a Roman Catholic priest named Ignatius Brito, of Portuguese extraction but largely of Burmese blood. He could speak no English, the favored language of the other prisoners, but they sometimes conversed in Burmese. He hated England and the English, but otherwise was not an unpleasant

OUNG-PEN-LA 347 companion. He liked music and composed a dance which he called “Deliverance from Prison.” He used to burn the music to the other prisoners as an accompaniment to his dance, which suffered somewhat from having to be performed in fetters. Often, too, he would sing Latin chants in honor of the Virgin Mary in an excellent voice —sometimes in the middle of the night—to the pleasure of his companions. Gradually, the others realized that he was insane, though harmless.

A day or so after the arrival of Brito another prisoner arrived. This one came in the middle of the night in a huge cart. They first heard roars, over the rumblings of wheels from a mile or so away; then the cart was driven into the Stockade and left there in spite of loud expostulations from Koh-bai.

In the morning they learned the new prisoner’s identity: 3 huge lioness confined in a cage mounted on wheels. No one, not even the jailer, could understand the reason for the order that placed a full—grown lioness in the stockade. Some thought it was because the lion was the emblem of England. Gouger and Adoniram thought it more likely that the Pakan Wun meant to feed the prisoners to the lioness when he got around to it.

Whatever the purpose, there the lioness was, pacing up and down the cage and glaring at them when they passed. But no orders came to feed the animal. It began to starve. Its roars of hunger kept them awake all night. After two weeks Koh-bai threw a pariah dog into the cage with it, but by this time the lioness lacked strength to kill it. A few days later she died, and was taken away and buried.

But the cage remained -— large, airy, and with a fine floor and roof. Adoniram, weakened by fever, thought it would be a fine place for privacy and rest. He applied to Koh-bai for permission to occupy it. His request was granted, and from this time on Adoniram lived by himself in the lion’s cage and was locked up like a lion at night instead of being put in the stocks.

Meanwhile, just as Mary and Maria began to recover a little from the smallpox, Nancy fell ill herself, probably with dysentery. She could hardly make her way from the grain storage room where she and the children lived to the prison. In this state she took a cart to Ava for medicines and better food, leaving Koo-chil to care for the children. At Ava, she suddenly became so much worse she thought she was dying. But she managed to get the medicine chest from the governor and by taking two drops of laudanum at a time for several hours, recovered enough to get on a boat for Amarapura. Here she found a cart which took her to Oung—pen-la. At the hut, she collapsed, so changed and emaciated that when Koo-chil came out to help her he burst into tears. With his assistance she crawled into the grain storage room and fell on a mat, completely unable to help herself.

Koo-chil forgot his caste in order to take care of Nancy. In the morning he found food, prepared it and took it to Adoniram. The rest of the day, until time for Adoniram’s evening meal, he devoted himself to her.

But the problem was little Maria. She had to have m0ther’s milk to live. Her cries of hunger at night became unbearable. Although Nancy could not move, she could talk. Koh-bai’s wife brought him in to see her, and she offered him presents if he would let Adoniram out of prison for a few hours -— safely fettered, of course —-to take the baby around the village to the nursing mothers. If one or another would supply a little superfluous milk, perhaps Maria could live.

Koh-bai agreed. Every day Adoniram was released for a time from the lion’s cage, taken under guard to the jailer’s house, and allowed to carry the baby around the village begging a little milk here and there from generous Burmese mothers. The expedient \vorked. Somehow the baby lived on from day to day and so did Nancy. On exceptional days Adoniram was allowed to spend an additional hour or two with Nancy in the grain storage room. The rest of his time he spent by himself in the cage in the prison stockade.

His spirits had never been so low. Ever since he had first been put in prison he had tried to console himself by imitating Madam Guyon’s meek acquiescence. He used to repeat, to Gouger, Cowper’s translation of her verses:

No bliss I seek, but to fulfill

In life, in death, Thy lovely will;

No succour in my woes I want,

Except what Thou art pleased to grant.
Our days are number’d—let us spare
Our anxious hearts 3 needless care;

’Tis Thine to number out our days, And ours to give them to Thy praise.

But now this philosophy failed him. His daughter was starving before his eyes; Nancy was nearly dead; his translation was lost; he himself was marked for death. The thought of death was tolerable. But the indignity, the protracted petty misery of day to day, were not. Merely to drag out a few hours more of life he had to meet the daily extortions of the jailers. One day he was allowed to visit Nancy. Another day, for no apparent reason, he was refused.

He knew there must be a just Plan and a loving Planner in all that was happening. Everything was doubtless for God’s good purpose. But his finally rebelling mind refused to accept it.... So his despairing thoughts went as he mused by himself in the lion’s cage. But he did not quite give up. Every day he somehow took up the battle to stave off death. And somehow he lived, and Nancy lived, and Maria lived.

Meanwhile the war seemed to be standing still. In his wretchedness, Adoniram hardly knew or cared what was happening, but Gouger was still interested. The English had settled down at Prome. The Pakan Wun took the opportunity to reorganize his own forces, which he repleted by large bounties from the Royal Treasury. The new recruits were of poor quality, the scouring of the cities, but at leaSt he had them in large numbers. Other large units were brought in from the tributary Shan States under the command of their own princes.

And now Gouger, who had become well acquainted with Kohbai, learned some things which had no good effect on his peace of mind. The Pakan Wun had been born in Oung-pen-la. The very name of the village could be translated as something like “Field of Victory.” A pattern emerged. The name, the association of the location, the lioness, all indicated that the Pakan Wun had something impressively and dreadfully symbolic in mind for the white prisoners.

Rumor soon supplied the explanation. When the Pakan Wun was ready to proceed against the British, he planned to assemble his headquarters staff at Oung-pen-la, where the white prisoners were to be offered up to propitiate the spirits of war by being buried alive at the head of the army. Planting their bodies in the Field of Victory could result only in a harvest of victory.

The prisoners never found out whether the rumor was really true, for on May 28, three days before the sacrifice was to take place, Gouger’s trusty baker came hurrying up to the prison from Ava. He was almost exhausted, but good tidings glowed from his face like a beacon. As soon as he could catch his breath he burst forth with them: The Pakan Wun was dead!

“Where did you get the news?” questioned Gouger, standing amidSt all the prisoners, who had clustered around when they saw the approach of the excited baker. “Are you sure?”

“I saw it myself,” beamed the baker. “He was dragged and beaten through the town to the place of execution, and there trodden to death by elephants!”

The haggard faces of the prisoners brightened. For the first time in all these weary months there was hope. Their joy was almost hysterical. A couple attempted a feeble cheer. One or two danced impromptu jigs in their hobbles.

Later they heard a reason for the sudden execution of the hated leader. The Pakan Wun had asked for command over the troops of the Shan princes. This was refused on the ground that a subject could not command royalty. Then he asked that the king’s personal bodyguard be put at his disposal to accompany him to the wars. The king was already becoming suspicious of him. This request heightened his suspicions. The Pakan Wun next asked the king to go to the Mengoon Pagoda, some miles outside of Ava, site of one of the largest bells in the world, and pray for success.

Command of king’s forces... Command of the Royal bodyguard... The king to leave Ava... to the king, all this looked like a plot. In rage he broke out: “Ha! He would take away my guard and then have me leave my throne!” Before the Pakan Wun could say another word he was dragged by the hair from the Golden Feet and beaten and kicked all the way to the execution place, where the elephants did their work in a very few minutes. Immense treasures, it was said, were found in his house afterwards —money withheld from the Royal Treasury for paying recruits.

After this news, the prisoners felt fairly sure that they were in no further danger of execution, except through some high ofiicial’s sudden outburst of rage at the English. And even this seemed unlikely. Sooner or later the British Army would move. The more it moved, the more valuable would the prisoners become as hostages.

The summer passed. Little Maria held on to life by the sympathetic nursing mothers of the village. Slowly Nancy began to recover. She was almost as emaciated as the prisoners and almost too feeble to move. But it seemed that her life had been spared. The prisoners, existing drearily but peacefully, felt as if they had been forgotten by the Government.

But about August they learned they were remembered. One day a band of Burmese officials arrived at the prison, with orders to transport them in carts to Amarapura. There at the house of the governor of the city each was placed in a separate room. It turned out that they were to translate a document discussing terms of peace from Sir Archibald Campbell, the British commander. In order to rule out any collusion, each prisoner was to translate the document separately and the results were to be compared.

Sir Archibald had offered to make a treaty. The prisoners —-particularly Gouger— had no optimistic ideas about the probable success of the peace negotiations, but they did feel that from now on their services would be required often and they could expect better treatment.

Their estimate was correct. The ministers of the court viewed the British proposal as a face-saving device. The faCt that the enemy commander had offered to discuss terms meant to them that he must be weak. The inactivity of his forces seemed to confirm their view. Rumors flew about that cholera was destroying the British forces, that war had broken out elsewhere, that the army would be withdrawn. Then in late October the Kyi-Wungyi blandly informed Sir Archibald Campbell that the Burmese had never heard of a custom of giving up territories or paying indemnities. The chagrined British general realized that the Burmese had merely been playing for time while they amassed their forces, and the fighting began again.

But powerful individuals at Ava had begun to realize interpreters would be needed. Peace would have to come sometime, and not a single person in the Burmese camp could speak and write English. Nor could a single one of the British speak and write Burmese.

On November fourth, a messenger came to Nancy from a friend, the former Koung-tone Myoo-tsa, now the governor of the North Gate of the palace, that an order had been given in the palace for Adoniram’s release. That evening it came. In the morning, Adoniram’s fetters were struck off. Nancy joyously set about preparations to leave. But the jailers decided to keep her in Oung-pen-la on the ground that the orders did not include her name. She pointed out that she was not a prisoner and never had been, but they refused permission to let anyone in the village rent her a cart. Finally Adoniram was brought out of the prison to the house of the jailers. For once he was in a position to bargain. He threatened them the wrath of the Golden Presence and sweetened the threat with promises of rich gifts. A large load of food had just come to Nancy from Ava; the jailers finally agreed to let Nancy go if they could have it. At noon, after a whole morning of haggling and cajoling, Nancy, with little Maria in her arms, Mary and Abby Hasseltine, the cook Koochil and Adoniram took their places in a creaking cart and began rolling slowly to Amarapura in the custody of a jailer.

They were sick and very tired. The children were fretful. The cart was slow and uncomfortable. But as the prison of Oung-pen-la finally receded from sight, their hearts were full of joy.