A Wanderer Till I Die

By Leonard Clark

The world was rumbling with discontent in 1934. Fascism was on the march and Japan was making a military land grab against a weakened Chinese empire. Nobody with any common sense went wandering around South East Asia alone unless they were looking for trouble. Which is exactly what young Leonard Clark (1908-1957), one of the greatest adventure travel writers of the early 20th century, thrived on. Clark’s later life included leading a mounted group of guerrillas into Tibet and organizing a spy ring against the Japanese Imperial army, before he eventually died in a Venezuelan jungle looking for diamonds. But this some-time aviator, full-time risk-taker, got his start in the jungles and battlefields of 1930s Asia. And while his later travel accounts are better known, “A Wanderer Till I Die” is the book that sets the pace for Clark’s event-filled life.

Though only 26 when the story opens, he’s already armed with a keen eye, a sense of humour, no regrets and his trusty Colt 45 pistol. Clark delights in telling his readers how he outsmarts warlords, avoids executioners, gambles with renegades and hangs out with an up and coming Communist leader named Mao Tse Tung. In a world with lax passport control, no airlines, and few rules, the young man from San Francisco floats effortlessly from one adventure to the next. When he’s not drinking whiskey at the Raffles Hotel or listening to the “St. Louis Blues” on the phonograph in the jungle, he’s searching for Malaysian treasure, being captured by Toradja head-hunters, interrogated by Japanese intelligence officers and lured into shady deals by European gun-runners.

If you crave the vicarious thrill of hunting tigers with a faulty rifle, or if you’ve ever fantasized about offering your services as a mercenary pilot to a warlord, only to discover that the man interviewing you is the wrong general, then this is the book for you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Muriwai Books
• Release date: Jan 13, 2019
• ISBN: 9781789123265

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Text originally published in 1937 under the same title.

© Muriwai Books 2018, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

A WANDERER TILL I DIE

BY

LEONARD CLARK

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 5

DEDICATION 6

ILLUSTRATIONS 7

I—THE FUKIEN REBELLION 9

II—TIGER AND PYTHON 23

III—TO THE LAND OF SWEET SADNESS 31

IV—AFTER MALAY WAR LOOT 41

V—CROCODILES 51

VI—SUMATRA—CAMERA! 55

VII—LOAFING THROUGH JAVA 62

VIII—CELEBES-AND GOLD 68

IX—THE JAPANESE ARMY ENTERTAINS 80

X—THE HAPPY CITY 89

XI—I GO TO BORNEO 98

XII—THE INTERIOR BUSH 109

XIII—ON THE TRAIL OF THE TAILED-MEN 120

XIV—EXPLORING ARCTIC MEXICO 130

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 158

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

"For I must tread adventure’s road,

A wanderer till I die."

—DENNIS ALLEN

The author wishes to express his appreciation for permission to include herein material previously published by Asia, The Pilot, Saga, Travel, and Field and Stream.

DEDICATION

TO

MY MOTHER

MRS. HERBERT SANFORD SWIFT

ILLUSTRATIONS

The Author

The Taiyuan

Decks Loaded With Prisoners

A Shoemaker

Escaping the Bullets

Manpower

A Sampan Family

Big-Sword Fighter

Hong Kong

Canton

Shiu-Chow

Water-Buffalo

En Route to Macao

Junk

Nipa Palm Huts

Tamils

Sultanate of Kedah, Malaya

A Fleet of Fishing Praus

Kampong

Night-prowling Elephants

Court Dancer

Javanese on the Barubudur

Beautiful Japan

The Riam Kiwa River

River Dyaks

The Pyramid of the Sun...

Looking North From Moreajoea

Orizaba From a Jungle Village

Above the Orizaba Ice Pinnacles

Resting

Castillo Climbing on the Cone

The Author at the Summit

I—THE FUKIEN REBELLION

ONE day in January, the Shanghai newspapers were ablaze with news of the greatest rebellion ever known in modern China! The Nineteenth Route Army, who had so gallantly fought the expert Japanese Marines at Shanghai, had revolted against the Nanking Regime. Fukien Province—which lay on the coast, between Hong Kong and Shanghai—had been given to General Tsa Ting-Kai as reward for his great fight at Shanghai. But he was even now forming a rebel People’s Government in Fukien. He was believed to have six airplanes but only three Chinese pilots.

Since I had a pilot’s license, I boarded the Taiyuan at midnight in the Whangpoo River, and headed down the Eastern China Sea for Amoy, hoping desperately to reach the capital of the Rebels before it fell to Nanking’s hammering armies.

On February 2nd, 1934, at dawn the third day out of Shanghai,—I was suddenly wakened by the thunderous firing of big navy rifles. I practically jumped into my clothes. Once on deck, I saw that the English and Chinese first-class passengers were crowding the rails and talking excitedly. The Taiyuan was sliding indifferently past a jagged row of iron-gray Nanking destroyers, apparently shelling rebel troop positions on the stone ridges above Amoy.

The British captain clattered down the bridge stairs:

No one goes ashore at Amoy! he sang out loudly, looking hard at me.

Sorry, sir, I retorted, stepping forward, my ticket expires at Amoy.

"You must continue to Hong Kong! Radio orders from British and American Consulates!" He hurried down the deck to reassure his passengers.

Radio orders be damned! I was practically broke! I had arrived none too soon. Troop and naval units had already gone into action. Only forty thousand Rebel troops were holding the great Nanking Offensive at bay. General Tsa Ting-Kai was in for the greatest battle of his long career. Foochow had already fallen before Nanking’s victorious armies. The first line of defense of The People’s Government had been ground under! The great Rebel would need his planes for artillery observation, and perhaps even for a get-away!

The Taiyuan slid into the narrow channel separating Amoy from tiny Kuluan Island, the Foreign Settlement. The engine vibration and rattle of anchor chain were followed by the irregular stuttering tat-tat-tat-tat of machine gun fire. Sampans flocked to our sides. A Britisher named Forrest, his wife, and I jumped into one of the bobbing craft, slipped under the whanging naval barrage, and threaded through thousands of scurrying sampans and junks that had jammed into the channel for protection.

We leaped ashore and stood safely on International Territory, headquarters of the sixty-odd foreigners. My companions and I fought our way through narrow streets surging with half-hysterical Chinese refugees. Finally we reached the other side of the Island. Here it was not so crowded.

My immediate objective was to reach General Tsa Ting-Kai’s war headquarters. While the Forrests were standing entranced with the Dragon Sea—sheer magic, green islands and brown sailing junks stuck like toys on a sheet of steel-blue paper—I looked for a way to enter Amoy City.

There was only one possible way—to swim the channel—and that was blocked by a Japanese warship. I would have to return to the boat, as much as I hated to. It was becoming beastly hot. We slid down a hill and rested in a grove of banana trees that swished with the restless green surf below. How could I reach the headquarters! In a few minutes I saw Forrest bend forward listening...the explosions had ceased.

We should return, he said nervously, perhaps thinking the mopping-up of civilian snipers with bayonets had started.

We skirted the Island, which I noted resembles old Manila with its walls sagging under heavy tropical plants, the calls of birds, and the wet sting of heat although the month was February. I suggested a glass of beer at a hotel operated by a German and his Chinese wife. Then, we stepped into a sampan, held by a Hindu Sikh police, and crossed the boat-seething channel back to the Taiyuan’s lowered gangplank.

I now intended to cross under the muzzles of the naval guns, and so reach the city of Amoy. Forrest, an engineer, had on entering the harbor also voiced a desire to land in Amoy. He had lived in China many years, but had never seen a war-torn area. His wife, a charming girl just out from London, made her way up the gangplank with the aid of a Chinese soldier.

I said, Guess I’ll have a look around the city. I tapped my pipe, If the Captain squawks, tell him I’m a bit short of tobacco.

No foreign tobacco here!

Coming along?

The Englishman glanced upward. The girl was anxiously standing at the top; he smiled, Sorry, old man...but… and he climbed reluctantly.

I shoved off. Persistently waving my hand I left no doubt in the amazed coolie’s mind as to my destination. However, he did not turn under the guns of the warships and head for shore until I showed him the wooden butt of my .45 revolver. In a few minutes I leaped ashore. The frightened coolie sculled into the channel and crossed to Kuluan. I climbed the stone stairs of the unfinished New Bund: Never had I seen such a sight! Thousands of frantic Chinese—black or blue pajamaed—poured out of narrow streets that seemed to have been designed after animal paths and set down in a man-created jungle of mud and stone painted in fantastic colors. I headed for the widest of the intersecting streets. In ten minutes I had reached its Chinese-gushing mouth by fighting...kicking...elbowing...sweating...through that human mass of fright. Every time a naval gun exploded, they would cringe like terrified sheep to the walls of the amazingly colored buildings.

At last reaching the street and keeping to the middle of the sixty-foot thoroughfare, I struck off toward the heart of the teeming city in search of General Tsa Ting-Kai’s headquarters. I hailed rickshaws and sedan chairs, but none responded. A crowd of Chinese gathered...followed...swelled...until it bulged on both sides of me.

I passed patrolling columns of smart soldiers in khaki and German gray. But! I had understood in Shanghai that Tsa Ting-Kai’s Rebel Army was uniformed in gray only! Well armed, they carried the latest in sub-machine guns, rifles, Belgian automatic pistols, as well as big swords which hung hilt-down from their backs. Officers brought their columns to a halt...stared! I continued...glancing back in a few minutes. They still watched me and the excited mob that surged around me.

That a foreigner, alone and unguarded, walked through Amoy; the only foreigner among a million war-crazed Chinese, was so bizarre a spectacle that its very mystery, alone, protected me. For in peace or in war, Amoy has always been one of China’s bitterest strongholds against the foreign white devil...the importer of opium, as he is called here.

Gunfire, both from the destroyers and the light arms ashore, seemed to have increased. It was on the slopes of the great stone mountain rising on the edge of Amoy, which confines the city to the tip of a peninsula, that the infantry of both factions were contesting for the prize city.

A mile from the Bund I reached the summit of a hill—the end of the street. A narrow crooked road filled with countless hurrying soldiers ran down the hill to the left. A wider thoroughfare branched to the right. Straight ahead was a temple-garden filled with patrolling infantrymen. Their fixed bayonets gleamed among the stone lions and gods. The General would certainly be closer to the battle front. I tossed a coin: Heads, to the right; tails, to the left! Heads!

I entered the right-hand street, pushing and shouldering through hurrying, grim, excitedly sing-songing soldiers and refugees; riding oxen carts, rickshaws, sedan chairs, even—water-buffalo! A few shops were being smashed or looted. Merchandise not portable was being destroyed in a fit of political-faction hatred, thrown into the street where we scrambled over it. A few bodies of civilians and soldiers lay sprawled underfoot, and blood that had run from their wounds lay in queer blackish-red patterns between the cobble stones. Those hellish head-swords had been at work.

I reached a group of officers standing at ease around a machine gun. They saluted, smartly. I addressed them in English, Take me to your commanding officer! They stared back, puzzled; clicked to another salute. Then, since these men looked like Cantonese, I tried to remember a few words of Cantonese and said, "Mau chi tong shan yat?" (Where is the commanding officer?)

They were immediately all smiles. One officer indicated I was to follow him.

We went through a gate whose wall was of blue porcelain designed after giant bamboo. The compound contained temples, canals meshed with yellow water-lilies, and ponderous gods. Soldiers were bivouacked everywhere. Whether this was the army supporting the Revolt—Tsa Ting-Kai’s, I had no way of knowing, and dared not ask the officer. If so, I had succeeded in reaching the war headquarters of the most disgraceful revolt known in modern China.

Probably a thousand soldiers were drilling and marching like automatons among the ruined temples—some tiled green, red or yellow. We crossed a moon-bridge of alabaster, then a ruined garden, and mounted the stairs of a massive monastery. Here, officers, uniformed in German gray, belted and armed with swords and heavy Luger automatic pistols in wooden sheaths, stood watching the great review.

At the end of a long hall we came to a heavily paneled door. Six soldiers presented arms; the officer spoke sharply; they stepped aside. The door swung open, disclosing an ex-sanctuary of a High Priest of Buddha. Now, it was stripped of its gods, scrolls of ancient philosophy and ritualistic trappings.

The room seemed empty at first. Then, I saw a slender Chinese officer with a glaring white scar from chin to ear. We advanced down the empty room to his desk—once an altar of sacrament—he rose...smiled...and extended his hand. I took it, more convinced than ever that all Chinese shake hands like a languid woman. The escorting officer stood rigidly nearby.

I sat down. The rattle of rifle and machine gun seemed smothered. A movement caught my eye. Above the General’s head, on the white wall, an arm and sub-machine gun were faintly outlined in the shadow. A soldier, then, was hiding in one of the window-niches. A slipper-shod soldier handed me tea and cigarettes.

Was the man before me General Tsa Ting-Kai, the unknown warlord who had stopped Japan’s war-machine at Shanghai? For the moment, this pale Chinese had been the supreme idol of his four hundred million countrymen—the direct cause of their new nationalism—and the man who had made the rest of the world wonder about China’s future as a possible war find.

Later in San Francisco and Shanghai, I was to meet General Tsa Ting-Kai...but at that moment in the temple, I would have given much to know who was this man before me. Though the insignia of the Provincial armies is pinned on the left side of the tunic, I, unfortunately, read no Chinese characters. Or, was this man the commander of the Nanking armies sent to suppress the rebels! We sipped tea, before mentioning my reason for calling—thus observing the ancient formalities. The interval, furthermore, gave me time to do some uncomfortable wondering if I were to be searched!

A dapper young officer appeared. He spoke English. His intonations, however, were not English, being rather free and less concise; I asked him whether he had been to America, for he whanged slightly, as a Britisher terms the accent of many of us.

Yes, he answered, surprised, I am a graduate of Princeton.

The thin officer spoke sharply to him. The young officer turned to me, and asked, The General wishes to know of what assistance he can be?

First, tell the honorable General that I am an aviator.

The translation...the three officers stiffened...the air seemed suddenly charged with electricity—that magic word in China...aviator!

Why have you come to Amoy——?

"In Shanghai I learned that the Amoy Army Corps (nearly slipped there!) needed an aviator."

The General rose to his feet, his voice sing-songed sharply.

"The General says he has no airplanes under his command! The six pursuits acquired two hours ago, from the retreating Rebels, were burned by them!"

The wrong army! At that instant I carried a chit written by Major Peter Kelley to Generals Li Chai-Sum and Tsa Ting-Kai—he was an old friend of theirs. If it was found I would be immediately shot. Somebody poked a gun against my spine. I stood perfectly still, expecting the shot.

How unfortunate for us... I said, sipping the tea.

You must be searched, snapped the Princeton man.

Among my letters he found the chit to the Rebels. Instantly he translated it into Chinese. The General looked closely at me, then spoke curtly in Chinese.

You are a friend of Major Kelly? questioned the interpreter.

I have known him for years, I answered, wondering at the intense expression on the General’s face.

"The General is also a friend of Major Kelly...you may go free!" half-smiled the young interpreter.

The gun came away from my spine. Convey my congratulations to his Excellency, the new Governor of Fukien Province, on his historic defeat of the world-famous Nineteenth Route Army, I gasped, rising.

The General beamed, although his scar turned livid. The escorting officer and I rode in the General’s black French touring car, escorted by two columns of infantry, back down to the Bund. Here in a huddle of wretchedness squatted about three thousand prisoners of war. Few of them had slippers. They were ragged, grimy, and their raw wounds drew clouds of flies. Nanking soldiers prodded them with bayonets, guarding them with the holy zeal of a missionary over his rice converts.

During my absence, the ship’s Captain fumed; but not knowing what it was all about, did not report me by radio to Shanghai. The Taiyuan had moored alongside the prisoners. The wretched prisoners were herded like cattle to the decks of the ship. Iron