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Both in my study of Annamese, and my practice in disguise and the pursuance of correct behaviour appropriate to that disguise, I contrived to make progress which satisfied Captain Deleuze.

On several occasions he permitted me to accompany him when he made excursions to neighbouring towns and villages or up the Red River, himself disguised as an Annamese lowlander, a pedlar, a priest, a dacoit, a coolie, a camp-follower, a shop-keeper, a railway contractor, a café servant; as a seller of carved wooden models and toys and figures modelled in clay and split bamboo; as whatever was useful in the attainment of his purpose—observation, verification, personal communication with his spies, and the collection of information.

On the occasions when I accompanied him, I myself, owing to my height and bulk, always went in the rôle of a Chinese tough, a truculent ruffian who earned his living as a “strong-arm man”, personal body-guard and bully; a rôle for which Captain Deleuze unkindly informed me I was admirably fitted by my appearance, if not actually so intended by Nature.

Certainly I could use my fists, and, upon more than one occasion, had to do so, to the utter amazement as well as discomfiture of aggressive and truculent persons who were either over-inquisitive or disposed to be arbitrary, high-handed and interfering.

With us went the admirable Doi Linh Nghi and the half-dozen members of his Section whom we called his family, they being, in point of fact, brothers or near kinsmen of his, from the same Highland village of the district whence came the admirable thois who are to the French what the Gurkhas are to the British.

Our most ambitious effort in the guise of wandering budmashes, rag-tag-and-bobtail jungle-ruffians, was a visit to the camp of the famous Luu-Ky himself, a Chinese brigand-leader who was harrying the railway under construction from Phulang-Thuong to Lang-son; swooping down and slaughtering working-parties; actually carrying off French engineers for ransom or torture; ambushing convoys going by road to Lang-son; and generally making himself a thorough nuisance. During the week before our visit to his camp, he had suddenly rushed the escort of an ammunition-column, captured twenty-five cases of Lebel rifles, and ten thousand rounds of ammunition, killed Commandant Bonneau of the Infanterie de Marine, and after mutilation, had crucified, upside-down on trees, all who fell into his hands.

He had also captured a prominent railway engineer named Gautrin, and notified General Voyron that, unless a ransom of one hundred thousand silver dollars was paid for him within a week, his ears would be forwarded; within a fortnight, his hands; within three weeks, his feet; and at the end of the month, his head....

Our visit was a great success, for we learned that, in the attack on the convoy, Luu-Ky had been wounded, that the wound was doing very badly, and that he was unlikely to recover. On the strength of Captain Deleuze’s report, Luu-Ky’s hitherto amazingly mobile force was surrounded, attacked, and handled so severely that it practically ceased to exist.