[Excerpts] ...

[...]

The Japanese had a superstitions fear of interfering with religious practices, and when the guards reported back to their officers what Father Scanlan had said, they all shrugged and decided not to do anything further that night.

Father Scanlan continued to chant his office for another hour or so, and he kept this up all week, making his starting time later each night.

Finally, in desperation, the officers whose sleep had been wrecked every night for eight days ordered Father Scanlan out of solitary confinement and back to camp.

[excerpt]

Father Scanlan was a big round-faced, red-haired man, going bald. He spoke with a soft, slow voice; all his movements were slow and measured. But his mind was fast and good and resourceful, and for this reason, chiefly, the camp chose him to head the ring.

His egg-smuggling operations constituted an interfaith movement, you might say; Father Scanlan’s outside operative who delivered the eggs was Mrs. K’ang, a Protestant Chinese, and equally resourceful and spunky.

The Trappists’ room was located near a drain, which carried off the overflow of water from heavy rains. The drain was built underground to the road that ran outside the camp, by the outer wall, where it was covered with iron bars. Father Scanlan used this drain for his delivery route for eggs, cigarettes, and produce. He would crawl through it as far as he could, and Mrs. K’ang or one of her small boys would push the eggs and small packages through the bars to Father Scanlan inside the drain. I often went along to help, especially when we had big orders coming in. The rendezvous was always at night, and that meant working in pitch-darkness.

[excerpt]

My excitement was twofold, for this was the first concrete evidence I had had that the men had managed to get away safely, and now we had a means of communicating with them and, through them, with the National Government. I confided now in two of any close friends, Mr. Mac Laren and Dr. H. W. Hubbard, a Protestant minister I had known in Paoting, and the three of us arranged to send out our first code message. We typed it on a piece of white silk torn from an old handkerchief. The material was so soft the coolie could conceal it easily in his sleeve.

[further reading]
http://www.weihsien-paintings.org/rdjaegher/text/ChapterXVIII.htm

#