The vice consul's Irish setter was first up the gangway. Then fur-hatted Consul General Angus Ward loomed over the side of the U.S. freighter Lakeland Victory, at anchor off Taku Bar, a deep-water port downriver from Tientsin, China. He squinted cheerfully through his steel-rimmed spectacles as he came on board, his famous reddish beard now partly white, his fur-collared canvas coat and breeches bagging around his undernourished, 6-ft. frame.
Nearly two hours later, after long haggling with heavily armed Chinese Communists over the signing of release papers, Mrs. Ward and 18 others of...