At seven o'clock that morning, in a neatly-thatched, white-washed brick cottage, surrounded by a luxuriant and well-kept garden, in the hill-country above the Chuan, a little group sat at breakfast. The room was plain but spotlessly clean. The wooden floors shone; the white plastered walls were covered with coloured lithographs representing the seven stations of the Cross; the little windows were hung with curtains of Chinese muslin. A narrow shelf of books occupied one corner, a stove another; and the table in the centre was spread with a snow-white cloth, dishes of fruit, and home-made bread.At the table three persons were seated. One was a tall man of fine presence, with clear-cut features, soft brown eyes, long white hair and beard. He wore the loose white tunic and pantaloons of a Chinaman, but the cross that hung by a cord round his neck was not Chinese. Jean Mayenobe was a Frenchman, a priest, one of those devoted missionaries who cut themselves off from home and kindred to live a life of self-denial, peril, and humble Christian service in remote unfriendly corners of the globe.His companions were a woman and a girl. The former was plain-featured and plainly dressed, with placid expression and humble mien. The latter seemed strangely out of place in her surroundings. She was young, apparently of some seventeen years. Her features were beautiful, with a dignity and a look of self-command rare in one of her age. Her complexion was ruddy brown; her bright hair, gathered in a knot behind, rebelled against the black riband that bound it, and fell behind her ears in crispy waves. Before her on the table was a samovar, and she had just handed a cup of tea to the missionary."Father," she said in French, "I am so tired of waiting. I am beginning to think that permission will never come. But why should it be refused? It is not as if I were seeking some benefit. In appearance I lose, not gain.""True, my child, you have nothing personally to gain. I have said before, it is not every daughter who would come thousands of miles and suffer hardship in order to bear her father company in exile and imprisonment. And such exile! The little I know of Sakhalin is frightful. It gives me pain to think of your knowing even so much.""I am not afraid. And if the treatment of prisoners in Sakhalin is so bad, that is all the more reason why I should be at my father's side, to help and comfort him a little. Why do they refuse to let me go?""Probably they have forgotten all about you. The war occupies them completely. And I repeat, if you have patience your father may come to you. I have no belief that the Russians will win in this terrible war. I heard but a little while ago from a brother priest near the scene of operations at Hai-cheng, who has studied the combatants, that he is convinced of the ultimate success of the Japanese. If they are victorious they will probably demand that Sakhalin shall be restored to them, and it will no longer be a place for Russian prisoners. Rest in the Lord, my child; wait patiently for Him, and He will give thee thy heart's desire."Gabriele Walewska was silent. Father Mayenobe sank into a reverie. The elderly woman looked sympathetically at her mistress, laid her hand on hers, and murmured a few words in Polish, to which the girl responded with a grateful smile. The sound of a distant shot coming through the open window shook the missionary from his musing."Russian officers out snipe-shooting again, I suppose," he said. "It reminds me I must go, my child. That poor Korean convert of mine is at the point of death, I fear. I must go to him. I may be absent all day.""We shall be quite happy, father. I shall pick the last of your strawberries to-day, and make some of your favourite tartlets for supper.""You will spoil me," said the priest with a smile. "Dominus vobiscum."When the missionary had gone, Gabriele left the Korean servants to clear the table, and, accompanied by her old nurse, went out into the garden with a light wicker basket. As she did so she scanned the surrounding country for signs of the shooting party. The mission station was at the summit of a low hill, and below it, towards the east, stretched a tract of sparse woodland, alternating with cultivated fields. A stream bathed the foot of the hill, and wound away to join the Hun-Chuan, its course traceable by the thickness of the wooded belt and the more vivid green of the fields.While the girl was still picking the ripe red berries she heard another shot, this time closer at hand. She rose, and out of pure curiosity searching the landscape she saw, about two miles away, a band of horsemen galloping through a field of kowliang, already so well grown that the stalks rose almost to the horses' heads. There were some thirty or forty of the riders, at present little more than specks in the distance. It struck her as rather a large hunting party, and she wondered what they were chasing, big game being unknown in the neighbourhood, and the time of year unusual for such sport. As she stood looking, the horsemen left the field and disappeared into the wooded belt bordering the stream.Expecting them to come again into sight a little higher up, Gabriele remained at the same spot. It occurred to her that one of them might be bringing the written permission she desired, and had taken advantage of his errand to organize a hunt. Suddenly she was startled to see a figure on horseback emerge from the copse but a few yards below her. It was a young man, a European; he was swaying in his saddle; and she noticed with feminine quickness that one arm was supported in a sling—a handkerchief looped round his neck. The next moment the rider caught sight of her; his eyes seemed to her to speak the language of despair. He swayed still more heavily, and was on the point of falling from his horse when Gabriele sprang down the slope and caught him. Calling to her nurse and a Korean man-servant near at hand, with their help she lifted him from the saddle and loosened his shirt-collar, then sent the Korean for water.Jack was dazed at first, all but swooning."Thank you!" he said in Russian. "I was almost done, I think. But please help me to mount again. I must ride on.""Impossible, gospodin!" she said. "You are hurt, I see; the injury must be seen to.""It is good of you, but my arm must wait. Please help me to mount my pony."His wounded arm, his urgent manner, recalled to Gabriele the shots she had heard, the band of horsemen she had seen galloping in the distance."You are in danger?" she said quickly. "Is it not so?""Yes. There are Buriats behind me; they are close on my heels. Indeed"—he smiled wanly—"it is your duty, as a Russian, I suppose, to give me up.""I am not a Russian," she exclaimed. "And if I were, I should not lightly give up a fugitive to the Russian police. You can go no farther; what can I do? There is so little time."For a few seconds she appeared to be considering. Her brow was knit; she looked at him anxiously. Fully trusting her, he made no further effort to continue his flight, for which, indeed, he was manifestly unfit. Half-reclining on his pony's neck, he waited, panting.Then she spoke rapidly to the Korean."Take the pony, unsaddle him, and turn him loose in the kowliang yonder. Saddle the Father's pony, ride a few yards in the stream, then gallop past the edge of the copse, through the hemp field, up to Boulder Hill. If you are followed by horsemen, throw them off the scent. Don't let them see you closely. Return after dark, but make sure the Buriats are not here before you come in."An unregenerate Korean would probably have hesitated, but this man had been for some time under Father Mayenobe's training, and in a few minutes he had brought out the pony and cantered away. Meanwhile Gabriele, asking Jack to lean upon her arm, had led him into the copse to a large beech, the lowest branch of which sprang from the trunk about twelve feet from the ground. Asking him to remain there, she ran off with the fleetness of a doe, and soon returned with a light ladder. Setting this against the tree, she assisted Jack to mount; when he reached the fork he saw that the interior of the trunk was hollow. Then she pulled up the ladder, lowered it into the hollow space, and helped Jack to descend. Drawing up the ladder again, she let it down outside, ran down, and carried it swiftly back to the house, leaving Jack inside the trunk, where he stood upright, supporting himself with his uninjured arm.Scarcely five minutes had passed since his first appearance. The Buriats had not yet come in sight; they had clearly been checked by the fugitive's sudden divergence from his previous line of flight, and nonplussed by his precaution in riding for some distance through the stream. But in another five minutes half a dozen horsemen, with a handsome young Russian lieutenant at their head, drew rein in front of the house. Gabriele was unconcernedly shelling peas at the window of the little dining-room.The officer was evidently surprised to see a young European lady. With heightened colour he bent over his saddle and addressed her in Russian."Have you seen a man on horseback in (he neighbourhood, Mademoiselle?"Gabriele looked up, with a puzzled expression."Monsieur parle-t-il français?" she said."Oui, Mademoiselle," returned the officer, then repeating his question in French."Yes," she replied. "A few minutes ago a man galloped from the stream, past the copse, and rode auay along the side of the hill.""Merci bien, Mademoiselle," said the lieutenant, translating the information for his men.They at once began to hunt for the tracks, and in a few moments spied the hoof-marks of a galloping horse. One of them discharged his rifle to bring up the rest of the troop, who had scattered over the face of the country, endeavouring to pick up the trail of the fugitive. Some were already galloping off in the direction indicated by Gabriele. Soon the rest of the Buriats came riding by in twos and threes, until the whole band was in full cry up the hillside.Gabriele remained at the window shelling peas until she was sure that the last horseman had passed. Then she took a bottle of home-grown wine from the missionary's store, filled a cup and gave it to her old nurse to carry, and returned with the ladder to the tree."It is I," she said as she approached. "I am bringing you wine."Mounting into the tree, she handed down the cup. Jack drained it at a draught."You are suffering?" said the girl."Not much. It is a flesh wound; I have lost some blood, and was faint. I am better now.""You must remain in the tree. The danger is not yet past; but have patience. I dare not stay longer; they will come back soon. Hope on."CHAPTER VIIA Daughter of PolandSuppressio Veri—The Keys—At Fault—A Polish Patriot—A Daughter's Love—A Common Sorrow—A French Mission—A Council of War—From Canton—A Surprise Visit—Hide and Seek—Ladislas StreleszkiAll was silent for nearly an hour. Slowly the minutes passed. Jack felt he had never been so wretchedly uncomfortable. His legs ached; his arm throbbed with pain; there was not room in his hiding-place to sit; the stuffiness of his prison and the attentions of innumerable insects so tortured him that he could hardly refrain from crying out to be released. Eagerly he listened for the return of the tall strong girl whose quick wit had thrown the Buriats off his track. When would she come again? At last, after a period of waiting that seemed ten times as long as it really was, he fancied he heard her footsteps. He listened; yes, it was certainly someone approaching; his long imprisonment was ended. But just as the footsteps, now distinctly audible, neared the tree, his ears caught the heavy thud of horses galloping, and a few moments afterwards an angry voice saying in French:"The man you saw, Mademoiselle, is not the man we are searching for. My sergeant, who is following him up, sends me word that he got a clear view of him as he breasted the hill. The dress is different, the horse is different——"He broke off as if expecting an explanation."How unfortunate, Monsieur!" exclaimed Gabriele in a tone of concern. "I fear you must have come a long distance out of your way.""That is as it may be, Mademoiselle," replied the lieutenant, somewhat nettled. "Perhaps not so far either, for we tracked our man to within a few hundred yards of your house." He paused a moment, then added suspiciously: "What was he like, the man you saw galloping?""What was he like?" she repeated reflectively. "I think he was about your height; but then you are mounted, and so was he, and it is so difficult to judge when a man is mounted, is it not, Monsieur? And then he was going so fast; in a flash he was by; there was his back disappearing into the copse. It was a broad back; yes, certainly a broad back; and he was hitting his pony; yes, I remember that clearly, poor thing! and it was going so fast, too."All this was said with the most artless simplicity, and Jack was amused, though his heart was beating hard with apprehension."But, Mademoiselle, what was he like?" repeated the officer, finding some difficulty in repressing his anger."The man I saw, Monsieur, or the man you saw, or the man your sergeant saw? There are so many—they confuse me.""The man you saw. Come, Mademoiselle, we are wasting time. Was he a white man, or a Chinaman, or what?""Oh, his colour! Really, I cannot say. You see, Monsieur, the sun was in my eyes. I saw his back plainly, a broad back; but he was riding fast, and hitting his pony; yes, poor thing! he was hitting it very hard."The lieutenant hesitated; Jack held his breath."You will pardon me, Mademoiselle, if I ask you to let me search your house.""Not my house, Monsieur. It belongs to Father Mayenobe.""Peste!" he exclaimed as he dismounted. "This house, whosesoever it is. The man gave us the slip in this neighbourhood, and my orders are to capture him.""Certainly search, Monsieur. Father Mayenobe is away from home, or I am sure he would receive you as the occasion demands. The house is open to you. Perhaps a few of you would enter at a time?"The frowning officer glanced at her, unable to decide whether she was mocking him. But her face was perfectly grave."Certainly, Mademoiselle," he replied a little uneasily. "Two will be sufficient; and with your permission I will accompany them. Doubtless," he added, as by an afterthought, "it will prove a mere form.""I suppose it is quite right, Monsieur. I know nothing about these things. Perhaps I ought to say no until Father Mayenobe returns. But then I couldn't prevent you, could I? So you had better go in and do your duty. Let me see, you will want the keys." She took a bunch from her pocket. "There are very few. This is the key of the larder."She innocently handed him the bunch, indicating the one she had mentioned."Only the larder is locked," she added. "The natives, you are aware, Monsieur, will overeat if one is not careful."The young officer, looking very much ashamed of himself, took the bunch, and having no answer ready, moved towards the house."Will you show us the house, Mademoiselle?""Oh no, Monsieur! that would be to countenance your intrusion. I cannot be expected to do that."The conversation had been carried on throughout within a few feet of Jack. In spite of his wound, his uncomfortable position, and the danger of discovery, he found himself shaking with silent laughter, imagining the play of expression on the faces of Gabriele and her victim.The lieutenant with two of his men went into the house. There was silence for a while, broken only by the champing of the Buriats' ponies and the rattle of accoutrements, the men sitting their steeds mute and motionless. Then the voice of the officer could be heard interrogating the old nurse, who merely shook her head to every question. She knew nothing but Polish, and the officer's Russian was as incomprehensible to her as his French. After a few minutes he returned."Accept my apologies and my thanks, Mademoiselle," he said, as he handed her the keys. "We must pursue our chase elsewhere. Bonjour!""Bonjour, Monsieur!"The troop rode away, taking a different course. Gabriele's lips curved in a smile as she watched them. The officer glanced back just before riding out of sight. She was walking slowly towards the house.Half an hour afterwards the missionary returned."Father," said Gabriele, "I have played the good Samaritan since you have been away."She explained to him rapidly what had occurred."My daughter," he said gently, "I cannot blame you, but you acted rashly, very rashly indeed.""What would you have done, Father?" she asked archly."Just what you did, my dear," he replied with twinkling eyes. "But we must be careful. The Russians look askance at our missions as it is; they only want a pretext to expel us.""And the poor young man is all the time in the tree! He must be nearly dead with fatigue.""But we cannot release him yet. Some of the Russians may return this way from their chase of Min-chin. I hope they will not shoot the poor fellow by mistake."Jack waited, feeling more and more exhausted, and wondering how long his irksome durance was to last. By and by he again heard horses galloping. The Buriat sergeant and one of his men had returned from their fruitless chase. Min-chin, the Korean servant, had outridden them, and they had lost trace of him. They pulled up at the missionary's house to ask the whereabouts of the remainder of the troop, then they rode on. Watching them out of sight, and waiting for some time to assure himself that danger was past, Father Mayenobe carried the ladder to the tree, and soon Jack, pale, worn, and hungry, lay in the priest's own bed. The father, like most of the French missionaries in China, knew something of medicine and surgery; he examined Jack's wound, dressed and bound up his arm, and said that he was not to think of getting up for several days. It was in fact nearly a week before he was allowed to leave the bed, and the missionary saw that watch was kept night and day to guard against a surprise visit from the Russians.During this period of enforced seclusion Father Mayenobe learnt Jack's story. Though it made him feel more than ever the gravity of his position if his guest should be discovered, it did not abate by a jot his determination to do what he could for him. Indeed, his sympathy for Jack was enhanced by a certain similarity between his circumstances and Gabriele's. He told Jack her story. Her father was a large land-owner, the descendant of a great Polish family, a man of noble character, greatly beloved of his tenants and respected by his peers. Like every true Pole he was a strong patriot, and had been a member of one of the secret associations that have for their object the restoration of Polish liberties. Some six years before, the society had been betrayed by one of its members; Count Walewski, with several of his compatriots, was arrested and sent without trial into exile; and as a deterrent to other Poles who might contemplate revolt, the place selected for his punishment was the bleak barren island of Sakhalin, the farthest eastern limit of the Russian empire. There was special cruelty and indignity involved in this choice, for the island was reserved as a rule for murderers and the lowest class of criminals; and his friends in Poland were aghast when they heard to what a living death he had been condemned.At the time of the count's arrest and banishment, his daughter Gabriele was only eleven years of age. Her father's estates being confiscated, and she a motherless child, she was adopted by her paternal aunt, an unmarried lady of ample means, who took her to her home in Paris, educated her, and treated her with a mother's care. But as the girl grew older and learned to understand more fully the hopelessness of her father's fate, she resolved at all costs to share his exile, and to do what lay in her power to alleviate and sweeten his terrible lot. Her aunt, fearful of allowing a young girl to undertake a mission so terrible, and being too infirm to accompany her, did all that she could to turn her from her purpose. But with increasing years the girl's determination became ever stronger. She grew up quickly into a thoughtful strong-willed maiden, full of patriotic ardour, of passionate resentment against the Russian government, and of an overflowing love for the father whose affection she remembered so well, and whose noble qualities she had not been too young to appreciate. While grateful for all the kindness her aunt had showered upon her, she was possessed by an overmastering sense of duty to her father. At last, when she was nearly seventeen, but in looks and mind older than her years, she threatened to set forth without assistance if her aunt refused her assent and help. Having no alternative the poor lady yielded, only stipulating that Gabriele's old nurse should accompany her. For some months they vainly tried to get permission from St. Petersburg for the girl to join her father. In the case of ordinary criminals no difficulty was usually made; it was clear that, as happens so often in Russia, the political offence was to be visited more heavily than the worst of crimes. Then she started without permission, hoping to obtain the necessary authorization at Vladivostok. She was provided with letters of introduction to a Polish family in Siberia, and one to Father Mayenobe, whose sister had been a teacher at the pension Gabriele had attended in Paris. But the outbreak of the war had so much disorganized things that the Polish friends were not to be found. She arrived in Vladivostok; there her request for permission to go to Sakhalin had been referred by one official to another, shelved, and finally ignored. Then, friendless and despairing, she had written to the missionary asking his advice. He had already heard of her from his sister. Riding at once into Vladivostok he endeavoured to get the required permission; but the governor and officials had something more important to consider than the romantic impulses of a Polish school-girl, and they politely shunted all his representations. At his suggestion Gabriele and her nurse had returned with him to his little mission station in the hills, where they had since remained, hoping that in course of time they would gain their object.When Jack was well enough to leave his bedroom and share the simple life of the missionary and his household, it was apparent that the two young people were drawn together by the common circumstances of their fate. From the first moment Jack had felt a strong admiration for the girl whose resourcefulness had saved him from capture; while Gabriele regarded his position as even worse than her own, for she knew at any rate where her father was. They had many long conversations together; the girl put her own sorrows into the background, and entered heartily into Jack's perplexities and plans. Father Mayenobe often joined them in talking things over, and soon won Jack's admiration for his character, and respect for his wise counsel.Jack had opportunities of seeing something and learning more of his new friend's mission work. Jean Mayenobe had been a favourite pupil of Monsieur Venault, the young nobleman who gave up his career as a courtier of Louis XVIII, and devoted his whole fortune and forty-two years of his life to his labour of love in Manchuria. A great part of a French missionary's work consists in relieving the poor and sick and caring for orphans. He does little actual preaching of the Gospel; he conducts service in a small church or oratory attached to his house, but converts are made chiefly through the agency of native Christians, and through the training of orphan children from tender years. The priest dresses and fares little better than the poorest of his flock, and is never absent from his charge, fulfilling with absolute literalness the Divine command.One day a Korean youth in training for the priesthood came in with a message from the Sister in charge of the orphanage at Almazovsk. He remained for several days in the house. Observing his manly open countenance and his air of energy and enthusiasm, so much in contrast to the average Korean's flabby effeminacy, Jack understood what an influence for good the Christian missionary can wield.The talk in the little mission-house turned again and again upon the mystery of Mr. Brown's fate.Father Mayenobe confessed that he was unable to make a likely guess as to the merchant's whereabouts."There are so many places in Siberia to which he may have been sent. Sakhalin, you suggest? Sakhalin is little used now for political prisoners, although, as in Count Walewski's case, some few are still sent there.""How am I to find out? It is the uncertainty that is so terrible.""I can think of no safe means. If the Russians are determined to keep his whereabouts secret——""That is itself an admission that they are in the wrong," interrupted Gabriele."It may be. I was going to say that if that is their determination it will be very difficult to trace him, and the only likely course would be to follow up enquiries along the railway.""That is almost hopeless in present circumstances. The war has disorganized everything. Besides, how am I to get into Moukden again?""Why attempt it? Why not try to gain the coast and make for home, and trust to diplomatic representations at St. Petersburg?""No, no, father, I certainly disagree with you," cried Gabriele. "You know how slowly diplomacy works. Think of it; Monsieur Brown may pass months, perhaps years, in the most terrible uncertainty and suspense. No; if I were in his place I would do as he means to do. Oh, I wish I were a man!""But think of the danger! If he were to go as a European, he would be set upon by Chinese in the out-of-the-way parts through which he must pass. In the towns the English and the French are respected when other Europeans are not, but in the country parts all alike are foreign devils, of less account than pigs. If he got safely within the Russian lines he would probably be arrested as a spy and shot. His only chance is to go as a Chinaman.""As a Chinaman?""Yes, disguised to the best of our ability."Gabriele looked dubiously at Jack, as though questioning whether any disguise would serve."What do you say yourself, Monsieur Brown?" asked the missionary."I must risk it, father. I have been long enough in China to know the difficulties and dangers in my way; I don't underrate them, I assure you. But anything is better than this harrowing uncertainty. I could not remain idle; I feel I must do something to clear up the mystery, even though I should be venturing on a forlorn hope.""Well, my son, I will not dissuade you. Fortune favours the brave, they say. You are determined to go; God go with you! But we must think of how it is to be done.""I must go as a Chinaman, that is certain. It had better be as a southern Chinaman. Mademoiselle perhaps does not know that the spoken language of the north and south are so unlike that natives of the one can only communicate with the other by written characters or by pidgin English. I can't write Chinese, and if I pretend to be quite illiterate (as indeed I am from the Chinese point of view) I may hope to pass muster. I can speak pidgin English. We had a Canton servant in Shanghai with whom I spoke nothing else, and we use it still with the servants in Moukden.""But there is a greater difficulty—the difficulty of feature. You would pass better in Canton as a Manchu, than as a Cantonese in Manchuria.""I can only risk it. A little saffron and henna——""And a pigtail, Monsieur Brown?—will you have to wear a pigtail?" said Gabriele."Yes, unluckily," said Jack with a rueful smile. "My own hair won't suffice. But false pigtails are common enough in China. I shall ask your help with that, Mademoiselle.""It would amuse me—if it were not so terribly serious.""You will go as a Chinaman, then," said the priest. "But you must have a story to tell on the way if you are questioned: have you thought of that?""Yes. Suppose I give out that I am the servant of a Moukden mandarin, returning from a special mission to Hun-chun, hinting perhaps at anti-Russian intrigue?"Father Mayenobe stroked his beard."It is inevitable," he said. "For you this is a state of war, and in war the first principle is to deceive the enemy. Still, I do not like your venture. The more I think of it, the more heavy do the odds appear against success.""Father, do not let us go into that again," pleaded Gabriele. "Can you suggest any better plan for Monsieur Brown?""I confess I cannot. Well, let it be so, then. I will do all in my power to help you, my son."A fortnight passed away. The wet season had begun, and though the rainfall was not so continuous as is commonly the case, the streams were swelled to overflowing and the rough tracks rendered impassable. The mission station, being on a hillside, suffered less than huts on the lower ground. During the unfavourable weather much anxious care was given to Jack's preparations. The costume was got ready in every detail; Gabriele with her own hands plaited the pigtail and wadded the loose tunic and pantaloons. At last all was in readiness, and Jack only awaited a fine day to set off.One afternoon, when the sun was hot, raising a thick vapour from the sodden fields, Min-chin came running into the house with the news that a party of Buriats were riding up the hill. It happened that Father Mayenobe had taken advantage of the change of weather to visit some of his little flock a few miles off. Without a moment's delay Jack hastened to the hollow tree, and was safe inside by the time the horsemen rode up. They surrounded the house, and the officer, an older man than the lieutenant whom Gabriele had discomfited, alighted at the door and called for the priest. Gabriele appeared. It was evident from the officer's manner that he had heard of her."Mademoiselle," he said in French, "you will please give me a plain answer. A stranger has been seen in and about this house. Who is he?""Oh! you mean the catechumen from Almazovsk?"The captain looked hard at her."Come, Mademoiselle, where is the man?""The catechumen? He is gone. He went three days ago, all through the rain. He would not remain, though Father Mayenobe pressed him to wait in hope of finer weather. You seem to doubt me," added the girl. "The house has been already searched once, in Father Mayenobe's absence; I assure you there is nobody in it but our servants; if you will not accept my assurance you had better search again."She moved away, and began to occupy herself with simple household matters, completely ignoring the Russians. The captain did not go shamefacedly about his work as the lieutenant had done; he searched the little house thoroughly, ransacking every hole and corner. The task did not take him long; he found nothing. Coming out again, he beckoned to a man in civilian costume whom Gabriele had not previously noticed. As he rode forward, she started; but in an instant recovered herself. He spoke a few words to the captain; then the latter, with a curt word of farewell to the girl, gave his men the order to ride away. Gabriele did not like his look; he had seemed too easily satisfied, and consulted with the civilian; and she sent two of the servants to keep watch at the only convenient approaches to the settlement. Her precaution was justified. Two or three hours later the party rode back at a gallop. The alarm was given by one of the sentinels, and Jack had time to get back into the serviceable beech before they arrived. A second search was made, this also fruitless; then the horsemen finally departed, convinced against their will that they had come once more on a false scent.When Jack left his hiding-place he saw by the expression of Gabriele's face that she had something to tell him. A red spot burned on each cheek, and her eyes were blazing."How dare he! How dare he!" she exclaimed. "Oh, if I could have killed him! It was Ladislas Streleszki, the traitor, the villain, the man who betrayed my father. He was our steward; we did not know for a long time who had done that foul deed; but when my father was arrested Streleszki disappeared, and it was many months before we understood.""Do you mean, Mademoiselle, that he is now a Russian officer?""No, no; but when they came the second time he was with them.""Did he not recognize you?""No; it is six years since he saw me, and I have changed very much. I was afraid he might; I thought perhaps a chance word from one of the officers in Vladivostok through whom my applications have passed, had brought him here to persecute me. But it cannot be so; he hardly looked at me. I knew him at once; he has altered little; his hair is turning grey; but I could never mistake him; one eyelid droops and——""Indeed!" cried Jack with a start. "Is it his left eyelid?""Yes. Oh, why do you ask?""Sowinski, my father's enemy, has the same defect. Did you hear him speak, Mademoiselle?""Yes; his voice is gruff and coarse.""Then Streleszki and Sowinski are the same man. Good heavens, we have indeed had a narrow escape! It would have been all up with me if I had been found, and I fear your fate would have been sealed too. I am to blame for staying here so long. I must not bring you into danger again. I will go to-day."CHAPTER VIIIA Custom of CathayThe Forbidden Mountain—Two from Canton—Clutching at Straws—Ipsos Custodes—A Question of Dollars—The Yamen—The Majesty of the Law—Judge and Jury—The Cage—Torture—Mr. Wang—Benevolence and Aid"Hai-yah!""Ph'ho!""Fan-yun!""Fan-kwei!""Look at his eyes! How big! Round as the moon. See how they goggle and glare!""Yah! Ugly beast! His nose! Look at it! Like the beak of a hawk.""And his hair! Ch'hoy! Like the fleece of a sheep.""And his clothes! Ragged as a quail's tail.""No doubt of it, he is a foreign devil, ugly pig.""Why still alive? Kill him at once, say I. Foreign devils are dangerous to keep. One come, thousands follow. Kill at once; if we had done that with the Russians, no more trouble. He will bring ill-luck on the village. What luck have we had since the Russians came digging into the Hill of a Thousand Perfumes? Who can say how many demons they let loose?""Yah! Who has found ginseng since then, who? Nothing but ill-luck now. An Pow dead, strong as he was; Sun Soo drowned in the river; all our oxen carried off by Ah Lum and his Chunchuses. Hai! hai! And this foreign devil will make things worse. Why did they not chop off his head at once?"To this conversation, carried on within a few feet of him, Jack listened in a somewhat apathetic spirit. He was utterly dejected, worn out, humiliated. He lay in a large wooden cage near the headman's house in the village of Tang-ho-kou in the Long White Mountains. It was a secluded spot, in a district supposed to be sacred to the emperor's ancestors, where it was sacrilege even for a Chinaman to tread. The inhabitants were an exclusive community, ruled by a guild, owning only nominal allegiance to the emperor, and essentially a self-governed republic. They were unmolested, for government is lax in Manchuria, and the Long White Mountains are far from the capital and difficult ground to police; theoretically the guildsmen went in danger of their heads, practically they were monarch of all they surveyed.A group of the villagers was collected on this July evening about the cage, discussing the foreign prisoner, interrupting their conversation to snarl at him."It is true; his head ought to be chopped off, but they were afraid.""Afraid of what?""Of what might be done to them. The illustrious viceroy at Moukden is very strict. Even a foreign devil may not be killed without leave. Why? Because if one is killed, there is trouble. The kings of the foreign devils are angry, and many good Chinese heads have to fall. They have sent to ask leave to behead the barbarian: better still, to slice him. He fought like a hill tiger when they caught him, and two men even now lie wounded.""How did they catch him?""A Canton man, mafoo to his excellency General Ping at Moukden, overtook him riding in the hills. He was making a bird's noise with his lips; that was suspicious. But the Canton man was wary. He spoke to him as a friend, and rode alongside. Where did he come from? Thus asked the Canton man. The barbarian shook his head and answered in pidgin, the tongue of the foreign devil in the south. Yah! That was his ruin. Our Canton friend also speaks pidgin. 'You come from Canton?' says he. 'Yes.' 'What part? Where did you live? Do you know this place or that? What is your business?' Those were his questions; a shrewd fellow, the Canton man. He left him at the next village; then followed with six strong men. They got ahead of him, hid in a copse by the roadside, and when the foreign devil came up, rushed out upon him. They were seven; but it was a hard fight. Ch'hoy! These barbarians are in league with a thousand demons; that is why they are so fierce and strong. But they got him at last, and brought him here; worse luck! he shall suffer for it yet."The crowd drew nearer to their helpless prisoner, stared at him, jeered, cast stones and offal, and, worked up by the teller of the story, were only kept from tearing him to pieces by the guard and the bars of the cage. Exposed without shelter to the broiling sun, Jack was dizzy and faint. His clothes had been torn to tatters in the struggle, his pigtail wrenched from his head. He had had no food for many hours, and, what was worse, no water.He had been able to catch the gist of what the chief speaker in the crowd had said. How stupid of him to whistle—a thing a Chinaman never does! How unlucky that he had met a man from Canton! The dialects of the north and south differ so much that by professing to be a Southerner he had come so far on his journey undetected; but in conversation with a Cantonese his accent had inevitably betrayed him. And now he knew that he could expect no mercy. A European carries his life in his hands in China whenever he ventures alone out of the beaten track. In Manchuria just then, with the natives embittered by the wanton destruction of their towns and villages, the chances of a captive being spared were infinitesimal. Only fear of the mandarins had apparently caused them to hold their hands in his case; but Jack had little reason to suppose that the mandarins would interfere to protect him. No order would be issued; but the villagers would receive a hint to do as they pleased; and Jack well knew what their pleasure would be. In the unlikely event of diplomatic pressure being afterwards brought to bear, the mandarins could still repudiate responsibility, and the villagers would suffer; several, probably the most innocent, would lose their heads. But Jack knew that he had placed himself outside the protection of the British flag. Neither the mandarins nor the villagers had anything to fear.The sun went down; the village watchman beat his wooden gong; and the group gradually dispersed. Only the guard was left. Parched with thirst, Jack ventured to address him, asking for a cup of water. The man, with more humanity than the most, after some hesitation acceded. He was generous, and brought also a mess of rice. Greatly refreshed by the meal, scanty though it was, Jack felt his spirits rising; with more of hope he began to canvass the possibilities in his favour. But he had to admit that they were slight. There was just one ray of light, dim indeed; but a pin-point glimmer is precious in the dark. He had heard the villagers mention the brigand Ah Lum, the chief of the Chunchuses, who had levied upon their oxen. This was the chief whom Wang Shih had left Moukden to join. If Jack could only communicate with Wang Shih there might still be a chance for him.He began a whispered conversation with his guard, and learnt that, a few days before, Ah Lum's band was known to be encamped in the hills some twenty miles to the south-west. It was resting and recruiting its strength after a severe brush with a force of Cossacks, who had almost succeeded in cutting it to pieces during a raid on the railway."Do you know Wang Shih?""No; Ah Lum has several lieutenants. His band numbers nearly eight hundred; there were more than a thousand before the fight with the Russians.""You know what a dollar is?""It is worth many strings of cash.""Well, if you will take word to Mr. Wang about me, I will give you fifty dollars.""Where will you get them from?" asked the man suspiciously. "Were you not searched, and everything taken from you?""True, I was searched; but the foreign devil has ways of getting money that the Chinaman does not understand. It is a small thing I ask you to do. The reward is great; fifty dollars, hundreds of strings of cash. You will never get such a chance again."True to the oriental instinct for haggling, the man argued and discussed for some time before he at last agreed to Jack's proposition."You must make haste," said Jack. "If the messenger to the mandarin returns before you, I shall be killed and you will get no money."The man at once explained that it was impossible for him to leave the village; he must find a messenger."Very well. He is to find Wang Shih and say that Jack Brown from Moukden is in peril of death. You can say the name?""Chack Blown," said the man."That will do. Now, when can you send your man?"The guard said that he would be shortly relieved; then he would lose no time. In a few minutes a man came to take his place, and Jack, with mingled hopes and fears, settled himself in a corner of the cage, to sleep if possible. Half an hour later the guard returned with the welcome news that a messenger had started, after bargaining for twenty of the fifty dollars, and would travel all night on foot, for he had no horse, and to hire one would awaken suspicion."But," added the guard, "he is a trusty man, much respected, and a great hater of foreign devils, like all good Chinamen. If he had had his way the honourable foreign devil would have been executed this afternoon.""Then how comes it," asked Jack, "that he is willing to go as messenger?"The guide looked puzzled."Surely the honourable barbarian understands? Did I not explain that I promised Mr. Fu twenty dollars?"Even in his misery Jack could not forbear a smile. His messenger was doubtless the man who had led the chorus of threats and insults a few hours before. The man's convictions were no doubt still the same; but the prospect of a few dollars had completely divorced precept from practice.Then Jack reflected that the enterprise was a poor chance at the best. There was little likelihood of the man finding Wang Shih in time, and if he found him, it was uncertain whether his sense of gratitude was sufficiently keen to bring him to the rescue. Yet, in spite of all, Jack's impatient eager thought followed the messenger, as though hope could give him winged feet.He spent a miserable night. In that hill country even the summer nights are cold; and his clothes having been well-nigh torn from his back, he had scant protection. He slept but little, lying awake for hours listening to the mice and rats scampering around the cage, and to the long-drawn melancholy howls of the village dogs.Soon after dawn he heard a great commotion in the village. His pulse beat high; he hoped that Wang Shih had arrived. But when his friendly guardian came to resume duty, his heart sank, for he learnt that the headman's messenger to the local mandarin had returned, bringing word that the barbarian should be suitably dealt with by the guild. The mandarin had evidently washed his hands of the matter; the guard had no doubt that when the headman was ready Jack would be taken before him, and he must expect no mercy. The people had never ceased to grumble at the delay in executing him; and nothing could be hoped of the headman, for he was a native of Harbin, and bore a bitter grudge against the Russians, who in constructing their railway had cut through his family graveyard, and in defiling the bones of his ancestors had done him the worst injury a Chinaman can suffer. Jack was to have no breakfast; his captors were so sure of his fate that they thought it would be a mere waste to feed him.An hour passed—a terrible hour of suspense. The villagers began to gather round the cage, and their looks of gleeful and malicious satisfaction struck Jack cold. All at once they broke into loud shouting as a posse of armed yamen-runners forced their way through. Jack was taken out of the cage, and, surrounded by the runners and followed by the jabbering crowd, was marched to the headman's house. He there found himself in the presence of a dignified Chinaman, a glossy black moustache encircling his mouth and chin, his long finger-nails denoting that he did not condescend to menial work. He was in fact a prosperous farmer, who, besides possessing large estates (to which he had no title) in the Forbidden Country, carried on an extensive trade in ginseng, a plant to which extraordinary medicinal virtues are attributed by the Chinese, and so valuable that a single root will sometimes fetch as much as £15 in the Peking market. The headman, feeling the importance of the occasion, had got himself up in imitation of a magistrate, wearing a round silk buttoned cap and a blue tunic.He had evidently made a study of the procedure in a mandarin's yamen. He was the only man seated at a long table; at each end stood a scribe with a dirty book, which might or might not have been a book of law, outspread before him; at his right hand stood a man with a lighted pipe, from which during the proceedings the headman took occasional whiffs; in front stood a group of runners in weird costumes, wearing black cloth caps with red tassels. From the sour expression on the Chinaman's face Jack knew that he was already judged and condemned; but he held his head high, and gazed unflinchingly on the stern-visaged Chinaman.It is proper for a prisoner to take his trial on his knees, and one of the runners approached Jack and sharply bade him kneel. He refused. Two other men came up with threatening gestures, and laid hands on him to force him down. He resisted; he had the rooted European objection to kowtow to an Asiatic. With too much good sense to indulge himself in heroics, he yet recalled at this moment by a freak of memory the lines written on the heroic Private Moyse of the Buffs. His back stiffened; there was the making of a pretty wrestling match; but the headman, mindful of the stout fight when the prisoner was arrested, and desiring that the proceedings should be conducted with decorum, ordered his men to desist. Then he began his interrogatory."You are an Russian?""No, an Englishman.""Where have you been living?""In Moukden.""What have you been doing there?""I lived with my father.""Who is he?""He is a merchant.""What is his name?""He is known as Mr. Brown of Moukden.""What did he trade in?""In many things. He supplied stores of all kinds.""To the Russians?""Yes.""Assisting them to build the iron road that is the ruin of Manchuria?""I believe your august emperor gave the Russians permission.""Do not dare to mention the Son of Heaven. Do not dare, I say, you foreign devil! Where is your father now?""I do not know. He was arrested by the Russians.""Why?""They accused him of giving information to the Japanese.""Did he give information?""No.""Ch'hoy! Then clearly he was in league with the Russians. He, too, is worthy of death. What brought you into the Shan-yan-alin mountains?""I am trying to find my father. I was on my way to Moukden.""Do you know that the Ch'ang-pai-shan is sacred to the emperor? Nobody is allowed to tread these hills, on pain of death.""I am in your honour's august company."The headman winced and blinked. That was a home-thrust. He grew angry."Enough! You are a foreign devil. By your own confession you have been in league with the Russians, assisting them in their impious work, disturbing the feng-shui in the most sacred city of the virtuous Son of Heaven. You are found in insolent disguise within the limits of the Forbidden Mountains; you resisted lawful arrest, to the severe injury of two of my officers. It is clear that you are a vile example of the outer barbarians who are scheming to drive the Manchu from his immemorial lands, defiling the graves of our fathers, and bringing our sons to shame. You are not fit to live; every one of your offences is punishable with death; in their sum you are lightly touched by my sentence upon you, that you suffer the ling-ch'ih, and then be beheaded. Confess your crimes."Jack had answered the man's questions briefly and calmly, and listened with unmoved countenance to his speech. The decision was only what he had expected. The worst was to come. He knew that by the laws and customs of China he could not be executed until he had acknowledged the justice of the sentence and made open confession of his crime; he knew also that, failing to confess voluntarily, he would be tortured by all the most fiendish methods devised by Chinese ingenuity until confession was extorted from his lacerated, half-inanimate frame. The end would be the same; for a moment, in his helplessness and despair, he thought it would perhaps be better to acquiesce at once and get it over. But then pride of race stepped in. Could he, innocent as he felt himself to be, act a lie by even formally acquiescing in the sentence? He did not know how far his fortitude would enable him to bear the tortures in store; but he would not allow the mere prospect to cow him. He had paused but a moment."I have nothing to confess," he said.The headman gave a grunt of satisfaction."Put him in the cage," he said.Jack's blood ran cold in spite of himself. The word used by his judge was not the name of the cage in which he had already been confined, but meant an instrument of torture. Amid the exultant hoots of the crowd of natives, who spat on the ground as he passed, he was hauled from the presence and taken to a yard near by. In the centre of it stood a bamboo cage somewhat more than five feet high. Its top consisted of two movable slabs of wood which, when brought together, left a hole large enough to encircle a man's neck, but too small for his head to pass through. The height of the cage was so adjusted, that when the prisoner was inside with his head protruding from the top he could only avoid being hung by the neck so long as his feet rested on a brick. By and by that would be removed; he might defer strangulation for a short time by standing on tiptoe, but that would soon become too painful. Jack had never seen the instrument in use, but he had heard of it, and he quailed at the imagination of the torture he was to endure.His arms were bound together; he was locked into the cage; his head was enclosed; and the mob jeered and yelled as, the brick being knocked away after a few minutes, he instinctively raised himself on his toes to ease the pressure on his neck. How long could he endure it? he wondered. Had the messenger failed to find Wang Shih? Had some perverse fate removed the Chunchuse band at this moment of dire peril? Humanly speaking, his salvation depended on Wang Shih, and on him alone: was his last hope to prove vain? Should he now yield, confess, and spare himself further torture? Already he was suffering intense pain; he gained momentary relief for his feet by drawing up his legs, a movement which brought his whole weight upon his neck; but that was endurable only for a few seconds. He closed his eyes to shut out the sight of the yelling mob; pressed his lips together lest a moan should escape him: "I will never give in, never give in." he said to himself; "pray God it may not be long."The pain became excruciating; he no longer saw or heard the yelling fiends gloating over every spasm of his tortured body; he was fast sinking into unconsciousness, and the headman, fearful of losing his victim, was about to give the order for his temporary release, when suddenly his ears caught the sound of galloping horses. The noise around him lulled; he heard loud shouts in the distance, and drawing ever nearer. Then the crowd scattered like chaff, and through their midst rode a brawny figure brandishing a riding-whip of bamboo. Dashing through the amazed throng at the head of thirty shouting bandits he leapt from his horse, sprang to the cage, tore away the catch holding the two panels together, and Jack fell, an unconscious heap, to the bottom of the cage.The first alarm being now passed, the villagers raised a hubbub. They clustered about the new-comers, protesting with all their might that the prisoner was merely a foreign devil, an impious pig. But Wang Shih cleared a space with his whip; then, springing to the saddle again, he raised his voice in a shout that dominated and silenced the clamour of the mob."Hai-yah! What are you doing, men of Tang-ho-kou? Is this foreigner a Russian that you treat him thus? A fine thing truly! You skulk in your fangtzes, afraid to come out with the honourable Ah Lum and me and fight the Russians, and yet you are bold enough to catch a solitary man, a friend of the Chinaman, and to misuse him thus because he is alone! Know you not that he is an enemy of the Russians? They have imprisoned his father; it is reverence for his father that brings him here. Is filial piety so little esteemed in Tang-ho-kou to-day? Ch'hoy! I see your headman aping a lordly mandarin; let him listen. I say you are lucky I do not burn your village and execute a dozen of you as you were about to execute the stranger. But I will be merciful. I will take from you a contribution of five thousand taels for my chief; and your headman—ch'hoy! he shall stand for half an hour in the cage. That shall suffice. But beware how you offend again. Learn to distinguish your friends from your enemies—an Englishman from the Russians whom the dwarfs of Japan are helping us to drive back to the frozen north. Take heed of what I say—I, Wang Shih, the worthless servant of his excellency Ah Lum, the virtuous commander of many honourable brigands."This speech made an impression upon the crowd. The headman was beginning to slink away, but Wang Shih noticed the movement and sent one of his men after him. In spite of his protests he was dragged to the cage, from which Jack, now fully conscious, had been removed; he was fastened in it, and compelled to tiptoe as his erstwhile prisoner had done. But after some minutes Jack, with a vivid remembrance of his own sufferings, interceded for the wretched man, and Wang Shih released him, bidding him collect from the villagers the tribute he had demanded. The presence of the thirty well-armed Chunchuses was a powerful spur to haste, and within half an hour the amount was raised. Meanwhile Jack's neck had been bathed, and his muscles were beginning to recover from the strain to which they had been put. He declared that he was well enough to ride away with his deliverers. He had first to pay the guard the fifty dollars agreed upon. Not wishing to disclose the hiding-place in the soles of his boots where he kept his notes, he borrowed from Wang Shih the necessary sum in bar silver. Then, mounted upon a horse borrowed from the headman's own stables, he rode with the brigands from the village.
At seven o'clock that morning, in a neatly-thatched, white-washed brick cottage, surrounded by a luxuriant and well-kept garden, in the hill-country above the Chuan, a little group sat at breakfast. The room was plain but spotlessly clean. The wooden floors shone; the white plastered walls were covered with coloured lithographs representing the seven stations of the Cross; the little windows were hung with curtains of Chinese muslin. A narrow shelf of books occupied one corner, a stove another; and the table in the centre was spread with a snow-white cloth, dishes of fruit, and home-made bread.
At the table three persons were seated. One was a tall man of fine presence, with clear-cut features, soft brown eyes, long white hair and beard. He wore the loose white tunic and pantaloons of a Chinaman, but the cross that hung by a cord round his neck was not Chinese. Jean Mayenobe was a Frenchman, a priest, one of those devoted missionaries who cut themselves off from home and kindred to live a life of self-denial, peril, and humble Christian service in remote unfriendly corners of the globe.
His companions were a woman and a girl. The former was plain-featured and plainly dressed, with placid expression and humble mien. The latter seemed strangely out of place in her surroundings. She was young, apparently of some seventeen years. Her features were beautiful, with a dignity and a look of self-command rare in one of her age. Her complexion was ruddy brown; her bright hair, gathered in a knot behind, rebelled against the black riband that bound it, and fell behind her ears in crispy waves. Before her on the table was a samovar, and she had just handed a cup of tea to the missionary.
"Father," she said in French, "I am so tired of waiting. I am beginning to think that permission will never come. But why should it be refused? It is not as if I were seeking some benefit. In appearance I lose, not gain."
"True, my child, you have nothing personally to gain. I have said before, it is not every daughter who would come thousands of miles and suffer hardship in order to bear her father company in exile and imprisonment. And such exile! The little I know of Sakhalin is frightful. It gives me pain to think of your knowing even so much."
"I am not afraid. And if the treatment of prisoners in Sakhalin is so bad, that is all the more reason why I should be at my father's side, to help and comfort him a little. Why do they refuse to let me go?"
"Probably they have forgotten all about you. The war occupies them completely. And I repeat, if you have patience your father may come to you. I have no belief that the Russians will win in this terrible war. I heard but a little while ago from a brother priest near the scene of operations at Hai-cheng, who has studied the combatants, that he is convinced of the ultimate success of the Japanese. If they are victorious they will probably demand that Sakhalin shall be restored to them, and it will no longer be a place for Russian prisoners. Rest in the Lord, my child; wait patiently for Him, and He will give thee thy heart's desire."
Gabriele Walewska was silent. Father Mayenobe sank into a reverie. The elderly woman looked sympathetically at her mistress, laid her hand on hers, and murmured a few words in Polish, to which the girl responded with a grateful smile. The sound of a distant shot coming through the open window shook the missionary from his musing.
"Russian officers out snipe-shooting again, I suppose," he said. "It reminds me I must go, my child. That poor Korean convert of mine is at the point of death, I fear. I must go to him. I may be absent all day."
"We shall be quite happy, father. I shall pick the last of your strawberries to-day, and make some of your favourite tartlets for supper."
"You will spoil me," said the priest with a smile. "Dominus vobiscum."
When the missionary had gone, Gabriele left the Korean servants to clear the table, and, accompanied by her old nurse, went out into the garden with a light wicker basket. As she did so she scanned the surrounding country for signs of the shooting party. The mission station was at the summit of a low hill, and below it, towards the east, stretched a tract of sparse woodland, alternating with cultivated fields. A stream bathed the foot of the hill, and wound away to join the Hun-Chuan, its course traceable by the thickness of the wooded belt and the more vivid green of the fields.
While the girl was still picking the ripe red berries she heard another shot, this time closer at hand. She rose, and out of pure curiosity searching the landscape she saw, about two miles away, a band of horsemen galloping through a field of kowliang, already so well grown that the stalks rose almost to the horses' heads. There were some thirty or forty of the riders, at present little more than specks in the distance. It struck her as rather a large hunting party, and she wondered what they were chasing, big game being unknown in the neighbourhood, and the time of year unusual for such sport. As she stood looking, the horsemen left the field and disappeared into the wooded belt bordering the stream.
Expecting them to come again into sight a little higher up, Gabriele remained at the same spot. It occurred to her that one of them might be bringing the written permission she desired, and had taken advantage of his errand to organize a hunt. Suddenly she was startled to see a figure on horseback emerge from the copse but a few yards below her. It was a young man, a European; he was swaying in his saddle; and she noticed with feminine quickness that one arm was supported in a sling—a handkerchief looped round his neck. The next moment the rider caught sight of her; his eyes seemed to her to speak the language of despair. He swayed still more heavily, and was on the point of falling from his horse when Gabriele sprang down the slope and caught him. Calling to her nurse and a Korean man-servant near at hand, with their help she lifted him from the saddle and loosened his shirt-collar, then sent the Korean for water.
Jack was dazed at first, all but swooning.
"Thank you!" he said in Russian. "I was almost done, I think. But please help me to mount again. I must ride on."
"Impossible, gospodin!" she said. "You are hurt, I see; the injury must be seen to."
"It is good of you, but my arm must wait. Please help me to mount my pony."
His wounded arm, his urgent manner, recalled to Gabriele the shots she had heard, the band of horsemen she had seen galloping in the distance.
"You are in danger?" she said quickly. "Is it not so?"
"Yes. There are Buriats behind me; they are close on my heels. Indeed"—he smiled wanly—"it is your duty, as a Russian, I suppose, to give me up."
"I am not a Russian," she exclaimed. "And if I were, I should not lightly give up a fugitive to the Russian police. You can go no farther; what can I do? There is so little time."
For a few seconds she appeared to be considering. Her brow was knit; she looked at him anxiously. Fully trusting her, he made no further effort to continue his flight, for which, indeed, he was manifestly unfit. Half-reclining on his pony's neck, he waited, panting.
Then she spoke rapidly to the Korean.
"Take the pony, unsaddle him, and turn him loose in the kowliang yonder. Saddle the Father's pony, ride a few yards in the stream, then gallop past the edge of the copse, through the hemp field, up to Boulder Hill. If you are followed by horsemen, throw them off the scent. Don't let them see you closely. Return after dark, but make sure the Buriats are not here before you come in."
An unregenerate Korean would probably have hesitated, but this man had been for some time under Father Mayenobe's training, and in a few minutes he had brought out the pony and cantered away. Meanwhile Gabriele, asking Jack to lean upon her arm, had led him into the copse to a large beech, the lowest branch of which sprang from the trunk about twelve feet from the ground. Asking him to remain there, she ran off with the fleetness of a doe, and soon returned with a light ladder. Setting this against the tree, she assisted Jack to mount; when he reached the fork he saw that the interior of the trunk was hollow. Then she pulled up the ladder, lowered it into the hollow space, and helped Jack to descend. Drawing up the ladder again, she let it down outside, ran down, and carried it swiftly back to the house, leaving Jack inside the trunk, where he stood upright, supporting himself with his uninjured arm.
Scarcely five minutes had passed since his first appearance. The Buriats had not yet come in sight; they had clearly been checked by the fugitive's sudden divergence from his previous line of flight, and nonplussed by his precaution in riding for some distance through the stream. But in another five minutes half a dozen horsemen, with a handsome young Russian lieutenant at their head, drew rein in front of the house. Gabriele was unconcernedly shelling peas at the window of the little dining-room.
The officer was evidently surprised to see a young European lady. With heightened colour he bent over his saddle and addressed her in Russian.
"Have you seen a man on horseback in (he neighbourhood, Mademoiselle?"
Gabriele looked up, with a puzzled expression.
"Monsieur parle-t-il français?" she said.
"Oui, Mademoiselle," returned the officer, then repeating his question in French.
"Yes," she replied. "A few minutes ago a man galloped from the stream, past the copse, and rode auay along the side of the hill."
"Merci bien, Mademoiselle," said the lieutenant, translating the information for his men.
They at once began to hunt for the tracks, and in a few moments spied the hoof-marks of a galloping horse. One of them discharged his rifle to bring up the rest of the troop, who had scattered over the face of the country, endeavouring to pick up the trail of the fugitive. Some were already galloping off in the direction indicated by Gabriele. Soon the rest of the Buriats came riding by in twos and threes, until the whole band was in full cry up the hillside.
Gabriele remained at the window shelling peas until she was sure that the last horseman had passed. Then she took a bottle of home-grown wine from the missionary's store, filled a cup and gave it to her old nurse to carry, and returned with the ladder to the tree.
"It is I," she said as she approached. "I am bringing you wine."
Mounting into the tree, she handed down the cup. Jack drained it at a draught.
"You are suffering?" said the girl.
"Not much. It is a flesh wound; I have lost some blood, and was faint. I am better now."
"You must remain in the tree. The danger is not yet past; but have patience. I dare not stay longer; they will come back soon. Hope on."
CHAPTER VII
A Daughter of Poland
Suppressio Veri—The Keys—At Fault—A Polish Patriot—A Daughter's Love—A Common Sorrow—A French Mission—A Council of War—From Canton—A Surprise Visit—Hide and Seek—Ladislas Streleszki
All was silent for nearly an hour. Slowly the minutes passed. Jack felt he had never been so wretchedly uncomfortable. His legs ached; his arm throbbed with pain; there was not room in his hiding-place to sit; the stuffiness of his prison and the attentions of innumerable insects so tortured him that he could hardly refrain from crying out to be released. Eagerly he listened for the return of the tall strong girl whose quick wit had thrown the Buriats off his track. When would she come again? At last, after a period of waiting that seemed ten times as long as it really was, he fancied he heard her footsteps. He listened; yes, it was certainly someone approaching; his long imprisonment was ended. But just as the footsteps, now distinctly audible, neared the tree, his ears caught the heavy thud of horses galloping, and a few moments afterwards an angry voice saying in French:
"The man you saw, Mademoiselle, is not the man we are searching for. My sergeant, who is following him up, sends me word that he got a clear view of him as he breasted the hill. The dress is different, the horse is different——"
He broke off as if expecting an explanation.
"How unfortunate, Monsieur!" exclaimed Gabriele in a tone of concern. "I fear you must have come a long distance out of your way."
"That is as it may be, Mademoiselle," replied the lieutenant, somewhat nettled. "Perhaps not so far either, for we tracked our man to within a few hundred yards of your house." He paused a moment, then added suspiciously: "What was he like, the man you saw galloping?"
"What was he like?" she repeated reflectively. "I think he was about your height; but then you are mounted, and so was he, and it is so difficult to judge when a man is mounted, is it not, Monsieur? And then he was going so fast; in a flash he was by; there was his back disappearing into the copse. It was a broad back; yes, certainly a broad back; and he was hitting his pony; yes, I remember that clearly, poor thing! and it was going so fast, too."
All this was said with the most artless simplicity, and Jack was amused, though his heart was beating hard with apprehension.
"But, Mademoiselle, what was he like?" repeated the officer, finding some difficulty in repressing his anger.
"The man I saw, Monsieur, or the man you saw, or the man your sergeant saw? There are so many—they confuse me."
"The man you saw. Come, Mademoiselle, we are wasting time. Was he a white man, or a Chinaman, or what?"
"Oh, his colour! Really, I cannot say. You see, Monsieur, the sun was in my eyes. I saw his back plainly, a broad back; but he was riding fast, and hitting his pony; yes, poor thing! he was hitting it very hard."
The lieutenant hesitated; Jack held his breath.
"You will pardon me, Mademoiselle, if I ask you to let me search your house."
"Not my house, Monsieur. It belongs to Father Mayenobe."
"Peste!" he exclaimed as he dismounted. "This house, whosesoever it is. The man gave us the slip in this neighbourhood, and my orders are to capture him."
"Certainly search, Monsieur. Father Mayenobe is away from home, or I am sure he would receive you as the occasion demands. The house is open to you. Perhaps a few of you would enter at a time?"
The frowning officer glanced at her, unable to decide whether she was mocking him. But her face was perfectly grave.
"Certainly, Mademoiselle," he replied a little uneasily. "Two will be sufficient; and with your permission I will accompany them. Doubtless," he added, as by an afterthought, "it will prove a mere form."
"I suppose it is quite right, Monsieur. I know nothing about these things. Perhaps I ought to say no until Father Mayenobe returns. But then I couldn't prevent you, could I? So you had better go in and do your duty. Let me see, you will want the keys." She took a bunch from her pocket. "There are very few. This is the key of the larder."
She innocently handed him the bunch, indicating the one she had mentioned.
"Only the larder is locked," she added. "The natives, you are aware, Monsieur, will overeat if one is not careful."
The young officer, looking very much ashamed of himself, took the bunch, and having no answer ready, moved towards the house.
"Will you show us the house, Mademoiselle?"
"Oh no, Monsieur! that would be to countenance your intrusion. I cannot be expected to do that."
The conversation had been carried on throughout within a few feet of Jack. In spite of his wound, his uncomfortable position, and the danger of discovery, he found himself shaking with silent laughter, imagining the play of expression on the faces of Gabriele and her victim.
The lieutenant with two of his men went into the house. There was silence for a while, broken only by the champing of the Buriats' ponies and the rattle of accoutrements, the men sitting their steeds mute and motionless. Then the voice of the officer could be heard interrogating the old nurse, who merely shook her head to every question. She knew nothing but Polish, and the officer's Russian was as incomprehensible to her as his French. After a few minutes he returned.
"Accept my apologies and my thanks, Mademoiselle," he said, as he handed her the keys. "We must pursue our chase elsewhere. Bonjour!"
"Bonjour, Monsieur!"
The troop rode away, taking a different course. Gabriele's lips curved in a smile as she watched them. The officer glanced back just before riding out of sight. She was walking slowly towards the house.
Half an hour afterwards the missionary returned.
"Father," said Gabriele, "I have played the good Samaritan since you have been away."
She explained to him rapidly what had occurred.
"My daughter," he said gently, "I cannot blame you, but you acted rashly, very rashly indeed."
"What would you have done, Father?" she asked archly.
"Just what you did, my dear," he replied with twinkling eyes. "But we must be careful. The Russians look askance at our missions as it is; they only want a pretext to expel us."
"And the poor young man is all the time in the tree! He must be nearly dead with fatigue."
"But we cannot release him yet. Some of the Russians may return this way from their chase of Min-chin. I hope they will not shoot the poor fellow by mistake."
Jack waited, feeling more and more exhausted, and wondering how long his irksome durance was to last. By and by he again heard horses galloping. The Buriat sergeant and one of his men had returned from their fruitless chase. Min-chin, the Korean servant, had outridden them, and they had lost trace of him. They pulled up at the missionary's house to ask the whereabouts of the remainder of the troop, then they rode on. Watching them out of sight, and waiting for some time to assure himself that danger was past, Father Mayenobe carried the ladder to the tree, and soon Jack, pale, worn, and hungry, lay in the priest's own bed. The father, like most of the French missionaries in China, knew something of medicine and surgery; he examined Jack's wound, dressed and bound up his arm, and said that he was not to think of getting up for several days. It was in fact nearly a week before he was allowed to leave the bed, and the missionary saw that watch was kept night and day to guard against a surprise visit from the Russians.
During this period of enforced seclusion Father Mayenobe learnt Jack's story. Though it made him feel more than ever the gravity of his position if his guest should be discovered, it did not abate by a jot his determination to do what he could for him. Indeed, his sympathy for Jack was enhanced by a certain similarity between his circumstances and Gabriele's. He told Jack her story. Her father was a large land-owner, the descendant of a great Polish family, a man of noble character, greatly beloved of his tenants and respected by his peers. Like every true Pole he was a strong patriot, and had been a member of one of the secret associations that have for their object the restoration of Polish liberties. Some six years before, the society had been betrayed by one of its members; Count Walewski, with several of his compatriots, was arrested and sent without trial into exile; and as a deterrent to other Poles who might contemplate revolt, the place selected for his punishment was the bleak barren island of Sakhalin, the farthest eastern limit of the Russian empire. There was special cruelty and indignity involved in this choice, for the island was reserved as a rule for murderers and the lowest class of criminals; and his friends in Poland were aghast when they heard to what a living death he had been condemned.
At the time of the count's arrest and banishment, his daughter Gabriele was only eleven years of age. Her father's estates being confiscated, and she a motherless child, she was adopted by her paternal aunt, an unmarried lady of ample means, who took her to her home in Paris, educated her, and treated her with a mother's care. But as the girl grew older and learned to understand more fully the hopelessness of her father's fate, she resolved at all costs to share his exile, and to do what lay in her power to alleviate and sweeten his terrible lot. Her aunt, fearful of allowing a young girl to undertake a mission so terrible, and being too infirm to accompany her, did all that she could to turn her from her purpose. But with increasing years the girl's determination became ever stronger. She grew up quickly into a thoughtful strong-willed maiden, full of patriotic ardour, of passionate resentment against the Russian government, and of an overflowing love for the father whose affection she remembered so well, and whose noble qualities she had not been too young to appreciate. While grateful for all the kindness her aunt had showered upon her, she was possessed by an overmastering sense of duty to her father. At last, when she was nearly seventeen, but in looks and mind older than her years, she threatened to set forth without assistance if her aunt refused her assent and help. Having no alternative the poor lady yielded, only stipulating that Gabriele's old nurse should accompany her. For some months they vainly tried to get permission from St. Petersburg for the girl to join her father. In the case of ordinary criminals no difficulty was usually made; it was clear that, as happens so often in Russia, the political offence was to be visited more heavily than the worst of crimes. Then she started without permission, hoping to obtain the necessary authorization at Vladivostok. She was provided with letters of introduction to a Polish family in Siberia, and one to Father Mayenobe, whose sister had been a teacher at the pension Gabriele had attended in Paris. But the outbreak of the war had so much disorganized things that the Polish friends were not to be found. She arrived in Vladivostok; there her request for permission to go to Sakhalin had been referred by one official to another, shelved, and finally ignored. Then, friendless and despairing, she had written to the missionary asking his advice. He had already heard of her from his sister. Riding at once into Vladivostok he endeavoured to get the required permission; but the governor and officials had something more important to consider than the romantic impulses of a Polish school-girl, and they politely shunted all his representations. At his suggestion Gabriele and her nurse had returned with him to his little mission station in the hills, where they had since remained, hoping that in course of time they would gain their object.
When Jack was well enough to leave his bedroom and share the simple life of the missionary and his household, it was apparent that the two young people were drawn together by the common circumstances of their fate. From the first moment Jack had felt a strong admiration for the girl whose resourcefulness had saved him from capture; while Gabriele regarded his position as even worse than her own, for she knew at any rate where her father was. They had many long conversations together; the girl put her own sorrows into the background, and entered heartily into Jack's perplexities and plans. Father Mayenobe often joined them in talking things over, and soon won Jack's admiration for his character, and respect for his wise counsel.
Jack had opportunities of seeing something and learning more of his new friend's mission work. Jean Mayenobe had been a favourite pupil of Monsieur Venault, the young nobleman who gave up his career as a courtier of Louis XVIII, and devoted his whole fortune and forty-two years of his life to his labour of love in Manchuria. A great part of a French missionary's work consists in relieving the poor and sick and caring for orphans. He does little actual preaching of the Gospel; he conducts service in a small church or oratory attached to his house, but converts are made chiefly through the agency of native Christians, and through the training of orphan children from tender years. The priest dresses and fares little better than the poorest of his flock, and is never absent from his charge, fulfilling with absolute literalness the Divine command.
One day a Korean youth in training for the priesthood came in with a message from the Sister in charge of the orphanage at Almazovsk. He remained for several days in the house. Observing his manly open countenance and his air of energy and enthusiasm, so much in contrast to the average Korean's flabby effeminacy, Jack understood what an influence for good the Christian missionary can wield.
The talk in the little mission-house turned again and again upon the mystery of Mr. Brown's fate.
Father Mayenobe confessed that he was unable to make a likely guess as to the merchant's whereabouts.
"There are so many places in Siberia to which he may have been sent. Sakhalin, you suggest? Sakhalin is little used now for political prisoners, although, as in Count Walewski's case, some few are still sent there."
"How am I to find out? It is the uncertainty that is so terrible."
"I can think of no safe means. If the Russians are determined to keep his whereabouts secret——"
"That is itself an admission that they are in the wrong," interrupted Gabriele.
"It may be. I was going to say that if that is their determination it will be very difficult to trace him, and the only likely course would be to follow up enquiries along the railway."
"That is almost hopeless in present circumstances. The war has disorganized everything. Besides, how am I to get into Moukden again?"
"Why attempt it? Why not try to gain the coast and make for home, and trust to diplomatic representations at St. Petersburg?"
"No, no, father, I certainly disagree with you," cried Gabriele. "You know how slowly diplomacy works. Think of it; Monsieur Brown may pass months, perhaps years, in the most terrible uncertainty and suspense. No; if I were in his place I would do as he means to do. Oh, I wish I were a man!"
"But think of the danger! If he were to go as a European, he would be set upon by Chinese in the out-of-the-way parts through which he must pass. In the towns the English and the French are respected when other Europeans are not, but in the country parts all alike are foreign devils, of less account than pigs. If he got safely within the Russian lines he would probably be arrested as a spy and shot. His only chance is to go as a Chinaman."
"As a Chinaman?"
"Yes, disguised to the best of our ability."
Gabriele looked dubiously at Jack, as though questioning whether any disguise would serve.
"What do you say yourself, Monsieur Brown?" asked the missionary.
"I must risk it, father. I have been long enough in China to know the difficulties and dangers in my way; I don't underrate them, I assure you. But anything is better than this harrowing uncertainty. I could not remain idle; I feel I must do something to clear up the mystery, even though I should be venturing on a forlorn hope."
"Well, my son, I will not dissuade you. Fortune favours the brave, they say. You are determined to go; God go with you! But we must think of how it is to be done."
"I must go as a Chinaman, that is certain. It had better be as a southern Chinaman. Mademoiselle perhaps does not know that the spoken language of the north and south are so unlike that natives of the one can only communicate with the other by written characters or by pidgin English. I can't write Chinese, and if I pretend to be quite illiterate (as indeed I am from the Chinese point of view) I may hope to pass muster. I can speak pidgin English. We had a Canton servant in Shanghai with whom I spoke nothing else, and we use it still with the servants in Moukden."
"But there is a greater difficulty—the difficulty of feature. You would pass better in Canton as a Manchu, than as a Cantonese in Manchuria."
"I can only risk it. A little saffron and henna——"
"And a pigtail, Monsieur Brown?—will you have to wear a pigtail?" said Gabriele.
"Yes, unluckily," said Jack with a rueful smile. "My own hair won't suffice. But false pigtails are common enough in China. I shall ask your help with that, Mademoiselle."
"It would amuse me—if it were not so terribly serious."
"You will go as a Chinaman, then," said the priest. "But you must have a story to tell on the way if you are questioned: have you thought of that?"
"Yes. Suppose I give out that I am the servant of a Moukden mandarin, returning from a special mission to Hun-chun, hinting perhaps at anti-Russian intrigue?"
Father Mayenobe stroked his beard.
"It is inevitable," he said. "For you this is a state of war, and in war the first principle is to deceive the enemy. Still, I do not like your venture. The more I think of it, the more heavy do the odds appear against success."
"Father, do not let us go into that again," pleaded Gabriele. "Can you suggest any better plan for Monsieur Brown?"
"I confess I cannot. Well, let it be so, then. I will do all in my power to help you, my son."
A fortnight passed away. The wet season had begun, and though the rainfall was not so continuous as is commonly the case, the streams were swelled to overflowing and the rough tracks rendered impassable. The mission station, being on a hillside, suffered less than huts on the lower ground. During the unfavourable weather much anxious care was given to Jack's preparations. The costume was got ready in every detail; Gabriele with her own hands plaited the pigtail and wadded the loose tunic and pantaloons. At last all was in readiness, and Jack only awaited a fine day to set off.
One afternoon, when the sun was hot, raising a thick vapour from the sodden fields, Min-chin came running into the house with the news that a party of Buriats were riding up the hill. It happened that Father Mayenobe had taken advantage of the change of weather to visit some of his little flock a few miles off. Without a moment's delay Jack hastened to the hollow tree, and was safe inside by the time the horsemen rode up. They surrounded the house, and the officer, an older man than the lieutenant whom Gabriele had discomfited, alighted at the door and called for the priest. Gabriele appeared. It was evident from the officer's manner that he had heard of her.
"Mademoiselle," he said in French, "you will please give me a plain answer. A stranger has been seen in and about this house. Who is he?"
"Oh! you mean the catechumen from Almazovsk?"
The captain looked hard at her.
"Come, Mademoiselle, where is the man?"
"The catechumen? He is gone. He went three days ago, all through the rain. He would not remain, though Father Mayenobe pressed him to wait in hope of finer weather. You seem to doubt me," added the girl. "The house has been already searched once, in Father Mayenobe's absence; I assure you there is nobody in it but our servants; if you will not accept my assurance you had better search again."
She moved away, and began to occupy herself with simple household matters, completely ignoring the Russians. The captain did not go shamefacedly about his work as the lieutenant had done; he searched the little house thoroughly, ransacking every hole and corner. The task did not take him long; he found nothing. Coming out again, he beckoned to a man in civilian costume whom Gabriele had not previously noticed. As he rode forward, she started; but in an instant recovered herself. He spoke a few words to the captain; then the latter, with a curt word of farewell to the girl, gave his men the order to ride away. Gabriele did not like his look; he had seemed too easily satisfied, and consulted with the civilian; and she sent two of the servants to keep watch at the only convenient approaches to the settlement. Her precaution was justified. Two or three hours later the party rode back at a gallop. The alarm was given by one of the sentinels, and Jack had time to get back into the serviceable beech before they arrived. A second search was made, this also fruitless; then the horsemen finally departed, convinced against their will that they had come once more on a false scent.
When Jack left his hiding-place he saw by the expression of Gabriele's face that she had something to tell him. A red spot burned on each cheek, and her eyes were blazing.
"How dare he! How dare he!" she exclaimed. "Oh, if I could have killed him! It was Ladislas Streleszki, the traitor, the villain, the man who betrayed my father. He was our steward; we did not know for a long time who had done that foul deed; but when my father was arrested Streleszki disappeared, and it was many months before we understood."
"Do you mean, Mademoiselle, that he is now a Russian officer?"
"No, no; but when they came the second time he was with them."
"Did he not recognize you?"
"No; it is six years since he saw me, and I have changed very much. I was afraid he might; I thought perhaps a chance word from one of the officers in Vladivostok through whom my applications have passed, had brought him here to persecute me. But it cannot be so; he hardly looked at me. I knew him at once; he has altered little; his hair is turning grey; but I could never mistake him; one eyelid droops and——"
"Indeed!" cried Jack with a start. "Is it his left eyelid?"
"Yes. Oh, why do you ask?"
"Sowinski, my father's enemy, has the same defect. Did you hear him speak, Mademoiselle?"
"Yes; his voice is gruff and coarse."
"Then Streleszki and Sowinski are the same man. Good heavens, we have indeed had a narrow escape! It would have been all up with me if I had been found, and I fear your fate would have been sealed too. I am to blame for staying here so long. I must not bring you into danger again. I will go to-day."
CHAPTER VIII
A Custom of Cathay
The Forbidden Mountain—Two from Canton—Clutching at Straws—Ipsos Custodes—A Question of Dollars—The Yamen—The Majesty of the Law—Judge and Jury—The Cage—Torture—Mr. Wang—Benevolence and Aid
"Hai-yah!"
"Ph'ho!"
"Fan-yun!"
"Fan-kwei!"
"Look at his eyes! How big! Round as the moon. See how they goggle and glare!"
"Yah! Ugly beast! His nose! Look at it! Like the beak of a hawk."
"And his hair! Ch'hoy! Like the fleece of a sheep."
"And his clothes! Ragged as a quail's tail."
"No doubt of it, he is a foreign devil, ugly pig."
"Why still alive? Kill him at once, say I. Foreign devils are dangerous to keep. One come, thousands follow. Kill at once; if we had done that with the Russians, no more trouble. He will bring ill-luck on the village. What luck have we had since the Russians came digging into the Hill of a Thousand Perfumes? Who can say how many demons they let loose?"
"Yah! Who has found ginseng since then, who? Nothing but ill-luck now. An Pow dead, strong as he was; Sun Soo drowned in the river; all our oxen carried off by Ah Lum and his Chunchuses. Hai! hai! And this foreign devil will make things worse. Why did they not chop off his head at once?"
To this conversation, carried on within a few feet of him, Jack listened in a somewhat apathetic spirit. He was utterly dejected, worn out, humiliated. He lay in a large wooden cage near the headman's house in the village of Tang-ho-kou in the Long White Mountains. It was a secluded spot, in a district supposed to be sacred to the emperor's ancestors, where it was sacrilege even for a Chinaman to tread. The inhabitants were an exclusive community, ruled by a guild, owning only nominal allegiance to the emperor, and essentially a self-governed republic. They were unmolested, for government is lax in Manchuria, and the Long White Mountains are far from the capital and difficult ground to police; theoretically the guildsmen went in danger of their heads, practically they were monarch of all they surveyed.
A group of the villagers was collected on this July evening about the cage, discussing the foreign prisoner, interrupting their conversation to snarl at him.
"It is true; his head ought to be chopped off, but they were afraid."
"Afraid of what?"
"Of what might be done to them. The illustrious viceroy at Moukden is very strict. Even a foreign devil may not be killed without leave. Why? Because if one is killed, there is trouble. The kings of the foreign devils are angry, and many good Chinese heads have to fall. They have sent to ask leave to behead the barbarian: better still, to slice him. He fought like a hill tiger when they caught him, and two men even now lie wounded."
"How did they catch him?"
"A Canton man, mafoo to his excellency General Ping at Moukden, overtook him riding in the hills. He was making a bird's noise with his lips; that was suspicious. But the Canton man was wary. He spoke to him as a friend, and rode alongside. Where did he come from? Thus asked the Canton man. The barbarian shook his head and answered in pidgin, the tongue of the foreign devil in the south. Yah! That was his ruin. Our Canton friend also speaks pidgin. 'You come from Canton?' says he. 'Yes.' 'What part? Where did you live? Do you know this place or that? What is your business?' Those were his questions; a shrewd fellow, the Canton man. He left him at the next village; then followed with six strong men. They got ahead of him, hid in a copse by the roadside, and when the foreign devil came up, rushed out upon him. They were seven; but it was a hard fight. Ch'hoy! These barbarians are in league with a thousand demons; that is why they are so fierce and strong. But they got him at last, and brought him here; worse luck! he shall suffer for it yet."
The crowd drew nearer to their helpless prisoner, stared at him, jeered, cast stones and offal, and, worked up by the teller of the story, were only kept from tearing him to pieces by the guard and the bars of the cage. Exposed without shelter to the broiling sun, Jack was dizzy and faint. His clothes had been torn to tatters in the struggle, his pigtail wrenched from his head. He had had no food for many hours, and, what was worse, no water.
He had been able to catch the gist of what the chief speaker in the crowd had said. How stupid of him to whistle—a thing a Chinaman never does! How unlucky that he had met a man from Canton! The dialects of the north and south differ so much that by professing to be a Southerner he had come so far on his journey undetected; but in conversation with a Cantonese his accent had inevitably betrayed him. And now he knew that he could expect no mercy. A European carries his life in his hands in China whenever he ventures alone out of the beaten track. In Manchuria just then, with the natives embittered by the wanton destruction of their towns and villages, the chances of a captive being spared were infinitesimal. Only fear of the mandarins had apparently caused them to hold their hands in his case; but Jack had little reason to suppose that the mandarins would interfere to protect him. No order would be issued; but the villagers would receive a hint to do as they pleased; and Jack well knew what their pleasure would be. In the unlikely event of diplomatic pressure being afterwards brought to bear, the mandarins could still repudiate responsibility, and the villagers would suffer; several, probably the most innocent, would lose their heads. But Jack knew that he had placed himself outside the protection of the British flag. Neither the mandarins nor the villagers had anything to fear.
The sun went down; the village watchman beat his wooden gong; and the group gradually dispersed. Only the guard was left. Parched with thirst, Jack ventured to address him, asking for a cup of water. The man, with more humanity than the most, after some hesitation acceded. He was generous, and brought also a mess of rice. Greatly refreshed by the meal, scanty though it was, Jack felt his spirits rising; with more of hope he began to canvass the possibilities in his favour. But he had to admit that they were slight. There was just one ray of light, dim indeed; but a pin-point glimmer is precious in the dark. He had heard the villagers mention the brigand Ah Lum, the chief of the Chunchuses, who had levied upon their oxen. This was the chief whom Wang Shih had left Moukden to join. If Jack could only communicate with Wang Shih there might still be a chance for him.
He began a whispered conversation with his guard, and learnt that, a few days before, Ah Lum's band was known to be encamped in the hills some twenty miles to the south-west. It was resting and recruiting its strength after a severe brush with a force of Cossacks, who had almost succeeded in cutting it to pieces during a raid on the railway.
"Do you know Wang Shih?"
"No; Ah Lum has several lieutenants. His band numbers nearly eight hundred; there were more than a thousand before the fight with the Russians."
"You know what a dollar is?"
"It is worth many strings of cash."
"Well, if you will take word to Mr. Wang about me, I will give you fifty dollars."
"Where will you get them from?" asked the man suspiciously. "Were you not searched, and everything taken from you?"
"True, I was searched; but the foreign devil has ways of getting money that the Chinaman does not understand. It is a small thing I ask you to do. The reward is great; fifty dollars, hundreds of strings of cash. You will never get such a chance again."
True to the oriental instinct for haggling, the man argued and discussed for some time before he at last agreed to Jack's proposition.
"You must make haste," said Jack. "If the messenger to the mandarin returns before you, I shall be killed and you will get no money."
The man at once explained that it was impossible for him to leave the village; he must find a messenger.
"Very well. He is to find Wang Shih and say that Jack Brown from Moukden is in peril of death. You can say the name?"
"Chack Blown," said the man.
"That will do. Now, when can you send your man?"
The guard said that he would be shortly relieved; then he would lose no time. In a few minutes a man came to take his place, and Jack, with mingled hopes and fears, settled himself in a corner of the cage, to sleep if possible. Half an hour later the guard returned with the welcome news that a messenger had started, after bargaining for twenty of the fifty dollars, and would travel all night on foot, for he had no horse, and to hire one would awaken suspicion.
"But," added the guard, "he is a trusty man, much respected, and a great hater of foreign devils, like all good Chinamen. If he had had his way the honourable foreign devil would have been executed this afternoon."
"Then how comes it," asked Jack, "that he is willing to go as messenger?"
The guide looked puzzled.
"Surely the honourable barbarian understands? Did I not explain that I promised Mr. Fu twenty dollars?"
Even in his misery Jack could not forbear a smile. His messenger was doubtless the man who had led the chorus of threats and insults a few hours before. The man's convictions were no doubt still the same; but the prospect of a few dollars had completely divorced precept from practice.
Then Jack reflected that the enterprise was a poor chance at the best. There was little likelihood of the man finding Wang Shih in time, and if he found him, it was uncertain whether his sense of gratitude was sufficiently keen to bring him to the rescue. Yet, in spite of all, Jack's impatient eager thought followed the messenger, as though hope could give him winged feet.
He spent a miserable night. In that hill country even the summer nights are cold; and his clothes having been well-nigh torn from his back, he had scant protection. He slept but little, lying awake for hours listening to the mice and rats scampering around the cage, and to the long-drawn melancholy howls of the village dogs.
Soon after dawn he heard a great commotion in the village. His pulse beat high; he hoped that Wang Shih had arrived. But when his friendly guardian came to resume duty, his heart sank, for he learnt that the headman's messenger to the local mandarin had returned, bringing word that the barbarian should be suitably dealt with by the guild. The mandarin had evidently washed his hands of the matter; the guard had no doubt that when the headman was ready Jack would be taken before him, and he must expect no mercy. The people had never ceased to grumble at the delay in executing him; and nothing could be hoped of the headman, for he was a native of Harbin, and bore a bitter grudge against the Russians, who in constructing their railway had cut through his family graveyard, and in defiling the bones of his ancestors had done him the worst injury a Chinaman can suffer. Jack was to have no breakfast; his captors were so sure of his fate that they thought it would be a mere waste to feed him.
An hour passed—a terrible hour of suspense. The villagers began to gather round the cage, and their looks of gleeful and malicious satisfaction struck Jack cold. All at once they broke into loud shouting as a posse of armed yamen-runners forced their way through. Jack was taken out of the cage, and, surrounded by the runners and followed by the jabbering crowd, was marched to the headman's house. He there found himself in the presence of a dignified Chinaman, a glossy black moustache encircling his mouth and chin, his long finger-nails denoting that he did not condescend to menial work. He was in fact a prosperous farmer, who, besides possessing large estates (to which he had no title) in the Forbidden Country, carried on an extensive trade in ginseng, a plant to which extraordinary medicinal virtues are attributed by the Chinese, and so valuable that a single root will sometimes fetch as much as £15 in the Peking market. The headman, feeling the importance of the occasion, had got himself up in imitation of a magistrate, wearing a round silk buttoned cap and a blue tunic.
He had evidently made a study of the procedure in a mandarin's yamen. He was the only man seated at a long table; at each end stood a scribe with a dirty book, which might or might not have been a book of law, outspread before him; at his right hand stood a man with a lighted pipe, from which during the proceedings the headman took occasional whiffs; in front stood a group of runners in weird costumes, wearing black cloth caps with red tassels. From the sour expression on the Chinaman's face Jack knew that he was already judged and condemned; but he held his head high, and gazed unflinchingly on the stern-visaged Chinaman.
It is proper for a prisoner to take his trial on his knees, and one of the runners approached Jack and sharply bade him kneel. He refused. Two other men came up with threatening gestures, and laid hands on him to force him down. He resisted; he had the rooted European objection to kowtow to an Asiatic. With too much good sense to indulge himself in heroics, he yet recalled at this moment by a freak of memory the lines written on the heroic Private Moyse of the Buffs. His back stiffened; there was the making of a pretty wrestling match; but the headman, mindful of the stout fight when the prisoner was arrested, and desiring that the proceedings should be conducted with decorum, ordered his men to desist. Then he began his interrogatory.
"You are an Russian?"
"No, an Englishman."
"Where have you been living?"
"In Moukden."
"What have you been doing there?"
"I lived with my father."
"Who is he?"
"He is a merchant."
"What is his name?"
"He is known as Mr. Brown of Moukden."
"What did he trade in?"
"In many things. He supplied stores of all kinds."
"To the Russians?"
"Yes."
"Assisting them to build the iron road that is the ruin of Manchuria?"
"I believe your august emperor gave the Russians permission."
"Do not dare to mention the Son of Heaven. Do not dare, I say, you foreign devil! Where is your father now?"
"I do not know. He was arrested by the Russians."
"Why?"
"They accused him of giving information to the Japanese."
"Did he give information?"
"No."
"Ch'hoy! Then clearly he was in league with the Russians. He, too, is worthy of death. What brought you into the Shan-yan-alin mountains?"
"I am trying to find my father. I was on my way to Moukden."
"Do you know that the Ch'ang-pai-shan is sacred to the emperor? Nobody is allowed to tread these hills, on pain of death."
"I am in your honour's august company."
The headman winced and blinked. That was a home-thrust. He grew angry.
"Enough! You are a foreign devil. By your own confession you have been in league with the Russians, assisting them in their impious work, disturbing the feng-shui in the most sacred city of the virtuous Son of Heaven. You are found in insolent disguise within the limits of the Forbidden Mountains; you resisted lawful arrest, to the severe injury of two of my officers. It is clear that you are a vile example of the outer barbarians who are scheming to drive the Manchu from his immemorial lands, defiling the graves of our fathers, and bringing our sons to shame. You are not fit to live; every one of your offences is punishable with death; in their sum you are lightly touched by my sentence upon you, that you suffer the ling-ch'ih, and then be beheaded. Confess your crimes."
Jack had answered the man's questions briefly and calmly, and listened with unmoved countenance to his speech. The decision was only what he had expected. The worst was to come. He knew that by the laws and customs of China he could not be executed until he had acknowledged the justice of the sentence and made open confession of his crime; he knew also that, failing to confess voluntarily, he would be tortured by all the most fiendish methods devised by Chinese ingenuity until confession was extorted from his lacerated, half-inanimate frame. The end would be the same; for a moment, in his helplessness and despair, he thought it would perhaps be better to acquiesce at once and get it over. But then pride of race stepped in. Could he, innocent as he felt himself to be, act a lie by even formally acquiescing in the sentence? He did not know how far his fortitude would enable him to bear the tortures in store; but he would not allow the mere prospect to cow him. He had paused but a moment.
"I have nothing to confess," he said.
The headman gave a grunt of satisfaction.
"Put him in the cage," he said.
Jack's blood ran cold in spite of himself. The word used by his judge was not the name of the cage in which he had already been confined, but meant an instrument of torture. Amid the exultant hoots of the crowd of natives, who spat on the ground as he passed, he was hauled from the presence and taken to a yard near by. In the centre of it stood a bamboo cage somewhat more than five feet high. Its top consisted of two movable slabs of wood which, when brought together, left a hole large enough to encircle a man's neck, but too small for his head to pass through. The height of the cage was so adjusted, that when the prisoner was inside with his head protruding from the top he could only avoid being hung by the neck so long as his feet rested on a brick. By and by that would be removed; he might defer strangulation for a short time by standing on tiptoe, but that would soon become too painful. Jack had never seen the instrument in use, but he had heard of it, and he quailed at the imagination of the torture he was to endure.
His arms were bound together; he was locked into the cage; his head was enclosed; and the mob jeered and yelled as, the brick being knocked away after a few minutes, he instinctively raised himself on his toes to ease the pressure on his neck. How long could he endure it? he wondered. Had the messenger failed to find Wang Shih? Had some perverse fate removed the Chunchuse band at this moment of dire peril? Humanly speaking, his salvation depended on Wang Shih, and on him alone: was his last hope to prove vain? Should he now yield, confess, and spare himself further torture? Already he was suffering intense pain; he gained momentary relief for his feet by drawing up his legs, a movement which brought his whole weight upon his neck; but that was endurable only for a few seconds. He closed his eyes to shut out the sight of the yelling mob; pressed his lips together lest a moan should escape him: "I will never give in, never give in." he said to himself; "pray God it may not be long."
The pain became excruciating; he no longer saw or heard the yelling fiends gloating over every spasm of his tortured body; he was fast sinking into unconsciousness, and the headman, fearful of losing his victim, was about to give the order for his temporary release, when suddenly his ears caught the sound of galloping horses. The noise around him lulled; he heard loud shouts in the distance, and drawing ever nearer. Then the crowd scattered like chaff, and through their midst rode a brawny figure brandishing a riding-whip of bamboo. Dashing through the amazed throng at the head of thirty shouting bandits he leapt from his horse, sprang to the cage, tore away the catch holding the two panels together, and Jack fell, an unconscious heap, to the bottom of the cage.
The first alarm being now passed, the villagers raised a hubbub. They clustered about the new-comers, protesting with all their might that the prisoner was merely a foreign devil, an impious pig. But Wang Shih cleared a space with his whip; then, springing to the saddle again, he raised his voice in a shout that dominated and silenced the clamour of the mob.
"Hai-yah! What are you doing, men of Tang-ho-kou? Is this foreigner a Russian that you treat him thus? A fine thing truly! You skulk in your fangtzes, afraid to come out with the honourable Ah Lum and me and fight the Russians, and yet you are bold enough to catch a solitary man, a friend of the Chinaman, and to misuse him thus because he is alone! Know you not that he is an enemy of the Russians? They have imprisoned his father; it is reverence for his father that brings him here. Is filial piety so little esteemed in Tang-ho-kou to-day? Ch'hoy! I see your headman aping a lordly mandarin; let him listen. I say you are lucky I do not burn your village and execute a dozen of you as you were about to execute the stranger. But I will be merciful. I will take from you a contribution of five thousand taels for my chief; and your headman—ch'hoy! he shall stand for half an hour in the cage. That shall suffice. But beware how you offend again. Learn to distinguish your friends from your enemies—an Englishman from the Russians whom the dwarfs of Japan are helping us to drive back to the frozen north. Take heed of what I say—I, Wang Shih, the worthless servant of his excellency Ah Lum, the virtuous commander of many honourable brigands."
This speech made an impression upon the crowd. The headman was beginning to slink away, but Wang Shih noticed the movement and sent one of his men after him. In spite of his protests he was dragged to the cage, from which Jack, now fully conscious, had been removed; he was fastened in it, and compelled to tiptoe as his erstwhile prisoner had done. But after some minutes Jack, with a vivid remembrance of his own sufferings, interceded for the wretched man, and Wang Shih released him, bidding him collect from the villagers the tribute he had demanded. The presence of the thirty well-armed Chunchuses was a powerful spur to haste, and within half an hour the amount was raised. Meanwhile Jack's neck had been bathed, and his muscles were beginning to recover from the strain to which they had been put. He declared that he was well enough to ride away with his deliverers. He had first to pay the guard the fifty dollars agreed upon. Not wishing to disclose the hiding-place in the soles of his boots where he kept his notes, he borrowed from Wang Shih the necessary sum in bar silver. Then, mounted upon a horse borrowed from the headman's own stables, he rode with the brigands from the village.