after a prolonged hunt, hiding, in an almost fainting condition,
underneath the bunk in the first lieutenant's cabin, and dragged him
forcibly on deck. He was obliged to give the terrified man a stiff dose
of raki to bring him to a condition to understand what was being said to
him; then, the fellow finally coming in some degree to his senses,
Frobisher explained to him the plan of campaign, and ordered him to
translate it to the men.
There being now but two junks left, it was the Englishman's intention to
run the _Su-chen_ up stream and in between them, firing as she went.
Then boarding parties, headed respectively by himself and the first
lieutenant, were to leap on to the decks of the junks, drive the crews
overboard--not below--cut the cables, fire the vessels, and send them
adrift down stream with the current. The _Su-chen_ would then be free
to turn her entire attention to the fort. She would anchor in the berth
vacated by the junks, and endeavour to silence the fire of the fort with
her remaining guns. If this could be done, a landing-party was to be
thrown ashore who would carry with them a number of powder-bags for
blowing in the gates; after which the idea was to enter the fort and
carry it by storm. If the guns could not be entirely silenced, then as
much damage as possible was to be done, and the assault was to be
attempted in any case.
The men signified their comprehension of the plan with a cheer; then
rifles were loaded, bayonets fixed, cartridge-pouches refilled, and
cutlasses brought up from below and belted on. Frobisher gave the word,
and the _Su-chen_ went ahead at full speed for the junks. The men on
the latter at once understood the move, and did their utmost to prevent
it coming off, but all to no purpose. The gunboat crashed in between
them, grapnels were hove aboard each junk, and the two parties of
boarders, with Frobisher and the lieutenant at their head, scrambled up
on the decks of the junks, where a desperate hand-to-hand struggle at
once commenced.
The pirates, knowing that they could expect no mercy, showed none, and
no quarter was given on either side. Frobisher, at the head of his men,
strove to cut his way forward, driving the pirates ahead of him and
overboard; but he soon realised that this was going to be an exceedingly
difficult task. The desperadoes were splendidly armed, and seemed not
to know the meaning of the word fear. Men found revolvers flashing in
their very faces, and spoke no more in this world; the air scintillated
with the gleam of whirling steel and vibrated with the hoarse shouts of
the combatants and the cries of wounded men; while, to add to the horror
and confusion of the scene, the guns of the fort opened fire murderously
upon friend and foe alike.
Twice the pirates had given way slightly, but each time they had
recovered their ground, and however many of them were killed, others
seemed to appear from nowhere to take their places; and so the fight
raged with unabated fury. Frobisher picked out a man who appeared to be
one of the chiefs, and made herculean efforts to reach him; but time and
again a whirlwind of men swept in between him and his prey, so that the
fellow seemed unapproachable.
Then, suddenly, there arose a roar of exultation from the pirates, and,
turning, Frobisher saw the other boarding party give way, and, seemingly
struck with panic, go tumbling back on board the _Su-chen_, defeated.
Frobisher, forgetting that he would not be understood, shouted to his
men to redouble their efforts, and to those on the gunboat to go back
and try again.
But there was worse to come. The Englishman was at the head of his men,
plying his cutlass with terrible effect, when he felt a slight jar, and
looked round just in time to see a man on board the _Su-chen_ throw off
the last grapnel, and the gunboat begin to gather sternway down the
stream. He uttered a shout of rage, and strove to hew his way to the
side of the junk; but even as he did so, he realised that he was too
late. There were already fathoms of water between junk and steamer, and
the bitter conclusion was forced home upon him that he had been deserted
by his crew, and left alone with a mere handful of men in the midst of a
crowd of howling, murderous pirates. The end of all things for him
seemed very close at that moment.
CHAPTER TWELVE.
THE PATHWAY OF GLASS.
Desperate as the situation undoubtedly was, Captain Frobisher was not
the man to yield without a struggle. He was cornered, and he knew it.
Nothing short of a miracle could extricate him from the position in
which the momentary panic of the other boarding party had placed him by
the withdrawal of the _Su-chen_; but he determined that, if he was to
die, he would not die alone.
With this resolution, he renewed the fight with even greater desperation
than before, if that were possible; and so formidable a foe did he
become that, for a few seconds, the pirates in front of him wavered and
all but broke. His tall, strong figure, as he advanced bareheaded, with
set teeth and gleaming eyes, and that long ruddily-gleaming strip of
steel which played here, there, and everywhere with the swiftness of
light, made up a spectacle sufficiently awe-inspiring to terrify any
man, one would have thought; but many of the pirates were themselves
almost as big and strong as Frobisher, and were thoroughly accustomed to
desperate, hand-to-hand fighting. Their hesitation was therefore but
momentary, and the next instant they had closed round him like a pack of
hungry wolves, snarling and spitting curses at him, and even striving to
pull him down with their hands.
Gaining the opportunity of an instant's breathing space, Frobisher
glanced quickly behind him to discover how many of his men were left to
him, and was horrified to find that, out of the forty men who had
followed him on to the deck of the junk, but ten remained on their feet,
while of those ten, fully half were bleeding from more or less severe
wounds which would quickly put them _hors de combat_. There was
therefore not the smallest possibility of cutting a way through the
dense throng that surrounded them and leaping over the side into the
water, as he had at first thought of doing; and there seemed nothing to
be done but to sell his life and the lives of his followers as dearly as
possible--for he was quite resolved to die rather than fall alive into
the hands of the pirates, having already heard something of the tender
mercies of the Chinese to their prisoners.
Unhappily for Frobisher, however, he was unable to control circumstance,
and, not having eyes in the back of his head, he was unaware of what was
happening behind him. He did not know that a few seconds later his
followers were all cut down and slain, and that he remained fighting
alone, without a single protector at his back, and with his enemies
swarming all round him. Neither did he observe the chief, whom he had
been trying to reach unsuccessfully ever since the beginning of the
fight, made a brief signal to his men not to strike.
Consequently he was not a little astonished when he suddenly felt
himself seized round the neck and body by half a dozen pairs of arms,
which pinioned his own and left him helpless. In an instant his cutlass
was wrenched from his grasp and he was hurled to the deck, where more
men immediately flung themselves upon him, holding him firmly down, so
that he found it utterly impossible to move a limb.
Thereafter the business of binding him was comparatively easy, and he
presently found himself swathed from head to foot in coils of rope,
until he resembled a mummy rather than a living man.
His captors then rolled him contemptuously out of the way against the
shot-riddled bulwarks, and proceeded to take account of their
casualties. Where Frobisher had made his final stand the dead lay
thickest, and he noticed with grim satisfaction that there were very few
wounded men to be seen. His men and he had fought well, and he had
nothing with which to reproach himself. The pirate chief scowled
heavily as he scanned the result of the fight; but although he had
unquestionably paid dearly in men for his victory, he had no compunction
in ordering the more severely wounded to be hove over the side.
Probably there were no facilities for doctoring them, and the chief
perhaps thought they might as well die now as later on, and so save him
a good deal of trouble in transporting them to the shore.
Just then the other junk bumped heavily alongside, and her men came
aboard, reporting that their craft had been so badly damaged that she
was in a sinking condition. Indeed her crew had hardly transferred
themselves before she disappeared beneath the muddy waters.
The fourth junk safely accounted for, Frobisher comforted himself with
the assurance that, with any sort of luck at all, the _Su-chen_ ought to
be able to make her way back to Tien-tsin, short-handed though she must
undoubtedly be; and, once there, he knew a report of the failure of the
expedition would be speedily carried to Wong-lih, provided the admiral
happened to be still there. The latter would then be quite certain to
send a rescue expedition up the Hoang-ho to recover any prisoners the
pirates might have taken, or to avenge them if slain. Happily for the
Englishman's peace of mind, he did not know that, although the _Su-chen_
did eventually reach Tien-tsin in safety, she arrived too late to catch
the admiral, who had left to visit some of the Southern Chinese ports
and inspect the men-of-war on that station, and was not expected back,
unless specially sent for, for at least a couple of months. And it was
certain that none of the Chinese officials at Tien-tsin would consider
the fact of Frobisher's capture and probable murder at the hands of the
pirates as sufficient to justify the exertion of dispatching a messenger
to recall Wong-lih, or even to give him news of the result of the
expedition. So, although he did not know it, there was little prospect
of rescue for Murray Frobisher, for some time, at all events.
The business of disposing of the dead and badly wounded men having been
completed, the pirate chief, whose name--from the number of times the
word was used when he was being addressed--Frobisher guessed to be
Ah-fu, issued a few brief orders in barbarous-sounding, up-country
Chinese; and the survivors of the fight got up the anchor, and slowly
poled the junk back to her berth behind the small headland where the
fleet had been lying on the arrival of the _Su-chen_. Observing that,
in his bound condition, nobody seemed to consider it necessary to stand
on guard over him, and being anxious to learn as much as possible
respecting his present surroundings--with a view to future escape if he
were left alive long enough--Frobisher contrived to bring himself into a
kneeling position, after which he had not much difficulty in struggling
to his feet, and was thus able to look over the side and see what was
going on.
By the time that he had executed this manoeuvre the junk had left the
main stream of the river and had entered the bight where the pirate
fleet was accustomed to be concealed; and, at the far end of this, about
a quarter of a mile from their present position, Frobisher distinguished
a small wharf, some two hundred feet in length by about thirty wide, and
standing about eight feet out of the water, toward which the junk was
being steered. This was no doubt the jetty where the pirates unloaded
the loot stolen from captured prizes, and whence they took aboard their
own stores of ammunition, provisions, and water. There was quite a
number of bamboo and thatch huts scattered about at the shore end of the
jetty--evidently store-houses--while a stream of flashing, sparkling,
crystal-clear water, tumbling down a narrow gully and cutting a tiny
channel for itself across the sand to the river, was without doubt the
source of the pirates' water supply.
Frobisher noticed that at the end of the jetty a number of the men from
the fort had collected, apparently awaiting the arrival of their
comrades of the maritime department; and as the junk came alongside,
these individuals clambered aboard, and a vociferous conversation
ensued, during which fierce glances and threatening gestures were
directed toward the Englishman, who knew instinctively that the new
arrivals were strongly urging that he should be put to death, as some
sort of a sacrifice to the memory of the dead pirates, in whose
destruction he had played so large a part. Indeed, it seemed at one
moment as though he were to be slaughtered as he stood there, bound and
helpless; for the new-comers surged forward, knives and swords gleaming
in their hands, pushing the junk's crew backward until the whole crowd
had gathered in a circle, with Frobisher in the centre. Frobisher
expected death at any moment, and he was at a loss to understand why the
junk's men seemed reluctant to let the others have their way, seeing
that they themselves had been eager enough to put an end to him but a
short time previously. Presently he noticed that Ah-fu had disappeared
from the deck, and guessed that the men were merely waiting for him to
return before allowing the people from the fort to have their way.
Presently the pirate chief reappeared, and was immediately surrounded by
an eager, gesticulating crowd, who pointed to Frobisher and handled
their blades in sanguinary anticipation. But, holding up his hand for
silence, Ah-fu said a few words to his followers which produced an
immediate and remarkable effect. Sheathing their weapons, they broke
out into shouts of laughter, and began to discuss with one another the
details of what they evidently considered an excellent joke; and
Frobisher, knowing something of the Chinese pirates' idea of amusement,
felt that he would infinitely have preferred being killed on the spot to
being kept alive to provide sport for these barbarians. Quen-lung had
certainly been right when he had prophesied disaster as the result of
attacking the "Unconquerable"--as Frobisher afterwards found was indeed
the name of the sect to which the pirates belonged--although what reason
the man had had for being so sure, the young Englishman was utterly
unable to guess.
The matter having evidently been settled entirely to the pirates'
satisfaction, Frobisher's legs were unbound, so that he could walk, and,
closely guarded by two men carrying long, broad-bladed knives, he was
led down the sloping gangway to the wharf, followed by the rest of the
crowd talking and laughing hilariously. Thence he was taken up the
hill, a distance of a quarter of a mile, to the fort.
On reaching his destination he was amazed to note the enormous strength
of the building, and the consequently small amount of damage that had
been done by the fire of the gunboat. With the exception of the hole in
the tower, and a few splintered and starred "splashings" where the
missiles had struck, very little actual injury seemed to have been
inflicted, notwithstanding the excellent practice of the _Su-chen's_
gunners. The walls, he decided, must be enormously thick, thicker even
than those of the fortress of Asan, which were stout enough to withstand
anything less than heavy gun fire.
He was not permitted to examine the appearance of the building very
closely, for, observing his hesitation, the two guards prodded him
vindictively with the points of their knives, and pushed him before them
through the massive stone gateway, which was protected by a strong
portcullis at either end, as well as an iron double door between, strong
enough to turn rifle bullets. Frobisher now realised that even if he
had succeeded in sinking all the junks and reaching the gate of the fort
his difficulties would only have begun, and that his plan of blowing in
the gates with powder would have been completely frustrated by the
existence of the outer portcullis. These men certainly knew how to
protect themselves, and were determined not to be captured if human
ingenuity could prevent it.
Once inside, Frobisher found himself in a spacious courtyard, round
which the fort was built. The windows of the different chambers looked
inward, thus allowing the outer walls to be entirely used for gun
embrasures, rifle loopholes, and even arrow-slits, so varied were the
weapons to be found in this robber stronghold.
Still in charge of the two guards, at a command from Ah-fu the prisoner
was marched through a doorway in the wall exactly opposite the main
gateway, and was hurried through corridor after corridor--all of them
only dimly lighted by small openings in the outer wall--until he became
utterly confused and lost even the remotest idea of his bearings. After
a walk of about five minutes the guards halted before an iron-bound
door, which, upon being opened, disclosed a flight of steps. Down these
steps he was hurried, finding himself, when at the bottom, at the
entrance to another long passage, which looked as though it had been
hewn out of the solid sandstone, for there were no joints visible in its
walls.
Removing a lantern from a hook, one of the men lighted it, and the
journey was continued for quite ten minutes in a perfectly straight
line, thus confirming Frobisher's impression that he was in an
underground passage leading from the fort to some other structure at a
considerable distance, probably constructed to afford a means of escape
in the extremely unlikely event of the fort ever being captured. At the
far end of this passage there were several iron-bound doors--a
circumstance which Frobisher noted for future reference; and it was
through one of the middle ones that he was conducted, arriving at once
at the foot of another flight of stairs, similar to those at the other
end, and finally at a large, square, stone cell, lighted on three sides
by very small windows, high up in the walls--a most dismal-looking
prison. There was a low plank bench covered with straw and presumably
intended for a bed, two stools, and a bucket, these few articles
constituting the entire contents of the chamber.
Frobisher's arms were now unbound, and he was thrust inside, the guards
holding themselves in readiness to frustrate any attempt at escape. But
the prisoner was by this time far too stiff and numb after the
constriction of the ropes to make any such attempt; it was as much as he
could achieve to stagger to the apology for a bed, upon which he flung
himself at full length. He was utterly exhausted, and his body had
scarcely touched the straw before he was fast asleep, in which condition
he remained for nearly twenty-four hours.
When he awoke he found that a coarse meal had been left for him, while
the bucket had been filled with water; so he made a hearty meal, and
then proceeded to examine his cell by the light of the declining sun.
His search, however, was fruitless: there was nothing out of which he
might construct a key, as he had done at Asan; the windows were scarcely
six inches square; in short, escape appeared an impossibility.
And now many days dragged out their slow length in dreary monotony; day
after day his custodians brought him a supply of food; but, strangely
enough, the time passed without his being subjected to indignity and
torment for the amusement of the pirates, as he had fully expected might
be the case. Possibly they were absent on some foray, and had postponed
their entertainment until their return. Whatever might be the reason,
however, the days slid past, without molestation to him, and lengthened
into weeks, until, by the notches which he scored every morning on the
edge of his bed, Frobisher found that he had been just thirteen weeks in
confinement. Thirteen weeks!--And, so far as he could tell, no attempt
had been made by the Chinese authorities to rescue him or obtain his
release; at any rate, there had been no sounds of fighting, no report of
guns from the river; and he was being slowly forced to the conclusion
that his very existence had been forgotten, or else that it was thought
not worth while to throw away any more valuable Chinese lives in order
to effect the rescue of so unimportant a personage as an English
mercenary.
Then, one morning, when Frobisher awoke and commenced to dress--for he
had made a practice of undressing at night, that he might feel the
cleaner and more refreshed next day--he discovered, to his astonishment,
that his boots had mysteriously disappeared during the night. He
searched everywhere for them, but they were nowhere to be found. For
whatever reason--and he puzzled himself to think of a satisfactory one--
his foot-gear was undoubtedly missing, and there was an end of the
matter. The curious happening vexed him considerably. It seemed such
an idiotic trick to play; and the more he thought about the matter the
more convinced he became that this joke, or whatever it was intended to
be, had a deeper significance than he had at first imagined.
Since his arrival in China he had contrived to acquire a fragmentary
knowledge of the language, and by its means he endeavoured to ascertain
from the man who nightly brought him food the reason for the apparently
senseless prank; but the fellow either could not or would not
understand, and Frobisher was obliged to give up the attempt.
The jailer had hitherto been in the habit of closing the iron-bound door
behind him with a slam, rattling the lock after him to make sure that it
was fastened, when he brought the prisoner's food; and this circumstance
had come to be so expected by Frobisher that when, on the evening of the
day on which his boots had disappeared, the man simply pulled the door
to gently behind him and went off about his business without even trying
the lock, the omission immediately attracted the Englishman's attention.
The man had never before been so careless, and Frobisher could not
decide whether he had been thinking of something else at the moment, and
had succumbed to an attack of absent-mindedness, or whether he had
suddenly recollected something that he had forgotten, and intended to
pay another visit to the cell. Whichever it might be, Frobisher
believed he saw in the circumstance a possibility of escape of which he
instantly determined to avail himself.
With stealthy footsteps he crept across the stone-flagged floor,
scarcely daring to breathe lest his movements should attract some
inconvenient person's attention. He had, it is true, heard the jailer
walk away down the corridor; but perhaps, playing some stupid joke, the
man had crept back noiselessly, and was even now outside the door,
listening and chuckling to himself at the prisoner's foolishness in
imagining that he would be careless enough to go away leaving the door
unfastened. The mere idea caused the beads of sweat to start out on
Frobisher's forehead; disappointment would be too terrible!
But he swiftly pulled himself together, and, with fingers that trembled
in spite of himself, he touched the old-fashioned latch and slowly, very
slowly, raised it, pulling the door gently toward him as he did so.
The door opened, and, scarcely daring to credit his senses, Frobisher
pulled it still wider open, and a moment later was able to look out into
the corridor. There was an antiquated oil lantern hanging at the foot
of the stone stairway, placed there for the jailer's convenience, and by
its light the prisoner was able to see that the corridor was empty.
Then the incident of the door was no trick, after all, and the man had
really suffered a lapse of memory. Twenty-four hours would elapse
before he returned, and Frobisher's absence was discovered, and the
latter hoped by that time to be far away, if he could but find some mode
of escaping undetected from the building. The first and most serious
obstacle in the way, the cell door, was overcome; now to find whether
his luck would still hold, and if he could find another unguarded gate
leading to freedom.
First of all, however, he must have some covering for his feet. He knew
that he could not walk far barefooted over rough ground; and, if pursued
under such circumstances, capture would be certain and speedy. He
therefore removed his shirt and undervest, and tearing them into strips,
he swathed the wrappings round his feet somewhat after the manner
followed by the Spanish mountaineers. This done, he next had to
ascertain whether the remaining doors between himself and freedom were
locked or unlocked.