LEAPING INTO UNKNOWN BLACKNESS
To the friends who had been so mysteriously separated many months
earlier, and on the other side of the world, their reunion at this place
and under such conditions was bewildering and incredible. They could
scarcely believe the evidence of their own eyes. The last time Rob had
seen Jo the latter had been shorn of his queue, while now his hair again
hung in a long, glossy braid. For a moment they stood clasping each
other's hand, after the fashion of the West, and staring without speech.
There was so much to be said that they could say nothing. Then they were
aroused to a sense of imminent danger by the sounds of ascending voices
and hurrying footsteps on the stone stairway. Evidently the present was
no time for explanations.
"Quick, Rob! Go up there and hide," whispered Jo, pointing, as he spoke,
to a rude ladder leading into the darkness of an upper loft. "Stay there
till I come or I cannot save you."
Even as he spoke, Jo turned to the stairway as though about to descend,
while Rob sprang to the ladder.
A Chinese soldier was so close at hand that he would have gained the
room and caught sight of the fugitive had not the young officer arrested
his progress with the stern inquiry:
"What is going on below? Are you all mad or drunk with the juice of
poppies? Cannot I meditate in peace without being disturbed by the
howlings of you swine? How dare you come up here without orders? Answer
me, dog, and son of generations of dogs, before I cause you to be beaten
with a hundred blows!"
The terrified soldier, who held a petty office, corresponding to that of
corporal of the guard, recoiled from the presence of his angry superior,
who, if he had chosen, could have him beaten even to death, and,
kotowing until his forehead touched the stones, answered:
"Know, your honorable excellency, that the outer gate has been closed
without knowledge of any in the guard-house, and beyond it many persons,
mad with anger, are clamorous for admittance. It is a mystery; and
before opening the gate I came up here for a look at the outsiders, to
make certain that they are not enemies."
"Closed, pig? How can it be that the gate is closed without orders from
me, the keeper of the gate? This thing must be examined into," cried
the young officer, with every appearance of extreme anger. "Let it be
opened without delay. But first come with me and look at these outside
howlers. It may be, even as your stupidity suggests, that they are men
from Chang-Chow, who have ever been unfriendly to this city because of
its greater prosperity."
This was said to give the soldier an opportunity for seeing that no
other person was in the room, which fact he would report to his comrades.
As they examined the furious crowd besieging the gate, Jo exclaimed,
even more angrily than before:
"Those be no Chang-Chow men, but our friends and own people. They are
the dancers, who, together with the good priests, pray constantly for
rain, and who went out to the shrine of the holy rain-god but an hour
ago. Ah, but you shall smartly suffer for closing a gate of their
own city against them. Hasten and open it again if you would have
the setting sun behold your worthless head still upon your wretched
shoulders."
Thus saying, the young officer spurned the trembling soldier with his
foot and followed him down the stairway. In another moment the great
gate was opened to the torrent of frantic humanity that rushed in
demanding to know what had become of the foreign devil whom they had
seen enter only a few minutes before, and where the soldiers had hidden
him. Also why they had closed the gate in the very faces of his pursuers.
"Give him up to us," shrieked the priests, "that we may kill him, for
doubtless it is he who keeps away the blessed rain."
The denials of the guard that they even had seen any foreigner, or that
they had closed the gate, were so little heeded by the clamorous throng,
that it might have gone hard with them had not Jo secured a hearing by
firing a shot from his revolver, a weapon that he alone of all those
present possessed.
"The guard has not seen the foreign devil or surely they would have
arrested him," he cried, in the awed silence that followed his shot.
"Nor did they close the gate, for they would not dare without my orders,
and I gave none. Nor could one man, not even a foreign devil, close the
gate unaided, since it often has been tried and they have proved too
heavy. Only by magic could he have done this thing, and by magic must
he have blinded the eyes of the soldiers so that they did not see him
pass them into the city. But your priests have magic as well as the
foreigners, and by means of it he may be discovered. Let us then again
close the gate that he may not escape, and search for him in every
quarter of the city. When he is found let his head promptly be cut
off, before he has time again to use his magic. Thus shall the city be
purified and the wrath of the rain-god be appeased. Protect the empire!
Exterminate foreigners!"
With this rallying-cry of the Great Swords, Jo led the way across the
enclosed space separating the inner from the outer gate, past the
guard-house, where his soldiers spent their waking hours in gambling
with long, slim Chinese cards and piles of beans, and on into the
narrow streets of the city. There he was so active in the search that
was maintained, until stopped by darkness, that he gained a notable
reputation as a hater of foreigners. Thus by his prompt action were
Rob's enemies so completely thrown off his track that not once was his
real hiding-place approached or even suspected.
In the mean time he, intensely wearied by hours of confinement in that
hot, dusty loft, grew vastly impatient of inaction. He was hungry and
parched with thirst; no sound penetrated his prison, nor any ray of
light. He had no idea of the passage of time, and imagined it to be much
later in the night than it really was, when he was startled by a sharp
"Hist!" that seemed to come from the top of the ladder.
Too wary to answer it, he only listened, with senses all alert, for
something further. Then came a whispered "Rob," and he knew that his
only friend in that part of the world was at hand.
"Crawl here on your hands and knees," whispered Jo. "Don't let your
boots touch the floor, for the guards below are wide awake and listening
to every sound. That's right. Now put on these felt boots. Leave your
own behind, and follow me without a word."
Rob obeyed these instructions in all but one thing. His boots were of
heavy English leather, lacing high on his ankles, and had been procured
in Hankow. They were very comfortable as well as durable, and he could
not bear the thought of exchanging them for cloth shoes with felt soles,
especially in view of the amount of walking ahead of him if he made
good his escape. So, though he put on the pair provided by Jo, he tied
the others about his neck, and, thus equipped, noiselessly followed
his friend down the ladder to the room below. From this room a narrow
doorway opened on the broad parapet of the city wall. Towards this door
they were making their cautious way, when suddenly the hastily tied
strings of Rob's heavy boots gave way, and they fell to the stone floor
with a clatter that awoke the echoes.
Our lad uttered an exclamation of dismay as he groped about the floor
to recover his lost treasures; but it was drowned in a tumult of shouts
from below. At the same time a scuffling of feet on the stairway proved
that the alarmed guard were on their way to investigate.
Jo, knowing nothing of the boots, could not imagine what had happened,
and called from the doorway that he already had reached:
"Never mind anything! Come on, quick, for your life!"
But Rob, having found one boot, was determined to have the other, for
which he still was feeling over a wide area of floor space. At length
his fingers touched it; but as he triumphantly rose to his feet a dark,
heavily breathing form, brandishing some sort of a weapon, confronted
him. The next instant he had sent the overzealous guard reeling backward
with a swinging blow from the heavy boot just recovered, that took him
full in the face. With a yell of combined pain and fright, the soldier
pitched down the narrow stairway, carrying with him the comrades who
were close at his heels. Before the confused heap could disentangle
itself, our lads had fled through the doorway and were speeding like
shadows along the top of the lofty wall.
As they ran they heard behind them a shrill screaming and a furious
beating of gongs. Then from the tall drum-tower in the centre of the
city came a deep, booming sound that could be heard for miles. The great
drum that is only sounded in times of public peril was arousing the
citizens and sending them swarming from their houses. Torches appeared
not only in the streets but on the wall behind our flying lads. Then, to
Rob's dismay, others began to gleam in front of them. To be sure, these
still were a long distance away, but they gave certain evidence that
flight in that direction must come to a speedy end.
"What is the use of running any farther?" asked Rob. "We'll only fall in
with that torch-light procession all the sooner. Seems to me we might as
well stop where we are and see about getting down off this perch."
"There's only one place to get down," answered Jo, "and it still is
ahead of us. Run faster! We've got to reach it first."
So the fugitives put on an added burst of speed, though to Rob it seemed
that they were only rushing directly into the arms of the advancing
torch-bearers.
Suddenly Jo exclaimed, breathlessly, "Here's the place!" and then, to
Rob's dismay, he took a flying leap off the parapet into the gulf of
impenetrable blackness lying on the outer side of the wall.
For a moment the young American turned sick with the thought that,
despairing of ultimate escape, his comrade had chosen death by suicide,
and now lay lifeless at the foot of the lofty battlement.
Then came the familiar voice rising from some unknown depth, and calling
on him to follow.
"Jump, Rob!" it cried; "you'll land all right, the same as I have."
Even with this assurance our lad hesitated to leap into the darkness.
He knew that the wall was at least fifty feet high. There was at its
bottom no moat filled with water, into which one might launch himself
with safety. "Nor is there any pile of feather-beds, that I know of," he
thought, grimly.
From both sides lines of torches were steadily advancing, while up from
the city rose a tumult of angry voices. Only in the outside blackness
that already had engulfed his friend was there the slightest promise of
escape.
"I suppose there's nothing else to be done," he muttered, setting his
teeth and bracing himself for the effort. "So, here goes!"
With this he sprang out into space and instantly vanished.
When, a minute later, the advancing lines of torch-bearers came together
at that very point, they were bewildered and frightened by the absolute
disappearance of those whom they had thought to be so surely within
their grasp.
Certainly the magic of the foreign devils was stronger than their
priests had led them to believe.