THE LAST TRAIN FROM PORT ARTHUR.
Fred Larkin's first move, on finding himself trapped, was a perfectly
natural one. He scrambled to his feet and rushed to the door. It took
him some time to find the knob, in the darkness, and on turning it and
pulling with all his might he was not surprised to discover that it
refused to yield.
"It's a bad scrape," said the reporter to himself, breathing hard with
his exertions, "but I've been in worse ones, unless that threat of
blowing up the house is carried out."
He had been fumbling in his pocket, and now drew from it a box of wax
vestas, one of which he struck. The light disclosed a small room,
perfectly bare. A glance at the heavy door convinced him that it was
useless to attempt a speedy escape in that direction. There were two low
windows, both with the sashes fastened down and protected by outside
shutters of wood.
Fred made short work of one of the sashes, smashing it to bits with his
foot. He then unhasped the shutters and peered out. The night was cloudy
and he could discover nothing beyond the fact that there was a sheer
drop of at least twenty-five feet to a sort of yard, which might be
paved with brick or lumbered up with stones and iron scrap, for all he
could see. The buildings beyond seemed to be warehouses of some sort;
not a light gleamed from a single window. He shouted with all his might
for help, but none came. Although he did not believe the house would "be
a heap of rubbish in ten minutes"--three of which had already
elapsed--he was sufficiently in doubt to be perfectly willing to leave
it at once, if there were any possible way of escape.
As he stepped back into the room the flooring creaked under his foot.
Lighting another wax match he found that a board was loose. He managed
to get his fingers under the end, and, throwing his whole weight upward,
ripped out the board. With the first for a lever, its neighbour came up
easily enough. It was a cheaply built house, without a second layer
beneath the surface floor. The edgewise-set planks on which the boards
rested were about two feet apart. Fred did not hesitate a moment, but
stamped hard upon the upper side of the ceiling of the apartment beneath
his own. His foot went through the lath and plaster with a smash and a
cloud of dust. Picking up the broken boards, he enlarged the hole, and,
as soon as the dust cleared away, peered through the opening. The room
below was as dark as his own. He "sounded" with the longest floor-board
at his disposal, and was gratified to find that he could "touch bottom"
at about nine feet depth. Without losing further time he crawled through
the hole, hung off from the stringers and dropped.
Recovering himself from the shock of alighting in the dark, Fred hastily
produced another vesta, in order to survey his new quarters. The room
was entirely unfurnished, like the one above. In one respect, however,
it differed from the apartment in which he had been so unceremoniously
installed: the door was ajar! In a minute more Larkin stood on the
pavement outside, and in another, having taken a careful survey of the
premises, he was hurrying away to his own lodgings, which he reached in
safety, congratulating himself on the happy issue of his evening's
adventure.
Martin Stevens, like all evil-doers, was an unhappy man. For weeks and
months he would toil at a self-imposed task, to earn money and fame at
the expense of principles, and when he seemed to himself to have
attained absolute success, and felt the crackle of his basely earned
bank-notes in his pocket,--he was miserable. The luscious fruit he had
so long looked forward to eating was a Dead Sea apple, crumbling to
ashes at the first bite.
After his narrow escape from death at the hands of the Spaniards in
Santiago, he had engaged in various questionable enterprises on the
Continent, where a natural aptitude for languages soon enabled him to
converse fluently in German, French, Italian, and Russian. He was
already master of Spanish, as we have seen, and he had received a fine
education in applied mathematics, physics, and navigation at the United
States Naval Academy. Tall and rather well formed, carrying himself
well, and conversing easily in the language of the country where he
desired to exercise his peculiar calling--that of a professional spy--he
readily obtained admittance to many councils and offices closed to the
general public. He had correspondents in every court in Europe, as well
as in Japan and at Pekin.
When Stevens left Tokio in disguise, with half a dozen important papers
in his breast pocket, he felt that he had achieved the crowning glory of
his life. The documents were indeed gladly received at the Russian
headquarters, but the man was despised and distrusted. The bluff,
gallant Stoessel paid the spy a large sum without hesitation; but,
beyond suggesting another expedition--perhaps to the camp of General
Nogi's forces, or to Admiral Togo's fleet--he had nothing more to say to
him. As the high-minded Russian turned to his staff-officers, whose
bronzed, manly faces bore witness to their honourable service under the
Czar, Stevens sneaked off, his face sallower than ever, to cash the
official draft and to gnash his teeth at the cold, contemptuous
treatment he had met with when his secrets were all divulged. In this
mood, plotting a new system of espionage upon the Russians, whom he
hated, he had met Larkin. He had already recognised the reporter in
Tokio, and had thought himself well rid of him when he fled to Port
Arthur. No sight could have been more unwelcome to him than that of
Larkin's merry, honest, shrewd countenance, rising before him like
Banquo's ghost, when least expected.
Near Stevens's lodgings was an empty house of which he had the key, and
in which he had already met representatives of that terrible class of
men who are now found in all parts of the civilised world, but most
where the double eagle of the Russian flag proclaims the despotic rule
of St. Petersburg--the Nihilists. Revolving in his mind various plans
for getting rid of Larkin without actually committing murder, he
determined, on the spur of the moment, to lock him up over night at this
secret place of rendezvous. He even thought vaguely of blowing up the
building with a bomb, which one of his friends would supply on demand.
He shrank, however, from this extreme measure, which would put his own
head in peril, and contented himself with giving the war correspondent a
good scare, out of pure malice, and with so disposing of his person that
he would be kept out of the way over night. He had no doubt that Larkin
would gain his release in some way the next morning, but there would be
time, meanwhile, to don a new disguise and perfect arrangements for
leaving the city. How he failed, we have seen. Fred Larkin was not an
easy man to scare, or to keep within four walls against his will. The
next morning, accordingly, both spy and reporter were at the railway
station, eager to take the first train for the north. There was a dense
crowd of refugees struggling for places, and neither of the two men was
conscious of the other's presence on board when the guard's whistle
sounded at last, and the long train--the last train for many a weary
month, as it proved--moved out of Port Arthur.
It was six o'clock on the morning of May 6th. The sun had burst through
the clouds which had rendered the preceding night so gloomy, and the
country around the city stretched out on either side of the railroad in
all the loveliness of spring. Fields and hillsides flushed with blossoms
of almond and apricot, and opened fair reaches of greensward as the
train rolled past. In sheltered nooks, by the banks of dancing
streamlets, nestled those little Chinese villages which, however
squalid upon close acquaintance, add a picturesque touch to the Oriental
landscape. All around the horizon was piled with high hills, clothed in
verdure or reddish in the early sunlight where broad ledges and
stretches of sandy slope had been denuded by storm and the hand of man.
Larkin almost forgot the war and the hot passions that were smouldering
behind the fair peaks and along the hidden valleys of Manchuria, as he
gazed from the car window and thought of the Brookfield meadows in May,
the little stream where he had caught his first trout, and the pine wood
which sheltered the brave mayflowers and hepaticas before the winter's
drifts had melted on the northern slopes and in the deeper recesses of
the forest.
But his musings were rudely interrupted. At the end of about two hours
after leaving Port Arthur the train halted at the outpost position
occupied by the Russian forces under General Fock. The peace of nature
was broken by the sound of sappers and diggers at work, by commands
harshly shouted, the tramping of horses, the rumble of wheels, the stir
and bustle of an armed camp.
On again, steadily forging northward, with the engine throwing out great
clouds of black smoke from her soft-coal fuel as she climbed the
up-grades; through several villages without a stop, until Kinchow was
reached. A sharp lookout was now kept for Japanese cavalry, which were
known to be scouring the country to the east, the main body of the
invaders having already made a substantial advance from Dalny, on the
eastern coast. A train had been fired upon, only the day before, at a
point about forty miles north of Port Arthur. There were rumours that
Japanese troops were landing in force at Port Adams, on the west coast
of the peninsula, near Newchwang, and that a strong detachment had
occupied Haicheng, just south of Liaoyang.
The engineer pulled open the throttle, as the train struck a long,
straight piece of road. The cars rocked from side to side, and cries of
alarm from invalids and women were heard. The speed was frightful.
Larkin clung to his seat, devoutly hoping that his journalistic career
would not terminate in a smash-up on the Imperial Trans-Siberian
Railroad. Just then a band of horsemen was seen galloping toward the
road. They drew up sharply and could be seen to unsling their muskets.
_Puff! Puff!_ No noise could be heard above the roar of the train, but
the passengers were not left in doubt as to the cavalrymen's intentions.
A dozen windows were shattered by bullets, while the frightened inmates
of the rocking cars crouched low between the seats. With a rush and a
roar the train clattered on, leaving the assailants far behind.
On and on, through Newchwang, crossing bridges which were soon to be
wrapped in flames, rattling over level plains, winding through narrow
defiles surmounted with frowning fortifications, until at last the train
rolled into the station at Liaoyang. That afternoon the railroad was
crossed by the Japanese, the rails torn up, bridges burned and telegraph
wires cut. Port Arthur was isolated from the world. Its next telegram
would be sent out eight months later, to be recorded in the quaint
characters of the Island Empire.
Fred Larkin, little dreaming that his captor of the preceding evening
was in the same city, at once proceeded to make himself at home. He
presented his credentials at headquarters, secured lodgings, and sent
off a dispatch to the _Bulletin_ that very night, describing the last
train from Port Arthur and the conditions as he had found them in that
city. This final portion of his telegram would have occupied about half
a column of his paper. The grim censor blue-pencilled it down to eight
lines and a half!