Chapter IV: Part 4

"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 L15 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.

*CHAPTER IX*

*Ah Lum*

Ishmaels--The Chief--Fair Words--Wise Saws--Ah Fu's Tutors--An Honorary Appointment--Chopping Maxims--A Deputation--Hunting the Boar--A Forest Monarch--Charging Home--The Knife--A Close Call

The Chunchuse camp, Jack learnt as he rode, was some thirty miles distant in the hills. It had been shifted; it was always shifting; that was why the intervention of Wang Shih had been so nearly too late.

Jack was somewhat amused when he reflected on the strange company in which he found himself. He had heard a good deal about these redoubtable bandits, but never till this day had he seen any of them. Their bands were, he knew, very miscellaneous in their composition. Escaped prisoners, whether guilty, or innocent like Wang Shih, frequently sought refuge with one or other of the brigand chiefs. Men who had been ruined in business, or were too indolent for regular work; men possessed of grievances against the mandarins, or by a sheer lust of adventure and lawlessness; helped to swell their numbers; and Mr. Brown had once remarked that they reminded him of the motley band that gathered about David in the cave Adullam: "Every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented".

The name Chunchuse means "red beard", and was originally applied by the natives to any foreigner. Since the bandits were almost all clean-shaven, like the majority of Chinamen, Jack could only conjecture that they were styled "red beards" from some fancied resemblance of their predatory ways to the methods of the hated foreigners. They were held in terror by all the law-abiding inhabitants, and the machinery of the Chinese government was totally unable to keep them down. Since the coming of the Russians they had grown in numbers and in power. Knowing every inch of the country they were able to wage an effective guerrilla warfare against the invaders, often surprising scouting parties of Siberian riflemen or Cossacks, raiding isolated camps, damaging the railways, and capturing convoys.

Jack was interested in taking stock of his strange companions. They were tall strapping fellows, powerfully built, with muscular and athletic frames, and they included men of every race known in Manchuria. Their costumes differed as greatly as the men themselves. Some were clad in the usual garb of Chinamen; others had black cloth jackets with brass buttons, tight-fitting trousers, and long riding-boots reaching to the knees. Their heads were covered with knotted handkerchiefs of red, black, or yellow cotton, beneath which their pigtails were coiled up out of sight. Each carried a rifle and a revolver stuck in his leather belt.

On the way to the camp Wang Shih gave Jack a few particulars about the band, in which he had already risen to a high position. Ah Lum, the chief, had been for many years notorious for the daring with which he would swoop with a few men on rich merchants travelling through the country, even though they might be escorted by Chinese soldiers. But since the outbreak of the war such sources of gain had ceased, and he had gradually collected a very large following for the purpose of conducting irregular operations against his country's despoilers. All were magnificent horsemen; the Russians had in vain endeavoured to hunt them down; and the very rifles they carried were the spoil of successful raids.

After a ride of about five hours through the hills, Wang Shih's party reached the Chunchuse camp. It was a strange mixture of shelters, many of them huts built of the stalks of kowliang, yet arranged, as Jack noticed, in a certain order. Conspicuous in the middle of the camp was a large tent, in which, as they approached, Jack recognized the Russian service pattern. This too was evidently part of the spoil of a raid.

At the outskirts of the camp Wang Shih dismissed his men, proceeding alone with Jack to the tent. It was the head-quarters of the chief. There was no sign of state, no sentinel at the entrance; Wang Shih rode up unquestioned, and unceremoniously shouted into the tent for Mr. Ah. If Jack had expected to see the typical brigand of romance he must have been disappointed. Ah Lum was the shortest member of the band, a wiry figure with a slight stoop. His appearance was that of a university professor rather than a warrior. He was apparently between forty and fifty years of age, with an intelligent and thoughtful cast of countenance, enhanced by a pair of horn spectacles over which he looked searchingly when Jack was introduced to him. Ah Lum was, in fact, a man of considerable education and even learning. He had taken the highest honours in the examinations for the successive degrees of Cultivated Talent, Uplifted Literary Man, and Exalted Bookworm; and the poems he composed when competing for a place in the Board of Civil Office were acknowledged as superior to anything recently written in the Mandarin language. But his success on this occasion awoke a bitter jealousy in the breast of a "same-year-man" who had kept pace with him throughout his career until this last promotion. The disappointed candidate adopted a characteristically Chinese mode of wreaking vengeance. He committed suicide on Ah Lum's door-step. According to Chinese belief Ah Lum would not only be haunted ever after by his rival's spirit, but would also have to clear himself before the mandarin's court of a charge of murder. Unluckily the mandarin was an enemy of Ah Lum; his price for a favourable judgment was more than the Exalted Bookworm could offer; and the latter, seeing that his condemnation was certain, discreetly vacated his desk at the Board of Civil Office and betook himself to the mountains.

Jack only learnt all this gradually. His first impression of Ah Lum as a spectacled, courteous, polished savant left him wondering how such a man had succeeded in imposing his authority on the hard-living, hard-faring, reckless set of outlaws who composed his band. That he had some personal force of character was a foregone conclusion, for his position could depend on nothing else. He received Jack very kindly, and, having Heard his story from Wang Shih, promised to do all he could to help him.

"Mr. Wang," he said, bowing to his lieutenant, "does me the honour to be my friend. Has he not rendered me great services? Surely it becomes me to serve his friends when my insignificant capabilities permit. Meanwhile deign, sir, to regard all our contemptible possessions as your own, and excuse our numberless shortcomings. Where good-will is the cook, the dish is already seasoned."

He paused, as though expecting a comment on the proverb.

"Quite so," said Jack, feeling that he ought to say something.

The chief proceeded at once to warn him of the danger of pursuing further his attempt to enter Moukden in disguise. If he tried to pass as a Canton man he might at any moment meet a real Cantonese, as had already happened to his cost; and, besides, the Cantonese were not loved in Manchuria. As a Manchu, on the other hand, he would be apt to betray himself in endless little ways. However, if he were bent on it, Ah Lum would do what he could to secure him good treatment. Meanwhile, after what he had gone through, a few days' rest in camp would do him no harm.

"Haste is the parent of delay," he said; "whereas if one has a mind to beat a stone, the stone will in due time have a hole in it."

Again he paused, like an actor waiting for the gallery's applause to his tag.

"A very sound maxim," said Jack, thinking it well to humour this singular moralist.

The chief concluded with an offer of hospitality so cordial, that Jack, anxious as he was to pursue his mission, could not well decline it.

Wang Shih, Jack found, was third in command. His enormous strength, allied to a bull-dog courage, had enabled him to force his way to the front in a community where those qualities were esteemed above all others. That they were not the only titles to respect was proved by the position of the chief; and the longer Jack stayed in the camp the more he was impressed by the ease and firmness with which Ah Lum swayed his band.

The chief had a son, a boy of twelve, who from the first took a great liking to Jack. Ah Fu was a bright boy, vivacious for a Chinese; and Ah Lum loved him with even more than the usual Chinaman's devotion. He doted on the child. He never tired of talking about him to Jack.

"If," he said, "a man has much money, but no child, he cannot be reckoned rich: if he has children, but no money, he cannot be reckoned poor. And I am blessed in my son: he is dutiful, respectful, voracious of knowledge. 'A bad son', says the Sage, 'is as a dunning creditor; but a good son as the repayment of a long-standing debt'."

At great pains he had kidnapped two graduates for the express purpose of having Ah Fu carefully trained in the elements of Chinese culture. Himself a man of education, he set the highest value on learning. "Weeds are the only harvest of an untilled field," he would say. "Though your sons be well disposed, yet if they be not duly instructed, what can you expect of them but ignorance?" In addition to his daily instruction in the philosophers and poets, the boy went through all kinds of physical exercises--practising with the bow and the rifle, riding a spirited little pony, learning fearless horsemanship from the best rider in the band; and the Chunchuses rival the Cossacks in the superb management of their steeds. Before Jack had been a day in the camp he was requested by the chief to teach his son English. He agreed, though he thought that in the short time he was to spend with them not much could be done. Ah Lum was very pressing in the matter. Jack, he was sure, had all the learning of the west (this tickled Jack; how the fourth-form master at Sherborne would have roared!). The learning of the east Ah Lum himself could get for the boy. In addition to the kidnapped graduates he had his eye on an astronomer of distinction at Kirin, and at Tieling there lived a very learned man, skilled in the casting of horoscopes. But he had naturally few opportunities of providing European instruction. "True doctrine cannot injure the true scholar," he said. "An ounce of wisdom is worth a world of gold." He was particularly anxious that Ah Fu should lack nothing in education through his father's outlawed condition. Himself a poet, he set much store by poetry; and having learnt from Jack that the most popular English poet was Tennyson, he made it a special point that the boy should from the first learn some of his poems. Jack was amused; he did not tell the chief that poetry was not so highly esteemed in England as in China; but happening to know a few odds and ends of Tennyson's verse, he got Ah Fu to repeat them after him until the boy could recite them faultlessly. Jack had his doubts whether the poems thus recited would have been recognized by an Englishman, but that was nothing to the point.

After a week, when he felt his strength thoroughly recruited, Jack spoke of continuing his journey. But Ah Lum, in his politest manner, urged excellent reasons why he should remain a little longer. It had been raining almost continuously since his arrival; the streams were in flood; the rivers were not fordable. Moreover, a large body of Russian troops was moving between the camp and Moukden; and Chinamen were being narrowly questioned and examined under suspicion of being Japanese spies in disguise. Day after day passed; every hint of Jack's that he wished to be off was met by some new excuse enforced by maxims, and turned by a question as to how Ah Fu was getting on with his poetry. At last Jack grew uneasy and suspicious; it appeared as if Ah Lum intended to keep him as an additional tutor, unpaid. He began to think of taking French leave, but was restrained by several considerations: the fact that he owed his life to the brigands; the danger lest his disappearance should cause a quarrel between Wang Shih and the chief; the hope that he might find the Chunchuses useful in prosecuting his search; and the risk of recapture, for he knew that the country people would certainly give him up to the chief if they caught him.

He abandoned therefore the idea of flight, resolving to stay on with what patience he could muster, and hoping to obtain his end by mild persistence. But his courteous and repeated applications were met by still more courteous and equally firm refusals--not direct refusals, but regrets that on one pretext or another the "Ingoua superior man" could not safely leave the camp. Ah Lum's stock of proverbs and maxims was again drawn upon. "Though powerful drugs be nauseous to the taste, they are beneficial to the stomach. So, candid advice may be unpleasant to the ear, but it is profitable for the conduct. The carpenter makes the cangue that he himself may be doomed to wear."

"Exactly."

There was a want of conviction in Jack's stereotyped reply. He was growing tired of these eternal copy-book headings, which seemed to him often the merest platitudes--tired of expressing the assent which his sententious host always looked for. He asked Wang Shih to expostulate with the chief; but when the Chinaman ventured to suggest that the young Englishman's dutiful regard for his father ought to be respected and his errand furthered, he got a good snubbing for his pains.

"It is easy to convince a wise man," said Ah Lum with a snap; "but to reason with fools, that is a difficult undertaking. You cannot turn a somersault in an oyster-shell."

Greatly daring, Wang Shih cited a maxim very pertinent, he thought, to the case.

"True, honourable sir; but is it not written: 'Of a hundred virtues, filial piety is the best'?"

"No doubt," retorted Ah Lum, still more snappishly. "But remember that if a man has good desires, heaven will assuredly grant them."

And Jack had to kick his heels, and drum poetry into Ah Fu, thinking disrespectfully of proverbial philosophy.

Thus three weeks passed. During this period the band grew steadily stronger. Jack reckoned that it now numbered at least eleven hundred. The rains having ceased, the camp was moved some twenty miles to the north-west, not in a direct line to Moukden, but nearer to that city. To Jack this was a crumb of comfort; but there were disadvantages in the change, for with the finer weather and the removal to somewhat lower ground, the midges and mosquitoes became more lively and troublesome, and he spent many a hot hour of pain and smart.

Another fortnight went by. The Chunchuses had been inactive so far as brigandage was concerned, and, except that they did no work, they might have been nothing but a peaceful mountain tribe. But one day a deputation came to the chief from a village lying in the midst of a woody and well-cultivated valley a few miles from the camp. They announced that their plantations of young bamboos were being devastated by a herd of wild boars with which they were unable to cope, and they had been deputed to beg the Chunchuse chief to come to their assistance. Ah Lum was never unwilling to please the country people when he saw a chance of gaining a substantial advantage. "Let no man," he would say, "despise the snake that has no horns, for who can say that it may not become a dragon?" Food was running short, and but for the deputation it was probable that some fine night the village would have been raided and plundered. But the request for assistance opened the way for a deal; Ah Lum consented to organize a battue in return for a large supply of food and fodder; and after half a day had been spent in haggling, the deputation returned, promising to send in the quantity first demanded.

The chief was exceedingly pleased.

"Do not rashly provoke quarrels, but let concord and good understanding prevail among neighbours. Seeing an opportunity to make a bargain, one should think of righteousness."

Jack welcomed the impending hunt as a pleasant change, and appeared to gratify the chief when he asked to be allowed to join in it. As a diversion from the sugared sweetness of Tennyson, he bethought himself to teach Ah Fu Fielding's fine song "A-hunting we will go"; and when the boy learnt the meaning of the words, he was all afire to share in the chase. Ah Lum was pleased with his spirit; but being unwilling that his only son should run any risk, he at first declined his request. The boy persisted, pointing out that he was already a good shot, and asking what was the good of his learning poems of hunting if he was not allowed to express in action the ardour thus fostered. This argument appealed to the chief's sense of the fitness of things; he would have agreed with Socrates that action was the end of heroic poetry; he yielded, stipulating, however, that throughout the hunt the boy should remain at his side.

Jack soon found that the hunt was not to be conducted on the lines of pig-sticking in India. He remembered the vivid account of such an adventure given him by a Behar planter whom he had once met on board a steamer between Shanghai and Newchang. Nor were the animals to be caught in artfully-contrived pits, as is the custom in Manchuria. The chief was ignorant of the Indian method, and was possessed of too strong a sporting instinct to be content with the work of a trapper; it was to be a real hunt, as he understood it. The cover in which the boars were known to lurk was about a square mile in extent. Ah Lum intended to take advantage of the large force at his disposal and arrange for beaters to drive the animals to a comparatively open space, at the end of which he and a select few would take up their positions and shoot down the boars as they emerged from cover. This seemed likely to be a safe way of effecting the desired object; and though not sport in the British sense, it would at any rate make some demand on their nerve and their marksmanship.

The important day came. On a bright fresh morning, soon after the sun had gilded the hilltops, when the air was clear and a cool breeze tempered the summer heat, Ah Lum, accompanied by seven of his best marksmen and by Ah Fu and Jack, rode down to skirt the base of the hill and gain the northern side of the clearing to which the boars were to be driven. Jack had been provided with a rifle and a long knife; his pupil rode at his side, armed with a carbine; and very proudly the boy bore himself. At the foot of the hill the party were met by some of the villagers, come to guide them to their destination. When they reached the spot they found that the clearing was about a furlong across, with thin plantations behind them and on either side, and in front a mass of dense, almost impenetrable scrub interspersed with trees.

The party of ten took up their position in line facing the scrub, standing a few feet apart; Ah Lum was in the centre, with the boy on his left, and Jack one place farther in the same direction. Jack felt that if the Manchurian boar was anything like the Indian specimen of which his planter friend had told him, the party might have a lively time should two or three of the beasts break cover at the same moment, especially if they should charge down through the plantations on left and right. The Chunchuses, however, were evidently secure in their numbers and the stopping power of their military rifles.

The beaters, nearly a thousand strong, had been sent to their allotted positions earlier in the morning. They formed a rough semicircle more than two miles in length. When all was ready, the chief sent a horseman to the farthest point with orders to begin the beat. The clang of a gong soon rang out in the still morning air; immediately the sound was taken up all along the arc; drums, gongs, rattles, shrill yells combined to form a pandemonium of noise. Flocks of birds clattered out of the tree-tops and flew in consternation over the country; hares and rabbits darted out of the underwood as the beaters closed in; a fox or two, even a wolf, came padding out, stopped at the edge, gave a glance at the line of men, and disappeared on either side. All these passed unmolested; the ten stood in silent expectation, ready to bring their weapons to the shoulder.

Suddenly from the centre of the scrub pounded with lowered tusks a large boar. He had advanced some yards into the open before he was aware of the ten human figures ranged opposite to him. Then, swerving heavily to the left, he trotted towards the plantation. At the same moment two shots rang out as one; the chief and his son had fired together, the others waiting in courtesy. Ah Lum, for all his spectacles, his poetry, and his sentences, was an excellent shot; the boar fell within a yard of the trees; the chief's bullet had penetrated his brain.