Part 20

This news almost tempted Jack to venture again within the city. But on second thoughts he decided to run no risks of meeting Sowinski. The imminence of another great battle, however, perhaps to prove the decisive battle of the war, created a keen longing to witness the scene; and next day, taking leave of his kind hosts, he set off with Hi Lo for a little village lying between the Moukden railway-station and Sin-min-ting. Hi Lo had relatives there with whom they could safely stay.

The battle-ground was in essentials a repetition of that of Liao-yang, though on a much larger scale. The Russians had thrown up an immense line of entrenchments extending in a rough semicircle from Sin-min-ting on the north-west of the city to Ping-ling on the east, with Moukden as the centre. Comprising a range of low hills for the greater part of its course, the position was naturally strong, and it had been fortified for months with all the devices known to the military engineer--pits, abattis, barbed-wire entanglements, forts of solid masonry bristling with huge guns. Snow lay upon the ground, frozen so hard that the passage of cavalry across it raised clouds of white dust. The plain to the west and south of the city was one vast whiteness: yet that peaceful scene was the arena on which three-quarters of a million of men were preparing to spill their blood in blind obedience to duty--to contend with desperate earnestness in one of the decisive battles of the world.

The Russian right wing was composed of the Second Manchurian Army under General Kaulbars, resting on an arc between Sin-min-ting and Moukden. The centre, south of the city, was held by General Bilderling with the Third Army; the left, thrown out as far south-east as Tsin-khe-chen, was entrusted to General Linievitch and the First Army. It was here that the first attack was made. On February 19 General Kawawura threw his right flank detachment against the Russian works, and, after a fight prolonged over five days, drove the Russians back towards Fa-ling. Meanwhile General Kuroki moved forward upon Kao-tu-ling, and succeeded in forcing his way northward, and General Nodzu, from his position on the Sha-ho, opened a furious bombardment on the exact centre of the Russian lines. By these movements General Kuropatkin was led to expect that the brunt of the fighting would fall upon his centre and left; in reality they were designed to hold his attention while more formidable operations were developed on his right.

It was on the last day of February that General Oku's army deployed between the Sha-ho and the Hun-ho, and General Nogi started with incredible rapidity on his northward march. By the time General Kuropatkin became aware of the danger threatening his communications on the right, Nogi had made such progress and so skilfully disposed his forces that to crush him was out of the question; all that Kaulbars could do was to fall back towards Moukden and oppose as stubborn a resistance as possible. The assaults of Kuroki and Nodzu on the centre were so fierce and persistent that Kuropatkin had no troops to spare for the reinforcement of his jeopardized right flank. Doggedly, intrepidly, the indomitable Japanese pressed home their attack. The Russians clung heroically to their positions, and rolled back charge after charge; but still the enemy returned, seeming to gain in vigour and enthusiasm after each repulse. They charged with bayonets, with grenades, with shovels and picks; sometimes, when they penetrated the Russian entrenchments, flinging down their weapons and going to it with their fists. The trenches were filled with corpses; the frozen ground all around was dyed red with blood; there was no respite day or night; men fell, their places were filled, and foe met foe over the bodies of the slain.

For ten days the issue was in doubt. Then, on March 5, Kuroki was across the Sha-ho; Nogi had swept through Sin-min-ting towards the railway; Marshal Oyama's huge army was flinging its octopus tentacles around the Russian position, vast as it was. Kuropatkin, most unfortunate of generals, on March 8 found it necessary to withdraw his centre and left behind the line of the Hun-ho, and collect every unit that could be spared by Kaulbars and Bilderling to stem the advance of Oku and Nogi.

Meanwhile the Russian left had opposed a bold front to Kuroki and Kawawura. Unable to make a successful offensive movement, Linievitch stubbornly retreated in good order beyond the Hun-ho, and entrenched himself in a new position there. But around Moukden the plight of the Russian army was becoming desperate. As the terrible enemy crept on towards the city from all sides save the north-east, the Russian troops, packed into a constantly diminishing space, and exposed to a converging fire, fell in thousands. More than once the Russians attempted to break through. The gallant Kuropatkin in person led a terrific attack on Oku at the head of sixty-five battalions, and his splendid men fought with such courage and determination that for a while it seemed the Japanese advance must be checked. But at this critical moment, when the Russians were at least holding their own on the right centre and left, and Oyama was concentrating to hurl them back, an event had taken place at the left centre that proved to be Fortune's cast of the die. Early on the morning of March 9, Kuropatkin received the news that Kuroki had driven a wedge between Bilderling and Linievitch. Those generals in falling back on the Hun-ho had temporarily lost touch: and the Japanese general, who had never made a mistake throughout the war, was quick to seize this opportunity of breaking the enemy's line. On the same day Nogi got across the railway between Moukden and Tieling; nothing but instant retreat could save the Second and Third Russian armies from annihilation or capture; and at nightfall on that fifteenth day of the battle the order to retreat was given.

Next day at ten in the morning the Japanese entered the city, and with their entrance burst the bubble of Russian domination in Manchuria. Scattered parties of Russians fought on for several days in the neighbouring villages; but with Nogi astride of the main line of retreat and every northern road, the Russians were forced to abandon everything and take to the hills. Two days afterwards the Japanese had chased their enemy full thirty miles to the north; Kuropatkin's great army, broken, routed, had well-nigh ceased to be.

Jack is never likely to forget that terrible fortnight. During the first few days he witnessed nothing of the fighting; he heard the reverberations of the guns, and saw crowds of natives hastening from the villages in the line of the Japanese advance, bearing with them everything portable that could be saved from the impending ruin. At night, standing on the broken mud wall, he beheld in the far distance a dull glow in the sky that told of houses burning, and thought of the untold misery inflicted upon a peaceable and industrious people by the greed of rival governments. But as the tide of battle rolled northward, and the roar of the guns grew louder, other evidences of the terrific struggle came within his ken. Ever and anon a train would rumble northward along the line, with wagon-loads of wounded. The darkness of the nights was now illuminated with bursting star-shells, and the red flare of burning villages nearer at hand. One morning, in the twilight before dawn, he saw an immense column of smoke rise over the Russian settlement by the station. It was in flames. Venturing out with Hi Lo, he soon came upon stragglers from the army, and by and by upon a huge block of horse and foot and artillery, field-telegraph wagons, mess carts, ambulances--all in inextricable confusion, jammed in their frantic efforts to escape. Trains rolled along, crowded to the roofs of the carriages, even to the engine itself, with soldiers; carts lay overturned, broken, wheelless, on the roads and fields; the air was loaded with the acrid fumes from piles of blazing goods, clothing, and forage, burnt to prevent their falling into the hands of the conquerors.

The retreat from Liao-yang had been orderly and not uncheerful; the retreat from Moukden was an orgy of riot and misery. There was no order in the ranks: the officers made no efforts--made, they would have been in vain--to check the insubordination of their men. Some as they fled had looted the sutlers' carts and roamed at large, defenceless, intoxicated, singing wild songs, dropping to the ground, to be frozen stiff in a few minutes. Others tramped along, moody, taciturn, mad, going blindly they knew not whither, they knew not why. Here a horse's head could be seen above the crowd, its eyes bloodshot and haggard, its nostrils dilated. There a horse fell; the throng thickened around it; harsh voices were raised in imprecation; then the movement recommenced, and nothing was heard but the tramping of feet and the crunching of wheels. Wounded men dropped and froze in their blood; others staggered this way and that, having lost all power to govern their limbs; and still in the distance artillery boomed, flames crackled, and the smoke of burning homesteads rose into the sky.

Sick at heart, Jack returned to the village. That evening the Japanese entered it, bringing with them a number of Russian prisoners and wounded, these having been carefully tended by the Japanese ambulance corps. Jack lent what assistance he could in finding cottages where the more seriously injured could remain. "Strange," he thought, "that war, which brings out the worst in men, should bring out also all that is best."

*CHAPTER XXI*

*Ah Lum at Bay*

Schwab again Retreats--A Business Friend--Reinstated--A Little Light--Ah Lum Threatened--A Thousand Roubles Reward--The Lessening Circle--A Mountain Tiger--Mirage--Ah Lum's Lament--A Cossack Cloak

It was not merely curiosity that had held Jack within the area of fighting. He clung with a sort of superstition to the belief that his father's fate was inwoven with the fate of the Russian army. He had a conviction, perfectly illogical, that a victory for Japan would favour his quest. There was so much truth in this idea as that amid the disorders of a Russian retreat he might hope to pass undetected in his disguise. The Russians would be too busy to look closely into the bona-fides of a mere Chinaman, one of thousands who would be swept northwards on the tide. He could easily keep out of sight of the few who might recognize him.

He thus had a purely personal interest in the result of the battle. Convinced that the compradore must have remained with his brother in Harbin, he had resolved to go north and learn from the man's own lips the issue of his enquiries. When the victorious army had rolled by, he set off with Hi Lo in its wake.

One day, a few miles north of Tieling, he was riding slowly along, contrasting his present position with the different circumstances under which he had made the retreat from Liao-yang, with Mr. Schwab's precious tripod in his care, when, a little ahead of him, he caught sight of a solitary figure trudging wearily along. It needed but one glance at the broad back. The tired pedestrian was Schwab himself--and he was carrying the camera.

Jack's lips twitched. To this had come the descendant of the great Hildebrand Suobensius, the itinerant representative of Germany's imperial might! There was matter for amusement in the reflection, and for sympathy too: Schwab's patriotism was genuine; his little vanities were harmless enough; and whatever else might be said of him, he was devoted to the interests of the Schlagintwert company. Jack resolved to make himself known to the correspondent, who could have no interest in betraying him to the Russians. Cantering up behind, he heard Schwab sighing and muttering under his breath.

"Excellenz," he said, "my Sin Foo----"

At the first word Schwab swung round with an alacrity that betokened as much pleasure as surprise.

"Ach!" he said, "I know you; you are imbostor. I am delighted. I abologize."

"That's very good of you, Herr Schwab, but I don't know why."

"Vy! Vy, for my vant of gombrehension, my zickness of shkull. But you did bretend; zat you muss gonfess; and I did bay you your vages, so!"

Jack smiled.

"I've nothing to complain of," he said. "To you I was a Chinese servant, and I never want a better master."

"Say you so? I vill shake hands viz you. Zere vas talk about you in Moukden; vy truly, zey gratulate me for because I haf, zey say, a so clever servant. Ach, mein freund! you see me; I am sad, I am broken; no longer am I vat I haf been."

Schwab proceeded to tell a pitiful story. He had started on the retreat in company with Sowinski, with whom he had arranged a great deal of business against the termination of the war. One night they had taken refuge in a Chinese hovel. Schwab had carefully put the satchel containing his papers and money under his head. In the night he had heard and felt a movement, and, springing up in the dark, seized and held an arm. The arm was wrenched away, then Sowinski's voice asked whether he had heard anything.

"'Yes, certainly,' I said, 'I zink zere is a zief. 'Shtrike a light!' I cry. Zere shtrikes a light; I look for my zinks; siehe da! eferyzink is gone. Against ze door had I blaced a big kettle, for to gif notice if anyvun intrude. Zere it is, in ze same sbot. I say: 'Sowinski, you are vun big scoundrel; gif me my money!' Zen he burst into fearful bassion; he bresent me a bistol and demand instant abology. For myself, I am berfeckly cool. I egsblain I am business man; certainly it is not my business to fight, ven ze ozer man hold a revolver. I abologize; Sowinski say he is satisfied; but zen he say I had cast asbersion on his honour; no longer could he travel in my gompany; he demand me to get out. Vat could I? Ze bistol muzzle vas at my head. It is gombulsion. I vat you call clear out, viz my photographabbaratus. But my trouble only begins. My mafoo, vere is he? Vizout doubt he has abbrobriated my bony. Zere am I, zen, viz no babers, no money, no bony, nozink in ze vide vorld but my camera. I cannot send a message to ze _Illustrirte Vaterland und Colonien_: vere is ze money to gome from? Ze Kaiser,--alas! he is in Berlin. I zink vat is var gorresbondence for a kind of business? I try to sell my camera; no vun buys. Ze Russian soldier is good comrade, ver' fine fellow; for zree days I eat nozink but vat he gif me. But ze officers--ach! ven I egsblain to zem, zey are all too busy to listen; zey tell me, abbly Colonel Egoroff. But Colonel Egoroff, vere is he? Nobody know. Nobody know vere nobody is. All is gonfusion and upside-down. I never see nozink so unbusinesslike novere."

As he told his story Schwab trudged along beside Jack's pony. Jack did not interrupt him; the man's relief in finding someone to lend him a sympathizing ear was so obvious.

"You have had an uncommonly hard time," he said. "I'm very sorry. What do you think of doing?"

"Zink! I zink nozink. My brain is no more vat it vas. All I can do, you see it; I valk and valk; I beg my bread, vich is Russian biscuit. Nefer shall I see ze Vaterland no more. Hildebrand Schwab is gome to an end."

"Cheer up! What do you say to taking me on as your servant again?"

"Zat is unkind, to mock at me."

"Believe me, nothing is further from my thoughts. I mean it. There will be some risk for you and for me, but it's worth chancing. Let me explain my plan."

Jack saw in Schwab's plight a means of advancing his own quest, and at the same time doing a good turn to the unfortunate representative of the _Illustrirte Vaterland_, for whom, in spite of certain unlovely characteristics, he had a real liking. As servant of a European, far from any place where he was likely to be recognized, Jack thought he would probably reach Harbin more quickly than as a masterless Chinese fugitive. He proposed that they should make for the railway. The nearest point was Erh-shih-li-pu, the junction of the Kirin branch with the main line. It was not unlikely that if Schwab told his story there the officials would give him a passage to Harbin. The German eagerly accepted the proposal. Jack insisted on his mounting the pony; it was necessary, he explained, to keep up appearances, but his firmness on the point was really due to the quite obvious fact that Schwab was completely worn out. At the first village both Jack and Hi Lo made a few alterations in their dress, so as to look as little like Schwab's former servants as possible; and without more than the expected difficulties and delays, the three at length reached Erh-shih-li-pu. Luckily at the station Schwab was recognized by a Russian officer, a member of Stackelberg's staff, who had once dined with the foreign correspondents at the Green Dragon in Moukden. On hearing the German's troubles he readily agreed to give him a pass to Harbin for himself and his servants, and would not allow the fares to be paid; Jack had previously pressed upon Schwab some of his rouble notes. Thus on a bright March day, when the frozen ground was sparkling in the sunshine, the three travellers arrived in Harbin. Schwab was lucky in obtaining quarters in the Oriental Hotel; Jack made his way at once with Hi Lo to the house of his uncle, the grain merchant, and there, as he had expected, found Hi An. The two brothers were delighted to see their visitors, and there was a touching scene of welcome between Hi Lo and his father.

For Jack there was but one crumb of information. Hi Feng, as he had promised, had set on foot such enquiries as seemed safe, especially along the railway line. About a fortnight after Jack left Harbin in the horse-box, a customer of Hi Feng came in with the news that he had seen a man answering to the description of Mr. Brown among a batch of prisoners at Imien-po on the Harbin-Vladivostok section. The train was apparently bound for Vladivostok, but it had remained for twenty-four hours on a siding, and the man's business had not allowed him to wait to see what became of it. Hi Feng had himself travelled to the place; the train had of course by that time departed; and the Chinese of the neighbourhood could give him no information about it; one train was to them like another, and delays at this siding were of constant occurrence.

Jack shuddered to think what his father's sufferings must have been during the protracted journey. His blood boiled when he saw Russian officers in the streets; his rage against Bekovitch poisoned his former good-will towards them. He fumed under his utter helplessness; he could do nothing. To some extent the information received narrowed the area of search. The fact of the train having been seen at Imien-po showed that the prisoners had been taken either to Eastern Siberia or to Sakhalin. Whichever it might be, Mr. Brown would be equally unable to communicate with his son, and his removal from Manchuria seemed to destroy all chance of help from the Chinese. To them Siberia and Sakhalin are foreign lands; and if Siberia was remote, Sakhalin was inaccessible. Being wholly a penal settlement, there was little chance of getting into or out of its ports undetected.

Jack remained for several weeks with Hi Feng, hoping against hope. Herr Schwab was still at the Oriental Hotel. Exposure to cold, lack of sufficient food, and his mental anxieties had broken down the German's robust health, and for a fortnight he lay at death's door. Monsieur Brin happened to be at the same hotel; he had missed every fight, solely through his own restlessness, which sent him backwards and forwards from place to place--never the time and the place and the correspondent together. He was a good-hearted fellow, and, finding a German lying ill and not too carefully tended, he constituted himself sick nurse, and devoted himself to his self-imposed duties with unusual constancy. He had his reward in the patient's convalescence. As soon as Schwab was able to sit up and take a little nourishment, Brin undertook to prove to him that the Kaiser in Berlin was the Man of Sin, and for a good fortnight he had much the better of the argument.

One day Hi Feng learnt that a great effort was at last being made against Ah Lum. He had already been defeated by a large force of Cossacks, and driven from the neighbourhood of Kirin north-eastwards towards the Harbin-Vladivostok railway. Strong columns were hard upon his heels in pursuit. Through his position as forage contractor to the Russians, Hi Feng already knew that a large body of Cossacks was shortly to leave Harbin for a place half-way between that town and Vladivostok. Putting the two pieces of news together, and making discreet enquiries, he found that it was intended to make a sudden dash upon Ah Lum's line of retreat and dispose of him once for all. The evacuation of Moukden and the narrowing of the area of country open to the Russians in Manchuria had made the presence of a strong guerrilla force within their lines insupportable. Ah Lum must be rooted out.

Hi Feng was to deliver a large quantity of forage within ten days; it was pretty safe to infer that the expedition would start from Harbin soon afterwards. Jack felt that Ah Lum must be warned at once. Furthermore, he was much disposed to rejoin the Chunchuses. Without overrating his abilities, he knew that he had been able to do something for them, and what he had learnt about his father's treatment did not make him more friendly to the Russians or less inclined to do what he could to thwart them. If he had seen any chance of reaching or communicating with his father he might have taken a different view: having left Ah Lum with that purpose there would be no call for him to abandon his quest. But it was now clear that his enquiries must be pursued through Russian agents. He therefore decided to rejoin Ah Lum. At the same time he would let it be known that a reward of 1000 roubles should be paid to anyone giving him certain information of his father's whereabouts. This offer, judiciously circulated through Chinese channels among the officials of the railway, might bring definite news.

There was another consideration. Among the Chunchuses, so long as Ah Lum held his own, Jack would be out of reach of the Russian authorities. If he remained in Harbin, or any other Russian centre, the news of his offer would at once put his enemies on his track. While he was in Ah Lum's camp Hi Feng or his brother the compradore could easily communicate with him if they received any information.

Once more, then, he set out to join Ah Lum, Hi Lo accompanying him. He travelled in the guise of a Chinese farmer. Each took two ponies, and they pushed on with great rapidity, riding the animals alternately. By means of the secret signs used by Ah Lum, Jack soon got upon the chief's track. Making a wide detour to avoid the Russian columns now steadily driving Ah Lum towards the point whence the Harbin force was to complete his encirclement, he came upon the Chunchuses from the east, and early one morning rode into the brigand camp.