Part 25

"Difficulty and danger," began the chief, folding his hands and looking benignly over the rims of his spectacles--"difficulty and danger teach us to know the value of friendship; at the same time they winnow the true from the false, even as a husbandman winnows the grain from the chaff. I may never see you again; take from me a few words of counsel, learnt as well from life as from the works of the poets and sages. What says Li T'ai-poh?--'A good rule of conduct is better than stout armour or a sharp sword'. When you are most happy, you should be most ready to meet misfortune. Extreme joy is but a sign of grief to come. In security, do not forget danger. Do not consider any vice as trivial, and therefore practise it; nor any virtue as unimportant, and therefore neglect it. Let your words be few, and your companions select. Inattention to minute actions will ultimately be prejudicial to a man's virtue. Past events are as clear as a mirror; the future as obscure as lacquer; yet, gazing into that mirror, I seem to see reflected a future of great prosperity, high office, and a numerous progeny. Heaviness and care will come upon you, as upon all men; at such periods the works of Li T'ai-poh will prove a well of refreshment, a mine of solace. I have no fears for you. As the sun's rays first gild the highest mountains, so the blessings of Heaven fall in richest measure upon the upright. You have shown yourself to be an excellent son: what says the poet Wang Wei in his _Address to Posterity_?--

"'To him who faithfully his Father's Will obeys, Heaven in its Bounty grants great Wealth and Length of Days'."

*CHAPTER XXVII*

*Sakhalin*

Abundant Profits--A Hut in Sakhalin--Sowinski and Another--Sympathy--Coincidence--Blood Money--Downhill

One brilliant April morning Jack set out towards Ninguta, accompanied by Gabriele and the servant, Hi Lo, and two trusty Chunchuses. They were all dressed in Chinese garb, and since Manchurian women do not deform their feet there was no difficulty for Gabriele on that score. But they carried Russian dresses and uniforms for use if necessary. They crossed the railway safely at night half-way between two of the block-houses; and, striking into the hills, followed a path that would take them a considerable distance south of Ninguta. Their great danger lay in the chance of meeting one of the Russian columns which had been engaged in rounding up Ah Lum; but the two bandits believed that they would hear of the proximity of any such troops in good time to avoid them.

Jack had discussed with Gabriele whether they should take Father Mayenobe's mission station in passing. On all grounds they decided that it would be best to leave the good priest undisturbed. No doubt he believed that Gabriele was well on the way to Europe; it would be a pity to renew his anxieties, and possibly involve him in trouble with the Russians.

While they were laboriously making their way over the hills, another member of Ah Lum's band, posing as a lumberman, travelled by the railway, newly restored and more strictly guarded than ever, to Vladivostok. He bore a letter from Gabriele to the man by whose aid she had communicated with her father in Sakhalin. The letter stated that the receiver might earn 500 roubles if he would accompany the bearer to Possiet Bay, and there meet the writer, who would then give him further instructions. Jack had little doubt that when they arrived they would find the man waiting. To an ex-convict of Sakhalin 500 roubles is a fortune.

The Chinese shipping interest at Possiet Bay was scandalized when it heard that Too Chin-seng was contemplating a voyage to Chifu at least three weeks before the usual season. The ice, it was true, was breaking in the harbour; but the weather was tempestuous outside; and large quantities of loose floe rendered navigation difficult and dangerous. There was much shaking of the head over the temerity of the ship-owner who was thus imperilling not only the lives of the crew but the safety of the vessel. He could easily get another crew; a vessel like the _Yu-ye_ ("Abundant Profits") was more difficult to replace. She was a stout junk some sixty feet in length and fifteen in beam, built of thick wood to withstand the heavy seas of those northern latitudes, and from the Chinese point of view well found in all respects. That for the sake of a few weeks' gain in time a man should risk so valuable a craft seemed to the shipping world at Possiet Bay a wilful flying in the face of fortune, almost an insult to Ma Chu, the goddess who watched over good sailors.

Too Chin-seng went quietly about his preparations, not even swerving when his neighbours protested that by the time he returned from Chifu he would be too late for the early herring fishing off Sakhalin. One day the vessel, loaded with a cargo of rice, made her way with much creaking and groaning out of the harbour, her sides bumped and scratched by heavy ice floes. Before sailing she had undergone the usual inspection; the officials sniffed and pried, as though the dissatisfaction of the native community had infected them also; but everything was in order. The day was fine, the sea exceptionally smooth for the time of year; and when once free from the floating ice, the _Yu-ye_ ran merrily before a light north-easter down the coast.

But towards evening, when off Cape Lesura, she hauled her wind and beat about as if in expectation of something. She had not long to wait. Half a dozen figures appeared on the shore; a sampan was launched from the edge of the ice and laboriously punted its way out to the junk. The passengers were got aboard with some difficulty, for the wind was rising and the sea beginning to be choppy. But, all being at length embarked, the junk clumsily beat out to sea, heading towards the coast of Yesso to the north-east.

"He can makee chop-chop sailo pidgin, lowdah?" asked Jack of Too Chin-seng at the tiller.

"My belongey numpa one junk, masta. Ping-ch'wahn no can catchee he, galaw!"

In a rough wooden hut on a hill-slope above a small lumber settlement on the south-east coast of Sakhalin two men were talking. It was nearly dark; a sputtering tallow candle threw a murky light over the room, showing up its bareness. A rickety table was the only article of furniture; a raised portion of the rugged wooden floor, covered with one or two frowsy blankets, served both for chairs and bed. On these blankets the two men were now seated.

One of them was a big, heavy-browed, uncouth fellow--a posselentsy; that is, one who having served his time in the convicts' prison, was now liberated, though not free. He could not leave the island, nor could he choose his place of residence; he was bound to live where the governor bade him live. On leaving the prison he had been furnished with implements and ordered to go and build himself a hut at the spot prescribed, and till the soil around it. For two years he had been provided with food enough to keep him from starving; after that he must keep himself by the labour of his hands--cutting wood, loading coal, mending bridges. His hut became the nucleus of a village, other convicts being sent to do as he had done. After fourteen years he might hope to be permitted to return to Siberia or Russia.

The posselentsy was sitting with his back against the log wall, taking frequent pulls at a bottle of vodka, which, though forbidden to the colonists except at the two great Russian festivals in October and January, is secretly manufactured in stills deep in the woods, and stealthily bought and sold. But this bottle was a present.

"Yes," he was saying in answer to a question; "he checks the logs loaded into store by the foremen of our artels."

"An easy job, no doubt," suggested the other man--the Pole Anton Sowinski.

"Easy! It's child's play. All he has to do is to count the logs and write the numbers in a book. Then the dirty Pole--I beg pardon; I forgot he was a countryman of yours--gives out the vouchers, and the work--work!--is done. I had the Englishman's job myself--until I made a mistake in the figures."

"A mistake!"

"Well, they said it was intended. At any rate they sent me back to the woods."

"And while this Englishman--this spy--and the other sit at their ease, you poor Russians have to do all the hard work. I suppose it _is_ hard?"

"Hard! Try it, barin. Felling trees and splitting logs all day is not exactly a soft job. And to make matters worse, since this war has been going on they've set a lot of us fellows to deal with the fish--make the stinking fish manure that the Japanese used to make. The herring season is just beginning; that'll be my pleasant occupation next week."

"And that is the life you lead while the Englishman--the spy--and the other live like barins, eh? It is shameful."

The Russian took a long pull at the bottle. It was not often he got a chance of airing his grievances and drinking vodka from the continent--a great deal more to his taste than the crude poison of local manufacture.

"You are right; it is shameful."

"I wonder you don't do something."

"Do something! What can we do? We rob them when we get the chance, but that doesn't make things easier. Besides, they are not so bad after all--the Pole and the Englishman. The Englishman taught my boy to cast accounts; he's now a clerk in the superintendent's office. And the Pole taught my girl to speak French; she's now maid to the governor's lady. It didn't cost me a kopeck: no, they're not a bad sort."

"Still, think of the injustice."

"Yes, the injustice; that's what makes my blood boil. I was a robber; I tell you straight what I was; and I killed a gorodovoi who interfered with me: that's what brought me here. But what's that to being a spy, and plotting against the Little Father's life? No, and if I had my rights----"

The drink was beginning to take effect; the posselentsy was becoming noisy.

"Yes, yes," interrupted Sowinski; "and I suppose if the Englishman were out of the way you would stand a chance of getting your old job--his job--again?"

"Perhaps--if I could bribe the governor's secretary. But what chance is there of that? His price is too high for me. And besides, the Englishman is not out of the way, nor likely to be."

"And yet it might be managed too. A determined man like you, with say a couple of hundred roubles to back you, might go far."

The Russian was not so much fuddled that he failed to understand the drift of the other's words.

"What do you mean?" he asked suspiciously. "Speak plainly," he added, bringing his huge fist down upon the table with a bang that made the Pole wince. "What is your game?--that's what I put to you. You haven't come here--a barin like you--just to see me, and listen to my grumbles; I know that. No, nor yet for love of anybody else; I'm an old bird, I am, and I see what I see, I do. If you want anything out of me, I won't say I sha'n't meet you if you make it worth my while; but you'll have to speak out, man to man, you know; beating about the bush is no good with an old bird like me, not a bit of it."

"Quite so, my friend, quite so. Indeed, that is my way: a clear understanding--nothing kept back on either side."

"Well then, speak out, can't you? What is it? What do you want me to do, and what will you pay me for it?"

"That's what I like--plain speaking. Well, it seems that the matter stands thus: here are two men between your present hard life--an atrocious life, an unendurable life, a life worse than a dog's--and an easy life, a life with little to do and any amount of time to do it. It's a strange thing, but these very two men are hated by the government. The officials don't want to do anything openly: you know their way; but if the two men were suddenly to disappear----you understand?--well, the government at Alexandrovsk wouldn't take it amiss. Of course, there would be a kind of enquiry--a formal matter; and that would be all. But the officials must not appear in it. There are reasons. That is why, as I was coming here to see about a contract for railway sleepers, the matter was mentioned to me--by a high personage, you understand. I have with me----" he corrected himself hastily--"that is to say, not here, but at the superintendent's, two hundred roubles--fifty for an immediate present when an understanding is come to, another fifty when the disappearance takes place; the rest if the disappearance is so complete that no traces of the two are found--say within a month. But of course I must know what becomes of them."

"Ah! That's the game, is it? And what's to be the story for Petersburg, eh?"

"That's an easy matter. We'll say they bought false passports--there's a manufactory of those useful documents not a hundred miles from Nikolaievsk--and smuggled themselves away in a herring boat. That'll wash, don't you think?"

"If it goes down as easy as this vodka it'll go down uncommon easy," said the man with a chuckle.

"And there's plenty more where that came from. Well, what do you say?"

"I can't do it alone. I shall want some one to help. You--" he looked critically at the Pole--"you ain't the man for such a job. I'll have to get a pal. Ten roubles, now--I suppose you won't object to pay that, supposing you don't want to lend a hand yourself?"

"That shall not stand in the way. I shall have to pay the money out of my own pocket," he added as by an artistic inspiration.

The man flashed a shrewd glance at his visitor; but though he said nothing on the point, he was apparently making a note of something in his mind.

"Well, you leave it to me, barm," he said. "When I take a job in hand, my motto's 'thorough', it is. And mind you: when I see you next, another bottle of this vodka: that won't ruin a barin with two hundred roubles at the superintendent's office and ten in his own pocket, eh?"

A few minutes later Sowinski left the hut and stumbled out into the darkness--down the hill, dotted with rude huts dimly discernible in the gloom, towards the little bay where half a dozen junks engaged in the herring fishery lay at anchor. The road was broken by ruts and pitfalls; unconsciously the Pole groped his way over or past them, busy with his thoughts, which were blacker than the night, hurrying him to a deeper pitfall dug by himself for his own undoing.

*CHAPTER XXVIII*

*The Empty Hut*

My Son--Liberty in Sight--Au Revoir!--Suspense--The Open Door--A Footprint--The Trail

While Sowinski was making his way down the hill, a sampan with two passengers put off in dead silence from one of the junks in the roadstead. The vessel had arrived that afternoon with a small cargo of rice; she was to ship a consignment of dried fish for Chifu. The loading was to be commenced at dawn on the following day; she was not to carry a full cargo, having to fill up with coal at Alexandrovsk; by the evening it was expected that her consignment would be on board, and she would sail again next morning.

The sampan moved without a splash towards the northern end of the bay, where there were no huts. The fishing settlement extended half round the southern end, and the lumber yards occupied the rest of the southern quarter and part of the northern. It was a very solitary spot at which the passengers landed, and the sampan-man--who happened also to be the owner of the junk--steering his little craft between two rocks, where he was secure from observation, squatted motionless, apparently awaiting the return of the two men whom he had just put ashore.

Making a circuit round the lumber settlement--a somewhat difficult matter in the dark--the two passengers, one of whom evidently knew the way and walked a pace or two in advance, stopped at a hut a little larger than the majority of those they had passed, and gently tapped at the door. No light was visible; the taller of the two men cleared his throat as in nervous impatience. A step was heard within; the door was opened, and a voice asked in Russian:

"Who is there?"

"It is I, graf," said the man who had led the way. "I have a friend with me."

"Come in, then."

The two entered; the door was gently closed behind them. The outer room was in complete darkness; but, leading the way through that, Count Walewski opened a farther door, which led into a second room, dimly lighted by a couple of candles. A man was seated at a table, reading.

"Here is our friend Godunof, comrade," said the count in French.

Mr. Brown looked up--looked again, stared, then sprang to his feet.

"Jack!"

The taller of the two visitors brushed past Godunof, and father and son clasped hands. For a few moments not a word was spoken by either of them; a stranger might not perhaps have guessed from their manner that they had been parted for nearly a year--the father a victim of foul wrong, the son ignorant of the father's whereabouts and burning to avenge the wrong. But beneath his iron-gray moustache and beard Mr. Brown's lips were quivering, and Jack had a lump in his throat which made him incapable of speech when his father turned to the count and, keeping Jack's hand in his, said simply:

"My son, Count."

Count Walewski was deep in conversation with the other man. He seemed scarcely to comprehend what Brown had said.

"Your son! But--my daughter--you remember her letter; she is here, now, in a junk at the shore; Godunof says so; it bewilders me; am I dreaming? Your son!--they came together; Godunof tells me they have come to take us away. After all these years!--Brown, this will kill me!"

The count, trembling like a leaf, leant for support against the crazy table.

"Sit down, my friend," said Brown. "We must keep our heads. Jack has come on a desperate adventure; it takes my breath away; he must tell us what it means."

A long conversation ensued--not long in point of time, but in the amount of matter compressed into it. The difficulty of arranging the escape lay in the impossibility of knowing from what quarter the wind would be blowing at any hour that might be determined. Without a favourable wind the _Yu-ye_ could not get out to sea; and it would be madness for Mr. Brown and the count to go aboard until there was a practical certainty of the junk being able to slip away. As soon as they were missed, every boat in the roadstead would be searched. And even if the vessel cleared the bay, there was always a risk of its being followed by the government launch engaged to patrol the fishing settlements along the coast, perhaps by a gunboat sent from Korsakovsk in response to a telegram. The launch at this moment lay at anchor in the bay, and unless the _Yu-ye_ got a good start and a fair wind, it must inevitably be overhauled, though the government boat was an old and crazy vessel whose best work was long since done.

Granted a favourable wind, then, it was arranged that the two, the following midnight, should make their way down to the point at which Jack had landed. If the wind proved unfavourable, the departure must be postponed. The junk would slip her moorings at the first glint of dawn, and before the escape was discovered Jack hoped they would be hull down on the horizon.

"But what speed can you make?" asked Mr. Brown. "You can't outrun a steamer."

"I doubt whether the launch would venture far into the open," said Godunof, the colonist who had carried the letters between Gabriele and her father. "She can't stand heavy weather, and a gale may spring up at any moment in these seas. Besides, she'd be chary of meeting Japanese cruisers in the Strait of La Perouse. I wonder, indeed, she ventured into this bay--no better than an open roadstead, and exposed to attack."

"She only arrived two days ago from Korsakovsk," said Mr. Brown. "She came on a matter of revenue; nothing else brings her here."

"Well, we must chance it, Father," said Jack. "We've got here safely, and please God we shall get away safely too. We can run for the nearest Japanese port, and there we'll be as safe as--as in Portsmouth Harbour, by Jove!"

The plan having been discussed rapidly, yet with anxious care, Jack took leave of the two gentlemen--all three with full hearts wondering whether they would ever meet again--and returned by the way he had come.

His return was eagerly expected on board the junk. He had scarcely clambered over the side when a figure closely enwrapped in Chinese dress moved towards him.

"Did you see him?"

"Yes, Mademoiselle. He was overcome at the news that you were here."

"And is he well? And your father--both well? Oh, Monsieur Jack, I pray that nothing, nothing, may happen! Nobody knows of your visit?--you are quite sure? You made them understand?--the time, the place, the wind? To think that we have to wait a whole night and day! I can hardly endure it!"

"I am just as bad, really, Mademoiselle. Lucky for me we have to load up to-morrow; that will give me something to do. By this time to-morrow----"

The next day was a time of dreary waiting. It was a bright morning, the sky clear, the sea smooth--too smooth, thought Jack, anxiously whistling for a wind. The cargo was taken on board--smelling horribly, but Gabriele waived Jack's condolences: what was such an unpleasantness beside the larger matter of her father's safety? As the day wore on, black clouds came scudding out of the north; the wind freshened minute by minute, and the junk began to roll.

"The wind serves!" cried Gabriele joyfully. "Oh for the dark!"

Some time before the hour agreed upon, the sampan was punted to the appointed spot. In it were Jack, Hi Lo, and the owner of the _Yu-ye_. The wind was roaring, the sky was black, the tide full, and the Chinaman had much ado to prevent his craft from being dashed against the rocks. Time passed; nobody appeared. Jack looked at his watch; it was twenty minutes after midnight. What had delayed the prisoners? Another twenty minutes; he was becoming uneasy. What could have happened? Godunof could not have played him false; the colonist had not returned to the junk with him the night before, but since he had received only a portion of the reward promised him, it was unlikely that he had betrayed the secret. Had the prisoners been delayed by an unexpected visitor? Had they started and been caught? All kinds of possibilities occurred to him.

At last, when the two were fully an hour and a half late, he could endure the anxiety and suspense no longer. He resolved to go up to the hut, and alone. But when he told the Chinaman what he intended, and asked him to put him ashore, Hi Lo spoke:

"My go long-side masta."

"No, no; you must stay and look after Mademoiselle."

"My no wantchee stay-lo; my no can do. Masta wantchee some piecee man allo-time long-side; ch'hoy! what-fo' Hi Lo no belongey that-side?"

The boy was already slipping over the side of the sampan.

"Very well then," said Jack reluctantly.

Then, turning to the Chinaman, he bade him remain at the same spot until near dawn. If by that time Jack had not returned, the man was to go back to the junk and come again when darkness fell on the following night. He must find some excuse for not putting to sea, and not let it be known that anyone connected with the junk was ashore. Above all, he was to watch over the women.