Part 1

Produced by Al Haines.

Kobo

A Story of the Russo-Japanese War

BY

HERBERT STRANG

AUTHOR OF "TOM BURNABY"

Illustrated by William Rainey, R.I.

NEW YORK G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 27 AND 29 WEST 230 ST. 1905

TO LILLIPUT WITH ALL DUE RESPECT TO BROBDINGNAG

"Oh! it is easy to cross the Yalu river." --_Japanese War Song_.

_My dear Ralph,_

_Last year, I remember, you were a little reproachful because I sent "Tom Burnaby" to Jack at Harrow, and I made you a half promise that possibly at some future date you Taylorians should not be forgotten. I am better than my word. Here is a book--too late for your birthday, but in time for Christmas--which I hope will meet with your good favour._

_It is now nearly ten years since, on one of the bridges in Osaka, I watched a battalion of the Imperial Guards marching to the China war. The Chinese had been driven across the Yalu and hustled through Manchuria; the Guards were to assist in carrying the war, if necessary, to the walls of Pekin. There was something in the bearing of those short, sturdy, alert little soldiers to arrest the attention and give food for thought. They had all the purposeful air of our own Gurkhas, with a look of keener intelligence, and a joyous eagerness that thrilled the observer._

_In the China war the Japanese were for the first time measuring their strength. It was merely practice for the great struggle with the Colossus of the North which all knew to be inevitable, however long delayed. The humbling of China cost Japan little real effort, and we in this country hardly realized all that was at stake when European diplomacy robbed the victor of the fruits of victory. The part of Great Britain at that period was regarded, perhaps justly, by the Japanese as something less than that of the warm friend and well-wisher she was supposed to be. Yet, in common with other English visitors to their country, I never met with aught but perfect courtesy and smiling hospitality. The politeness and self-restraint of the people, and their extraordinary military promise, were among my strongest impressions of Japan. How completely they have been justified the history of the past ten years and of the present struggle has shown._

_Yours very sincerely,_ _HERBERT STRANG._

_Michaelmas Day, 1904._

*Contents*

_Chapter_ I A Mere Chinaman

_Chapter_ II Rokuro Kobo San

_Chapter_ III A Samurai's Home

_Chapter_ IV Six to One

_Chapter_ V A Fleet in Action

_Chapter_ VI Helping-to-Decide

_Chapter_ VII The Battle of the Destroyers

_Chapter_ VIII Cut Off

_Chapter_ IX Chased by Cossacks

_Chapter_ X The One-Eared Man

_Chapter_ XI Tried and Sentenced

_Chapter_ XII At Midnight

_Chapter_ XIII Ah-Sam

_Chapter_ XIV Mrs. Isidore G. Pottle

_Chapter_ XV Fortifying the Gully

_Chapter_ XVI Hemmed In

_Chapter_ XVII A Night Reconnaissance

_Chapter_ XVIII Rushing a Cossack Camp

_Chapter_ XIX Sound and Fury

_Chapter_ XX Herr Schwab Gomblains

_Chapter_ XXI The Battle of the Yalu River

_Chapter_ XXII A Dumb Chinaman

_Chapter_ XXIII The Tiger's Lair

_Chapter_ XXIV In the Enemy's Gates

_Chapter_ XXV Nemesis

_Chapter_ XXVI Old Friends and New Prospects

*Glossary*

*List of Illustrations*

_Plate_ I Koreans Receiving Cavalry . . . . . . Frontispiece

_Plate_ II Bob Rescues Yamaguchi

_Plate_ III Bob Surprises his Jailer

_Plate_ IV A Korean Knight-Errant

_Plate_ V A Question of Seconds

*Map and Plan*

Map of Korea and part of Manchuria

Plan of the Battle of the Yalu River

*CHAPTER I*

*A mere Chinaman*

Flotsam--A Commercial Correspondent--A Story of the Sea

The P. and O. liner _Sardinia_ was some twenty hours out of Shanghai, making a direct course for Nagasaki. Few passengers were on deck: it was drear and cold this January afternoon, the sky grey and sullen as with coming snow, the sea rolling heavily under a stiff north-easter that blew cuttingly through the Korea Strait. But beneath the bridge, somewhat sheltered from the wind, sat three figures in a group, talking earnestly. The eldest of the three, John Morton by name, a big shaggy Englishman of forty-five, sat enwrapped in a heavy ulster and a travelling rug, his legs propped on a deck-chair before him. Every few seconds a voluminous cloud of smoke issued from his lips, and floated away like a pale miniature copy of the vast black coil from the funnel above. John Morton was correspondent of the _Daily Post_. At his left sat a round little Frenchman, with fine-drawn moustache and neat imperial, a comforter about his neck, a cigarette in his mouth. Armand Desjardins was also a correspondent, representing the _Nouveau Figaro_. The third member of the group was much younger than his companions. He was a tall, slim young fellow, with bright hair and frank blue eyes, his cheeks tanned the healthy brown of outdoor life at home no less than by the winds of four weeks' sea travel. The collar of his long frieze ulster was turned up to his ears; a low cloth cap was perched on the back of his head. Nobody could have mistaken Bob Fawcett for anything but a Briton.

He had just answered, smilingly, a remark of the vivacious little Frenchman, when the attention of the group was attracted by the quarter-master clambering hurriedly up the ladder to the bridge, the ship's biggest telescope under his arm. He handed it to the captain, who, with the chief and third officers, was looking intently towards a spot a few points on the port bow. After gazing for a minute or two through the telescope, the captain handed it without remark to the chief officer, who looked in his turn and passed it also in silence to the third. The three men below rose to their feet and went to the port-rail, scanning the horizon for the object of the officers' curiosity. Nothing was to be seen save a limitless expanse of dark, green billows, heaving with the swell.

There was a short colloquy on the bridge, after which the third officer ran down the ladder on his way aft. He was intercepted by the little group, who raked him with a gatling-fire of questions.

"Only a raft, or wreckage, or sea-serpent, or something," he said in reply. "Perhaps sea-weed."

"But you vill examine?" said Desjardins. "De sea-serpent is a subject of im-mense interest to de savants of all nations."

The officer laughed.

"Well, monsieur," he said, "get a good glass and you'll have a chance of seeing for yourself; we shall pass it within a short mile."

By this time a speck was visible far ahead, which gradually disclosed itself, as the vessel drew nearer, as a half-submerged spar with a tangled mass of rigging. Bob Fawcett and his companions had ceased to take any interest in what appeared to be merely floating wreckage, when they were surprised at hearing the clang of the engine-room bell signalling successive orders. The steamer slowed down, then with helm hard a-starboard crept up to within a hundred yards of the object, and came to a stop. A boat was speedily lowered, and the passengers, drawn from below by the sudden stoppage on the high sea, crowded into the bows, and looked on with breathless curiosity as the third officer steered gingerly up to the spar. It was possible now to make out a human figure rising and falling with the heave of the sea, its outlines half-hidden by the surrounding cordage. The quarter-master was seen to open his huge clasp knife and cut several strands that apparently lashed the castaway to the mast, and the men who had supported the inert body while this was being done lifted it gently into the boat. The passengers heard the third officer's voice shout the order to give way, and in less than three minutes the boat was being swung in upon the davits, and the _Sardinia_ was again forging ahead at full speed.

The castaway, an inert, sodden, unconscious figure, was lifted out of the boat and carried below, to be handed over to the ship's doctor.

"Is there any life in him?" asked Bob Fawcett, pressing forward to the third officer.

"As dead as mutton, sir, in my belief. But we'll do what we can for the poor beggar."

He passed on; and, catching a glimpse of the castaway as he was borne down the companion-way, Bob noticed that he had but one ear. In a few minutes the passengers had resumed the occupations and amusements which the incident had interrupted. The curiosity of the most of them finally evaporated when it became known that the figure saved from the sea was nothing more romantic than the body of a Chinaman. Bob Fawcett was not a sufficiently hardened traveller to take the matter so lightly. But learning on enquiry that the doctor had little hope of the man's recovery, and that in any case his resuscitation would take some time, he went back to his companions, and found that they had been joined by another passenger--a stranger to him. The new-comer was a stout, brown-bearded, spectacled man, with cheeks puffy and sallow. He leant heavily on a stick, and every now and then rammed his soft wide-awake down upon his head, evidently in apprehension of its being swept away by the breeze.

"Feel better?" Bob heard Morton say as he approached.

"Ach ja!" was the reply. "I do feel better, zairtainly, but not vell, not vell by no means."

"You'll be all right soon. Fawcett, let me introduce you to Herr Schwab; don't think you've met. He came on at Shanghai, and--well, hasn't been visible since. My friend Mr. Fawcett--Herr Schwab."

"Glad to meet you, sir," said Bob, lifting his cap. The German was a second or two behind in the salutation, not from lack of native courtesy, but because his hand had to skirt the limp brim of his wide-awake and come perpendicularly on to the crown, which he raised between finger and thumb.

"Most delighted," he said with guttural urbanity. "I lose much zrough my so unlucky disbosition to sea-illness; it keep me downstair all ze time since ve leave Shanghai. Ze loss of food, zat is nozink; it is ze gombany. Vy, I regollect, ven first I voyage to Zanzibar it lose me vun big order for bianofortes. At Massowa zere come on board a Somali sheik vat vas fery musical. I vas below--fery ill. Vat could I? Ze sheik, he buy concertina from ze rebresentative of concertina house. Now ze Somali, zey all blay concertina; zey might haf blayed biano!"

"And are you in pianos now, sir?" asked Bob, smiling.

"Vell, yes, but primarily I am in literature. I haf ze honour to rebresent ze _Duesseldoerfer Tageblatt_, a journal of fery vide circulation in Werden, Kettwig, Muelheim, Odenkolin, Grevenbroich--zobsgribtion, twenty-zree mark fifty, payableinadvance."

He handed Bob a card with these particulars duly set forth, and paused as if for a reply.

"Unfortunately," said Bob with a smile, "my screw is payable in arrears; I'm afraid I shall have to wait a little."

"You say screw!" responded Herr Schwab instantly. "I haf also ze honour to rebresent ze solid house of Schlagintwert: ve can ship you best assorted screw f.o.b. Hamburg at truly staggering price."

He drew from the pocket of his ulster a sheaf of papers and looked them rapidly through.

"No," he murmured, "zis is botato spirit; zis is batent mangle; zis is edition de luxe _Stones of Venice_; ha! ve haf it: best Birmingham screw. Allow me, vid gombliments."

Bob caught Morton's eye as he pocketed the price list, and strenuously preserving his gravity, said:

"Thank you, sir; I shall know where to come. But I fear that with war in the air your journey may not be profitable."

"Ah! Zere you mistake, my friend. If it is peace, I sell botato-spirit Birmingham screw Ruskin edition de luxe batent mangle; if it is var--zen I rebresent ze _Duesseldoerfer Tageblatt_; ve circulate in Werden, Kettwig, Muelheim, Odenkolin--"

"Magnifique!" exclaimed Desjardins. "You save de price of passage in all case. To compete vid you Germans, it is impossible."

Herr Schwab smiled indulgently.

"Business are business," he said. "In peace, ze Chinese, ze Japanese, ze Russian--zey are all vun to me. But in var, I am instructed by my house--ach! I should say, my journal--to agompany ze Japanese field-army."

"By all accounts," said Bob, "it'll be a case of the patent mangle and not the pen this time. A fellow in the smoking-room has just been saying that there's no earthly chance of war. He had it from a native merchant in Hong-Kong, and somehow or other they're always the first to scent out news."

"No var!" exclaimed Desjardins. "Vat den shall I do? Vat shall I write for de _Figaro_! I have no patent-mangle!"

"You'll have to write poetry," said Morton; "geishas, plum blossom, and that kind of thing. You'll be all right. But I'm helpless. Couldn't do it to save my life; if I could, _Daily Post_ wouldn't take it. Fawcett will come off best of the lot."

"I'm afraid not. They wouldn't have sent for me to help with their range-finders unless they expected a rumpus, and soon. If there's no war, I shall get a month's notice and my passage home.--Hi, steward, how's the castaway?"

The steward came up in answer to Bob's hail.

"Doin' well, sir; most surprisin'. Doctor himself can't make it out nohow. Says the Chinee must have the constitootion of a elephant. Captain's with him this very minute, interviewin' of him; he can't speak English, but there's another Chinee in the steerage that's doin' the interpretin'. He's a big ruffian of a fellow, the castaway, a regular hooligan to look at--and only one ear and all. I've just sent some vittles for'ard for him, sir."

The steward passed on. A little later, when it became known that the interpreter had returned to his quarters, Bob announced that he was going to see the man, and was at once joined by Monsieur Desjardins and Herr Schwab, the former in eagerness to get material for a paragraph, the latter in obedience to his motto, "Business are business". Morton refused to budge.

"Saw plenty of Chinamen, dead and alive, in the war, ten years ago; all alike," he said.

Accordingly the other three made their way to the steerage, and, finding the Chinese interpreter, were soon assured of his willingness to tell all he knew for a consideration. It was Bob who paid.

The man who had so narrowly escaped drowning was, it appeared, a Manchu Tartar--a big muscular fellow nearly six feet high. When once he regained consciousness he had made a surprisingly rapid recovery from his long immersion, and had told his story with great readiness. He had been making the voyage from Chemulpo to Yokohama in a Korean junk, which had been capsized by a sudden squall, and had gone down, he feared, with all hands. Luckily he himself had managed to cling to a considerable portion of wreckage, and to hold on long enough to lash himself to the mast. He was sorry now that he had not waited for a steamer; it was only his strong family affection that had prompted him to sail in a crazy junk, and he would certainly never do so again. He had a brother in Tokio, the owner of a small curiosity shop. News had reached him in Chemulpo that his beloved brother was at the point of death, and without delay he had embarked on a rice-laden junk that happened to be sailing for Tokio, in the hope of reaching that town in time to see his brother before he died.

"'Plenty muchee velly good piecee man," concluded the interpreter approvingly.

"Extraordinaire!" exclaimed Desjardins in admiration. "Dat is sentiment; it is noble, it touch my 'art."

He laid his hand on that section of his rotundity which might be taken to conceal the organ in question, and sighed with enjoyment.

"Ach! it is not sentiment," said Schwab, "it is business. Ze brozer haf curiosity shop--vell, ze ozer brozer vish to inherit imme'ately, vizout drouble. He must be on ze spot."

"Come now, Herr Schwab, don't spoil our little romance," said Bob. "Poor fellow! he's had a rough time anyhow. I wonder how he lost his ear."

"Bad time indeed," said Desjardins. "Pauvre diable! Ve must make him a collection, and you, Monsieur Schwab, you are business man, you shall collect de moneys."

Herr Schwab, who had evidently foreseen that the Frenchman's sympathy might take this practical form, began to decline the proffered honour, but the chorus of amused assent left him no option. Then, finding that he had himself to pay the tax, with German thoroughness he devoted himself heartily to the task of seeing that no one else escaped, and by the time the vessel opened up the lights of Nagasaki quite a respectable sum had been gathered for the Chinaman's benefit.

Bob, being on official business, had instructions to proceed direct from Nagasaki to Tokio. Most of the passengers, however, among them his recent companions, were remaining on the _Sardinia_ as far as Kobe, with the object of seeing the world-famed beauties of the inland sea. The last words Bob heard as he went down the side after the final farewells were a guttural protest from Herr Schwab, with whom his enforced contribution to the Chang-Wo fund was still rankling.

"Business, my dear sir, are business; sentiment is sentiment. Zey should nefer be mix. Damit basta!"

*CHAPTER II*

*Rokuro Kobo San*

An Incident in Ueno Park--Japan at Play--Journalism in Japan--A Japanese Gentleman

Shortly before dusk, one day in the week following the arrival of the _Sardinia_ at Nagasaki, a stalwart figure in the coat, pantaloons, and clumsy clogs of a Chinaman slowly ascended the flight of steps leading to the Ueno Park in Tokio. The time of cherry-blossom was not yet; the trees stood bare skeletons against the gray sky; the ground was lightly touched with rime; it was not the beauties of nature that attracted the sauntering visitor. He seemed, indeed, to have no special object in view; but an observer might have noticed that wherever he saw a group of Japanese in conversation, he passed them with a very deliberate step, and always on the right-hand side, even when this necessitated some little squeezing. Only an observer of more than usual intentness would have connected this curious fancy with the fact that the Chinaman had lost his right ear.

He came by and by to a tea-house--not one of the large and well-appointed establishments which a Samurai would willingly have entered, but a structure little more than a shed, with tables ranged outside beneath the trees, and a few musumes sitting with folded hands and crossed feet on a long low bench covered with a crimson cloth. The Chinaman hesitated for a moment; it was cold, and hardly the evening for al-fresco refreshment. But something attracted him towards the shed. He sat down on one of the benches, and was soon contentedly sipping the weak almost colourless decoction supplied to him by the smiling girls as tea.

For half an hour he sat there, sipping, watching the passers with his yellow almond eyes, thinking Chinese thoughts, silent, almost motionless. Then he pulled his padded garments more closely around him as though for the first time feeling the cold, rose, bowed low in response to the still lower salutation of the attendants, and resumed his slow walk. There were fewer people about now; no talking groups; nothing apparently to attract the remaining ear; and Chang-Wo, shuffling along on his clogs, hurrying his step a little, passed beneath the bare oaks and gloomy pines towards the Buddhist temple near the gate.

Dark was beginning to fall; there were few rickshaws to be seen; the visitors to the famed Toshogu shrine had melted away. Only here and there a woman trudged homeward with her baby on her back and a bundle in her hand, or a shaven Buddhist priest sauntered amid the trees.

Turning from the path to shorten his way by crossing a secluded glade, the Manchu came all at once face to face with a small figure hastening in the opposite direction. He moved somewhat aside, to pass on, but with a suddenness that took his bulky form utterly aback, the shorter figure, that reached not much past his elbow, flung himself upon the Manchu with a cry like the snarl of a tiger, springing up at him, clutching at his throat, and hanging on with desperate fury. The shock was so unexpected, the assault so unprovoked, that the bigger man, his hands hampered by his capacious sleeves, was taken at a disadvantage, and gained nothing from his superior build. In a moment he was on the ground, and the Japanese was kneeling on his chest, retaining his grip on the prostrate man's throat, and striving with all his might to strangle him. But his advantage was short-lived: the Manchu regained command of his muscles, and exerting all the force of his arms thrust the assailant from him, wriggled over, and pinned the puny frame to the ground.

Scarcely a sound had been uttered, whether by Japanese or Manchu; but now, as the latter proceeded with vindictive and triumphant malice to retaliate upon his helpless victim, a half-choked cry, as of an animal at the shambles, broke the silence of the glade. Instantly, as though in answer, a tall great-coated form, the form of a European, came out from among the tree-stems. A glance apprised him of the position: a small man, black in the face, was being throttled by a man twice his size; and with a rush the new-comer hurled himself upon the Manchu, wrenched the Japanese from his grip, and saw that he was only just in time, if indeed not too late. For the small man lay inert, huddled in his kimono; and the Englishman placed his hand over his heart, fearing that he was already dead.

But his doubt was soon dispelled. In a few moments the little fellow moved, gasped, and sprang to his feet, his slanted eyes asquint with excess of rage. It seemed that he was about to fling himself on the young foreigner before him, so much was he blinded by passion; but recognizing in a moment his mistake, he looked round for the big Manchu, and found that he had disappeared. With a muttered word of thanks to his preserver, he rushed madly in the direction he supposed his enemy to have taken, and the Englishman was left to himself in the gathering darkness.

Bob Fawcett had a half-smile upon his face as he walked back through the park and the crowded streets to his hotel. It was his fourth day in Tokio, and he had already seen many strange things; nothing, perhaps, stranger than the deadly earnestness with which the little Japanese had sped after an enemy who could have crushed him with ease.

"I wonder what it was all about?" he thought. "Plucky little Hop o' my Thumb! I suppose he's the stuff of which the Japanese army is made."

He would have liked to know what had brought about the unequal fight, but speculation was vain; and besides, it was nearly dinner-time, and the meals at his hotel were punctually served. Punctuality was, in Bob's eyes, the only virtue the hotel possessed. He did not like the heavy carpets, the cumbrous four-poster in his bed-room, the general stuffiness that resembled only too closely the fusty musty atmosphere of certain hotels at home. He wished he could have put up at a Japanese place, lived in the Japanese way, eaten Japanese food, for he was of an enquiring turn of mind. But he had been strongly advised to put up at a house run on European lines, and for the present he could not but recognize that the advice was probably good.