Part 8

Northwards, in the direction from which he had come the previous night, he could see with the naked eye for several miles across the snow; and through his glass, which he had luckily brought with him, he descried what was evidently a small town--no doubt Yongampo. Over the whole white stretch intervening there was no sign of life. Looking then seaward, he saw a leaden sky, white-crested waves lashed by the high wind and breaking in angry foam on the ice--nothing more. There was not a speck on the sea. The _Kasumi_ had left him to his fate.

"And I dare say Yamaguchi is even more sorry than I am," he thought.

Then he turned again to the land and swept the horizon with his glass. What is that? In the far distance, towards Yongampo, he discerns two dark specks. He gazes intently, his hands so numbed with cold that he can scarcely hold the glass steadily. The specks are growing larger. Both are approaching him, one coming southward in a straight line, the other making a trend somewhat to his right. For some minutes he gazes at them; the specks become masses, and gradually define themselves as bodies of horsemen. Doubtless they are Cossacks; it is time to be up and away.

*CHAPTER IX*

*Chased by Cossacks*

A View-Halloo--Cossacks at Fault--Bluff--Suspicious Hospitality--On the Pekin Road--A Hill Tiger

The situation was desperate. One band of Cossacks was evidently following the tracks of his horse, the other taking a short cut to head him off. The Mandarin road from Pekin to Seoul could not be far away; the Russians had probably assumed that he would ride in that direction, and acquainted as they no doubt were with the neighbourhood, they would have a great advantage over him. His only hope lay in his horse, which was fortunately a good one, and in the pink of condition. He must ride, and ride, and ride.

Returning to the pagoda, he found that the horse had eaten the last wisp of hay. He led it out, down the slope on the side farthest from the pursuers, through a dip between two low hills; then coasting round a somewhat steeper hill which hid the pagoda from sight, he judged it safe to mount, and was soon cantering over the snow-covered ground. It was rolling country; at one minute he was as it were on the crest of a wave, the next he would be in a trough. The snow was soft, and the horse's hoofs left deep pits in the yielding surface by which the course of his flight could be easily tracked. Soon he lost sight of the sea, and had nothing by which to take his bearings; the sky all around was one unbroken lead-gray. As he rode on, he saw with misgiving that the hills were becoming lower and lower; he would be in full sight of the Cossacks when they reached the heights he had just left. There was no alternative but to push on. Of refuge there was none; the whole country seemed to be desert, with no marks of human habitation except here and there a native hut perched on the edge of a clump of trees, the abandoned home of some wood-cutter.

Every now and then he reined up his horse and turned in the saddle to see if his pursuers were in sight. Struggling up a long slope, and halting at the top to breathe the animal, he saw before him an almost level stretch, and behind him--yes, there they were at last, a band of at least twenty, who had probably dodged round some of the hills which he had laboriously climbed. He looked eagerly round; there was no way of eluding the pursuers. Should he set his steed at the gallop and try to distance them? That was a vain hope; it would exhaust his panting horse, and the Cossacks would wear him down, following untiringly upon his track like wolves. He must on again, and husband the animal's strength as much as possible.

Down the slope, then, he rode, the horse's breath leaving a trail of vapour in the cold air. The sky was growing blacker, the wind, which had been blowing in gusts, dropped; there was no sound but the soft glugging of the hoofs as they plunged into the snow. Suddenly Bob heard a faint shout behind him. He knew well what it meant; the Cossacks had reached the crest of the hill and seen him cantering before them. He looked over his shoulder; they were no more than a mile distant. In half an hour they would close in upon him; perhaps the second band had already come round upon his flank and was now ahead of him; for all he knew, he might have been riding in a circle. Still he must ride on. He quickened his horse's pace; some ten minutes later he heard the distant crack of shots, but as no ping of the bullets followed he guessed that they had flown wide. But the fact that the Cossacks were firing was ominous. They were accustomed to take flying shots from the backs of their steeds; at any moment a luckily-aimed bullet might hit him. He lay upon the horse's neck and called upon the beast to gallop. More shots, more shouts pursued him, but the sounds were fainter. The gap between him and the Cossacks must be widening; could the advantage be maintained?

He spoke encouragingly to the animal, which galloped along with wonderful sure-footedness. Suddenly Bob felt a damp, cold dab upon his brow, then another; he lifted his head, and gave a quick gasp of relief when he saw that snow was falling. The lowering sky had opened at last; in a few moments the rider was making his way through a dense shower of whirling snowflakes, which filled eyes and ears and shut out all objects beyond a hundred yards. By favour of this white screen he might yet escape.

To the left he saw a small dark clump of trees stretching up the hillside. Pushing on until he came level with the furthermost edge he wheeled round, struck through the fringe of the clump where the trees were thin, and ascended the hill at right angles to his former course, in hope that his pursuers, losing him from sight, might overshoot the spot where he diverged before they discovered their mistake. The blinding fall of snow must now be fast obliterating his tracks; to distinguish them the Russians would have to slacken speed; and the few minutes he thus gained might enable him to escape them altogether. But he dared not wait; the Cossacks, finding that they failed to overtake him, would soon cast back and probably scatter in the direction they would guess him to have taken, and how could he expect to elude them all? Walking his horse for a few minutes to allow it to recover breath, he again urged it on, hoping that his luck would yet serve.

The air was still thick with the falling snow; to follow a certain course was impossible. He rode on. Suddenly he heard a dull thud not far to his right; could it be the sound of the Cossacks returning already? Quick as thought he reined up behind a large tree, and peering round the trunk saw, through the whirling flakes, a number of shadowy forms flit past in the opposite direction to that in which he had been going. Mingled with the thudding hoofs came the muffled sound of voices. He could not distinguish the riders, yet he felt sure that they were his pursuers. Waiting till all sounds were quenched, he cantered slowly ahead, knowing now that could he but keep a straight course the Cossacks would be unable, while the snowfall lasted, to find his trail. But for an accident he was safe.

Safe, indeed, from the pursuers; but there were still dire perils to face. He had been riding hard for three hours; the horse had for some time been showing signs of fatigue; he had no food either for it or for himself, and he was himself ravenously hungry. He was in a wild, desolate, sparsely-populated region; should he encounter natives he would be taken for a Russian; he could not speak their language; even if his horse's strength held out until he reached an advanced Japanese outpost, he might be shot before he could make himself understood. Yet, unless he fell in with someone who would give him shelter and food, he and his horse alike must succumb to fatigue and cold, and he would have escaped the Scylla of Russian hands only to meet death from the Charybdis of the elements. Chilled, tired, hungry as he was, for a brief moment his mind was crossed by the shadow of despair; but he pulled himself together, shook the reins, straightened himself, and once more rode on.

It seemed to him that he was wandering on a vast white Sahara, or adrift on a wide sea without chart or compass. All at once, on his left hand, a hut such as he had previously seen from the sea-shore loomed up, like an excrescence from the white plain. He pulled up, dismounted, and led his horse towards the building. It was partially ruined. The doorway was too low to admit the animal, but going round to the back he found a large gap in the rough mud wall just wide enough to allow the horse to pass. Here at least there was temporary shelter for both man and beast. True, there was some risk of the Cossacks appearing even yet; but the horse could go no farther; while it was resting the snow-storm might cease, and with a lifting sky he might be able to take his bearings and strike out a definite course. Leading the animal into the hovel, he scraped the snow from its body, rubbed it as dry as possible with the cloths he unrolled from the saddle, and sat down on a billet of wood, cold, hungry, and depressed.

Thinking, dreaming, he at length fell into a doze. When he awoke, he noticed that the snow had ceased, and the sky was clearing. It was four o'clock. Rising stiff with cold, he went outside the hut and observed a streak of dull red on the horizon.

"That must be the setting sun," he said to himself. "I wonder if, guiding myself by that, I could by and by reach a village and get food. Poor old horse! I hope you are not feeling as hungry and miserable as I am."

He led the beast out and mounted. It was now freezing hard; the snow gave a metallic crunch under the hoofs as he rode away. Westward, towards the setting sun, must lie the sea; in that direction there was nothing to hope for. Northward were the Russians, southward the Japanese, but how far away? His course must be eastward, for sooner or later he must strike the high-road, and when once on the high-road he must in time reach a village. There would always be the risk of meeting Russians, but he could only chance that. Eastward, therefore, he set his horse. His advent in a Korean village would not be without danger; but one peril balanced another, and his plight could scarcely be more desperate.

He had ridden, as he guessed, some three miles farther across the valley, when suddenly, in the dusk before him, he descried a cluster of huts. "At last!" he said to himself with a sigh of relief. Here at any rate were people; where people were, there must be food--and food, both for himself and his horse, must be obtained, whatever the risk. The hamlet might harbour a Cossack patrol; but at this stage Bob felt that it was no worse to fall into Russian hands than to die of famine on the snow-clad hills. On the other hand, if there were no Cossacks in the hamlet, his own appearance in Russian guise would be sufficient to procure him supplies. The Korean as a fighting man was not, Yamaguchi had told him, very formidable, so that even if the villagers proved hostile he felt that he could manage to hold his own.

Taking the Cossack's pistol from the holster, Bob rode on boldly into the hamlet. To assure himself that it sheltered no Russians, he cantered right through the narrow street, then turned his horse and made his way to what appeared to be the principal house. Like all Korean villages of the poorer sort, this one was dirty and cramped, consisting of a few one-story houses of mud with thatched roofs. The street was now deserted; the few people who had been in it when he cantered through had scattered into their houses when they saw him turn, regarding him no doubt as the pioneer of a body of Cossacks. He dismounted at the closed door of the hut, and knocked. There was no reply; save for the bark of a dog the whole village was shrouded in silence. He knocked again, and a third time, still without effect; the fourth time he battered insistently on the door with his pistol. Then he heard a sound within; the door opened, and by the dim light of a foul-smelling oil-lamp he saw a very fat elderly Korean spreading himself across the entrance.

Bob knew no Korean, no Russian, no Chinese, and only a few words of Japanese. These he had perforce to rely on.

"Komban wa!" he said politely, giving the evening greeting.

The man snapped out something in gruff tones.

"Tabe-mono!" added Bob, taking a few Japanese coins out of his pocket. "Uma! Pan taberu daro!"

The Korean shook his head and began to jabber words incomprehensible to Bob. His meaning, however, was obvious; he was not inclined to supply the food for horse and man for which his visitor had asked. Bob was in no mood to brook reluctance or even dilatoriness. Raising his pistol and pointing it full at the man's head, he poured out a torrent of the first abuse that came to him, which happened to be phrases he had heard addressed to the referee at football matches in the Celtic Park. No Korean, as he had expected, could stand up against this. In a short time a feed of corn was brought for his horse; he tied the beast up at the door, and returning to the room sat down on the stone floor, awaiting food for himself, and wishing that the furnace in the cellar beneath were not quite so hot. The air inside the hovel was foul and suffocating, but a man can put up with a good deal of discomfort when he is starving, and Bob did not turn up his nose at the evil-smelling mixture by and by set before him. It was a dish of which the poorer Koreans are fond--a compound of raw fish, pepper, vinegar, and slabs of fat pork, and the odour was like mingled collodion and decaying sea-weed. He tasted it, tried to swallow a mouthful, found it impossible, and then, in a burst of scarcely feigned rage, demanded meshi or boiled rice, which he had reason to suppose would be at once more palatable and more trustworthy. This was in due course forthcoming, and with the aid of a spoon, the only one the house contained, he succeeded in disposing of a quantity of food which would have astonished anyone but a Korean. His host had now become cringingly polite. Bob questioned him, partly by signs, partly by means of his few words of Japanese, regarding the direction of Seng-cheng and the Pekin road. The former, he learnt, was 70 li (about 21 miles) over the hills, the latter 10 li due east. Thinking over the situation, he resolved to make boldly for the road, which he knew led direct to Ping-yang, and on reaching it to travel by night and rest in hiding during the day. Having made a hearty meal, with a moderate potation of a thin rice beer which he found very refreshing, he rose to leave, and offered the Korean a yen, which, as prices go in the country, was probably four times the value of what he and his horse had consumed. The man, with many bows and protestations, refused to accept payment. Bob insisted, the Korean resisted, and, pointing to a wooden pillow-block on the floor and a quilt hanging on a peg, tried to persuade his visitor to stay the night. This invitation was politely declined, whereupon the Korean in his turn became insistent, so that Bob grew suspicious. The man's refusal to accept money was no doubt an attempt to ingratiate himself with the Cossack patrol to which he supposed Bob belonged; his pressing invitation was capable of a less amicable explanation. Bob in his guise as a Cossack would never think of spending the night alone in a Korean village; if he fell asleep he might never awaken. Shaking his head resolutely, he made signs that he wished the remains of his meal to be put up for him in one of the lacquer boxes he saw in the room. This having been done with manifest reluctance by his host, he moved forward his horse, the Korean following him still with pressing entreaty. All the time that Bob was bundling up a supply of fodder for his horse the man stood jabbering at his side, but he withstood these persevering efforts to detain him, and was just about to mount his horse, when he saw dimly in the dusk, at the end of the street by which he had entered the village, a body of men whom even in the distance he recognized by their quaint caps and baggy clothes as Korean infantry.

Instantly he vaulted into the saddle. At the same moment he heard the bang-bang of rifles and a volley of shouts. His fat host flung himself flat on his face, and Bob galloped up the street, smiling at the ineffectiveness of the Koreans' aim, and wondering how long it would take them to reload. At a turn of the street, even more to their surprise than to his own, he came plump upon another body of Koreans marching in no great order in the opposite direction. Evidently a clumsy attempt had been made to surround him. There was no alternative. He dashed straight at this new body; they scurried like rabbits to the sides of the road, yelling with fright, and by the time they had recovered sufficiently to remember that they were soldiers of the emperor, Bob was out of sight.

Only a few minutes after Bob had thus routed a Korean detachment, two Chinamen rode in at the other end of the village. They were shorter than the average Chinaman; yet, mounted as they were on the high saddles usual in Korea, their feet nearly touched the ground at the sides of their diminutive and sorry-looking ponies. They dismounted at the door of the house that Bob had lately left, and then it could be seen that the younger of the two was dressed like a respectable Chinese merchant, the other being evidently his servant.

The merchant enquired of the Korean at the door what was the meaning of the sounds of firing he had heard.

"The soldiers were honourably shooting at a Russian," replied the man.

"Did he have his lance?" asked the Chinaman instantly.

"No; but a pistol."

"You are sure he was not a Japanese dressed in Russian clothes?"

"Yes; he was tall, his cheeks were red, his eyes were blue, his hair the colour of ripe corn; there is no doubt at all that he was a red-haired barbarian."

The merchant spoke a few words to his servant; then both remounted, and set off as fast as their Lilliputian steeds could carry them after the departed Cossack.

Bob meanwhile had been hastening on. During the day his horse had had nearly five hours' rest, and after its good meal was again comparatively fresh. Scrambling over the hills, in no little danger of coming to grief in the darkness, he at length struck the beaten track over the snow that alone marked the course of the high-road. It rang hard under the horse's hoofs; much heavy sled traffic must have passed over it--no doubt supplies for the Russian cavalry, scattered over the whole of Northern Korea. All the way as he rode, Bob was alert to catch any sound of approaching troops, but the highway was deserted; he met neither man nor beast. After covering about ten miles he thought it best to leave the road and strike off into the hills on his left, with the object of skirting round Seng-cheng, which he felt sure was occupied by a Russian force, large or small. Choosing a spot where the highway edged a clump of wood, he rode some yards among the trunks, dismounted, and then carefully smoothed over his horse's tracks on the snow, leaving no track himself by retreating in the hoof-marks. Then he plunged deeper into the wood, in a direction at right angles to the road, leading his horse in order to avoid collision with the trees, and hoping by and by to reach some woodman's hut where he might safely pass the rest of the night. A faint moonlight began to shine through the leafless skeletons, assisting his progress. After half an hour he came suddenly upon a somewhat extensive clearing, in the midst of which he saw a small cluster of huts similar to those he had left behind. He was about to turn sharply off to avoid them, when something in their appearance struck him as unusual. Leaving his horse, he advanced cautiously, and found that the huts were deserted and in ruins; the blackened thatch and mud told a tale of burning, and Bob surmised that here was evidence of a Cossack raid. After a little search he found a hovel that had suffered less than the rest. He easily broke a way through its wall for the horse, returned and led the animal in, barricaded the opening with debris from the other huts, and made himself as comfortable as he could by means of the cloak and horsecloths rolled up before and behind the saddle. Then, being by this time dead beat, he soon fell asleep.

Just as dawn was breaking, he was startled from his heaviness by the loud snorting of his horse. Springing up on his elbow, he saw in the wan light the animal, its ears thrown back, its eyes protruding, tugging at the reins by which Bob had secured it to one of the beams supporting the roof. It was panting, trembling, frantic with fear. Wide awake in an instant, Bob reached for the case containing his rifle, which he had worn slung over his shoulder and removed on lying down. Even as he did so the faint light filtering through the loosely-barricaded doorway was obscured. There was a thump and the crash of falling woodwork, and a heavy body, in the suddenness of its onset looking even larger than it was, sprang between him and the horse. A shrill scream of fright, followed instantly by a dull thud, then a deep growl, and Bob, though he had never heard it before, was in no doubt what the sound implied: it was the warning growl of a tiger after a kill. Stretched upon the inanimate horse, he saw in the uncertain light a huge tawny form. Its back was towards him; its tail was lashing the ground within a few feet of where he had lain; in a moment it must scent him. To gain the door, even had there been any prospect of safety in flight, he would have to pass immediately behind the brute, which at the sound would turn in far less time than he would take to rush past. The beast was still growling and lashing the floor. Bob remained still as death, in the reclining posture in which the tiger's entrance had surprised him. In a flash he saw that his only chance lay in one shot so well aimed as to kill or maim the brute; if he missed, nothing could save him; yet the slightest click or rustle would not escape its sensitive ears. Even as he raised the rifle to his shoulder with all his care, the tiger heard the movement and half-turned its head. But its head was still too much covered by the length of its body for Bob to risk a shot at its brain, and he knew that in the sudden volte-face that was now bound to come the movement would be so rapid that he might very easily miss. Instantly leaning forward, he brought the muzzle of the rifle within a foot of the animal's body at the region of the heart, and fired. There was a scream of rage, a convulsive twist of the huge body, a leap, and Bob was on the floor, beneath the tiger, unconscious.

*CHAPTER X*

*The One-Eared Man*

Mr. Helping-to-decide on Tour--Watched--The Tragedy of the Topknot--A Vampire--Mr. Helping-to-decide at Home--An Unholy Alliance--Cross-Examined

"How do you do, sir? I trust you enjoy excellent health and spirits."

These were the first words Bob heard when he came to himself. He was surrounded by a group of Korean soldiers, about whom there was nothing martial but the blood-red band in their hats. In the centre, just alighted from a palanquin, was a Korean in long white cloak and a hat like an inverted flower-pot; he was bowing and smiling with a mingled expression of amiability and concern. Bob recognized him in a moment; it was Mr. Helping-to-decide.

"Thank you, I'm rather shaky," said Bob looking round. "What has become of that brute?"

"Outside, sir. You stop horses; you stop tigers too. You kill him stone dead, sir."