*CHAPTER XXI*
*Ah Lum at Bay*
Schwab again Retreats--A Business Friend--Reinstated--A Little Light--AhLum Threatened--A Thousand Roubles Reward--The Lessening Circle--AMountain Tiger--Mirage--Ah Lum's Lament--A Cossack Cloak
It was not merely curiosity that had held Jack within the area offighting. He clung with a sort of superstition to the belief that hisfather's fate was inwoven with the fate of the Russian army. He had aconviction, perfectly illogical, that a victory for Japan would favourhis quest. There was so much truth in this idea as that amid thedisorders of a Russian retreat he might hope to pass undetected in hisdisguise. The Russians would be too busy to look closely into thebona-fides of a mere Chinaman, one of thousands who would be sweptnorthwards on the tide. He could easily keep out of sight of the fewwho 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 inHarbin, he had resolved to go north and learn from the man's own lipsthe issue of his enquiries. When the victorious army had rolled by, heset 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 underwhich he had made the retreat from Liao-yang, with Mr. Schwab's precioustripod in his care, when, a little ahead of him, he caught sight of asolitary figure trudging wearily along. It needed but one glance at thebroad back. The tired pedestrian was Schwab himself--and he wascarrying the camera.
Jack's lips twitched. To this had come the descendant of the greatHildebrand Suobensius, the itinerant representative of Germany'simperial might! There was matter for amusement in the reflection, andfor sympathy too: Schwab's patriotism was genuine; his little vanitieswere harmless enough; and whatever else might be said of him, he wasdevoted to the interests of the Schlagintwert company. Jack resolved tomake himself known to the correspondent, who could have no interest inbetraying him to the Russians. Cantering up behind, he heard Schwabsighing and muttering under his breath.
"Excellenz," he said, "my Sin Foo----"
At the first word Schwab swung round with an alacrity that betokened asmuch pleasure as surprise.
"Ach!" he said, "I know you; you are imbostor. I am delighted. Iabologize."
"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 youdid 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 Chineseservant, and I never want a better master."
"Say you so? I vill shake hands viz you. Zere vas talk about you inMoukden; vy truly, zey gratulate me for because I haf, zey say, a soclever 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 retreatin company with Sowinski, with whom he had arranged a great deal ofbusiness against the termination of the war. One night they had takenrefuge in a Chinese hovel. Schwab had carefully put the satchelcontaining his papers and money under his head. In the night he hadheard and felt a movement, and, springing up in the dark, seized andheld an arm. The arm was wrenched away, then Sowinski's voice askedwhether he had heard anything.
"'Yes, certainly,' I said, 'I zink zere is a zief. 'Shtrike a light!' Icry. Zere shtrikes a light; I look for my zinks; siehe da! eferyzink isgone. Against ze door had I blaced a big kettle, for to gif notice ifanyvun intrude. Zere it is, in ze same sbot. I say: 'Sowinski, you arevun big scoundrel; gif me my money!' Zen he burst into fearful bassion;he bresent me a bistol and demand instant abology. For myself, I amberfeckly cool. I egsblain I am business man; certainly it is not mybusiness 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 hishonour; no longer could he travel in my gompany; he demand me to getout. Vat could I? Ze bistol muzzle vas at my head. It is gombulsion.I vat you call clear out, viz my photographabbaratus. But my troubleonly begins. My mafoo, vere is he? Vizout doubt he has abbrobriated mybony. Zere am I, zen, viz no babers, no money, no bony, nozink in zevide vorld but my camera. I cannot send a message to ze _IllustrirteVaterland und Colonien_: vere is ze money to gome from? ZeKaiser,--alas! he is in Berlin. I zink vat is var gorresbondence for akind of business? I try to sell my camera; no vun buys. Ze Russiansoldier is good comrade, ver' fine fellow; for zree days I eat nozinkbut vat he gif me. But ze officers--ach! ven I egsblain to zem, zey areall too busy to listen; zey tell me, abbly Colonel Egoroff. But ColonelEgoroff, vere is he? Nobody know. Nobody know vere nobody is. All isgonfusion and upside-down. I never see nozink so unbusinesslike novere."
As he told his story Schwab trudged along beside Jack's pony. Jack didnot interrupt him; the man's relief in finding someone to lend him asympathizing ear was so obvious.
"You have had an uncommonly hard time," he said. "I'm very sorry. Whatdo 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 anend."
"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. Therewill be some risk for you and for me, but it's worth chancing. Let meexplain my plan."
Jack saw in Schwab's plight a means of advancing his own quest, and atthe same time doing a good turn to the unfortunate representative of the_Illustrirte Vaterland_, for whom, in spite of certain unlovelycharacteristics, he had a real liking. As servant of a European, farfrom any place where he was likely to be recognized, Jack thought hewould probably reach Harbin more quickly than as a masterless Chinesefugitive. He proposed that they should make for the railway. Thenearest point was Erh-shih-li-pu, the junction of the Kirin branch withthe main line. It was not unlikely that if Schwab told his story therethe officials would give him a passage to Harbin. The German eagerlyaccepted the proposal. Jack insisted on his mounting the pony; it wasnecessary, he explained, to keep up appearances, but his firmness on thepoint was really due to the quite obvious fact that Schwab wascompletely worn out. At the first village both Jack and Hi Lo made afew alterations in their dress, so as to look as little like Schwab'sformer servants as possible; and without more than the expecteddifficulties and delays, the three at length reached Erh-shih-li-pu.Luckily at the station Schwab was recognized by a Russian officer, amember of Stackelberg's staff, who had once dined with the foreigncorrespondents at the Green Dragon in Moukden. On hearing the German'stroubles he readily agreed to give him a pass to Harbin for himself andhis servants, and would not allow the fares to be paid; Jack hadpreviously pressed upon Schwab some of his rouble notes. Thus on abright March day, when the frozen ground was sparkling in the sunshine,the three travellers arrived in Harbin. Schwab was lucky in obtainingquarters in the Oriental Hotel; Jack made his way at once with Hi Lo tothe house of his uncle, the grain merchant, and there, as he hadexpected, found Hi An. The two brothers were delighted to see theirvisitors, and there was a touching scene of welcome between Hi Lo andhis father.
For Jack there was but one crumb of information. Hi Feng, as he hadpromised, had set on foot such enquiries as seemed safe, especiallyalong the railway line. About a fortnight after Jack left Harbin in thehorse-box, a customer of Hi Feng came in with the news that he had seena man answering to the description of Mr. Brown among a batch ofprisoners at Imien-po on the Harbin-Vladivostok section. The train wasapparently bound for Vladivostok, but it had remained for twenty-fourhours on a siding, and the man's business had not allowed him to wait tosee what became of it. Hi Feng had himself travelled to the place; thetrain had of course by that time de
parted; and the Chinese of theneighbourhood could give him no information about it; one train was tothem like another, and delays at this siding were of constantoccurrence.
Jack shuddered to think what his father's sufferings must have beenduring the protracted journey. His blood boiled when he saw Russianofficers in the streets; his rage against Bekovitch poisoned his formergood-will towards them. He fumed under his utter helplessness; he coulddo nothing. To some extent the information received narrowed the areaof search. The fact of the train having been seen at Imien-po showedthat the prisoners had been taken either to Eastern Siberia or toSakhalin. Whichever it might be, Mr. Brown would be equally unable tocommunicate with his son, and his removal from Manchuria seemed todestroy all chance of help from the Chinese. To them Siberia andSakhalin are foreign lands; and if Siberia was remote, Sakhalin wasinaccessible. Being wholly a penal settlement, there was little chanceof getting into or out of its ports undetected.
Jack remained for several weeks with Hi Feng, hoping against hope. HerrSchwab was still at the Oriental Hotel. Exposure to cold, lack ofsufficient food, and his mental anxieties had broken down the German'srobust health, and for a fortnight he lay at death's door. Monsieur Brinhappened to be at the same hotel; he had missed every fight, solelythrough his own restlessness, which sent him backwards and forwards fromplace to place--never the time and the place and the correspondenttogether. He was a good-hearted fellow, and, finding a German lying illand not too carefully tended, he constituted himself sick nurse, anddevoted himself to his self-imposed duties with unusual constancy. Hehad his reward in the patient's convalescence. As soon as Schwab wasable to sit up and take a little nourishment, Brin undertook to prove tohim that the Kaiser in Berlin was the Man of Sin, and for a goodfortnight he had much the better of the argument.
One day Hi Feng learnt that a great effort was at last being madeagainst Ah Lum. He had already been defeated by a large force ofCossacks, and driven from the neighbourhood of Kirin north-eastwardstowards the Harbin-Vladivostok railway. Strong columns were hard uponhis heels in pursuit. Through his position as forage contractor to theRussians, Hi Feng already knew that a large body of Cossacks was shortlyto 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 lineof retreat and dispose of him once for all. The evacuation of Moukdenand the narrowing of the area of country open to the Russians inManchuria had made the presence of a strong guerrilla force within theirlines insupportable. Ah Lum must be rooted out.
Hi Feng was to deliver a large quantity of forage within ten days; itwas pretty safe to infer that the expedition would start from Harbinsoon afterwards. Jack felt that Ah Lum must be warned at once.Furthermore, he was much disposed to rejoin the Chunchuses. Withoutoverrating his abilities, he knew that he had been able to do somethingfor them, and what he had learnt about his father's treatment did notmake him more friendly to the Russians or less inclined to do what hecould to thwart them. If he had seen any chance of reaching orcommunicating with his father he might have taken a different view:having left Ah Lum with that purpose there would be no call for him toabandon his quest. But it was now clear that his enquiries must bepursued 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 roublesshould be paid to anyone giving him certain information of his father'swhereabouts. This offer, judiciously circulated through Chinesechannels among the officials of the railway, might bring definite news.
There was another consideration. Among the Chunchuses, so long as AhLum 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 hisoffer would at once put his enemies on his track. While he was in AhLum's camp Hi Feng or his brother the compradore could easilycommunicate with him if they received any information.
Once more, then, he set out to join Ah Lum, Hi Lo accompanying him. Hetravelled in the guise of a Chinese farmer. Each took two ponies, andthey pushed on with great rapidity, riding the animals alternately. Bymeans of the secret signs used by Ah Lum, Jack soon got upon the chief'strack. Making a wide detour to avoid the Russian columns now steadilydriving Ah Lum towards the point whence the Harbin force was to completehis encirclement, he came upon the Chunchuses from the east, and earlyone morning rode into the brigand camp.
His arrival was regarded as a favourable omen. It was likened by Ah Lumto the delightfulness of rain after long drought. Sin Foo was lucky;Fortune would now surely smile. The Chunchuses were, in fact, in asomewhat critical position. The camp, only one day old, was pitched ina valley of the Chang-ling hills some twenty miles above the Kan-hulake--an extensive sheet of water nearly thirty miles long and ofvarying breadth. Fifty miles to the north lay the nearest point on therailway, about 150 miles from Harbin and twice as far from Vladivostok,the line threading a tortuous path among the hills. A considerableRussian force sent out from Kirin was known to be at Wo-ke-chan to thesouth-west; from this place a winter track led over the hills to thehead of the La-lin-ho valley, within striking distance of Ah Lum's camp.Another column, at O-mu-so to the south, commanded the upper valley ofthe Mu-tan-chiang, and while cutting off access to Ah Lum's old quarterson the upper Sungari, threatened his left flank by the high-road toNinguta. At that place, some eighty miles from O-mu-so, a third columncovered the passes into the Lao-ling mountains on the east. The banditswere thus in a ring-fence. Only the north was open, and Jack's newsconfirmed the wary chief's suspicions that the apparent gap in the northhad been left with the sole object of tempting him into theneighbourhood of the railway, on which an overwhelming force was held inreadiness.
The confirmation of his suspicions roused the chief from the dejectioninto which the gradual tightening of the coils had thrown him. From anattitude almost of despair he now rose to a spirit of sullendetermination. The Russians were gradually closing around him; theywould drive him to bay.
"The tiger comes to eat the fly," he said. "Wah! he may prove a woodentiger. The Russians shall see what it is to draw a badger. I own,honoured sir, I thought once of disbanding my force. But on reflectionI have come to another mind. The very villagers who have been mostwilling to help me would probably turn against me retreating, and sellme to the Russians. He who advances may fight, but he who retreats musttake care of himself. It is better to die fighting. Adversity isnecessary to the development of men's virtues. I will choose a strongposition and await the flood. It will not be long in coming. TheRussians, I doubt not, when their arrangements along the railway arecomplete, will advance at the same time from east, west, and south,driving me against the spears of the Cossacks hiding behind the railwayto the north. I have only 600 men left. There has been much fightingsince you left, honoured sir; my men are exhausted with constantmarching and insufficient food. It is not easy to stop the fire whenwater is at a distance."
Jack found that the Russian prisoners were no longer with theChunchuses. Ah Lum had been glad to exchange them against as many ofhis band captured during the recent fight. But for this exchange hisforce would have been even smaller than it was. He was hopelesslyoutnumbered by the Russians, each of whose columns was about 1200strong. Their horses were in good condition; and the work of chasingthe Chunchuses having devolved on one only of the columns at a time, theCossacks were not so much worn out as their quarry, who had been keptmoving constantly.
Ah Lum and Jack discussed the situation in great detail. There seemedindeed no way out. To fight or to disband: those were the alternatives,each fraught with peril if not disaster. Another fight would probablybe the last, for the Russians would hardly make a serious attack untilthey had the wily brigand who had given them so much trouble completelysurrounded. With perhaps 5000 men engaged on one side and only 600 onthe other there was but one result to be expected.
If the gap to the north had really be
en a gap--if the Russians had beenas stupid as they wished Ah Lum to believe--there would still have beena chance. The chief explained that far to the north, in the high hillsabove the lower valley of the Mu-tan-chiang, he might hope to eludepursuit for an indefinite period. It was a wild, mountainous, almostuninhabited country, in which the only difficulty would be that ofsubsistence, not of hiding. But a Chunchuse can live on much less thana Cossack, little though the latter requires. If only Ah Lum could havegained those hills, he could have shown a clean pair of heels to hispursuers.
Regrets, however, were useless. "It is no good climbing a tree to huntfor fish." The appearance of the Chunchuses within twenty miles of therailway would be the signal for a simultaneous movement of squadron uponsquadron of Cossacks from east and west, while the three columns nowclosing upon them would seize the opportunity of occupying the passes intheir rear, hemming them within a small circle where they would soon beannihilated.
"No," said Ah Lum, "I can only eat my three meals in the day and lookforward to sleeping at night. It is impossible to stand on two ships atonce. I shall stay here, occupy the approaches on each side, and fightto the last gasp. Death has no terror for me. I can eat my ricelooking towards heaven. My only trouble is my son, my only son Ah Fu.If I die, he will die; who then will do honour to my bones? True, Ishall be remembered; as the scream of the eagle is heard when she haspassed over, so a man's name remains after his death. But mycooking-range will go to a stranger; the ancestral tablets of my familywill be broken; there will be none to sacrifice to my manes. And theboy: why should he be cut off? The growth of a mulberry-treecorresponds with its early bent. Ah Fu is a good boy, as you know,honoured sir. He is brave; I love him, and have been liberal inpunishment, as the sage advises; his intelligence, though but a grain ofmillet, will in due time grow green to the height of a horse's head. Ilooked for him to endure the nine days' examination and write versesworthy of high office. Ai! ai!"
Through the scholar's pedantries Jack saw the man's heart throbbing. Heexpressed his sympathy.
"Wah!" returned Ah Lum. "Calamity comes from heaven. After the pig hasbeen killed it is useless to speak of the price. I have done all I can.The one thing remaining is to meet the inevitable end with dignity. Butas for you, honoured sir, you have done enough. I do not ask you tostay. You have your own quest to follow. Let every man sweep the snowfrom before his own doors, and not heed the frost on his neighbour'stiles."
"You are right, chief," said Jack. "But it has not come to that yet.There may be a way out even yet, and you have been so kind to me that Ishould not think of leaving you while there is any hope at all."
Ah Lum's remark about the possibility of evading pursuit if he couldreach the farther side of the railway had set Jack thinking. Was thereno way out of his strait? Could the Russians, he wondered, be led offthe scent, thus gaining time for the band to make a dash across theline? In the privacy of his little hut of kowliang stalks Jack ponderedthe problem long. But the more he thought, the less feasible the thingappeared. The railway gave the Russians so great a mobility: they couldmove troops so quickly up and down it, and now that the main armies werefor the time quiescent, they had so many men available, that with only600 Chunchuses there seemed no hope of such a dash being successful. Heracked his brains far into the night. As the hours drew on, it becamevery cold; the north wind struck keenly. Looking around for anadditional garment, Jack saw a military cloak, part of the stock ofclothing captured from the Cossacks. He put it on, and tramped up anddown, thinking and thinking again. The fur-lined cloak warmed him, byand by he became hot with the excitement of an idea. He rolled himselfup in the cloak and tried to sleep, but his eyes were still unclosedwhen the chill dawn stole over the mountains. With racking head hesought an interview with the chief. For some hours they remained inearnest consultation. When the talk was ended Ah Lum rubbed his handstogether and said:
"If you succeed, honoured friend, we shall certainly escape the net.The task you have set yourself is difficult. It is like feeling after apin on the bottom of the ocean. But whether you succeed or not, we shallowe you an unfathomable debt of gratitude. Choose what men you need;all will be proud to serve under you."
Then, weary but light of heart, Jack returned to his hut and slept.