CHAPTER XVII
LEAPING INTO UNKNOWN BLACKNESS
To the friends who had been so mysteriously separated many monthsearlier, and on the other side of the world, their reunion at this placeand under such conditions was bewildering and incredible. They couldscarcely believe the evidence of their own eyes. The last time Rob hadseen Jo the latter had been shorn of his queue, while now his hair againhung in a long, glossy braid. For a moment they stood clasping eachother's hand, after the fashion of the West, and staring without speech.There was so much to be said that they could say nothing. Then they werearoused to a sense of imminent danger by the sounds of ascending voicesand hurrying footsteps on the stone stairway. Evidently the present wasno time for explanations.
"Quick, Rob! Go up there and hide," whispered Jo, pointing, as he spoke,to a rude ladder leading into the darkness of an upper loft. "Stay theretill I come or I cannot save you."
Even as he spoke, Jo turned to the stairway as though about to descend,while Rob sprang to the ladder.
A Chinese soldier was so close at hand that he would have gained theroom and caught sight of the fugitive had not the young officer arrestedhis progress with the stern inquiry:
"What is going on below? Are you all mad or drunk with the juice ofpoppies? Cannot I meditate in peace without being disturbed by thehowlings of you swine? How dare you come up here without orders? Answerme, dog, and son of generations of dogs, before I cause you to be beatenwith a hundred blows!"
The terrified soldier, who held a petty office, corresponding to that ofcorporal of the guard, recoiled from the presence of his angry superior,who, if he had chosen, could have him beaten even to death, and,kotowing until his forehead touched the stones, answered:
"Know, your honorable excellency, that the outer gate has been closedwithout knowledge of any in the guard-house, and beyond it many persons,mad with anger, are clamorous for admittance. It is a mystery; andbefore opening the gate I came up here for a look at the outsiders, tomake certain that they are not enemies."
"Closed, pig? How can it be that the gate is closed without orders fromme, the keeper of the gate? This thing must be examined into," criedthe young officer, with every appearance of extreme anger. "Let it beopened without delay. But first come with me and look at these outsidehowlers. It may be, even as your stupidity suggests, that they are menfrom Chang-Chow, who have ever been unfriendly to this city because ofits greater prosperity."
This was said to give the soldier an opportunity for seeing that noother person was in the room, which fact he would report to his comrades.
As they examined the furious crowd besieging the gate, Jo exclaimed,even more angrily than before:
"Those be no Chang-Chow men, but our friends and own people. They arethe dancers, who, together with the good priests, pray constantly forrain, and who went out to the shrine of the holy rain-god but an hourago. Ah, but you shall smartly suffer for closing a gate of theirown city against them. Hasten and open it again if you would havethe setting sun behold your worthless head still upon your wretchedshoulders."
Thus saying, the young officer spurned the trembling soldier with hisfoot and followed him down the stairway. In another moment the greatgate was opened to the torrent of frantic humanity that rushed indemanding to know what had become of the foreign devil whom they hadseen enter only a few minutes before, and where the soldiers had hiddenhim. Also why they had closed the gate in the very faces of his pursuers.
"Give him up to us," shrieked the priests, "that we may kill him, fordoubtless it is he who keeps away the blessed rain."
The denials of the guard that they even had seen any foreigner, or thatthey had closed the gate, were so little heeded by the clamorous throng,that it might have gone hard with them had not Jo secured a hearing byfiring a shot from his revolver, a weapon that he alone of all thosepresent possessed.
"The guard has not seen the foreign devil or surely they would havearrested him," he cried, in the awed silence that followed his shot."Nor did they close the gate, for they would not dare without my orders,and I gave none. Nor could one man, not even a foreign devil, close thegate unaided, since it often has been tried and they have proved tooheavy. Only by magic could he have done this thing, and by magic musthe have blinded the eyes of the soldiers so that they did not see himpass them into the city. But your priests have magic as well as theforeigners, and by means of it he may be discovered. Let us then againclose the gate that he may not escape, and search for him in everyquarter of the city. When he is found let his head promptly be cutoff, before he has time again to use his magic. Thus shall the city bepurified and the wrath of the rain-god be appeased. Protect the empire!Exterminate foreigners!"
With this rallying-cry of the Great Swords, Jo led the way across theenclosed space separating the inner from the outer gate, past theguard-house, where his soldiers spent their waking hours in gamblingwith long, slim Chinese cards and piles of beans, and on into thenarrow streets of the city. There he was so active in the search thatwas maintained, until stopped by darkness, that he gained a notablereputation as a hater of foreigners. Thus by his prompt action wereRob's enemies so completely thrown off his track that not once was hisreal hiding-place approached or even suspected.
In the mean time he, intensely wearied by hours of confinement in thathot, dusty loft, grew vastly impatient of inaction. He was hungry andparched with thirst; no sound penetrated his prison, nor any ray oflight. He had no idea of the passage of time, and imagined it to be muchlater in the night than it really was, when he was startled by a sharp"Hist!" that seemed to come from the top of the ladder.
Too wary to answer it, he only listened, with senses all alert, forsomething further. Then came a whispered "Rob," and he knew that hisonly friend in that part of the world was at hand.
"Crawl here on your hands and knees," whispered Jo. "Don't let yourboots touch the floor, for the guards below are wide awake and listeningto every sound. That's right. Now put on these felt boots. Leave yourown behind, and follow me without a word."
Rob obeyed these instructions in all but one thing. His boots were ofheavy English leather, lacing high on his ankles, and had been procuredin Hankow. They were very comfortable as well as durable, and he couldnot bear the thought of exchanging them for cloth shoes with felt soles,especially in view of the amount of walking ahead of him if he madegood his escape. So, though he put on the pair provided by Jo, he tiedthe others about his neck, and, thus equipped, noiselessly followedhis friend down the ladder to the room below. From this room a narrowdoorway opened on the broad parapet of the city wall. Towards this doorthey were making their cautious way, when suddenly the hastily tiedstrings of Rob's heavy boots gave way, and they fell to the stone floorwith a clatter that awoke the echoes.
Our lad uttered an exclamation of dismay as he groped about the floorto recover his lost treasures; but it was drowned in a tumult of shoutsfrom below. At the same time a scuffling of feet on the stairway provedthat the alarmed guard were on their way to investigate.
Jo, knowing nothing of the boots, could not imagine what had happened,and called from the doorway that he already had reached:
"Never mind anything! Come on, quick, for your life!"
But Rob, having found one boot, was determined to have the other, forwhich he still was feeling over a wide area of floor space. At lengthhis fingers touched it; but as he triumphantly rose to his feet a dark,heavily breathing form, brandishing some sort of a weapon, confrontedhim. The next instant he had sent the overzealous guard reeling backwardwith a swinging blow from the heavy boot just recovered, that took himfull in the face. With a yell of combined pain and fright, the soldierpitched down the narrow stairway, carrying with him the comrades whowere close at his heels. Before the confused heap could disentangleitself, our lads had fled through the doorway and were speeding likeshadows along the top of the lofty wall.
As they ran they heard behind them a shrill screaming and a furiousbeating of gongs. Then from the tall d
rum-tower in the centre of thecity came a deep, booming sound that could be heard for miles. The greatdrum that is only sounded in times of public peril was arousing thecitizens and sending them swarming from their houses. Torches appearednot only in the streets but on the wall behind our flying lads. Then, toRob's dismay, others began to gleam in front of them. To be sure, thesestill were a long distance away, but they gave certain evidence thatflight in that direction must come to a speedy end.
"What is the use of running any farther?" asked Rob. "We'll only fall inwith that torch-light procession all the sooner. Seems to me we might aswell stop where we are and see about getting down off this perch."
"There's only one place to get down," answered Jo, "and it still isahead of us. Run faster! We've got to reach it first."
So the fugitives put on an added burst of speed, though to Rob it seemedthat they were only rushing directly into the arms of the advancingtorch-bearers.
Suddenly Jo exclaimed, breathlessly, "Here's the place!" and then, toRob's dismay, he took a flying leap off the parapet into the gulf ofimpenetrable blackness lying on the outer side of the wall.
For a moment the young American turned sick with the thought that,despairing of ultimate escape, his comrade had chosen death by suicide,and now lay lifeless at the foot of the lofty battlement.
Then came the familiar voice rising from some unknown depth, and callingon him to follow.
"Jump, Rob!" it cried; "you'll land all right, the same as I have."
Even with this assurance our lad hesitated to leap into the darkness.He knew that the wall was at least fifty feet high. There was at itsbottom no moat filled with water, into which one might launch himselfwith safety. "Nor is there any pile of feather-beds, that I know of," hethought, grimly.
From both sides lines of torches were steadily advancing, while up fromthe city rose a tumult of angry voices. Only in the outside blacknessthat already had engulfed his friend was there the slightest promise ofescape.
"I suppose there's nothing else to be done," he muttered, setting histeeth and bracing himself for the effort. "So, here goes!"
With this he sprang out into space and instantly vanished.
When, a minute later, the advancing lines of torch-bearers came togetherat that very point, they were bewildered and frightened by the absolutedisappearance of those whom they had thought to be so surely withintheir grasp.
Certainly the magic of the foreign devils was stronger than theirpriests had led them to believe.