Chapter XV Cossack and Chunchuse
The Road in China—A Change of View—Looking Ahead—A Cold Welcome—Beleaguered—The Part of Prudence—Smoke—Beaten Back—The Water Supply—An Inspiration—Ch’hoy!
At Hsien-chia-kou the strangely young old man with the two ponies met not only the guide punctually furnished by Ah Lum’s agent, but also Mr. Hi and his son. The compradore explained that after what had happened he no longer felt safe in his little cottage, and had made up his mind to join his brother in Harbin and do what he could there to further the enquiries for Mr. Brown. As for Hi Lo, the boy had for the first time shown a most reprehensible and unfilial spirit of disobedience. He had declared that the Toitsche genelum’s service, now that Sin Foo had left, had no further attraction for him. If he must serve someone, it should be Mr. Chack Blown; and he would much rather serve Mr. Chack Blown than accompany his father to Harbin, for he did not like his Aunt Feng.
Jack laughed.
“Let him come with me, Mr. Hi. He saved those papers so cleverly that I think a great deal of him, and I’ll really be glad to have him with me.”
The compradore would not oppose his young master’s express wish; accordingly, Jack, when he rode off, had two companions.
Jack had learnt from his guide that Ah Lum’s camp was situated in the hills south of Kirin, at a point many miles due north of the spot where he had left the chief. He had before him, therefore, a journey of nearly three hundred miles. Fortunately the rainy season was past; a few days of brilliant sunshine and bustling winds had worked a marvellous transformation. The road that only recently had been a pulp of liquid mud was now thick with soft brown blinding dust, clouds of which were blown by the north-easter full in the travellers’ faces, covering them from head to foot. Unpleasant as this was, it was less troublesome than the continual assaults of midges which Jack had suffered on his previous journey. The autumn air, already nipping out of the sunshine, had annihilated these pests, and the only trouble of a similar kind that Jack experienced was from some black ants whose nest his pony disturbed, and which bit with terrible ferocity.
For more than a week the three riders pursued their journey almost without incident. After the first few days they came into a country of hill and forest, broken by richly cultivated valleys and large swift streams. They had to climb ridges, to cross ravines, to ford rivers, sometimes fording the same river a score of times, so serpentine were its windings. Here and there were settlers’ huts, where they found scanty accommodation, but a warm welcome; here and there also a hillside inn, at which they spent the night on the floor of a tiny room, with perhaps a dozen Chinamen packed like sardines in a box on the k’ang above them.
During these days and nights Jack had many opportunities of thinking over his position. He wondered sometimes whether the course he had decided on was the best he could have taken; but his ponderings always converged to the same point—that his only chance of obtaining news of his father and procuring his liberation lay in remaining in Russian or Russo-Chinese territory. For himself, hunted and outlawed as he was, capture might well mean death, and nowhere was he so likely to be safe as among the Chunchuses. But he saw that in seeking an asylum among them he was in a sense casting in his lot with the enemies of Russia and espousing their quarrel. That consideration gave him food for thought. He had no concern with the great struggle then in progress. It was nothing to him whether Manchuria became the spoil of either Russia or Japan. Up to the time of his father’s arrest, indeed, his sympathies had inclined to the Russian side. He had made many friends among the Russians during his stay in Moukden, especially among the engineers and officials connected with the railway. He had found them amiable, courteous, and singularly free from what, for want of a better word, the Englishman calls “side”. Of the Japanese, on the other hand, he knew almost nothing. His impressions of the few he had met in the course of business were not wholly favourable, which was perhaps little to be wondered at, for the trading classes of Japan, with whom alone Mr. Brown had had relations, were only just beginning to emerge from the condition of a despised and, it must be admitted, despicable caste. Japanese of the Samurai class looked down on a merchant with far more disdain than an English aristocrat shows towards a petty tradesman; and it would have seemed incredible to them that an English marquis should become a coal merchant or a dairyman. It was natural enough that a class thus despised should not be greatly hampered with self-respect; and their business methods did not commend themselves to Mr. Brown, with whom, as with every British merchant, his word was as good as his bond.
But the black sheep whom Jack had come across recently had brought about a change in his feeling towards the Russians generally. He saw them now as grasping adventurers, and the Chunchuses as patriots waging a lawful warfare against invasion and oppression. He had no very kindly feeling for the men who were treating his father with such abominable injustice. He did not disguise from himself that in joining the Chunchuses he could not remain a passive spectator of the struggle. He must be prepared to identify himself completely with the fortunes of Ah Lum’s band, and become to all intents and purposes as lawless a brigand as themselves, But he hoped it would not be for long. If the tide of success upon which the Japanese arms had been borne from victory to victory did not turn, the Russian domination must ere long be shattered, and in some vague undefined way he felt that the fortunes of his quest were bound up with the discomfiture of the Russians. But in thus throwing in his lot with their enemies he reserved one point: he would steadily refuse to have any part in such excesses as were from time to time reported of the Chunchuses. It was likely enough that as a very unimportant individual, incurably a “foreign devil”, he would be laughed to scorn for his scruples by Ah Lum. The custom of torturing prisoners was so deeply rooted in Chinese methods of warfare that Ah Lum, even if he so desired, might be unable to control his followers and prevent atrocity when they were not under his immediate observation. This would make it difficult for Jack to remain with them; but he put the matter from his thoughts: he would not meet difficulties half-way.
Now and again, as with his guide and Hi Lo he passed through isolated villages, he heard of small bodies of Cossacks having been seen in their vicinity. From the general talk at inns and farmhouses he gathered that the Russians, alarmed for their communications after the battle of Liao-yang, were about to make a serious attempt to deal with Ah Lum and one or two other Chunchuse chiefs who threatened the railway between Harbin and Vladivostok. The Cossack parties whose movements the villagers reported, were presumably scouting to ascertain the exact position of Ah Lum’s band preparatory to a concerted attempt to entrap him.
One afternoon, as they climbed a rugged slope towards a village nestling among trees at the top, the travellers heard the rattle of musketry in the distance, and saw a couple of Russian horsemen riding away in the direction whence the sound came. At first Jack thought of avoiding the village altogether, and making a detour; but he had been riding since early morning over difficult country, the sun had been hot, and he was very hungry; so that after consulting with his guide he decided to go on, the man thinking there was as great a risk of encountering Russians the one way as the other. They proceeded, therefore, but cautiously, keeping a sharp look-out. The guide knew the headman of the village; if he could get speech with him they might obtain useful information.
Firing could still be heard fitfully; it was impossible to tell how far away, but it seemed at a considerable distance from the village. When they entered the street, they came upon a knot of villagers in voluble discussion. They were instantly the object of a narrow scrutiny; but the guide had already marked his friend the headman among the group, and called him by name. The man came forward to meet the riders; the guide explained in a sentence that he wished to have some private talk with him, and he at once led the way to his house.
Thinking that frankness was here the best policy, Jack asked his guide to explain briefly who he was and what had brought him to the village. The headman was perturbed, almost incensed, when he heard the story. He had suffered already from depredations by the brigands; if the Russians knew that he had harboured a fugitive, he could only expect to suffer even more seriously at their hands. And there was great danger that they would discover the new-comers’ presence. A squadron of Cossacks about two hundred strong was at that moment besieging some fifty Chunchuses in a farm three miles away. The brigands had been shut in for three days, and it was expected that they must yield shortly, perhaps before another day was past. The owner of the farm had come into the village when the Chunchuses appeared. He said that there was plenty of grain in his barns; the brigands could not be starved; but the water supply was likely to give out. The farm being situated less than half a mile from a river, the store of water kept in it was only sufficient for his family and servants, and could not meet the requirements of the company of Chunchuses, to say nothing of their horses. Behind the walls they might succeed in keeping the Russians at bay unless artillery were brought against them; but lack of water must inevitably cause them to surrender. They had made a good fight; the besiegers had lost a good many men; two Cossacks had come into the village only a short time before Jack’s arrival, with orders to the headman to prepare quarters for the wounded. But they so greatly outnumbered the defenders that they could afford to lose heavily without seriously reducing the odds in their favour; and, taught by experience, they would probably not attempt to storm the place, but would sit down and leave its reduction to the work of time.
These explanations were given by the headman, who concluded by earnestly entreating Jack and his companions to depart. If the Cossacks suspected that any of the villagers had been in relations with the brigands they would certainly burn every house in the place, and in all likelihood slaughter the inhabitants. Jack sympathized with the man in his terror; he said at once that the village should suffer no harm through him; and after buying a little food to carry him to the next stage, he rode out with his two companions.
But the news he had just heard was not of a kind to pass unconsidered. He was on his way to join Ah Lum’s band; it was a part of that band that was now in such desperate straits, and he felt a personal interest in their fate. Word had been sent to Ah Lum, as the headman had informed him; but Ah Lum was at least two days’ march away, and another two days must pass before help could come from him, even if he found himself in a position to send assistance. If this siege of the farm were a part of an organized movement against the Chunchuses, it was not unlikely that Ah Lum himself was hard pressed.
Jack was in a quandary. Prudence bade him press on without delay; the convoy with the Russian wounded was no doubt already on the way to the village, and might meet him or cross his path at any moment. But he felt an overpowering curiosity, natural in one of his active spirit, to see for himself the place where the brigands were so stoutly keeping up a fight against odds; and his curiosity was reinforced by another motive: the desire to see whether there was any possibility of their escaping from their peril. He felt the natural impulse of youth to “do something”, even though he recognized how hopeless it was to imagine that he, with but two companions, could intervene between the Chunchuses and their fate. Still, the impulse was overmastering; he must see with his own eyes how they were situated; and having availed himself of Ah Lum’s protection in placing himself in the hands of his agent, he thought it his duty not to leave the neighbourhood without at least assuring himself that rescue was out of the question.
He announced his intention of riding to the farm. His guide vigorously protested; it was absurd, he said, to go into the very jaws of danger; much better hurry on and reach safety with the chief.
“And what would Mr. Ah think of you if he heard that?”
“But I don’t know the way, master.”
“No matter. The firing was to our right; we saw the way the Cossacks went; no doubt the wounded will come the same way, so we must avoid that; but if we work round gradually under cover of that copse yonder, we shall be going in the right direction. They’re firing again. You will come with me,” he added sternly, divining an inclination to bolt, “or you will no longer be Mr. Ah’s man, and you know what that means.”
The three turned off to the right, skirting the beech plantation of which Jack had spoken, the guide resigned but sullen. It was now about five o’clock in the afternoon; in an hour and a half it would be dark. Riding cautiously, keeping a keen look-out on all sides for signs of the Russians, they gradually made their way across country, guided by the firing that was still heard at intervals. They were crossing a hilltop some three miles from the village they had left behind, when Hi Lo suddenly declared that he saw smoke in the distance.
“You have sharp eyes,” said Jack. “We had better dismount. Being on the sky-line we shall be easily seen if the Russians look this way. Let us hope they are giving their whole attention to the farm.”
They tied up their ponies to trees some distance from the hill-path they had been following. Jack wished to leave Hi Lo in charge of the animals, but the boy pleaded hard to be allowed to accompany his master.
“Masta say-lo my hab plenty good look-see. My walkee long-side masta; plaps my can helpum masta.”
“Very well. Now show me where you saw the smoke.”
The boy pointed to a hollow nearly a mile away, where at first Jack could see nothing but fields of hay and over-ripe kowliang. The smoke of course had now disappeared; but, following Hi Lo’s finger, Jack presently saw the dull mud-coloured walls of a farm enclosure, barely distinguishable from the brownish vegetation around. A moment later Hi Lo’s keen glance lighted upon the low shelter-tents of the Russian encampment, some distance to the left of the farm, apparently situated in a field, recently cropped, near the bank of the river, of which a few yards could be seen. Not a man was in sight; but beyond the camp was a clump of brushwood, at the edge of which Jack fancied he saw the black forms of two or three horses. Probably the rest were tethered in the copse.
As Jack and his two companions, standing motionless on the hilltop, looked across the valley they suddenly saw a score of men rush out from the tall kowliang in which they had been concealed, and dash forward against the far corner of the wall surrounding the farm. At the same moment, from the fields around puffs of smoke were seen rising in the air, and a few moments later the sharp rattle of musketry, like the sudden shooting of pebbles from a cart, reached their ears. But the defenders had not been caught napping. A withering fire met the Russians as they charged up the slight slope leading to the farm; only a few gained the crest, and these fell to the Chunchuses, who all at once appeared as by magic in the courtyard. The survivors hesitated for a moment; then they turned and plunged into cover of the long grass and kowliang. In a few seconds every man had disappeared from view; peace reigned over the scene; there was nothing to show that the farm was the centre of a bitter struggle.
But for the scarcity of water Jack had little doubt from what he had seen that the Chunchuses would be able to hold their own indefinitely against the Cossacks, unless siege operations of a regular kind were adopted. He could see no trace of trenches, such as, with their numerical advantage, the besiegers could easily have constructed if they had been so minded and possessed the requisite knowledge. But they were a mounted force, unused, no doubt, to any tactics but the simple Cossack evolutions. The average Russian soldier has little adaptability. The construction of trenches is not a horseman’s business; it would not enter the head of a Cossack captain to employ a device so far removed from his routine. Yet with the aid of a trench the besiegers could make short work of the Chunchuse defences, which consisted simply of the mud wall surrounding the farm, and the farm itself—a thatched cottage with byres and pig-sties adjacent, flimsy structures at the best.
Under cover of the tall shrubs that crowned the hill, Jack looked long and searchingly at the beleaguered farm. He tried to picture the defenders within the walls, hoping for relief, watching the inch-fall of their water supply, tantalized by the sight of the full stream flowing so near, and yet as distant as though it were in another continent. To Jack it appeared that there was no chance whatever of doing anything to assist the Chunchuses, among whom doubtless were men whom he had seen in Ah Lum’s camp. He asked the guide whether he could suggest a way. The man replied that the only course was to hurry on and inform Ah Lum of the desperate position of his men. Inasmuch as a messenger had gone on the same errand two days before, the guide’s suggestion was not very helpful. And Jack was possessed of the feeling that to act thus would be equivalent to leaving the trapped band in the lurch, a thing that went very much against the grain. Yet what else could he do? If he could give no help in the actual, pressing emergency, there was nothing to gain by remaining on the scene—not only nothing to gain but everything to lose, for he would run the risk of being snapped up by the Cossacks.
“There’s no help for it, I suppose,” he said half-aloud. Very unwillingly he turned his back on the farm, and retraced his steps down the hillside towards the copse where the ponies were tethered. Just before the farm was wholly shut from his sight by the crest of the hill, he turned again and swept the country with his eye, as though to take a last look at the scene of an approaching tragedy. It happened that in his movements upon the hill he had reached a point where a somewhat different view was obtainable, and he now noticed for the first time, half a mile away to his left, an open space in which a group of men, Russians no doubt, were busy around a number of tripods with big cauldrons suspended. Smoke was rising from one or two; the men were evidently lighting fires to prepare their evening meal.
“Strange,” thought Jack, “that the cooking place should be so far from the shelter-tents and horses. It must be nearly half a mile from the farm. Do the troops march to the food, I wonder, or is the food carried to the troops? Probably the former. But why so far away?”
Even as the question occurred to him the answer flashed upon his mind—and not only the answer, but a possible means of doing what he so much longed to do. Was it possible? He felt his pulse quicken at the mere thought. The dusk was fast gathering over the scene; the farm and its surroundings must soon be shut altogether from his gaze; before that came about, he must take one more look. Bidding Hi Lo and the guide remain where they were, he went back to his former post of observation, moving very carefully so as not to be seen from the quarter where he had not previously suspected the presence of an enemy. Once more he scanned the landscape; then he returned to the two Chinese, who looked at him questioningly, wondering at the change of expression on his face.
“Back to the ponies!” he said briefly. As they went they saw the glow of the Russians’ fires in the glooming sky. The sight brought a smile to Jack’s lips, but he said nothing to his expectant companions. They found the ponies where they had left them; they took from the saddles the food brought from the village—a little rice, some bean sprouts, and a small heap of monkey-nuts, all that they had been able to get at short notice. As they munched their frugal meal Jack could not but wish for five minutes by the steaming cooking-pots on the other side of the hill. When their hunger was satisfied, and the dusk had deepened into night, Jack suddenly looked up from the brown study in which he had appeared to be absorbed and said:
“Now, listen to me.”
His two companions listened with all their ears; Hi Lo soon became restless with excitement; the guide, though his Chinese stolidity was not so easily broken through, at length gave utterance to the exclamation “Ch’hoy!” which signifies approbation or disdain, pleasure or misgiving, according to the inflection of the voice. What Jack had to say took some time; it was quite dark when he finished; then he got up.
“Remember,” he said, “not a movement nor a sound. Do exactly as I have told you; then make for this spot again.”
Then he slipped away into the darkness.
Slowly, with infinite caution, he crossed the brow of the hill, struck off towards the right, and descended the slope on the opposite side. It was so dark that he had no fear of being seen; but, his view of the camp fires being intercepted by the hill, he could not make sure of his direction, and knew that at any moment he might stumble upon a sentry. The only chance of escape for the Chunchuses being to take advantage of the darkness, he had no doubt that the Russians would keep the strictest watch at night. He had to guess his way; he was going to the farm.