CHAPTER XV. UNDER THE RED CROSS.
When Fred Larkin regained consciousness, after being hurled into the sea, he found himself lying on a large table covered with a white cloth. Around him stood a number of big, burly men with black beards and stern but not unkindly faces. He knew at once that they must be Russians, and (having applied himself vigorously to the study of their language on his outward voyage from San Francisco) addressed himself to the most amiable-looking of the lot.
"Where am I?" he asked, in very poor Russian.
The man did not reply, but said, "Do you speak French?"
"Oui!" replied Larkin, glad to know that he could converse in a tongue much more familiar to him than the former. He repeated his question, adding, as a twinge of pain shot through his shoulder, "I am hurt."
"Yes," said the other; "you were struck by a splinter. We picked you up from the water and brought you here. You are English?"
"American. Am I in Port Arthur, then?"
"You are near Port Arthur, at Laouwei. What were you doing in the Chinese junk which was sunk by the Japanese?" demanded the Russian more sternly.
"I am a newspaper correspondent," said Fred boldly, though in a weak voice. His wound pained him more and more, and he rightly guessed that the collar-bone was fractured. "I have been in Tokio, and could not reach the front, so I crossed over to your side, where, they tell me, the press receives more consideration. My credentials are in my inside pocket."
The officer—for such Fred deemed him to be—smiled grimly, but made no comment upon this speech.
"You must be taken to the hospital in the city, where they will set your broken bone," he said. "Meanwhile you will pardon the discourtesy of covering your face."
A word of command was given, and a light cloth laid over the reporter's head. He was then placed gently upon a stretcher and carried on board some kind of a vessel. Before long Fred heard the clamour of a wharf crowd; then felt himself lifted again and borne through the streets of a city which he knew must be Port Arthur, up a rather steep hill, to a building where he was deposited on a cot beside two other men. The cloth was now removed, and the first object which met his eye was the kind, good face of a young woman, on whose arm was bound a strip bearing a red cross. With a feeling that he was in a safe refuge he meekly took the medicine held to his lips and fell into a deep sleep.
Between his sleeping and waking, the collar-bone was set that afternoon. Fred only remembered a confused sense of gentle hands and rough voices, of the smell of chloroform, of a general battered and "want-to-cry" feeling; and, at last, of utter abandonment of restfulness. The next morning he was weak and a little feverish, but he felt like a new man. In three weeks, the surgeon told him, he would be about again. Fred made use of his first returning strength to cable to the Bulletin and ask for instructions. The censor passed the message without cutting. The reply was terse: "Remain Russian army."
The time passed pretty heavily with the disabled correspondent, during his convalescence at the hospital. From the window of his room he could look down on the harbour and see the Russian war-ships. His two room-mates, Japanese officers from one of the stone-laden hulks sunk in a vain attempt to block the channel in Hobson fashion, had been sent to prison soon after his arrival.
From time to time he obtained scraps of information from other patients, from the hospital surgeon-staff, and from his gentle little nurse, Marie Kopofsky, a native of Moscow. Not "at the Czar's command," but of her own free will, she had volunteered, as had hundreds of Japanese women on their side of the sea, to nurse the sick and wounded at the front, under the banner of the Red Cross.
On the day before he left the hospital Fred was walking idly through the corridors to his room, when his ear caught the sound of an unpleasantly familiar voice. It recalled the prison at Santiago, where he had been confined at the close of his daring scouting expedition during the Spanish War. It recalled, too, strangely enough, the bright days he had recently passed at Tokio. Suddenly a light broke upon his mind.
"Stevens!" he exclaimed under his breath. "That mean traitor who tried to bribe me to betray the secrets of the United States navy to the Spanish—he and Señor Bellardo are the same man! It was the beard and the dark complexion that fooled me! What tricks is he up to now, I wonder?"[3]
Fred turned away abruptly, before Stevens caught sight of him, and entering his private room closed the door.
"I may not be here long," he muttered, "but while I am I will keep an eye on that fellow."
The next day he received his discharge from the hospital, and obtained lodgings at a respectable hotel near by. As soon as possible he presented his credentials to General Stoessel, and received a newspaper pass, with the instructions of the Russian government governing war correspondents at the front. They were, in brief, as follows:
Rule I. Correspondents must not interfere in any way with the preparations for war, or the plans of the staff, or divulge military secrets of advantage to the enemy, such as actions in which forts are damaged or guns lost.
II. No criticism of members of the General Staff, Corps, or Division Staff. The report of an engagement must be limited to a simple statement of fact.
III. Correspondents must not transmit unconfirmed information about the enemy, such as rumours of victory, or threatening movements, which may cause public uneasiness in Russia.
IV. All correspondents without credentials will be turned back. Those given permission to join the forces are in honour bound to observe the regulations, with the penalty of expulsion without warning for any violation. They can go anywhere in the field, and are barred only from the Russian fleet.
"H'm," said Fred, as he read over the printed rules, "fair enough, though 'a simple statement of fact' is hard lines on a flowery writer. If my friends the Japs had been as liberal, I shouldn't have got into Port Arthur in a hurry."
He soon made the acquaintance of two or three other newspaper men from European capitals, and managed to get a few good cables through the censor without their being mangled beyond recognition. He soon discovered Stevens's lodgings, where he learned that the traitor had the entrée of Staff headquarters, and was known as Henry Burley, of Liverpool. For the present Fred could see no spoke to put in his wheel, for the interests of the United States were, as far as he knew, in no way involved in the man's character or actions. Still, as Fred soliloquised, "he would bear watching."
The war proceeded with unabated vigour. During the second week of Fred's enforced idleness another sea-tragedy took place in the Yellow Sea, off Korea. The Japanese transport Kinshiu Maru was proceeding from Nagasaki to the Korean coast, with ammunition, coal, supplies, and infantry. In the middle of the night several large ships loomed up through the haze. Supposing them to be Togo's fleet, the Kinshiu Maru signalled, "I am bringing you coal." What was her commander's dismay to read the answer, twinkling out in red and white Ardois lights, "Stop instantly!" At the same moment the cry ran through the transport, "The Russians! the Russians!"
"Surrender!" signalled Admiral Yeszen, from his flagship. It was the Vladivostock squadron of formidable cruisers, released at last from the ice which for months had both protected and fettered them.
Instead of surrendering, the crew of the Kinshiu Maru began to lower their boats in mad haste, hoping to escape in the darkness; a Russian steam cutter captured every boat but one, which was afterward picked up by a Japanese schooner, many miles from the scene of the disaster.
The Russians boarded the transport, and found about one hundred and fifty soldiers, who barricaded themselves in the cabin and refused to surrender. Withdrawing to their ships, the victors began to shell the doomed hulk. The Japanese soldiers swarmed on deck and discharged their rifles in the direction of the foe, shouting old Samurai battle-songs. Pierced and shattered, the transport settled lower and lower in the water. At last a Whitehead torpedo, exploding against the ship, tore a great hole in her hull amidships, and she plunged into the depths of the sea. Up to the last moment, when the waves rolled over them, the soldiers shouted their defiance and steadily loaded and fired. With two hundred prisoners, the Russian squadron returned to Vladivostock.
On land the Japanese advanced steadily. Gradually the long, throttling fingers extended from east and west toward the railroad that meant life or death to the great fortress. Then came the battle of the Yalu, to the east. The river was crossed, the Japanese poured into Manchuria, and the position of the Russian forces on the Liaotung peninsula became still more critical. Supplies were crowded into the beleaguered port, and non-combatants filled the northward-bound trains to overflowing. Early in May it became evident that with one more clutch of the relentless hand of Nippon all communication between Port Arthur and the rest of the world would be cut off.
Fred Larkin saw that he must decide whether to move out at once or remain virtually a prisoner in the town. Most of the other correspondents had already gone. The instructions from the home office were ambiguous. He tried to cable again, but the wires were pre-empted for military despatches in those stirring days. He decided, reluctantly, to abandon Port Arthur and join the Russian army now entrenched a few miles north, on the line of the railroad.
On the evening before the day which he had set for his departure he was strolling about the large square where a military band was playing national airs, when he bumped against a stranger who was hurrying in the opposite direction. Both paused, and their eyes met.
"Larkin!"
"Stevens!"
"Hush!" said the latter, looking nervously over his shoulder. "My name is Burley. Why are you here? When did you leave Tokio?"
"At about the same time when you decamped with the War Office documents," said Fred easily. "Look here, old fellow," he continued with assumed cordiality, "there's no need for us to quarrel in a foreign camp. You've got something on hand now, or I'm mistaken. Can't you let me in?"
"You used pretty hard words to me the last time we met," said the other gloomily. "It wasn't your fault that I wasn't strung up."
"Nor yours that I wasn't," assented Fred cheerfully, "so we're square on that score. But this is a different matter. It's all Japanese or Russian over here, and your Uncle Samuel hasn't a finger in the pie. Now you must have made a good thing out of your Tokio observations, and the presumption is that, having the confidence of our friend Stoessel and his staff, you are about ready to face about."
"Perhaps I am," said Stevens, or Burley, again looking about him. "And if I am, I need one good man I can depend on, to help me in the job. It's too big for one to handle, and the city is so full of spies that I wouldn't trust a native round the corner. But how do I know you will do your part, eh?"
"Try me and see," said Larkin with great firmness.
"All right, I'll try you." They were now walking through one of the side streets, which was but dimly lighted. "Here are my lodgings. Come in and we'll talk it over."
He opened the outer door with a pass-key, and Fred followed him up two flights of narrow stairs.
"Here we are," said Burley, opening a door. "Step right in, and I'll light up."
Larkin entered, but he was hardly over the threshold when he was pushed headlong to the floor, and heard the door closed and locked behind him.
A low laugh sounded from the entry. "'Help me out,' will you, you puppy?" whispered Burley through the keyhole. "You'll never help anybody out, in this world. Within ten minutes this house will be a heap of rubbish, and you will be in kingdom come. Good-bye! I'll report you at home!"
His steps echoed down the stairway, and then the house was still.