Immediately before him was a second valley, at right angles to the one dividing the parallel ranges, resembling a huge, deep sword-cut in the barren, savage hills. This valley narrowed as it rose to a higher altitude, and finally became lost in mountain mist. There were few trees upon the steep, glistening slopes, and such as were to be seen were stunted and deformed. There were no roads or paths; no sign of life or civilisation. The sun itself appeared to have been shut out for ever from this stretch of desolation.
Frank turned and looked towards the south. In this direction were green trees, green fields--a plain, rich, fertile, well-watered and thickly populated. It was almost impossible to believe that a narrow watershed could divide landscapes so different that they might have been scenes from different planets. He glanced again at the dark sinister valley; and as he did so he caught a glimpse of something red, moving slowly across the spur that formed the angle of the two valleys immediately below.
He could not at first make out what this could be, for the moving object almost at once disappeared behind a hillock. When it appeared again, however, it was in mid-valley; and he recognised a party of men dressed in scarlet coats, who were marching in close formation, making in the direction of the pass across the range.
Frank knelt down behind a boulder and watched with interest, and not without apprehension, the approaching figures. A natural instinct warned him that it would not be wise to show himself. There was something in the forbidding nature of the valley itself that warned him that its sole occupants were not likely to be men whom one could trust.
They climbed the bridle-path, gaining at last the pass whence Frank himself had ascended to the hill-top. They were now easy to distinguish. The party numbered about thirty. They were brown-skinned Chinese, evidently mountain-born; all were armed with scythe-like spears or long, curved knives, and one or two carried pistols in their belts. All wore scarlet coats, some of which were bright and new, others being so faded that they were a kind of dirty pink. At the head of the party marched a little shrivelled man, whose scarlet coat was trimmed with gold. Frank Armitage did not know it--though within eight hours he was to learn the truth--but this was the redoubtable Cheong-Chau himself--the brigand chief who plundered the southern provinces from the Nan-ling Mountains to the sea.
As they passed, swinging on their way, these men sang a low, wailing chant that might have been a funeral dirge, but which was, in fact, a pirate song of blood and lust and murder. At the rear of the party was an old man, seated upon the back of a short-necked Mongolian pony. This was Men-Ching, who had ridden post-haste from the city of Canton, bringing greetings to Cheong-Chau from Ah Wu, who kept an opium den in the vicinity of the Mohammedan mosque.
Men-Ching had seen Yung How in the city of Wu-chau, and had there heard news of the ancient Taoist temple upon the southern slopes of the mountains. And Cheong-Chau had shaken off the sleep of opium and, gathering his men, had issued from the town of Pinglo, and had marched by night into the mountains, the sovereignty of which he shared with the eagles and the kites.
[CHAPTER V--HOW CHEONG-CHAU STRUCK AT DEAD OF NIGHT]
It was late by the time Frank returned to the temple, where he found his uncle and Mr Waldron engaged in an animated discussion upon the subject of the untapped resources of China. The boy had taken some time to climb down the mountain-side. Having no wish to fall into the hands of the scarlet-coated band who had descended into the valley to the south, he had given the bridle-path a wide berth, with the result that he had been obliged to go down upon all fours, and descend stealthily foot by foot.
He lost no time in relating to his uncle all that he had seen. The judge was somewhat surprised, but he did not show any signs of being nervous.