Held by Chinese Brigands

by Charles Gilson

There could be no doubt upon this point; for not only could the boy see, but he was able to hear quite distinctly, the woodwork of which the small room was constructed being extraordinarily thin. If Ling had been either upon the balcony or in the lower room Frank must have heard him; for the man seldom spoke without raising his voice to such a pitch that he might have been giving a word of command to a regiment of cavalry.

Fully an hour elapsed before the Honanese returned. He was then in a towering rage. He called for Ah Wu, who chanced to be absent in the kitchen. Frank heard Ling inform the proprietor of the opium den that Yung How had escaped on the Hong-Kong boat. Both men then repaired to Ah Wu's private apartments, where they remained for the greater part of the night, Ah Wu occasionally looking in upon the opium den to see that his business prospered.

Until about eleven o'clock the following morning, Frank Armitage was left to his thoughts; and these were none of the pleasantest. He was suffering considerable discomfort. It was a long time since he had had any food; and the great heat and stifling atmosphere of the opium den, together with the pungent smell of the smoke, had served to make him so thirsty that his lips were dry and his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth. He regretted bitterly that he had not been able to escape with Yung How. He felt that he could not stand the extreme suspense of his situation much longer. It seemed to him inevitable that before long Ling would discover who he was.

This was all the more probable, since--according to Ling--Cheong-Chau himself was coming to the opium den. The brigand would be far more likely than anyone else to recognise Frank--because he knew which of his prisoners had escaped, and had evidently come south in order to hunt for the fugitive.

Frank was seized with a great dread that Cheong-Chau had already made away with his other prisoners, that he had murdered both Sir Thomas Armitage and Mr Waldron. There was a possibility, on the other hand, that he had brought his captives with him, which he might have done quite easily on board a river-junk. Knowing full well that he could not hope to obtain the ransom if Sir Thomas and Mr Waldron were known to be dead, he may have decided to send further evidence to Hong-Kong to the effect that his hostages were still alive. On thinking the matter over, Frank was inclined to the belief that this was what had actually happened.

There was another aspect of the business which demanded consideration. It was now Cheong-Chau's intention to go himself to the Glade of Children's Tears, in order to procure the money as soon as it arrived. This, as we know, was a privilege that the mighty Ling had chosen to reserve for himself; and so a meeting between these two redoubtable villains was sooner or later inevitable. Cheong-Chau would have upon his side the advantage of numbers. Ling, on the other hand, was in possession of the more accurate information: he knew Cheong-Chau's whereabouts and his intentions, whilst Cheong-Chau knew nothing about him; he knew also that Yung How had escaped to Hong-Kong and that intervention by the British was by no means improbable--a circumstance of which the brigand chieftain remained in ignorance.

That night Frank endeavoured to work out every possible contingency, until his brain grew dizzy with thinking. At last, dead tired, feeling sick with suspense, hunger and thirst, with such a splitting headache resulting from the foul atmosphere of the den that he could hardly open his eyes, he flung himself down upon the couch and almost at once fell fast asleep.

In the boy's last waking thoughts he found some degree of comfort. He had come to realise that he himself could do nothing. He was at the mercy of fate, in the hands of Providence--just as helpless as a wisp of straw carried down-stream upon the current of a river. So far as his own safety was concerned, he had come to such a pass that it might almost be said that he no longer regarded it. To himself it did not seem a matter of supreme importance whether he lived or died. He had not given up hope, but physical exhaustion and mental strain had done their work.

During the earlier hours of the night his sleep was disturbed and restless. He was conscious all the time of the voices of men talking in the outer room, and these voices were in some way mingled with his dreams, which were nothing but a series of nightmares, in which the sinister figure of the colossal Ling was ever present--Ling with his great hands and brute strength, his long glistening pigtail, his evil, snake-like eyes, his rude jokes, his loud laughter, and the half-mocking, half-serious manner in which he quoted from the writings of the great Chinese philosophers. But, given a fair chance, a sane, healthy and youthful constitution will in the end triumph over both mental and bodily disorders, and towards the small hours of the morning the boy fell into a heavy, dreamless sleep, from which he was not awakened until Ling unlocked the door of the little room about eleven o'clock in the morning.

The Honanese regarded his captive for some moments without speaking.