The ex-lieutenant needed no second bidding, and as quickly as he could he arose to his feet. The Japanese took him by the arm and hurried him toward the cellar stairs. In the meantime the others continued to fight, and the Russian stevedores received a sound thrashing. But now one blew a whistle, a signal for the others of the gang to which he belonged.
Gilbert went down the cellar steps and Jiru Siko and his friends came after him. Then the cellar door was shut down and hooked fast. All was so dark Gilbert could not for the moment see anything.
“Come, Jiru Siko show the way,” said the Japanese, and hurried the young American forward through the gloom. They passed across the cellar and into a passageway that was utterly black. All the party followed a moment later, and Gilbert heard a stout wooden door close and heard the bolts as they were shot into place.
When the young American finally emerged from the passageway he found himself covered with dust and cobwebs. He was in a small stone room, almost entirely underground. Overhead was a storehouse, and beyond this the water front.
The room was filled with Japanese and Chinese, and back of it was another room containing a number of women and children, including Jiru Siko’s family. It was a foul-smelling place, damp and unwholesome, but to these conditions Gilbert did not pay attention.
“I must thank you for coming to my assistance,” said Gilbert, as he caught his Japanese friend by the hand. “You came in the nick of time.”
“No forget what Master Pennington do for Jiru Siko,” was the answer. “Very good man, Russians very bad mans—like to fight Russians all time!” And then the Japanese wanted to know if Gilbert was seriously hurt.
“No hurts of any consequence,” said the young American, after an inspection. “I got two or three cracks I didn’t like, but that was all. But if you hadn’t come up as you did, I don’t know how I should have fared. How did you happen to see me?”
“Go out for something to eat,” was the reply. The Japanese did not add that he and his followers had intended to confiscate some goods in one of the storehouses near there, yet such was a fact. All of the party needed food, and, as the war had now begun, they considered that a perfectly legitimate way of getting what was wanted.
It was thought by some that the Russians would try to get into the cellar and follow up those who had attacked them. But when more of the stevedores arrived those who had first set upon Gilbert were too dazed to point out the way by which the young American and his friends had escaped.