'For you, nothing; for me, reward.'
The Chinaman swung round on his heel, gave a swift order, and strode out of the place. Then one by one the bearers followed. The door was banged to, the bolts shot home, and David was left alone, alone in his prison, with the moon staring in at him through a window high up in a stone wall, staring in inquisitively as if to ask how this young fellow would face the coming ordeal.
'So it is like that? Ebenezer's hatred of me reaches even to Hatsu,' thought our hero. 'He has hired this rascal to kill me, and it looks as if the man would succeed. So he will if I don't move a little. But I'm not dead by a long way yet; I've still got a kick or two left in me.'
CHAPTER XIII
In a Chinese Prison
If Chang, the man who had so unexpectedly and suddenly led an attack upon the little party journeying via Hatsu to interview Twang Chun, the governor of the province, imagined that he had left David in a condition of terror at the thought of the execution he had threatened for the evening of the morrow, he was very much mistaken, and showed therefore that he knew his prisoner very little indeed; for David was not the one to be long down-hearted. It was not in his nature to give in without a serious struggle. No sooner had the door of his prison been banged and barred, than his spirits rose wonderfully, while he set about seeking for a remedy to enable him to beat his enemies. And the first thing that caused him joy was a discovery he made within a couple of minutes.
'The fools!' he whispered to himself, chuckling. 'The fools! They took me because I was idiot enough to fall asleep, but they forgot to search my pockets. Why, here is my magazine shooter, and here the letters I was carrying. George! Mr. Chang, I shall have something to say when the time for execution comes along; but I ain't going to wait for it if I can help; let's have a look at this cage they've put me in.'
It was a long, narrow cell, with walls formed of hewn blocks of hard stone, and lit by a range of narrow windows placed close to the ceiling. The openings themselves were innocent of glass, or of the Chinese equivalent, namely, oiled paper. Otherwise, the floor was of stone, the ceiling of a dusky white, while, save for himself and the basket in which he had been carried to the place, there was not another thing present. All was in darkness, except a wide stretch of floor on which the moonbeams played, as they crept up one of the walls till the bright patch of light ended at an abrupt edge, a faithful silhouette of the range of windows above placed on the outside wall of the prison.
'Door as safe as houses; heard the bolts shot home,' David told himself. 'Then I've got to reach those windows. Should say they're a good twelve feet from the floor; perhaps the height's even greater. Couldn't reach 'em I fancy, even with a big leap. However, I'll try; nothing like trying.'