Then it was no dream. Everything was wakeful and a fact, for he knew where he was to be imprisoned, the bearers halting and setting down his chair at the beetle-browed entrance of what proved to be the great guard-room of the gateway tower.
Chapter Eleven.
“Tchack! Tchack!”
“They’ll give me some tea,” thought Stan as, with head throbbing so that he could not hold it up, he sank down in the place to which he had been led, too much exhausted by all he had gone through to do more than glance round and see that it was literally a cage, whose floor and bars were of thick bamboos, opening upon a kind of yard from which came a sickening odour.
That was all he could note in the gloom, feeling only too glad to sink down against one side, which also seemed to be formed of bars. Then his eyes closed and he fell into a kind of stupor, in which the whole of the day’s adventures passed before him, from the earliest start till he staggered into his prison and heard the door banged to and fastened behind him. There it all was again, seeming to be beaten into his head with some great mallet with sickening reiteration, till sleep came after burning hours of misery, and the beating upon his brain ceased in oblivion.
Mingled with the thump, thump, thump, thump, as of his troubles being driven into his head so that he should never forget them, he had some consciousness of a door opening and a great red paper lantern appearing through the wall, shining like the moon seen through a thick fog.
Then there was a bang as of some heavy pot being placed on the floor, followed by another which splashed over his hand. Some one seemed to be speaking to him in a hoarse, deep, guttural voice, followed by a surly grunt; but he could not rouse himself sufficiently to answer what seemed in his dream-like state to be questions in the Chinese tongue; while directly after there was a tremendously loud rattling, such as might have been produced by a great staff being drawn over bars. Then further rattling, with shouts as if some one yelled the syllables “Ho, yo fi yup, yup, yup!” close by his head, with the effect of producing other sounds full of rage, snarling, squeaking, and squealing, while bang! bang! bang!—it was as if some great cat, a tiger or leopard, were bounding heavily about its cage.
Then came the rattling as of the great staff being drawn across the bars again, a grunt or two, the banging of the heavy door, and silence.