“Right!” answered Drake. “Come along, boys,”—to the listening crew—“you have heard what’s been said, so you see we’ve got to hurry. Jones, take this fellow Ling down below, and lock him up somewhere until Mr Frobisher is ready for him—I’m not taking any risks this trip. Then, when you’ve done that, take a few of the hands and swing eery one of our boats over into the water. We have enough cases on deck now to begin taking some of them ashore.”
Encouraged by the captain and Frobisher, both of whom worked as hard as, or harder than, any of the seamen, the men buckled-to again in earnest; and soon the chests and cases were leaping up out of the holds on to the decks, off the decks into the boats, and so ashore, at a very satisfactory rate of progress.
All night the work went swiftly and steadily on, and well into the following morning, with only a few minutes’ break for meals. Frobisher went ashore early in the morning with one of the loads, taking Ling with him as interpreter, in order to make arrangements for the transport of the cargo, and also to try to discover if there were as yet any signs of the arrival of the troops.
The villagers proved only too glad of the chance to hire out their carts and animals; and after a lengthy ride along the Yong-wol road, on a horse which he had borrowed, Frobisher satisfied himself that, thus far at any rate, there was no sign of troops in the neighbourhood.
By the time he got back to the ship the last of the cases was just being placed on deck, and two more trips of the little fleet of the Quernmore’s boats would see the whole of the cargo safely ashore. Frobisher therefore ran down to his cabin and, throwing off his uniform, dressed himself in a pair of khaki-coloured riding-breeches, which he had brought out with him from England, thick-soled brown boots, and good leather leggings. An old Norfolk jacket completed the outfit, so far as his outer garb was concerned. And when he had donned an old and somewhat battered, but still serviceable, topi helmet—a relic of more prosperous days—and had fastened round him a leather belt and bandolier combined, filled it with cartridges, and attached to it one of Penryn’s revolvers in a leather holster, it would have been rather difficult to recognise in him the erstwhile smart and spruce Murray Frobisher. Rather he resembled a South African transport-rider in a state of disrepair, and of so truculent an appearance that he might have been expected to put to flight with ease, and singlehanded, a considerable detachment of Korean soldiery. He slipped the second revolver into one of the side pockets of his jacket, and an extra supply of cartridges into the other pocket, and then ran up on deck, ready to start on his perilous journey into the interior.
By the time he had said good-bye to the skipper, and had received his instructions with regard to the collection of the purchase-money and sundry other matters, the last of the cargo had been sent ashore; and Drake’s own gig was waiting at the foot of the accommodation-ladder to take the young man to the landing-place.
As he was on the point of descending the side-ladder, Drake asked him to wait a moment, and ran down below; reappearing, a few seconds later, with a serviceable ship’s cutlass in his hand, which he himself belted round Frobisher’s waist.
“Revolvers are all very well in their way,” remarked the little skipper; “but sometimes a man is too busy fighting to have time to reload, and then he is very glad to have a yard of good, stout steel in his fist. Take it along with you, Mr Frobisher. If there should happen to be a scrap, I feel sure you will find it mighty handy. Avoid a fight if you can, of course; but, as Charlie Dickens says in that play of his, Jim the Penman, ‘once in a fight so carry yourself that the enemy shall be sorry for himself.’ Good-bye, my boy, and take care of yourself!”
With a laughing reply Frobisher clasped Drake’s hand once more, and ran lightly down the ladder into the boat; and fifteen minutes later he found himself safely ashore. The boat pulled back to the ship, where the remainder of the small fleet were already being hoisted up to the davits; and he was alone in a strange land, charged with a dangerous mission, with no white man to share his burden, and with only one man, Ling, who had even a nodding acquaintance with the English language.
Escort there was none, in the usual sense of the word, for the drivers of the carts containing the arms and ammunition-chests, although armed with old-fashioned muzzle-loading muskets, out-of-date halberds, and, in some cases, bows and arrows, could not possibly be relied upon to put up any sort of a fight in the event of an encounter with the regular Korean soldiery. The only person beside himself who was armed with a modern weapon was the interpreter, Ling, who carried a fairly recent and reliable Marlin repeating rifle, holding eight cartridges; but this was all the ammunition he had, so that, if trouble arose, he could not be relied upon very far, either.