The Sam-riek men were slaughtered like sheep, and Frobisher found himself surrounded by at least a dozen men, shooting and stabbing at him until it seemed miraculous that he still survived. He laid about him desperately, and many a man of the enemy went down under the terrific sweep of his cutlass—his revolvers he had emptied long ago, save for a single shot which he was hoarding against some special emergency.
But the fight could not last much longer; his foes pressed so closely about him that Frobisher could no longer freely swing his cutlass, while the blood running down into his eyes half-blinded him. Out of the corner of one eye, however, he suddenly caught sight of a heap of cartridges that he had emptied on the ground for his men to help themselves from. His foes had driven him almost on the top of the pile, and, seeing that there was no possible escape, the young Englishman determined to sell his life dearly.
With his cutlass hand he warded off the blows that were raining upon his head, and with the other he fired the last chamber of his revolver right into the middle of the heap of ammunition. The next instant there shot forth a dazzling burst of flame accompanied by a crackling report, and for a brief instant Frobisher had a confused vision of torn and writhing limbs and bodies. Then something struck him sharply; there was a sound as of roaring, tumbling, thundering waters in his ears; and he knew no more.
Chapter Five.
On the River.
When Frobisher recovered consciousness he became aware of most excruciating pains in his head and his left side, and so extreme was his suffering that he could scarcely restrain a groan. To add to his discomfort he was in complete darkness, and furthermore he was being jolted and shaken about in a most agonising manner.
Sick and faint with pain, it was several minutes before he was able to recall what had happened to him; and then he remembered the last scene of the fight, when, in the hope of destroying as many of his foes as possible, he had discharged his revolver into the heap of ammunition. There must, he recollected, have been some hundreds of rounds of cartridges lying loose within a very few feet of him, and it was doubtless a bullet from one of those that had struck him in the side and, he felt pretty sure, shattered one or more of his ribs. As for the pain in his head, that was of course accounted for by the stroke which he had received across his forehead early in the fight.
He put up his hand to his aching brow, and discovered to his surprise that it had been carefully bandaged, and that the wound had evidently been cleansed, for his hair was still damp, and there was no clotted blood adhering to it. Also he found, upon further investigation, that his jacket had been removed, and that his body had been strapped up with rough wrappings. It appeared probable, therefore, that his captors had received orders to capture him alive, if possible; otherwise, knowing as he did the usual methods adopted by the Chinese and Koreans toward their wounded prisoners, he felt tolerably certain that he would have been barbarously destroyed while still unconscious—particularly as he had been the direct means of bringing a dreadful death upon so many of his assailants. As he thought of this he could only come to one conclusion—he had been kept alive in order that, upon his arrival at head-quarters, he might be examined, by torture if necessary, as to the extent of his knowledge of the plot against the Government, and as to the existence of any other schemes for bringing arms into the country.