The fight was now virtually over, and only a few more long-distance shots were exchanged before the Korean fleet was out of range, leaving the rebel squadron behind them in a state of hopeless confusion. Late that same afternoon the town of Yo-ju was reached, and the men and cargo were disembarked without any signs of the reappearance of the rebels. In fact, the latter had given up the chase, thoroughly disheartened, after the destruction of the steamer, and had reconciled themselves to the loss of the arms.
Fortunately for them, the Englishman, Drake, had not been paid in advance, and the money was therefore still intact and available for the purchase of another consignment; so, with true Oriental submission to fate, they retraced their steps to Yong-wol, and subsequently sent a messenger to Drake, informing him that the convoy had been attacked and overpowered, the whole of the cargo captured, and the young white man in command either slain or made prisoner.
Frobisher, very much alive, but still weak from his wounds, arrived in due time at Asan, closely guarded by a file of soldiery, and was carried direct to the fort at the mouth of the river.
Here he was immediately haled before the officer in command of the garrison and closely questioned, through an interpreter, as to his connection with the matter of bringing arms to the rebels. But he had already foreseen that this would happen, and had decided upon his line of conduct; so he steadfastly refused to supply the required information, even when threatened with the naked sword which the official, in a towering rage, drew and flashed before his eyes.
Seeing that this demonstration produced no effect upon the intrepid young Englishman, Sung-wan—for so the officer was named—gave a few curt orders to the men who were guarding him, and Frobisher was hurried from the room, conducted down several long, gloomy corridors, and finally thrust into a large cell. This, as soon as his eyes became accustomed to the semi-darkness, he could see was furnished with several instruments of a horribly suggestive character; and it did not take a man of his intelligence long to realise that he had at last made the acquaintance of that supremely diabolic institution—a Korean torture-chamber.
Chapter Six.
In the Prison Cell.
“By Jove!” exclaimed the prisoner to himself, as his eyes gradually took in his dreadful surroundings, “I’m sadly afraid that all this means the end of Murray Frobisher, and a mighty unpleasant end it promises to be. No escape possible either,” he went on, carefully making a tour of the apartment, and at intervals tapping on the walls with an iron tool which he had picked up, in an endeavour to obtain some idea of their thickness, and so to judge as to the possibility of digging himself out, if he were left alone long enough. But the results were disheartening, to say the least of it. Every spot where he tapped gave back a dull, solid sound, indicating that the walls were quite unusually thick, and that escape by means of excavation or anything of that kind was absolutely out of the question. The room was somewhat peculiarly shaped, being evidently situated in one of the angles of the fort. The wall containing the thick, oaken, iron-studded door through which he had been thrust was evidently enormously thick, while the chamber itself was some fifteen feet wide by about thirty-five feet long, the end wall opposite the door being curved somewhat in the form of an ellipse, meeting in a blunt angle exactly opposite the door. And high up in this angle, about eight feet above the floor, was a small, iron-barred window, which might, but for the bars, have been large enough to permit of the egress of a man of ordinary size.