A Chinese Command: A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas

by Harry Collingwood

Then, one morning, when Frobisher awoke and commenced to dress—for he had made a practice of undressing at night, that he might feel the cleaner and more refreshed next day—he discovered, to his astonishment, that his boots had mysteriously disappeared during the night. He searched everywhere for them, but they were nowhere to be found. For whatever reason—and he puzzled himself to think of a satisfactory one—his foot-gear was undoubtedly missing, and there was an end of the matter. The curious happening vexed him considerably. It seemed such an idiotic trick to play; and the more he thought about the matter the more convinced he became that this joke, or whatever it was intended to be, had a deeper significance than he had at first imagined.

Since his arrival in China he had contrived to acquire a fragmentary knowledge of the language, and by its means he endeavoured to ascertain from the man who nightly brought him food the reason for the apparently senseless prank; but the fellow either could not or would not understand, and Frobisher was obliged to give up the attempt.

The jailer had hitherto been in the habit of closing the iron-bound door behind him with a slam, rattling the lock after him to make sure that it was fastened, when he brought the prisoner’s food; and this circumstance had come to be so expected by Frobisher that when, on the evening of the day on which his boots had disappeared, the man simply pulled the door to gently behind him and went off about his business without even trying the lock, the omission immediately attracted the Englishman’s attention.

The man had never before been so careless, and Frobisher could not decide whether he had been thinking of something else at the moment, and had succumbed to an attack of absent-mindedness, or whether he had suddenly recollected something that he had forgotten, and intended to pay another visit to the cell. Whichever it might be, Frobisher believed he saw in the circumstance a possibility of escape of which he instantly determined to avail himself.

With stealthy footsteps he crept across the stone-flagged floor, scarcely daring to breathe lest his movements should attract some inconvenient person’s attention. He had, it is true, heard the jailer walk away down the corridor; but perhaps, playing some stupid joke, the man had crept back noiselessly, and was even now outside the door, listening and chuckling to himself at the prisoner’s foolishness in imagining that he would be careless enough to go away leaving the door unfastened. The mere idea caused the beads of sweat to start out on Frobisher’s forehead; disappointment would be too terrible!

But he swiftly pulled himself together, and, with fingers that trembled in spite of himself, he touched the old-fashioned latch and slowly, very slowly, raised it, pulling the door gently toward him as he did so.

The door opened, and, scarcely daring to credit his senses, Frobisher pulled it still wider open, and a moment later was able to look out into the corridor. There was an antiquated oil lantern hanging at the foot of the stone stairway, placed there for the jailer’s convenience, and by its light the prisoner was able to see that the corridor was empty. Then the incident of the door was no trick, after all, and the man had really suffered a lapse of memory. Twenty-four hours would elapse before he returned, and Frobisher’s absence was discovered, and the latter hoped by that time to be far away, if he could but find some mode of escaping undetected from the building. The first and most serious obstacle in the way, the cell door, was overcome; now to find whether his luck would still hold, and if he could find another unguarded gate leading to freedom.

First of all, however, he must have some covering for his feet. He knew that he could not walk far barefooted over rough ground; and, if pursued under such circumstances, capture would be certain and speedy. He therefore removed his shirt and undervest, and tearing them into strips, he swathed the wrappings round his feet somewhat after the manner followed by the Spanish mountaineers. This done, he next had to ascertain whether the remaining doors between himself and freedom were locked or unlocked.

The first door he came to was the one at the foot of the stairs, and, as might have been expected, this was closed; but it was not locked. The pirates had clearly pinned their faith on the stanchness of the cell door. Close to this, in the opposite wall of the passage, were the other doors which Frobisher had observed when being conducted to his prison; and it was through one of these that he must pass if he was to escape at all. The passage itself, he remembered, simply communicated with the main building of the fort, and to travel by that path was tantamount to running into the arms of his captors.

With infinite care he tried the latch of the door on the left. It was locked.