What could I do now? Evening was closing in, and to wander amid those hills alone would be to woo death once more. Yet to remain there with the dead was worse. So I took a look at the robbers, and ventured to search the pockets of the leader of the party, from which I took my precious "passes" and the money, which were still in my belt. Then, having secured them as before, I quitted the scene of slaughter, and made my way across the darkening hills, thankful to the Providence which had preserved me from a horrible death.
All the night I wandered aimlessly—fancying that I was near the camp and the fires, but finding deep and black ravines between myself and them. At length I gave way, and seating myself in a deserted spot, not without qualms concerning wild animals, and commending myself to Heaven, I slept and dreamed.
My dream figured a kind of Robinson Crusoe incident. The savages were preparing their feast on the desert island, I thought, and were passing back and forward in front of the flames. Even in my dream the air "bit shrewdly"—and I shivered and looked on. A vivid dream indeed! I could almost fancy I was awake. I could see the men and the fire, and distinguished dark forms carrying others and throwing them into the flames. My senses were leaving me. Was this a dream or a vision of the fiend's concoction? Was I mad? Had my trouble unhinged my mind?
I shut my eyes and tried to think. I pinched myself, and thumped my chest. I was awake! Opening my eyes I sat up. Still the same weird scene: the black mountain glade, the bright, cold sky studded with stars, the great leaping flame surmounted by thick vapour which rose slowly and crawled along the hill inland. What could it be? I lay for a while, and then crept nearer and nearer to attempt to distinguish the actors in this Walpurgis night-drama enacted on the Manchurian Brocken.
Nearer and nearer I came, lying still a while and then proceeding. The actors were men: I decided that; but their occupation? I lay and looked.
It seemed to me very astonishing that these funereal figures should be thus occupied in such a stealthy manner in an outlying spot amid the hills. What they were destroying I could not discern, because all the surroundings beyond the glare of the fire were more intensely dark than the atmosphere, but I could see, time after time, that the men carried burdens, and cast them into the flames. Then the fearful reflection came into my mind—
These men, Japanese, were thus disposing of their prisoners by torture! Yet I heard no cries, nor saw any resistance.
Again I crawled nearer, nearer. I was then within the circle of leaping light, and lay as still as possible.
Two men appeared near me. They looked around them, and, horror of horrors! saw me extended upon the coarse herbage, my staring eyes reflecting the glare of the flames, no doubt. They at once came towards me, their blackened faces and untidy dress causing them to appear absolutely repulsive. They might have posed, in such surroundings, for fiends incarnate.
Without a word they raised me by shoulders and below the knees; in a careless, rough manner they advanced towards the fire, which was blazing fiercely at a little distance. I could feel the heat of it, but so upset was I, and so perplexed, that I could not utter a sound. My tongue was a piece of dry stick in my mouth, my lips were parched and cracked, and I was almost in a fever. The whole seemed a horrible nightmare—the fire and smoke, the blackness of the more distant surroundings, the black inquisitors, like the assistants pictured in illustrations of the burnings under Queen Mary, which I had seen in the Tower of London—a favourite book of mine. All the accessories were frightful, stupefying, maddening! yet I could utter no complaint, nor was I able to resist my captors.