The merchant's son was enveloped in a huge cloak, and he carefully avoided the circles of light cast by the electric globes. At his command Grant was unceremoniously dumped into a rowboat moored alongside the pier, then he followed with the stalwart coolie.
Lying out in the bay was a coasting junk, with sails spread ready for departure. Pulling alongside of this, poor Grant was lifted on board, and ten minutes later the Japanese vessel was sailing down the Bay of Tokio bound out.
As the ungainly craft passed Cape King, and slouched clumsily into the tossing waters of the ocean, the lame youth groaned, raised his hands to his aching head, and sat up. He glanced about him at the unfamiliar scene, then struggled to his feet. The swaying deck caused him to reel and then stagger to the low bulwark.
He thought he was dreaming. He looked at the white-capped waves shimmering unsteadily under the moon's rays; the quaint, ribbed sails looming above; the narrow stretch of deck ending in the high bow and stern, and at the half-clad sailors watching him from the shadows.
He glanced down at his tarred trousers and coarse shoes, then he gave a cry of despair. It was not an ugly nightmare. It was stern reality. His enemies had triumphed; he had been abducted.
The proof of valor is the sudden test of a man's courage. The greatest coward can face a peril if it is familiar to him. It is the unexpected emergency—the blow from the dark; the onslaught from the rear—that tries men's souls.
The consternation caused by a shifting of scenes such as had occurred to Grant can be imagined. From an ordinary room in an ordinary native house in Yokohama to the deck of a junk at sea, with all its weirdness of detail to a landsman, is a decided change.
The lame youth could be excused if he had sunk to the deck bewildered and in the agonies of terror. But he did nothing of the sort. As soon as he could command the use of his legs, he promptly marched over to a sailor grinning in the shadows of the mainmast, and catching him by the arm, sternly ordered him to bring the captain.
"Be sharp about it, you dog," he added. "I will see the master of this pirate or know the reason why."
Awed by his tone, the fellow slunk off and speedily produced the captain of the junk. But with him came Ralph Black, smoking a cigar, and with an insolent smile upon his sallow face.