"Hai-yah! What are you doing, men of Tang-ho-kou? Is this foreigner a Russian that you treat him thus? A fine thing truly! You skulk in your fangtzes, afraid to come out with the honourable Ah Lum and me and fight the Russians, and yet you are bold enough to catch a solitary man, a friend of the Chinaman, and to misuse him thus because he is alone! Know you not that he is an enemy of the Russians? They have imprisoned his father; it is reverence for his father that brings him here. Is filial piety so little esteemed in Tang-ho-kou to-day? Ch'hoy! I see your headman aping a lordly mandarin; let him listen. I say you are lucky I do not burn your village and execute a dozen of you as you were about to execute the stranger. But I will be merciful. I will take from you a contribution of five thousand taels for my chief; and your headman—ch'hoy! he shall stand for half an hour in the cage. That shall suffice. But beware how you offend again. Learn to distinguish your friends from your enemies—an Englishman from the Russians whom the dwarfs of Japan are helping us to drive back to the frozen north. Take heed of what I say—I, Wang Shih, the worthless servant of his excellency Ah Lum, the virtuous commander of many honourable brigands."
This speech made an impression upon the crowd. The headman was beginning to slink away, but Wang Shih noticed the movement and sent one of his men after him. In spite of his protests he was dragged to the cage, from which Jack, now fully conscious, had been removed; he was fastened in it, and compelled to tiptoe as his erstwhile prisoner had done. But after some minutes Jack, with a vivid remembrance of his own sufferings, interceded for the wretched man, and Wang Shih released him, bidding him collect from the villagers the tribute he had demanded. The presence of the thirty well-armed Chunchuses was a powerful spur to haste, and within half an hour the amount was raised. Meanwhile Jack's neck had been bathed, and his muscles were beginning to recover from the strain to which they had been put. He declared that he was well enough to ride away with his deliverers. He had first to pay the guard the fifty dollars agreed upon. Not wishing to disclose the hiding-place in the soles of his boots where he kept his notes, he borrowed from Wang Shih the necessary sum in bar silver. Then, mounted upon a horse borrowed from the headman's own stables, he rode with the brigands from the village.
CHAPTER IX
Ah Lum
Ishmaels—The Chief—Fair Words—Wise Saws—Ah Fu's Tutors—An Honorary Appointment—Chopping Maxims—A Deputation—Hunting the Boar—A Forest Monarch—Charging Home—The Knife—A Close Call
The Chunchuse camp, Jack learnt as he rode, was some thirty miles distant in the hills. It had been shifted; it was always shifting; that was why the intervention of Wang Shih had been so nearly too late.
Jack was somewhat amused when he reflected on the strange company in which he found himself. He had heard a good deal about these redoubtable bandits, but never till this day had he seen any of them. Their bands were, he knew, very miscellaneous in their composition. Escaped prisoners, whether guilty, or innocent like Wang Shih, frequently sought refuge with one or other of the brigand chiefs. Men who had been ruined in business, or were too indolent for regular work; men possessed of grievances against the mandarins, or by a sheer lust of adventure and lawlessness; helped to swell their numbers; and Mr. Brown had once remarked that they reminded him of the motley band that gathered about David in the cave Adullam: "Every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented".
The name Chunchuse means "red beard", and was originally applied by the natives to any foreigner. Since the bandits were almost all clean-shaven, like the majority of Chinamen, Jack could only conjecture that they were styled "red beards" from some fancied resemblance of their predatory ways to the methods of the hated foreigners. They were held in terror by all the law-abiding inhabitants, and the machinery of the Chinese government was totally unable to keep them down. Since the coming of the Russians they had grown in numbers and in power. Knowing every inch of the country they were able to wage an effective guerrilla warfare against the invaders, often surprising scouting parties of Siberian riflemen or Cossacks, raiding isolated camps, damaging the railways, and capturing convoys.
Jack was interested in taking stock of his strange companions. They were tall strapping fellows, powerfully built, with muscular and athletic frames, and they included men of every race known in Manchuria. Their costumes differed as greatly as the men themselves. Some were clad in the usual garb of Chinamen; others had black cloth jackets with brass buttons, tight-fitting trousers, and long riding-boots reaching to the knees. Their heads were covered with knotted handkerchiefs of red, black, or yellow cotton, beneath which their pigtails were coiled up out of sight. Each carried a rifle and a revolver stuck in his leather belt.
On the way to the camp Wang Shih gave Jack a few particulars about the band, in which he had already risen to a high position. Ah Lum, the chief, had been for many years notorious for the daring with which he would swoop with a few men on rich merchants travelling through the country, even though they might be escorted by Chinese soldiers. But since the outbreak of the war such sources of gain had ceased, and he had gradually collected a very large following for the purpose of conducting irregular operations against his country's despoilers. All were magnificent horsemen; the Russians had in vain endeavoured to hunt them down; and the very rifles they carried were the spoil of successful raids.