Fatigued as he was, he at once sent a message to the general asking the favour of an interview. Within half an hour he was in the presence of the commander-in-chief. He felt a little nervous as he looked at the great soldier. General Kuroki was somewhat taller than the average Japanese. His face was deeply bronzed, his hair and moustache gray and bristly. The sternness of his features was relieved by a humorous twinkle in his dark eyes as he glanced at Bob, who felt that the general's undoubted strength of character was combined with tenderness and humanity. He handed him Kobo's small folded paper, and waited while he read it.
"I thank you, Mr. Fawcett," he said at length, refolding the paper and handing it to an aide-de-camp. "Kobo San's intelligence is of the highest importance, and I am greatly in your debt for having brought it to me at such risk. Kobo San does not say why he has not returned. Do you know where he is?"
"I am very sorry to say, sir, that he is a prisoner. He was wounded in crossing the hills, and I very much fear that he is now in the hands of Chang-Wo, the Manchu brigand."
"Indeed! That is deplorable. Tell me, please, all you know. You were, I think, with Lieutenant Yamaguchi in Seoul; I shall be glad to know of the circumstances which have brought you here. Sit down, you look very tired. Perhaps, indeed, you would rather wait till the morning?"
"No, sir, I would rather tell you now."
He proceeded to relate as briefly as possible his experiences from the time he last saw Yamaguchi to the final escape from the Korean monastery. General Kuroki listened without remark, a faint smile crossing his face when he heard of the novel use made of the gramophone.
"You have had a desperately hard time," he said at the conclusion of the story. "I had already heard part of the circumstances from the American ladies who came in some time ago. I can quite understand their warm praise of you. And, let me say, you are to be congratulated on your escape from the Manchu Chang-Wo; he is a desperate villain—an old enemy of Kobo San, as perhaps you know. But now tell me; you came through the mountains north of the Yalu; is the road practicable for guns?"
"It might, I think, with some labour be made practicable for guns for some miles up to the spot where we first struck the Yalu; but I don't think the path we subsequently followed could be so used."
"That path is marked, I think, tentatively on our maps. Look at this; that is the path, is it not?"
"Yes," said Bob, after a glance at the map unrolled before him.