Under Escort—A Court-Martial—Leading Questions—The Bear's Claw
Bob's sensations were by no means agreeable as he kept pace perforce with the Cossack's horse. The trot, fortunately, soon slackened to a quick amble, or he must soon have been utterly exhausted. In spite of the cold, the exertion of walking fast, heavily clothed as he was, made him uncomfortably hot, and his physical temperature was matched by his mental condition. He was in a rage; not at being made a prisoner: that was only to have been expected: but at being tied up like a dog, reminding him of the curs he had seen chained to bakers' carts in French villages. Anger, however, was a mere waste of energy, as he soon saw; at present he could only make the best of a bad case,—keep up his courage and his pace without reminders from the evil-looking knout he saw ready to the Cossack's hand.
As he trudged along, two reflections were uppermost in his mind. One was that, having been captured and treated with indignity, he was justified in regarding himself now as a combatant; this gave him a little consolation. The other was, that in Chang-Wo, the Manchu, he had an enemy of a particularly dangerous kind. He remembered Kobo's story of him; and the knowledge that this same man was doing desperate work for the Russians in Korea was not reassuring. The Manchu had evidently recognized him as the stranger who had saved the little Japanese from his vengeance in the Ueno Park, and clearly bore him no good-will on that account.
The road was a difficult one, leading over the rugged hills. Darkness fell, and still the troop pushed on. At length, when Bob felt on the point of collapsing, they rode into a town or village of fair size, which, as he afterwards learnt, was Yong-cheng, on the Pekin high-road. He expected that now at least he would be allowed rest and food, but as soon as the Cossacks arrived at the place they took him before a Russian officer of some rank, apparently a lieutenant-colonel. When preliminary explanations had been given, the colonel ordered the prisoner to stand before him, and in peremptory tones began to question him in French. Bob's French was not very fluent, but he answered as well as he could, repeating the replies he had previously given. He refused to say who had been in his company before he made off on the Cossack's horse, and assured the Russian that he knew absolutely nothing of any communications that may have passed between this person and spies on shore. His persistence made the officer more and more angry, until at last the latter shouted:
"You're a liar! Tell me the truth, or I'll hang you on the spot."
"I have already told you the truth," said Bob quietly. "I don't know whom my friend may have met at Yongampo, and if I did, I could not tell you—surely you must see that?"
"You're an insolent puppy. A means will be found to loosen your tongue. I'll give you a night to come to your senses.—Take him away."
Bob, almost fainting with fatigue and hunger, was led away to a close and dirty hovel, where he was given a hunk of coarse bread and a fat sausage to eat, and there he remained in the custody of two Cossacks through the night. At sunrise, feeling stiff and dispirited, he was again taken before the officer, and again put through an interrogatory, a trooper standing at his elbow holding a knout ostentatiously in his view. But the colonel was again baffled; he received no more information than before; and at length, with a curse of impatience, he roared an order to his men. Bob expected the knout to be immediately applied to his back, but to his surprise he was led out into the open, and after a period of suspense he was ordered to mount a horse that was brought up. A few minutes later he was riding out of the village, a Cossack with cocked pistol on each side of him, and the Manchu in the rear.
The explanation of this change in his destiny was that the Russian colonel had not given up hope of obtaining information, and was sending him to General Sassulitch at Wiju, where perhaps he would be brought to reason. The Cossacks were ordered to guard him carefully, but not to ill-use him, and Bob was somewhat surprised, after what he had heard of the brutality of these reckless soldiers, to find that he was treated with some consideration. The whole of that day was occupied in the journey to Wiju. The country was hilly and rugged, and Bob realized, from the slow rate of progress of himself and his escort, that the transport of a whole army would take much time, especially in this winter weather.
At various points along the road parties of Russian soldiers were met with, but it was not until the three riders came within a few miles of Wiju that Bob had striking evidence of the Russian occupation. To the south of that frontier town large gangs of coolies were at work throwing up entrenchments under the direction of Russian officers. Bob was led close to a numerous party near the high-road, employed in excavating a shelter trench. Their sullen looks and reluctant movements indicated that they were forced labourers, and in the hands of several of the Russians Bob noticed ominous-looking whips. He was not surprised, for if they trusted to the efficacy of the knout in their own army and navy, it was unlikely that they would spare it in the case of Korean peasants.