Kobo: A Story of the Russo-Japanese War

by Herbert Strang

That afternoon seemed to Bob interminable. He paced up and down like a caged lion, waiting for the dark. He wondered who the writer of the message was, what it implied, what possible plan of deliverance was in contemplation—for surely it must mean that someone was planning on his behalf. Many times he gazed out of the window, searching the whole vista from the horizon to the river below, knowing all the time that during the daylight nothing would be done, yet looking and looking again. The hours passed slowly, lingeringly. As night began to shadow the hills he ceased his restless walk and remained fixed at the recess in the wall. The sky darkened, his outlook shortened; he lost sight of the hills, at length he could not see the opposite bank. He leant forward in the recess, till his head touched the sides of the outer opening. The wind was fresh and cold, but he heeded nothing. His eyes tried to penetrate the dark until he felt that they were almost projecting from his head. Thus he waited, waited, and shivered, looking, listening, seeing nothing, hearing only the slow gurgle of the river as it rolled down between its frozen borders, and the creaking and grinding of the ice as the floating masses met, and parted, and met again.

So the hours passed, and Bob began to lose heart. Was the message a Russian trap? Yet what could it gain? Was it genuine, but his unknown correspondent had been prevented in some way from keeping the implied appointment? A bugle-call struck his ear; and when its echoes had died away the world relapsed into the same silence, save for the occasional bark of a dog, the dull noises of the ice-laden stream, and the sighing of the wind over the snowy wastes beyond. It became colder; the wind blew more and more keen; and at length, his limbs cramped, his fingers numbed, Bob had perforce to move, and lift his rug from the floor and wrap it round him.

What was that? His hearing was now so acute that he fancied he could have heard the world roll round. What was it? A rustle in the dark; a faint rustle outside the window, like the scraping of a bird's wing against the wall. He strained his eyes; stars were glimmering cold and clear, but there was no moon, and he saw nothing. Again, the same rustle. He tried to grope near enough to the opening to thrust forth his head, and his shoulders stuck; it was impossible, unless—yes, by turning on his side he could wriggle himself to the slit, and he put his head out sideways. Something touched his face, with the cold, filmy touch of a spider's web. He put out his hand; it was gone. Would it return? He waited. Again the same insubstantial contact; and now he seemed to see, against the starlit sky, a gossamer thread. He clutched at it, but it eluded his fingers and disappeared. He waited again, how long he knew not, but it seemed an hour; then the thin line scraped along the outside of the wall until it reached him. He grasped at it, almost fearing to touch it lest it broke and floated away. He held it, and drew it towards him. It was a thin silken cord!

He wriggled back slowly through the recess into the room, holding the cord with gentle firmness. As he pulled it, he felt that only the upper part yielded; the lower part was fixed or held below. He drew the upper string towards him, feeling as if he were playing a fish. For a few moments it came unresisting, then there was a sharp tug, as though the captured object, whatever it was, was making an effort to escape. Suddenly the resistance ceased; even in the darkness the opening in the wall was darkened, and with a somewhat disconcerting scrape against the wall Bob hauled in a large triangle of paper stretched on a light bamboo frame. It stuck in the opening. He had once more to crawl into the recess, and with some difficulty he coaxed the pliant framework through the narrow aperture. It was done. The bent rods sprang back to their former shape, and Bob at last understood what had been puzzling him. It was a kite!

All was now plain; the rustle, the elusive string, the reluctant captive. He remembered how interested he had been at Tokio, in watching the dexterous kite-flying of boys and men; in Japan, as in China, it is more than a pastime: it is an art. The string was attached to a kite, and the person flying it was below. He tugged gently at the cord as a signal that the kite had reached him, and instantly he felt that the line was loose. His pulse beat high. Cautiously he hauled in the slack; foot after foot it came through his hands; would the end of it never come? Yes, here it was; the silken cord was tied to a stretch of twine, and this—how long it was!—to a thicker rope. With eager care Bob drew this last up hand over hand; it was knotted at intervals, and as he pulled he felt the weight increase. At length it resisted his pull, yet gave slightly when he pulled again. Crawling again to the aperture, never letting go his hold, he found that the entrance was barred by a bundle, apparently of cotton waste. By turning this longways he found he could draw it through. No precaution, he perceived, had been neglected; the soft wrapping had deadened any sound.

Hastily untying the bundle, he found by the touch, for it was too dark to see, a chisel, a crowbar, and a hammer faced with flannel. He needed no prompting. It was impossible to loosen the stones in the time he had at his disposal. He knew not, indeed, what the time was; but it must be late, and if he did not escape before daybreak his doom was sealed. The stones of the wall were large blocks firmly cemented, and though the cement at its surface showed signs of crumbling, it was no doubt strong inside. All that he could do was to chip away a few inches on each side of the window, so as to enlarge the space sufficiently to admit of the passage of his shoulders. At the edges the stone was greatly weathered, at the farther end of the recess it was already peeling off. If he could widen the opening by some five inches, he thought it would be possible for him to squeeze through.

This had flashed through his mind in a moment. He started work instantly. Beginning at the outer right edge of the aperture, he applied the chisel to the stonework, and was delighted to find that by the mere pressure of his arm it came away in flakes, which fell to the ground eighty feet below. Working quickly, he had soon scratched away an inch of rotted stone for a distance of two feet along each edge of the opening. But as he went on, he found that the stone was becoming harder; it was necessary to exert more force. It would take long to chip the stone away as he had seen masons do. How could he shorten the labour? Cautiously working with the chisel, he slowly bored a hole two inches deep in the wall, at about the same distance from the outer edge. Then inserting the crowbar, he pressed upon it in an outward direction with all the strength he could exert in his cramped position. To his joy the stonework gave way, and pieces fell with a sharp clatter upon the ground. He waited anxiously, wondering whether any of his guards would have heard the sound. All was silent. Feeling with his hand, he found that the stone had broken irregularly, leaving a jagged surface, and this he proceeded to trim with the chisel. He went through the same double process on each side of the opening.

At last, after hours of work, when muscles of hand and arm ached unendurably, and his whole body felt bruised from lying so long on the hard stone, he thought that the opening must be large enough. Tying one end of the rope to the crowbar, he paid the other out. A slight tug below told him that it had been received: his unknown helper was still in waiting. Then he tied his rug to the twine, and let it gently down. This, too, being caught, he placed the crowbar horizontally across the window on the inner wall, turned on his side, and began to wriggle out of the opening feet foremost, always holding firmly to the rope. Had his work been successful? The question forced itself upon him as he moved painfully towards the outer air. Alas! half-way through he stuck; his jacket and vest were riding up into a ridge; it would increase the more he struggled; he must return to the room.

It was more difficult to get back than it had been to wriggle out. With a great effort he worked his way along the recess, and had just reached the floor of the room when his foot kicked the chisel, and it sped with a clatter across the floor. Immediately afterwards he heard a step in the passage. His jailer must have detected the noise, and would certainly come to discover its cause. It would be impossible to strip off jacket and waistcoat and wriggle out before the man entered, discovered his flight, and gave the alarm or perhaps cut the rope. With a sinking of the heart Bob listened. Was he to fail at the last moment? Perhaps the man would not come in after all. But no; the steps halt at the door; there is a light in the crack below. Bob hears the man fumbling for his keys; a key is inserted in the padlock; the bolt is drawn. By this time Bob, with lightning decision, is behind the door. It opens heavily on its rusty hinges, and half the room is lit up by the dim lantern carried by a Siberian infantryman, who peers into the room, and seeing nothing to his left, advances a few paces to light up the other half. At this moment Bob springs at him like a tiger. One crushing blow beneath the jaw, and the Russian falls backward like a log, his lantern clattering to the floor and being instantly extinguished.

Two seconds passed, seconds crowded with the most rapid thinking hard-pressed prisoner ever accomplished. The noise would draw the man's comrades from below. They must be kept out at all costs. But even if they were excluded, the soldier might be only stunned, or perhaps dazed, and would recover in time to cut the rope. There was nothing at hand with which to tie him up, no time to cut a piece off the rope and retie it to the crowbar. He might kill the man, but the thought was banished the same instant that it occurred to him. Two seconds; then, even as he heard the shouts of men and the trampling of heavy footsteps far below, Bob stooped, lifted the ponderous figure, and, with a strength of which he would not have believed himself capable, hurled him out into the corridor across the head of the staircase.