So the gate was opened a little way, and the beggar was thrust through it at the points of a dozen spears, some of which pricked him cruelly. Thus driven from the city, he continued his way, walking more strongly now than he had before, over the great stone road leading to Tung Chou.
With sunrise there was borne to his ears the startling sounds of heavy firing in the east, the boom of field-artillery, the rat-tat-tat of machine-guns, and the sharp, volleying crash of musketry. Then came the roar of a heavy explosion, and he felt the earth tremble as though from a distant earthquake. Fugitive Chinese soldiers, many of them wounded, began to appear and hurry past him. A little later, as they threatened to throng the highway, he withdrew to a cluster of ruined mud-huts marking the site of an abandoned village. Here, desperately weary, he flung himself on the ground, and almost instantly fell asleep. An hour or two afterwards he awoke and cautiously peered from his shelter. The highway was deserted, and, regaining it, he again pressed on towards Tung Chou.
At length, the city wall was so close at hand that he could hear bugle-calls sounding beyond it. As he eagerly listened to the familiar notes, a rifle-shot came, without warning, from a ruined village similar to that in which he had rested. The beggar was spun half-way round, and felt a stinging sensation in his right shoulder. A moment later half a dozen Japanese soldiers, forming a scouting party, sprang from the ruins and ran towards him, laughing at the sorry figure he cut. One of them drew a pistol and was about to put him out of the misery indicated by his appearance, when, to their amazement, he shouted to them in a language that they knew to be English:
"I am American! Take me to General Chaffee!"
After a parley he managed to make them understand, and shortly afterwards he stood in the presence of the stern-featured, keen-eyed American commander.
"Well, sir! Who are you? What do you want?" demanded the general.
"I have just come from Pekin with this plan of the walls, sent by the American minister, and my name is Robert Hinckley," was the reply.
The words were hardly uttered when an officer, who had been writing in another part of the room, sprang to his feet and confronted the disguised lad with incredulous eyes.