In the tower, at the top of the stairway, he found his strange companion taking a quick view of the raging mob below. As he stepped to his side, the young Chinese turned and stared him full in the eyes. For a moment they regarded each other in amazed silence. Then a simultaneous exclamation burst from their lips:
"Rob Hinckley!"
"Chinese Jo!"
[CHAPTER XVII]
LEAPING INTO UNKNOWN BLACKNESS
To the friends who had been so mysteriously separated many months earlier, and on the other side of the world, their reunion at this place and under such conditions was bewildering and incredible. They could scarcely believe the evidence of their own eyes. The last time Rob had seen Jo the latter had been shorn of his queue, while now his hair again hung in a long, glossy braid. For a moment they stood clasping each other's hand, after the fashion of the West, and staring without speech. There was so much to be said that they could say nothing. Then they were aroused to a sense of imminent danger by the sounds of ascending voices and hurrying footsteps on the stone stairway. Evidently the present was no time for explanations.
"Quick, Rob! Go up there and hide," whispered Jo, pointing, as he spoke, to a rude ladder leading into the darkness of an upper loft. "Stay there till I come or I cannot save you."
Even as he spoke, Jo turned to the stairway as though about to descend, while Rob sprang to the ladder.
A Chinese soldier was so close at hand that he would have gained the room and caught sight of the fugitive had not the young officer arrested his progress with the stern inquiry: