Just as we were ready to start two or three country people came and asked for medicines for trifling complaints. Was anything ever so ill-timed? Surely we could not wait then, when the lives of our poor people as well as our own perhaps depended on our speedy departure. But not so, counseled my husband. These men and women needed help which we could give. It was our duty to show that we, as the servants of Jesus, had come in a spirit of brotherhood and love, and it gave us a fine opening to deliver a message and to distribute the printed Word—it would not take long, and in any case were we not in God’s hands? So not knowing what moment the ruffians might return to drag us away to share the unknown fate of our attendants, perhaps death, surely torture, I prescribed. Alas! I hope none of my patients were poisoned; but with so distracted a mind did I work that it was very difficult to fix my thoughts on afflicted eyes, ears and throats, etc. At length all had been seen, the medicines repacked, when another patient appeared; again we waited, I diagnosed and prescribed and Mr. Underwood prepared the medicine; but still another and yet another appeared, till I began to think we should not be able to leave that day at all. At last, however, all were satisfied, and we started with our race with time, considerably after two o’clock.
We had twenty-five English miles to travel before we could reach the nearest magistrate, on a road leading through and over the mountains. It was wild and exceedingly beautiful, but correspondingly rough and difficult. Sometimes it was only the narrowest foot-path, running along a ledge of rocks overhanging the stream; sometimes it was almost lost among great boulders, which must be skirted or surmounted. The loveliest wild flowers were all around us, but for once they did not tempt us to linger. We had barely left the confines of the village before we saw in the road before us the prostrate and apparently inanimate body of a man, whom we soon recognized as our constable. He proved to be not dead, but simply fainting from the cruel beating he had received. He soon revived a little and begged us to hurry on for aid. He was too much exhausted and bruised to be carried on with us, unless we abandoned our purpose of reaching the magistracy that night, which it seemed for the best good of all to do; so most reluctantly we left him to the mercy of the villagers. It was a sore alternative, but otherwise help for the others would have been delayed many hours.
When we had proceeded two or three miles farther we saw a line of armed men half kneeling barring the road in front of us, with their guns aimed apparently at us. I of course concluded that my last hour had come, but we decided that to advance with no signs of fear or doubt was the only course to pursue, and found a few minutes later that our formidable-looking opponents were only some hunters waiting game that was being driven towards them by others. Our road steadily ascended, and was more and more difficult. Where it was worst I walked to relieve the tired coolies, for even with four men and a light burden it is no easy matter to carry a chair up the mountain side on a warm April afternoon. When sunset was almost due, and we had many miles yet to go, the coolies insisted on waiting for supper. I dreaded the possible necessity of being obliged to spend a part of the night unsheltered in a country that seemed so hostile, added to which the other thought of the necessity for speed made it seem impossible and wicked to delay for such a paltry thing as food.
Why the men who had seemed so bitter and cruel at noon had not followed and attacked our weakened party I have never been able to entirely explain. I can only surmise that, like most Asiatics, they were firmly convinced that Mr. Underwood, in common with all foreigners, always went heavily though secretly armed, and that any attempt to injure our persons would result in awful calamity. In addition, our passport and the well-known fact that we were on very friendly relations with the palace may have made them fear the consequence of harming us, even though they were more than half resolved to do so. More than this, the villagers who forbade them to touch us probably knew their haunts and would be able to hunt them out; and lastly, the fact that Mr. Underwood stoutly resisted them and showed no signs of fear undoubtedly had a marked effect upon their treatment of us. Witness the fact that even the little soldier, the only man of our native party who fought them and showed no fear, was the only one of the Koreans who escaped unhurt. If we had at any moment shown ourselves afraid of them they would have taken it as sure proof that we were defenseless. Had they seen our little revolver, and known it for our only weapon, they would have counted us, as we were, practically helpless, and our fate might have been decided very differently.
At the time I felt certain they were not through with us, but having weakened our party, they would attack us in the lonely road, far away from the friendly village, and finish their work.
We could scarcely hope to distance them, handicapped as we were, but I felt we could not put too much space between them and us, and many a backward glance I cast, expecting to see them emerge any moment from some rock or tree. Good for man or woman it is to feel one’s self cast utterly on God’s mercy, and entirely in his hands, to know one’s self beyond all human aid, with him alone to look to for succor. As I turned to my husband that day and said, “Well, there’s nothing left to do but to trust the Lord,” it flashed over us both how commonly we only trust him when there is nothing else to do, as if his help were the last we should ever invoke, a last forlorn hope. How far, far too much, we fall into the habit of trusting in an arm of flesh and all the frail little human makeshifts with which we encompass ourselves and fancy we are safe. But how near he seems, how strong the uplift of the “everlasting arms,” when the soul is left alone to him.
We were forced to wait some time while our tired coolies fed, the darkness meanwhile coming on rapidly. At length, rather than waste any more time, I started, walking in advance and leaving the coolies to follow; eat I could not. Soon the road divided into two, one a short cut over the mountain, the other a much longer one around it; we decided to take the shorter road, which also leading through the woods became extremely dark, so that in a short time we were obliged to call for torches, the road too turning out to be very bad. It was barely a foothold, circling and twisting down the precipitous mountain side. Mr. Underwood soon concluded that he would rather trust his own feet than his pony’s, as we heard the displaced stones go rattling down into depths far below; but as for me, though I would have much preferred to descend from my chair, which had some time before overtaken us, I was now so tired that it would have delayed us too much and added nothing to my safety.
Still it was rather an uncomfortable thing to be carried along on the brink of a precipice, down a slippery, uncertain path, in a darkness which was scarcely relieved, only made visible, by the flickering torchlights, especially as they invariably burned out before the next came up, and we were obliged at times to proceed a quarter of a mile or more—it always seemed more—in total darkness; and yet worse than this is probably often experienced by people traveling in the mountains for pleasure. At last, however, after nine o’clock, Mr. Underwood came to the chair and bade me look up. There above us on a hill in relief against the starlit sky stood the walls and gate of the little city. A city of refuge indeed, and we realized that night, a little at least, of the joy of the hunted, who, closely pursued by the avenger of blood, found himself safe within protecting walls. The gates were hospitably open as our messenger had arrived, and we were expected.
We were told that it was a custom in many towns in the north to set a lamp in each doorway as a token of welcome to expected guests who for any reason were persons of importance. As we passed down the street and saw these bright little beacons before each door our hearts were deeply touched. Although it was too late for a formal audience, and the gate of the magistracy was closed, my husband insisted on being admitted at once. The request was granted and he hurried in and began the usual ceremony of introducing himself, when a familiar voice exclaimed, “And don’t you know me?” Then for the first he looked closely into the face of the official before him, and found that he was an old friend from Seoul, who had often been entertained at our house.
All was now easy. The events of the morning were carefully related, with the request that the police should be sent at once to rescue and bring back our people, reclaim our goods and arrest, if possible, the criminals. This he promised to do at once, and in fulfillment, immediately ordered up the hunters, a guild of brave men who know the woods and mountains for miles around, and who fear nothing. His spokesman then called out to them in loud tones, which thrilled through the clear starlit night, the order to go at once, find and arrest the robbers, and bring safely our attendants and goods in three days’ time, or lose their heads. To which they replied in a sort of chant in a minor key that they would so arrest, reclaim, and bring back in three days’ time or would lose their heads. The last syllable long drawn, rolled, rippled, and re-echoed, seeming to die away somewhere among the stars. The condition about the loss of their heads was, of course, merely for rhetorical effect, or very likely the echo of an old custom, the address and reply being probably a form hundreds of years old. At any rate, though they returned after three days had passed, their mission not fully accomplished, there was no talk of beheading, or thought of it in any quarter.