Notes of a War Correspondent

by Richard Harding Davis

Number One man nodded.

“Have got,” he said.

I totally forgot until the next morning to ask about the enamelled bathtubs.

When I arrived John Fox had gone to bed, and as it was six weeks since any of us had seen a real bed, I did not wake him. Hence, he did not know I was in the hotel, and throughout the troubles that followed I slept soundly.

Meanwhile, Lynch, as a punishment for running away from us, lost his own way, and, after stumbling into an old sow and her litter of pigs, which on a dark night is enough to startle any one, stumbled into a Japanese outpost, was hailed as a Russian spy, and made prisoner. This had one advantage, as he now was able to find New-Chwang, to which place he was marched, closely guarded, arriving there at half-past two in the morning. Since he ran away from us he had been wandering about on foot for ten hours. He sent a note to Mr. Little, the British Consul, and to Bush Brothers, the kings of New-Chwang, and, still tormented by visions of ice and champagne, demanded that his captors take him to the Manchuria Hotel. There he swore they would find a pass from Fukushima allowing him to enter New-Chwang, three friends who could identify him, four carts, seven servants, nine coolies, and nineteen animals. The commandant took him to the Manchuria Hotel, where instead of this wealth of corroborative detail they found John Fox in bed. As Prior, the only one of us not in New-Chwang, had the pass from Fukushima, permitting us to enter it, there was no one to prove what either Lynch or Fox said, and the officer flew into a passion and told Fox he would send both of them out of town on the first train. Mr. Fox was annoyed at being pulled from his bed at three in the morning to be told he was a Russian spy, so he said that there was not a train fast enough to get him out of New-Chwang as quickly as he wanted to go, or, for that matter, out of Japan and away from the Japanese people. At this the officer, being a Yale graduate, and speaking very pure English, told Mr. Fox to “shut up,” and Mr. Fox being a Harvard graduate, with an equally perfect command of English, pure and undefiled, shook his fist in the face of the Japanese officer and told him to “shut up yourself.” Lynch, seeing the witness he had summoned for the defence about to plunge into conflict with his captor, leaped unhappily from foot to foot, and was heard diplomatically suggesting that all hands should adjourn for ice and champagne.

“If I were a spy,” demanded Fox, “do you suppose I would have ridden into your town on a white horse and registered at your head-quarters and then ordered four rooms at the principal hotel and accommodations for seven servants, nine coolies, and nineteen animals? Is that the way a Russian spy works? Does he go around with a brass band?”

The officer, unable to answer in kind this excellent reasoning, took a mean advantage of his position by placing both John and Lynch under arrest, and at the head of each bed a Japanese policeman to guard their slumbers. The next morning Prior arrived with the pass, and from the decks of the first out-bound English steamer Fox hurled through the captain’s brass speaking-trumpet our farewells to the Japanese, as represented by the gun-boats in the harbor. Their officers, probably thinking his remarks referred to floating mines, ran eagerly to the side. But our ship’s captain tumbled from the bridge, rescued his trumpet, and begged Fox, until we were under the guns of a British man-of-war, to issue no more farewell addresses. The next evening we passed into the Gulf of Pe-chi-li, and saw above Port Arthur the great guns flashing in the night, and the next day we anchored in the snug harbor of Chefoo.

I went at once to the cable station to cable Collier’s I was returning, and asked the Chinaman in charge if my name was on his list of those correspondents who could send copy collect. He said it was; and as I started to write, he added with grave politeness, “I congratulate you.”

For a moment I did not lift my eyes. I felt a chill creeping down my spine. I knew what sort of a blow was coming, and I was afraid of it.

“Why?” I asked.