[THE DOCTOR'S RUSE.]
One morning in September, 190-, there came to the office of Doctor Frederic Curtin, a young English physician in Hongkong, a native junkman from the Chinese city of Swatow, about two hundred miles northeast of the English city. The junkman brought a letter to the doctor from an old acquaintance, the Rev. James Burren, a missionary in the vicinity of Swatow; and the letter begged Curtin to come and attend the missionary's young son, who was suffering from a puzzling and lingering illness.
As none of his patients in Hongkong demanded his immediate attention, Curtin was free to respond to the call. The Silver Moon, the trading junk that had brought the letter of appeal, was to leave on the return voyage the next day at noon; and as this junk offered the only means of reaching Swatow for several days, Curtin engaged passage on the slow-sailing, clumsy vessel.
There had been much activity that summer among the native pirates that infest the coast waters of the China Sea; and although the doctor did not expect to encounter any of these gentry, he took the precaution of placing in his valise two heavy navy revolvers and a quantity of cartridges.
The Silver Moon sailed on the morrow at midday, as scheduled, and, driven by a wide spread of canvas, slipped through the deep-blue, lapping water of this Eastern sea at a much better speed than the doctor expected. That evening a nearly full moon floated in the clear sky, and gave a glory to the ocean that Curtin had never seen surpassed. He sat on deck until late, and when he did go down to his cramped berth in the cabin below, he dropped into a sleep so profound that his first intimation of danger was when he was awakened by fierce, wild cries and the scurrying and trampling of many feet on the deck overhead.
He sprang to get his revolvers. But while he fumbled with the catches of the case, there was a rush of footsteps down the passageway outside; and the next moment the frail door burst in with a crash before the attack of half a dozen nearly naked Chinamen, who had revolvers and short curved swords. The Silver Moon had fallen a prey to pirates, and Curtin calmly submitted himself to the invaders.
He was allowed to dress. In the meantime the pirates rummaged through his baggage, including the rather portly black leather case in which he carried his medicines and surgical instruments. When he was hustled on deck a few moments later he found lying alongside the Silver Moon a huge junk, and swarming over the captured vessel a motley horde of evil-looking barbarians.
The crew of the Silver Moon, awed and cringing, was huddled forward under guard.
But Curtin was not placed with the other captives. At a word from the thin, wiry man who appeared to be the leader, two of the pirates marched the doctor straight aboard the strange junk, where they proceeded to bind his arms and legs with ropes, and left him near the foremast, to sprawl or sit on the hard deck, as he chose.