The Russian waved the man away, and faced the Japanese swordsman. His head seemed to lie upon his right shoulder, and his cruel, sun-darkened face shone with joy. His thick, gleaming white arm was bare. His blade, which had opened the veins of a half-hundred Europeans, screamed like a witch as the master-hand tried it in thin air.
The weapons touched. The styles of the antagonists were different, but genius met genius on its own high ground. Each blade was a quiver of arrows, each instant of survival due to devilish cunning or the grace of God. In spite of his warning, Volbars took the attack and forced it tigerishly. Some demon purpose was in his brain, for he shot his volleys high. A marvelous minute passed, and a fountain of crimson welled from Watanabe, where his neck and shoulder met. The heavy breathing of the Russian was heard now back among his fellow prisoners. The Japanese, sheeted with blood from his wound, defended himself silently. He was younger, lighter, superbly conditioned.
The face of Volbars changed hideously. Sweat ran into his eyes, where the desperation of fatigue was plain. His lips were stiff white cords. Patches of grayish white shone in his cheeks and temples.... For a second his shoulders lifted; then an exultant gasp was heard from his dry throat.
That which had been the left eye in the face of Watanabe burst like a bubble and ran down. Yet not for the fraction of a second did the Japanese lose his guard. Though a window of his throne-room was broken, the kingdom of his courage still endured. The Russian second heard his man gasp, “I’m spent. I can’t kill him!”
The grin upon the awful face of the One-eyed became more tense. He seized the aggressive, and the Japanese lines greeted the change with a high-strung, ripping shout. Watanabe bored in, stabbing like a viper, his head twisted to spare his dark side. Volbars’ limbs were stricken of power. He saw the end, as he was backed toward the prisoners. A tuft of grass unsteadied him for a second—and the Japanese lightning struck.
The sword of the Russian quivered to the earth and the master fell upon it, his face against the ground, his naked sword-arm shaking, the hand groping blindly for the faithless hilt. Watanabe bowed to the prisoners, and walked unassisted back to his own roaring lines. His seconds followed closely, one of them wiping the sword of the Samurai with a wisp of grass.... It appears that Volbars had the audacity to attempt to blind his opponent before killing him. It was like the battle of the Yalu. Volbars, as did General Zassulitch, looked too lightly on the foe....
“A. V. Weed”—what blessings fell upon the name that moment!... He was not with the Russians! Not in the Leper Valley! A cable to the World-News that night brought a reply the next day, to the effect that “A. V. Weed” had never been in touch with the office; that he was the freest of free lances, and brought his messages from time to time to one of the free cables outside the war-zone.... The free cable nearest to Liaoyang—already granted to be the next scene of conflict—was at Shanhaikwan, at the end of the Great Wall. Noreen arranged for mail and dispatches to follow her, and went down the Tokaido, overtaking at Nagasaki a ship which had sailed from Yokohama three days before she left.
TWENTIETH CHAPTER
ROUTLEDGE IS SEEN BY NOREEN CARDINEGH, BUT AT AN EXCITING MOMENT IN WHICH SHE DARE NOT CALL HIS NAME
Noreen breathed sweeter with the shores of Japan behind. The Pacific liner, Manchu, was crossing the Yellow Sea for Shanghai. An evening in early August, and the tropic breeze came over the moon-flecked water, from the spicy archipelagoes below. It was late, and she was sitting alone, forward on the promenade-deck. The thought thralled, possessed her completely, that she was drawing nearer, nearer her soul’s mate. Might it not be given to her to keep the covenant—to find him, though all others had failed?... There was a high light over Asia for her inner eye, this memorable night of her romance. The crush of Japan was gone, and in the great hour of emancipation her love for Routledge, hardiest of perennials, burst into a delicate glory of blossoming—countless blooms of devotion, pure white; and in all honor she could not deny—rare fragrant flowerings of passional crimson....
At Shanghai she sought the office of the North China News, to learn what the war had done during her three days at sea. The Japanese armies were panting—inside the passes which had recently protected Liaoyang. Any day might begin the battle with which Japan intended forever to end Russia’s hold in Liaotung peninsula. The News stated blithely that there was no doubt of the war being over by September.... There was another story in the files of early August, and in the silent office the woman bent long over the sheet, huge as a luncheon-cover. This was an Indian exchange with a Simla mark. An English correspondent, wandering somewhere in the Hills, had run across a white man travelling with an old Hindu lama. A weird mad pair, the story said, half-starving, but they asked no alms. Whither they were going, they would not say, nor from whence they had come. The natives seemed to understand the wanderers, and possibly filled the lama’s bowl. The feet of the white man were bare and travel-bruised, his clothing a motley of Hindu and Chinese garments. The article intimated that he was a “gone-wrong missionary,” but its whole purport and excuse was to point out the menace to British India from unattached white men, mad or apparently mad, moving where they willed, in and out of restless States, especially at such a time as now, when the activity of foreign agents, etc., etc....