"In a junk. You must take your chances of safe arrival. And mind, sir, you must not come here again. Twice is enough!"
"I certainly will not," said Fred, "if I can help it."
General Stoessel asked a few more questions concerning the reporter's escape from Liaoyang.
"It was like a crazy American," he said, more good-humouredly. Then he shook hands with Fred. "I hope you will have a safe voyage to Chefoo. Farewell!"
With the same precautions against the correspondent's discovering anything of value to report outside the walls, he was led back across the city and the next morning he left Port Arthur in a droschka, or light road-waggon, and—still blindfolded—was driven to a plain near Loisa Bay. At this point the bandage was removed from his eyes and he scrambled down a hilly path to the shore, where he was locked up in a small stone hut until late in the afternoon, when—blindfolded again—he was led over the beach to a sampan and taken off to a junk, one of three which were getting under way—a huge, dirty craft, like that in which he had sailed on his outward trip.
A Russian naval officer and boat crew accompanied him to the outer roads, where they said good-bye, entered their own boat and returned to the city. Fred noticed, the bandage having now been finally removed, that the Czarevitch, Retvizan, and some other damaged ships had been patched up and were changing anchorage under their own steam.
The next morning the daring reporter once more set foot on the dock at Chefoo.
FOOTNOTE:
[4] Since this paragraph was written a despatch in the daily press of the United States has announced that a short time ago a syndicate of American capitalists was formed to buy up the "cash" used by the natives of China, and sell it for the pure copper used in the coins. In this way enormous profits have been made, it is said, by the promoters of the scheme, and the larger cities of the Empire have been almost stripped of small change.