Phil saw the bright blade circle above the head of a terrified prisoner and then descend. He closed his eyes in horror to shut out the appalling sight.
A report of a pistol shot rang out deafeningly, and he opened his eyes to a view of Langdon with a smoking revolver in his hand, while the executioner lay on the sand beside his victim.
A PISTOL SHOT RANG OUT
CHAPTER VI
DIPLOMACY FAILS
“I guessed as much!” the pilot cried out, striding forward; the guards timidly giving way before his menacing revolver. “These men are Christian converts; it’s but a trick to make us lose face before this rabble.”
He reached the side of the prisoners and raised one to his feet. Phil watched with fascinated gaze as Langdon dragged forward excitedly the chained and terrified men who had been plucked from death by the timely and unerring shot of the American; there was something strangely familiar in the ashen features of one of them.
“This man is a mess attendant from the ‘Phœnix!’” Langdon exclaimed, pointing to the nearer of the two prisoners; “the trick was to execute them before our eyes before we could interfere.”
Both Commander Hughes and Phil saw at once that the pilot was right; there was the ward-room servant who had been missing since the day of the gunboat’s arrival; he was a Chinaman from a distant province and unable to speak the local dialect, and in consequence had been singled out as a victim by the scheming officials.
The midshipman feared that all was lost; he could see no avenue of escape; the viceroy’s attitude was certainly hostile, and how could they, a mere handful of officers armed with only their revolvers, hope to cope with the soldiers of the yamen, to say nothing of the hundreds of thousands of fanatics inside the walled city? A single wave of that treacherous hand would condemn them to a fate from which his soul revolted; he had heard of the terrible deaths meted out to foreigners by these semi-barbarians. The lad glanced anxiously at his companions; he saw in their faces that they were determined to sell their lives as dearly as possible, but the unequal struggle could have but one ending.