The North Pacific

The Petropavlovsk was a first-class battle-ship of about 11,000 tons, with heavy armament of twelve-inch guns and secondary batteries. She had on board the admiral, the regular crew of 650 men, the Grand Duke Cyril, and, as a special guest, the famous painter Verestchagin. Makaroff, with several officers of high rank, having satisfied themselves that the ship was in no immediate danger, proceeding as she now was under good headway, toward her home port, with the Japanese fleet hull down in the offing, went below to breakfast. The Grand Duke and the great artist remained on the bridge with the commander of the flagship and its lieutenant. They scanned through their glasses the far-off pursuers, and the frowning forts on Golden Hill, and congratulated each other on the escape of the Russian squadron from the danger of annihilation by an immensely superior force. Not a man of them guessed the near presence of a peril, unseen beneath those waves, dimpling in the morning sunlight, more terrible than the whole array of Japanese battle-ships on the horizon. Verestchagin, then the greatest living painter of death on the battle-field, knew not that Death was at that moment gliding toward him; that he was taking his last look at the drifting clouds, the rippling sea, the blue hills of Manchuria. The Petropavlovsk sped onward, but faster, beneath the waves, sped the Octopus, guided by the fierce eyes, the strong hand, the glowing heart and brain of the small brown man erstwhile cabin steward of the Osprey.

Suddenly the great battle-ship quivered from stem to stern, as if she had struck upon a rock. The sea rose on the starboard side in a tremendous wave, and a roar like a broadside of a frigate filled the air, followed by a rattling, crashing discharge from the magazines. A huge gap appeared in the hull of the ship. A cataract of water poured in, and slowly turning upon her side, with one great, hissing gasp the Petropavlovsk sank.

The other ships of the squadron hastened to the spot, and almost before the fighting-tops of the battle-ship disappeared their boats were foaming across the water to pick up the survivors from the ill-fated vessel. The Grand Duke was saved, as were the lieutenant, two other officers, and about fifty sailors. Every other man went to the bottom. Never again would the guns of Russia boom out their noisy salute to the gallant admiral; and Verestchagin had made his last great study of Death.

CHAPTER XV.

UNDER THE RED CROSS

When Fred Larkin regained consciousness, after being hurled into the sea, he found himself lying on a large table covered with a white cloth. Around him stood a number of big, burly men with black beards and stern but not unkindly faces. He knew at once that they must be Russians, and (having applied himself vigorously to the study of their language on his outward voyage from San Francisco) addressed himself to the most amiable-looking of the lot.

"Where am I?" he asked, in very poor Russian.

The man did not reply, but said, "Do you speak French?"

"Oui!" replied Larkin, glad to know that he could converse in a tongue much more familiar to him than the former. He repeated his question, adding, as a twinge of pain shot through his shoulder, "I am hurt."

"Yes," said the other; "you were struck by a splinter. We picked you up from the water and brought you here. You are English?"

"American. Am I in Port Arthur, then?"

"You are near Port Arthur, at Laouwei. What were you doing in the Chinese junk which was sunk by the Japanese?" demanded the Russian more sternly.

"I am a newspaper correspondent," said Fred boldly, though in a weak voice. His wound pained him more and more, and he rightly guessed that the collar-bone was fractured. "I have been in Tokio, and could not reach the front, so I crossed over to your side, where, they tell me, the press receives more consideration. My credentials are in my inside pocket."

The officer – for such Fred deemed him to be – smiled grimly, but made no comment upon this speech.

"You must be taken to the hospital in the city, where they will set your broken bone," he said. "Meanwhile you will pardon the discourtesy of covering your face."

A word of command was given, and a light cloth laid over the reporter's head. He was then placed gently upon a stretcher and carried on board some kind of a vessel. Before long Fred heard the clamour of a wharf crowd; then felt himself lifted again and borne through the streets of a city which he knew must be Port Arthur, up a rather steep hill, to a building where he was deposited on a cot beside two other men. The cloth was now removed, and the first object which met his eye was the kind, good face of a young woman, on whose arm was bound a strip bearing a red cross. With a feeling that he was in a safe refuge he meekly took the medicine held to his lips and fell into a deep sleep.

Between his sleeping and waking, the collar-bone was set that afternoon. Fred only remembered a confused sense of gentle hands and rough voices, of the smell of chloroform, of a general battered and "want-to-cry" feeling; and, at last, of utter abandonment of restfulness. The next morning he was weak and a little feverish, but he felt like a new man. In three weeks, the surgeon told him, he would be about again. Fred made use of his first returning strength to cable to the Bulletin and ask for instructions. The censor passed the message without cutting. The reply was terse: "Remain Russian army."

The time passed pretty heavily with the disabled correspondent, during his convalescence at the hospital. From the window of his room he could look down on the harbour and see the Russian war-ships. His two room-mates, Japanese officers from one of the stone-laden hulks sunk in a vain attempt to block the channel in Hobson fashion, had been sent to prison soon after his arrival.

From time to time he obtained scraps of information from other patients, from the hospital surgeon-staff, and from his gentle little nurse, Marie Kopofsky, a native of Moscow. Not "at the Czar's command," but of her own free will, she had volunteered, as had hundreds of Japanese women on their side of the sea, to nurse the sick and wounded at the front, under the banner of the Red Cross.

On the day before he left the hospital Fred was walking idly through the corridors to his room, when his ear caught the sound of an unpleasantly familiar voice. It recalled the prison at Santiago, where he had been confined at the close of his daring scouting expedition during the Spanish War. It recalled, too, strangely enough, the bright days he had recently passed at Tokio. Suddenly a light broke upon his mind.

"Stevens!" he exclaimed under his breath. "That mean traitor who tried to bribe me to betray the secrets of the United States navy to the Spanish – he and Señor Bellardo are the same man! It was the beard and the dark complexion that fooled me! What tricks is he up to now, I wonder?"3

Fred turned away abruptly, before Stevens caught sight of him, and entering his private room closed the door.

"I may not be here long," he muttered, "but while I am I will keep an eye on that fellow."

The next day he received his discharge from the hospital, and obtained lodgings at a respectable hotel near by. As soon as possible he presented his credentials to General Stoessel, and received a newspaper pass, with the instructions of the Russian government governing war correspondents at the front. They were, in brief, as follows:

Rule I. Correspondents must not interfere in any way with the preparations for war, or the plans of the staff, or divulge military secrets of advantage to the enemy, such as actions in which forts are damaged or guns lost.

II. No criticism of members of the General Staff, Corps, or Division Staff. The report of an engagement must be limited to a simple statement of fact.

III. Correspondents must not transmit unconfirmed information about the enemy, such as rumours of victory, or threatening movements, which may cause public uneasiness in Russia.

IV. All correspondents without credentials will be turned back. Those given permission to join the forces are in honour bound to observe the regulations, with the penalty of expulsion without warning for any violation. They can go anywhere in the field, and are barred only from the Russian fleet.

"H'm," said Fred, as he read over the printed rules, "fair enough, though 'a simple statement of fact' is hard lines on a flowery writer. If my friends the Japs had been as liberal, I shouldn't have got into Port Arthur in a hurry."

He soon made the acquaintance of two or three other newspaper men from European capitals, and managed to get a few good cables through the censor without their being mangled beyond recognition. He soon discovered Stevens's lodgings, where he learned that the traitor had the entrée of Staff headquarters, and was known as Henry Burley, of Liverpool. For the present Fred could see no spoke to put in his wheel, for the interests of the United States were, as far as he knew, in no way involved in the man's character or actions. Still, as Fred soliloquised, "he would bear watching."

The war proceeded with unabated vigour. During the second week of Fred's enforced idleness another sea-tragedy took place in the Yellow Sea, off Korea. The Japanese transport Kinshiu Maru was proceeding from Nagasaki to the Korean coast, with ammunition, coal, supplies, and infantry. In the middle of the night several large ships loomed up through the haze. Supposing them to be Togo's fleet, the Kinshiu Maru signalled, "I am bringing you coal." What was her commander's dismay to read the answer, twinkling out in red and white Ardois lights, "Stop instantly!" At the same moment the cry ran through the transport, "The Russians! the Russians!"

"Surrender!" signalled Admiral Yeszen, from his flagship. It was the Vladivostock squadron of formidable cruisers, released at last from the ice which for months had both protected and fettered them.

Instead of surrendering, the crew of the Kinshiu Maru began to lower their boats in mad haste, hoping to escape in the darkness; a Russian steam cutter captured every boat but one, which was afterward picked up by a Japanese schooner, many miles from the scene of the disaster.

The Russians boarded the transport, and found about one hundred and fifty soldiers, who barricaded themselves in the cabin and refused to surrender. Withdrawing to their ships, the victors began to shell the doomed hulk. The Japanese soldiers swarmed on deck and discharged their rifles in the direction of the foe, shouting old Samurai battle-songs. Pierced and shattered, the transport settled lower and lower in the water. At last a Whitehead torpedo, exploding against the ship, tore a great hole in her hull amidships, and she plunged into the depths of the sea. Up to the last moment, when the waves rolled over them, the soldiers shouted their defiance and steadily loaded and fired. With two hundred prisoners, the Russian squadron returned to Vladivostock.

On land the Japanese advanced steadily. Gradually the long, throttling fingers extended from east and west toward the railroad that meant life or death to the great fortress. Then came the battle of the Yalu, to the east. The river was crossed, the Japanese poured into Manchuria, and the position of the Russian forces on the Liaotung peninsula became still more critical. Supplies were crowded into the beleaguered port, and non-combatants filled the northward-bound trains to overflowing. Early in May it became evident that with one more clutch of the relentless hand of Nippon all communication between Port Arthur and the rest of the world would be cut off.

Fred Larkin saw that he must decide whether to move out at once or remain virtually a prisoner in the town. Most of the other correspondents had already gone. The instructions from the home office were ambiguous. He tried to cable again, but the wires were pre-empted for military despatches in those stirring days. He decided, reluctantly, to abandon Port Arthur and join the Russian army now entrenched a few miles north, on the line of the railroad.

On the evening before the day which he had set for his departure he was strolling about the large square where a military band was playing national airs, when he bumped against a stranger who was hurrying in the opposite direction. Both paused, and their eyes met.

"Larkin!"

"Stevens!"

"Hush!" said the latter, looking nervously over his shoulder. "My name is Burley. Why are you here? When did you leave Tokio?"

"At about the same time when you decamped with the War Office documents," said Fred easily. "Look here, old fellow," he continued with assumed cordiality, "there's no need for us to quarrel in a foreign camp. You've got something on hand now, or I'm mistaken. Can't you let me in?"

"You used pretty hard words to me the last time we met," said the other gloomily. "It wasn't your fault that I wasn't strung up."

"Nor yours that I wasn't," assented Fred cheerfully, "so we're square on that score. But this is a different matter. It's all Japanese or Russian over here, and your Uncle Samuel hasn't a finger in the pie. Now you must have made a good thing out of your Tokio observations, and the presumption is that, having the confidence of our friend Stoessel and his staff, you are about ready to face about."

"Perhaps I am," said Stevens, or Burley, again looking about him. "And if I am, I need one good man I can depend on, to help me in the job. It's too big for one to handle, and the city is so full of spies that I wouldn't trust a native round the corner. But how do I know you will do your part, eh?"

"Try me and see," said Larkin with great firmness.

"All right, I'll try you." They were now walking through one of the side streets, which was but dimly lighted. "Here are my lodgings. Come in and we'll talk it over."

He opened the outer door with a pass-key, and Fred followed him up two flights of narrow stairs.

"Here we are," said Burley, opening a door. "Step right in, and I'll light up."

Larkin entered, but he was hardly over the threshold when he was pushed headlong to the floor, and heard the door closed and locked behind him.

A low laugh sounded from the entry. "'Help me out,' will you, you puppy?" whispered Burley through the keyhole. "You'll never help anybody out, in this world. Within ten minutes this house will be a heap of rubbish, and you will be in kingdom come. Good-bye! I'll report you at home!"

His steps echoed down the stairway, and then the house was still.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE LAST TRAIN FROM PORT ARTHUR

Fred Larkin's first move, on finding himself trapped, was a perfectly natural one. He scrambled to his feet and rushed to the door. It took him some time to find the knob, in the darkness, and on turning it and pulling with all his might he was not surprised to discover that it refused to yield.

"It's a bad scrape," said the reporter to himself, breathing hard with his exertions, "but I've been in worse ones, unless that threat of blowing up the house is carried out."

He had been fumbling in his pocket, and now drew from it a box of wax vestas, one of which he struck. The light disclosed a small room, perfectly bare. A glance at the heavy door convinced him that it was useless to attempt a speedy escape in that direction. There were two low windows, both with the sashes fastened down and protected by outside shutters of wood.

Fred made short work of one of the sashes, smashing it to bits with his foot. He then unhasped the shutters and peered out. The night was cloudy and he could discover nothing beyond the fact that there was a sheer drop of at least twenty-five feet to a sort of yard, which might be paved with brick or lumbered up with stones and iron scrap, for all he could see. The buildings beyond seemed to be warehouses of some sort; not a light gleamed from a single window. He shouted with all his might for help, but none came. Although he did not believe the house would "be a heap of rubbish in ten minutes" – three of which had already elapsed – he was sufficiently in doubt to be perfectly willing to leave it at once, if there were any possible way of escape.

As he stepped back into the room the flooring creaked under his foot. Lighting another wax match he found that a board was loose. He managed to get his fingers under the end, and, throwing his whole weight upward, ripped out the board. With the first for a lever, its neighbour came up easily enough. It was a cheaply built house, without a second layer beneath the surface floor. The edgewise-set planks on which the boards rested were about two feet apart. Fred did not hesitate a moment, but stamped hard upon the upper side of the ceiling of the apartment beneath his own. His foot went through the lath and plaster with a smash and a cloud of dust. Picking up the broken boards, he enlarged the hole, and, as soon as the dust cleared away, peered through the opening. The room below was as dark as his own. He "sounded" with the longest floor-board at his disposal, and was gratified to find that he could "touch bottom" at about nine feet depth. Without losing further time he crawled through the hole, hung off from the stringers and dropped.

Recovering himself from the shock of alighting in the dark, Fred hastily produced another vesta, in order to survey his new quarters. The room was entirely unfurnished, like the one above. In one respect, however, it differed from the apartment in which he had been so unceremoniously installed: the door was ajar! In a minute more Larkin stood on the pavement outside, and in another, having taken a careful survey of the premises, he was hurrying away to his own lodgings, which he reached in safety, congratulating himself on the happy issue of his evening's adventure.

Martin Stevens, like all evil-doers, was an unhappy man. For weeks and months he would toil at a self-imposed task, to earn money and fame at the expense of principles, and when he seemed to himself to have attained absolute success, and felt the crackle of his basely earned bank-notes in his pocket, – he was miserable. The luscious fruit he had so long looked forward to eating was a Dead Sea apple, crumbling to ashes at the first bite.

After his narrow escape from death at the hands of the Spaniards in Santiago, he had engaged in various questionable enterprises on the Continent, where a natural aptitude for languages soon enabled him to converse fluently in German, French, Italian, and Russian. He was already master of Spanish, as we have seen, and he had received a fine education in applied mathematics, physics, and navigation at the United States Naval Academy. Tall and rather well formed, carrying himself well, and conversing easily in the language of the country where he desired to exercise his peculiar calling – that of a professional spy – he readily obtained admittance to many councils and offices closed to the general public. He had correspondents in every court in Europe, as well as in Japan and at Pekin.

When Stevens left Tokio in disguise, with half a dozen important papers in his breast pocket, he felt that he had achieved the crowning glory of his life. The documents were indeed gladly received at the Russian headquarters, but the man was despised and distrusted. The bluff, gallant Stoessel paid the spy a large sum without hesitation; but, beyond suggesting another expedition – perhaps to the camp of General Nogi's forces, or to Admiral Togo's fleet – he had nothing more to say to him. As the high-minded Russian turned to his staff-officers, whose bronzed, manly faces bore witness to their honourable service under the Czar, Stevens sneaked off, his face sallower than ever, to cash the official draft and to gnash his teeth at the cold, contemptuous treatment he had met with when his secrets were all divulged. In this mood, plotting a new system of espionage upon the Russians, whom he hated, he had met Larkin. He had already recognised the reporter in Tokio, and had thought himself well rid of him when he fled to Port Arthur. No sight could have been more unwelcome to him than that of Larkin's merry, honest, shrewd countenance, rising before him like Banquo's ghost, when least expected.

Near Stevens's lodgings was an empty house of which he had the key, and in which he had already met representatives of that terrible class of men who are now found in all parts of the civilised world, but most where the double eagle of the Russian flag proclaims the despotic rule of St. Petersburg – the Nihilists. Revolving in his mind various plans for getting rid of Larkin without actually committing murder, he determined, on the spur of the moment, to lock him up over night at this secret place of rendezvous. He even thought vaguely of blowing up the building with a bomb, which one of his friends would supply on demand. He shrank, however, from this extreme measure, which would put his own head in peril, and contented himself with giving the war correspondent a good scare, out of pure malice, and with so disposing of his person that he would be kept out of the way over night. He had no doubt that Larkin would gain his release in some way the next morning, but there would be time, meanwhile, to don a new disguise and perfect arrangements for leaving the city. How he failed, we have seen. Fred Larkin was not an easy man to scare, or to keep within four walls against his will. The next morning, accordingly, both spy and reporter were at the railway station, eager to take the first train for the north. There was a dense crowd of refugees struggling for places, and neither of the two men was conscious of the other's presence on board when the guard's whistle sounded at last, and the long train – the last train for many a weary month, as it proved – moved out of Port Arthur.

It was six o'clock on the morning of May 6th. The sun had burst through the clouds which had rendered the preceding night so gloomy, and the country around the city stretched out on either side of the railroad in all the loveliness of spring. Fields and hillsides flushed with blossoms of almond and apricot, and opened fair reaches of greensward as the train rolled past. In sheltered nooks, by the banks of dancing streamlets, nestled those little Chinese villages which, however squalid upon close acquaintance, add a picturesque touch to the Oriental landscape. All around the horizon was piled with high hills, clothed in verdure or reddish in the early sunlight where broad ledges and stretches of sandy slope had been denuded by storm and the hand of man. Larkin almost forgot the war and the hot passions that were smouldering behind the fair peaks and along the hidden valleys of Manchuria, as he gazed from the car window and thought of the Brookfield meadows in May, the little stream where he had caught his first trout, and the pine wood which sheltered the brave mayflowers and hepaticas before the winter's drifts had melted on the northern slopes and in the deeper recesses of the forest.

But his musings were rudely interrupted. At the end of about two hours after leaving Port Arthur the train halted at the outpost position occupied by the Russian forces under General Fock. The peace of nature was broken by the sound of sappers and diggers at work, by commands harshly shouted, the tramping of horses, the rumble of wheels, the stir and bustle of an armed camp.

On again, steadily forging northward, with the engine throwing out great clouds of black smoke from her soft-coal fuel as she climbed the up-grades; through several villages without a stop, until Kinchow was reached. A sharp lookout was now kept for Japanese cavalry, which were known to be scouring the country to the east, the main body of the invaders having already made a substantial advance from Dalny, on the eastern coast. A train had been fired upon, only the day before, at a point about forty miles north of Port Arthur. There were rumours that Japanese troops were landing in force at Port Adams, on the west coast of the peninsula, near Newchwang, and that a strong detachment had occupied Haicheng, just south of Liaoyang.

The engineer pulled open the throttle, as the train struck a long, straight piece of road. The cars rocked from side to side, and cries of alarm from invalids and women were heard. The speed was frightful. Larkin clung to his seat, devoutly hoping that his journalistic career would not terminate in a smash-up on the Imperial Trans-Siberian Railroad. Just then a band of horsemen was seen galloping toward the road. They drew up sharply and could be seen to unsling their muskets. Puff! Puff! No noise could be heard above the roar of the train, but the passengers were not left in doubt as to the cavalrymen's intentions. A dozen windows were shattered by bullets, while the frightened inmates of the rocking cars crouched low between the seats. With a rush and a roar the train clattered on, leaving the assailants far behind.