Kobo: A Story of the Russo-Japanese War

by Herbert Strang

  *CHAPTER IX*

  *Chased by Cossacks*

  A View-Halloo--Cossacks at Fault--Bluff--Suspicious Hospitality--On thePekin Road--A Hill Tiger

  The situation was desperate. One band of Cossacks was evidentlyfollowing the tracks of his horse, the other taking a short cut to headhim off. The Mandarin road from Pekin to Seoul could not be far away;the Russians had probably assumed that he would ride in that direction,and acquainted as they no doubt were with the neighbourhood, they wouldhave a great advantage over him. His only hope lay in his horse, whichwas fortunately a good one, and in the pink of condition. He must ride,and ride, and ride.

  Returning to the pagoda, he found that the horse had eaten the last wispof hay. He led it out, down the slope on the side farthest from thepursuers, through a dip between two low hills; then coasting round asomewhat steeper hill which hid the pagoda from sight, he judged it safeto mount, and was soon cantering over the snow-covered ground. It wasrolling country; at one minute he was as it were on the crest of a wave,the next he would be in a trough. The snow was soft, and the horse'shoofs left deep pits in the yielding surface by which the course of hisflight could be easily tracked. Soon he lost sight of the sea, and hadnothing by which to take his bearings; the sky all around was oneunbroken lead-gray. As he rode on, he saw with misgiving that the hillswere becoming lower and lower; he would be in full sight of the Cossackswhen they reached the heights he had just left. There was noalternative but to push on. Of refuge there was none; the whole countryseemed to be desert, with no marks of human habitation except here andthere a native hut perched on the edge of a clump of trees, theabandoned home of some wood-cutter.

  Every now and then he reined up his horse and turned in the saddle tosee if his pursuers were in sight. Struggling up a long slope, andhalting at the top to breathe the animal, he saw before him an almostlevel stretch, and behind him--yes, there they were at last, a band ofat least twenty, who had probably dodged round some of the hills whichhe had laboriously climbed. He looked eagerly round; there was no wayof eluding the pursuers. Should he set his steed at the gallop and tryto distance them? That was a vain hope; it would exhaust his pantinghorse, and the Cossacks would wear him down, following untiringly uponhis track like wolves. He must on again, and husband the animal'sstrength as much as possible.

  Down the slope, then, he rode, the horse's breath leaving a trail ofvapour in the cold air. The sky was growing blacker, the wind, whichhad been blowing in gusts, dropped; there was no sound but the softglugging of the hoofs as they plunged into the snow. Suddenly Bob hearda faint shout behind him. He knew well what it meant; the Cossacks hadreached the crest of the hill and seen him cantering before them. Helooked over his shoulder; they were no more than a mile distant. Inhalf an hour they would close in upon him; perhaps the second band hadalready come round upon his flank and was now ahead of him; for all heknew, he might have been riding in a circle. Still he must ride on. Hequickened his horse's pace; some ten minutes later he heard the distantcrack of shots, but as no ping of the bullets followed he guessed thatthey had flown wide. But the fact that the Cossacks were firing wasominous. They were accustomed to take flying shots from the backs oftheir steeds; at any moment a luckily-aimed bullet might hit him. He layupon the horse's neck and called upon the beast to gallop. More shots,more shouts pursued him, but the sounds were fainter. The gap betweenhim and the Cossacks must be widening; could the advantage bemaintained?

  He spoke encouragingly to the animal, which galloped along withwonderful sure-footedness. Suddenly Bob felt a damp, cold dab upon hisbrow, then another; he lifted his head, and gave a quick gasp of reliefwhen he saw that snow was falling. The lowering sky had opened at last;in a few moments the rider was making his way through a dense shower ofwhirling snowflakes, which filled eyes and ears and shut out all objectsbeyond a hundred yards. By favour of this white screen he might yetescape.

  To the left he saw a small dark clump of trees stretching up thehillside. Pushing on until he came level with the furthermost edge hewheeled round, struck through the fringe of the clump where the treeswere thin, and ascended the hill at right angles to his former course,in hope that his pursuers, losing him from sight, might overshoot thespot where he diverged before they discovered their mistake. Theblinding fall of snow must now be fast obliterating his tracks; todistinguish them the Russians would have to slacken speed; and the fewminutes he thus gained might enable him to escape them altogether. Buthe dared not wait; the Cossacks, finding that they failed to overtakehim, would soon cast back and probably scatter in the direction theywould guess him to have taken, and how could he expect to elude themall? Walking his horse for a few minutes to allow it to recover breath,he again urged it on, hoping that his luck would yet serve.

  The air was still thick with the falling snow; to follow a certaincourse was impossible. He rode on. Suddenly he heard a dull thud notfar to his right; could it be the sound of the Cossacks returningalready? Quick as thought he reined up behind a large tree, and peeringround the trunk saw, through the whirling flakes, a number of shadowyforms flit past in the opposite direction to that in which he had beengoing. Mingled with the thudding hoofs came the muffled sound ofvoices. He could not distinguish the riders, yet he felt sure that theywere his pursuers. Waiting till all sounds were quenched, he canteredslowly ahead, knowing now that could he but keep a straight course theCossacks would be unable, while the snowfall lasted, to find his trail.But for an accident he was safe.

  Safe, indeed, from the pursuers; but there were still dire perils toface. He had been riding hard for three hours; the horse had for sometime been showing signs of fatigue; he had no food either for it or forhimself, and he was himself ravenously hungry. He was in a wild,desolate, sparsely-populated region; should he encounter natives hewould be taken for a Russian; he could not speak their language; even ifhis horse's strength held out until he reached an advanced Japaneseoutpost, he might be shot before he could make himself understood. Yet,unless he fell in with someone who would give him shelter and food, heand his horse alike must succumb to fatigue and cold, and he would haveescaped the Scylla of Russian hands only to meet death from theCharybdis of the elements. Chilled, tired, hungry as he was, for abrief moment his mind was crossed by the shadow of despair; but hepulled himself together, shook the reins, straightened himself, and oncemore rode on.

  It seemed to him that he was wandering on a vast white Sahara, or adrifton a wide sea without chart or compass. All at once, on his left hand, ahut such as he had previously seen from the sea-shore loomed up, like anexcrescence from the white plain. He pulled up, dismounted, and led hishorse towards the building. It was partially ruined. The doorway wastoo low to admit the animal, but going round to the back he found alarge gap in the rough mud wall just wide enough to allow the horse topass. Here at least there was temporary shelter for both man and beast.True, there was some risk of the Cossacks appearing even yet; but thehorse could go no farther; while it was resting the snow-storm mightcease, and with a lifting sky he might be able to take his bearings andstrike out a definite course. Leading the animal into the hovel, hescraped the snow from its body, rubbed it as dry as possible with thecloths he unrolled from the saddle, and sat down on a billet of wood,cold, hungry, and depressed.

  Thinking, dreaming, he at length fell into a doze. When he awoke, henoticed that the snow had ceased, and the sky was clearing. It was fouro'clock. Rising stiff with cold, he went outside the hut and observed astreak of dull red on the horizon.

  "That must be the setting sun," he said to himself. "I wonder if,guiding myself by that, I could by and by reach a village and get food.Poor old horse! I hope you are not feeling as hungry and miserable as Iam."

  He led the beast out and mounted. It was now freezing hard; the snowgave a metallic crunch under the hoofs as he rode away. Westward,towards the setting sun, must lie the sea; in that direction there wasnothing to
hope for. Northward were the Russians, southward theJapanese, but how far away? His course must be eastward, for sooner orlater he must strike the high-road, and when once on the high-road hemust in time reach a village. There would always be the risk of meetingRussians, but he could only chance that. Eastward, therefore, he sethis horse. His advent in a Korean village would not be without danger;but one peril balanced another, and his plight could scarcely be moredesperate.

  He had ridden, as he guessed, some three miles farther across thevalley, when suddenly, in the dusk before him, he descried a cluster ofhuts. "At last!" he said to himself with a sigh of relief. Here at anyrate were people; where people were, there must be food--and food, bothfor himself and his horse, must be obtained, whatever the risk. Thehamlet might harbour a Cossack patrol; but at this stage Bob felt thatit was no worse to fall into Russian hands than to die of famine on thesnow-clad hills. On the other hand, if there were no Cossacks in thehamlet, his own appearance in Russian guise would be sufficient toprocure him supplies. The Korean as a fighting man was not, Yamaguchihad told him, very formidable, so that even if the villagers provedhostile he felt that he could manage to hold his own.

  Taking the Cossack's pistol from the holster, Bob rode on boldly intothe hamlet. To assure himself that it sheltered no Russians, hecantered right through the narrow street, then turned his horse and madehis way to what appeared to be the principal house. Like all Koreanvillages of the poorer sort, this one was dirty and cramped, consistingof a few one-story houses of mud with thatched roofs. The street wasnow deserted; the few people who had been in it when he cantered throughhad scattered into their houses when they saw him turn, regarding him nodoubt as the pioneer of a body of Cossacks. He dismounted at the closeddoor of the hut, and knocked. There was no reply; save for the bark ofa dog the whole village was shrouded in silence. He knocked again, anda third time, still without effect; the fourth time he batteredinsistently on the door with his pistol. Then he heard a sound within;the door opened, and by the dim light of a foul-smelling oil-lamp he sawa very fat elderly Korean spreading himself across the entrance.

  Bob knew no Korean, no Russian, no Chinese, and only a few words ofJapanese. These he had perforce to rely on.

  "Komban wa!" he said politely, giving the evening greeting.

  The man snapped out something in gruff tones.

  "Tabe-mono!" added Bob, taking a few Japanese coins out of his pocket."Uma! Pan taberu daro!"

  The Korean shook his head and began to jabber words incomprehensible toBob. His meaning, however, was obvious; he was not inclined to supplythe food for horse and man for which his visitor had asked. Bob was inno mood to brook reluctance or even dilatoriness. Raising his pistol andpointing it full at the man's head, he poured out a torrent of the firstabuse that came to him, which happened to be phrases he had heardaddressed to the referee at football matches in the Celtic Park. NoKorean, as he had expected, could stand up against this. In a short timea feed of corn was brought for his horse; he tied the beast up at thedoor, and returning to the room sat down on the stone floor, awaitingfood for himself, and wishing that the furnace in the cellar beneathwere not quite so hot. The air inside the hovel was foul andsuffocating, but a man can put up with a good deal of discomfort when heis starving, and Bob did not turn up his nose at the evil-smellingmixture by and by set before him. It was a dish of which the poorerKoreans are fond--a compound of raw fish, pepper, vinegar, and slabs offat pork, and the odour was like mingled collodion and decayingsea-weed. He tasted it, tried to swallow a mouthful, found itimpossible, and then, in a burst of scarcely feigned rage, demandedmeshi or boiled rice, which he had reason to suppose would be at oncemore palatable and more trustworthy. This was in due courseforthcoming, and with the aid of a spoon, the only one the housecontained, he succeeded in disposing of a quantity of food which wouldhave astonished anyone but a Korean. His host had now become cringinglypolite. Bob questioned him, partly by signs, partly by means of his fewwords of Japanese, regarding the direction of Seng-cheng and the Pekinroad. The former, he learnt, was 70 li (about 21 miles) over the hills,the latter 10 li due east. Thinking over the situation, he resolved tomake boldly for the road, which he knew led direct to Ping-yang, and onreaching it to travel by night and rest in hiding during the day.Having made a hearty meal, with a moderate potation of a thin rice beerwhich he found very refreshing, he rose to leave, and offered the Koreana yen, which, as prices go in the country, was probably four times thevalue of what he and his horse had consumed. The man, with many bowsand protestations, refused to accept payment. Bob insisted, the Koreanresisted, and, pointing to a wooden pillow-block on the floor and aquilt hanging on a peg, tried to persuade his visitor to stay the night.This invitation was politely declined, whereupon the Korean in his turnbecame insistent, so that Bob grew suspicious. The man's refusal toaccept money was no doubt an attempt to ingratiate himself with theCossack patrol to which he supposed Bob belonged; his pressinginvitation was capable of a less amicable explanation. Bob in his guiseas a Cossack would never think of spending the night alone in a Koreanvillage; if he fell asleep he might never awaken. Shaking his headresolutely, he made signs that he wished the remains of his meal to beput up for him in one of the lacquer boxes he saw in the room. Thishaving been done with manifest reluctance by his host, he moved forwardhis horse, the Korean following him still with pressing entreaty. Allthe time that Bob was bundling up a supply of fodder for his horse theman stood jabbering at his side, but he withstood these perseveringefforts to detain him, and was just about to mount his horse, when hesaw dimly in the dusk, at the end of the street by which he had enteredthe village, a body of men whom even in the distance he recognized bytheir quaint caps and baggy clothes as Korean infantry.

  Instantly he vaulted into the saddle. At the same moment he heard thebang-bang of rifles and a volley of shouts. His fat host flung himselfflat on his face, and Bob galloped up the street, smiling at theineffectiveness of the Koreans' aim, and wondering how long it wouldtake them to reload. At a turn of the street, even more to theirsurprise than to his own, he came plump upon another body of Koreansmarching in no great order in the opposite direction. Evidently aclumsy attempt had been made to surround him. There was no alternative.He dashed straight at this new body; they scurried like rabbits to thesides of the road, yelling with fright, and by the time they hadrecovered sufficiently to remember that they were soldiers of theemperor, Bob was out of sight.

  Only a few minutes after Bob had thus routed a Korean detachment, twoChinamen rode in at the other end of the village. They were shorterthan the average Chinaman; yet, mounted as they were on the high saddlesusual in Korea, their feet nearly touched the ground at the sides oftheir diminutive and sorry-looking ponies. They dismounted at the doorof the house that Bob had lately left, and then it could be seen thatthe younger of the two was dressed like a respectable Chinese merchant,the other being evidently his servant.

  The merchant enquired of the Korean at the door what was the meaning ofthe sounds of firing he had heard.

  "The soldiers were honourably shooting at a Russian," replied the man.

  "Did he have his lance?" asked the Chinaman instantly.

  "No; but a pistol."

  "You are sure he was not a Japanese dressed in Russian clothes?"

  "Yes; he was tall, his cheeks were red, his eyes were blue, his hair thecolour of ripe corn; there is no doubt at all that he was a red-hairedbarbarian."

  The merchant spoke a few words to his servant; then both remounted, andset off as fast as their Lilliputian steeds could carry them after thedeparted Cossack.

  Bob meanwhile had been hastening on. During the day his horse had hadnearly five hours' rest, and after its good meal was again comparativelyfresh. Scrambling over the hills, in no little danger of coming togrief in the darkness, he at length struck the beaten track over thesnow that alone marked the course of the high-road. It rang hard underthe horse's hoofs; much heavy sled traffic
must have passed over it--nodoubt supplies for the Russian cavalry, scattered over the whole ofNorthern Korea. All the way as he rode, Bob was alert to catch anysound of approaching troops, but the highway was deserted; he metneither man nor beast. After covering about ten miles he thought itbest to leave the road and strike off into the hills on his left, withthe object of skirting round Seng-cheng, which he felt sure was occupiedby a Russian force, large or small. Choosing a spot where the highwayedged a clump of wood, he rode some yards among the trunks, dismounted,and then carefully smoothed over his horse's tracks on the snow, leavingno track himself by retreating in the hoof-marks. Then he plungeddeeper into the wood, in a direction at right angles to the road,leading his horse in order to avoid collision with the trees, and hopingby and by to reach some woodman's hut where he might safely pass therest of the night. A faint moonlight began to shine through theleafless skeletons, assisting his progress. After half an hour he camesuddenly upon a somewhat extensive clearing, in the midst of which hesaw a small cluster of huts similar to those he had left behind. He wasabout to turn sharply off to avoid them, when something in theirappearance struck him as unusual. Leaving his horse, he advancedcautiously, and found that the huts were deserted and in ruins; theblackened thatch and mud told a tale of burning, and Bob surmised thathere was evidence of a Cossack raid. After a little search he found ahovel that had suffered less than the rest. He easily broke a waythrough its wall for the horse, returned and led the animal in,barricaded the opening with debris from the other huts, and made himselfas comfortable as he could by means of the cloak and horsecloths rolledup before and behind the saddle. Then, being by this time dead beat, hesoon fell asleep.

  Just as dawn was breaking, he was startled from his heaviness by theloud snorting of his horse. Springing up on his elbow, he saw in thewan light the animal, its ears thrown back, its eyes protruding, tuggingat the reins by which Bob had secured it to one of the beams supportingthe roof. It was panting, trembling, frantic with fear. Wide awake inan instant, Bob reached for the case containing his rifle, which he hadworn slung over his shoulder and removed on lying down. Even as he didso the faint light filtering through the loosely-barricaded doorway wasobscured. There was a thump and the crash of falling woodwork, and aheavy body, in the suddenness of its onset looking even larger than itwas, sprang between him and the horse. A shrill scream of fright,followed instantly by a dull thud, then a deep growl, and Bob, though hehad never heard it before, was in no doubt what the sound implied: itwas the warning growl of a tiger after a kill. Stretched upon theinanimate horse, he saw in the uncertain light a huge tawny form. Itsback was towards him; its tail was lashing the ground within a few feetof where he had lain; in a moment it must scent him. To gain the door,even had there been any prospect of safety in flight, he would have topass immediately behind the brute, which at the sound would turn in farless time than he would take to rush past. The beast was still growlingand lashing the floor. Bob remained still as death, in the recliningposture in which the tiger's entrance had surprised him. In a flash hesaw that his only chance lay in one shot so well aimed as to kill ormaim the brute; if he missed, nothing could save him; yet the slightestclick or rustle would not escape its sensitive ears. Even as he raisedthe rifle to his shoulder with all his care, the tiger heard themovement and half-turned its head. But its head was still too muchcovered by the length of its body for Bob to risk a shot at its brain,and he knew that in the sudden volte-face that was now bound to come themovement would be so rapid that he might very easily miss. Instantlyleaning forward, he brought the muzzle of the rifle within a foot of theanimal's body at the region of the heart, and fired. There was a screamof rage, a convulsive twist of the huge body, a leap, and Bob was on thefloor, beneath the tiger, unconscious.