The Lucky Number Fell To John Fox, And He
Left Us At A Gallop.
He was to engage rooms for the four, and to
arrange for the care of seven Japanese interpreters and servants,
nine Chinese coolies, and nineteen horses and mules.
We expected
that by eight o'clock we would be eating the best dinner John Fox
could order. We were mistaken. Not that John Fox had not ordered
the dinner, but no one ate it but John Fox. The very minute he left
us Priory's cart turned turtle in the mud, and the largest of his
four mules lay down in it and knocked off work. The mule was hot and
very tired, and the mud was soft, cool, and wet, so he burrowed under
its protecting surface until all we could see of him was his ears.
The coolies shrieked at him, Prior issued ultimatums at him, the
Japanese servants stood on dry land fifteen feet away and talked
about him, but he only snuggled deeper into his mud bath. When there
is no more of a mule to hit than his ears, he has you at a great
disadvantage, and when the coolies waded in and tugged at his head,
we found that the harder they tugged, the deeper they sank. When
they were so far out of sight that we were in danger of losing them
too, we ordered them to give up the struggle and unload the cart.
Before we got it out of dry-dock, reloaded, and again in line with
the other carts it was nine o clock, and dark.
In the meantime, Lynch, his sense of duty weakened by visions of
enamelled bathtubs filled with champagne and floating lumps of ice,
had secretly abandoned us, stealing away in the night and leaving us
to follow. This, not ten minutes after we had started, Mr. Prior
decided that he would not do, so he camped out with the carts in a
village, while, dinnerless, supperless, and thirsty, I rode on alone.
I reached New-Chwang at midnight, and after being refused admittance
by the Japanese soldiers, was finally rescued by the Number One man
from the Manchuria Hotel, who had been sent out by Fox with two sikhs
and a lantern to find me. For some minutes I dared not ask him the
fateful questions. It was better still to hope than to put one's
fortunes to the test. But I finally summoned my courage.
"Ice, have got?" I begged.
"Have got," he answered.
There was a long, grateful pause, and then in a voice that trembled,
I again asked, "Champagne, have got?"
Number One man nodded.
"Have got," he said.
I totally forgot until the next morning to ask about the enamelled
bathtubs.
When I arrived John Fox had gone to bed, and as it was six weeks
since any of us had seen a real bed, I did not wake him. Hence, he
did not know I was in the hotel, and throughout the troubles that
followed I slept soundly.
Meanwhile, Lynch, as a punishment for running away from us, lost his
own way, and, after stumbling into an old sow and her litter of pigs,
which on a dark night is enough to startle any one, stumbled into a
Japanese outpost, was hailed as a Russian spy, and made prisoner.
This had one advantage, as he now was able to find New-Chwang, to
which place he was marched, closely guarded, arriving there at half-
past two in the morning. Since he ran away from us he had been
wandering about on foot for ten hours. He sent a note to Mr. Little,
the British Consul, and to Bush Brothers, the kings of New-Chwang,
and, still tormented by visions of ice and champagne, demanded that
his captors take him to the Manchuria Hotel. There he swore they
would find a pass from Fukushima allowing him to enter New-Chwang,
three friends who could identify him, four carts, seven servants,
nine coolies, and nineteen animals. The commandant took him to the
Manchuria Hotel, where instead of this wealth of corroborative detail
they found John Fox in bed. As Prior, the only one of us not in New-
Chwang, had the pass from Fukushima, permitting us to enter it, there
was no one to prove what either Lynch or Fox said, and the officer
flew into a passion and told Fox he would send both of them out of
town on the first train. Mr. Fox was annoyed at being pulled from
his bed at three in the morning to be told he was a Russian spy, so
he said that there was not a train fast enough to get him out of New-
Chwang as quickly as he wanted to go, or, for that matter, out of
Japan and away from the Japanese people. At this the officer, being
a Yale graduate, and speaking very pure English, told Mr. Fox to
"shut up," and Mr. Fox being a Harvard graduate, with an equally
perfect command of English, pure and undefiled, shook his fist in the
face of the Japanese officer and told him to "shut up yourself."
Lynch, seeing the witness he had summoned for the defence about to
plunge into conflict with his captor, leaped unhappily from foot to
foot, and was heard diplomatically suggesting that all hands should
adjourn for ice and champagne.
"If I were a spy," demanded Fox, "do you suppose I would have ridden
into your town on a white horse and registered at your head-quarters
and then ordered four rooms at the principal hotel and accommodations
for seven servants, nine coolies, and nineteen animals? Is that the
way a Russian spy works? Does he go around with a brass band?"
The officer, unable to answer in kind this excellent reasoning, took
a mean advantage of his position by placing both John and Lynch under
arrest, and at the head of each bed a Japanese policeman to guard
their slumbers.
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