is
suffering that he could scarcely restrain a groan. To add to his
discomfort he was in complete darkness, and furthermore he was being
jolted and shaken about in a most agonising manner.

Sick and faint with pain, it was several minutes before he was able to
recall what had happened to him; and then he remembered the last scene
of the fight, when, in the hope of destroying as many of his foes as
possible, he had discharged his revolver into the heap of ammunition.
There must, he recollected, have been some hundreds of rounds of
cartridges lying loose within a very few feet of him, and it was
doubtless a bullet from one of those that had struck him in the side
and, he felt pretty sure, shattered one or more of his ribs. As for the
pain in his head, that was of course accounted for by the stroke which
he had received across his forehead early in the fight.

He put up his hand to his aching brow, and discovered to his surprise
that it had been carefully bandaged, and that the wound had evidently
been cleansed, for his hair was still damp, and there was no clotted
blood adhering to it. Also he found, upon further investigation, that
his jacket had been removed, and that his body had been strapped up with
rough wrappings. It appeared probable, therefore, that his captors had
received orders to capture him alive, if possible; otherwise, knowing as
he did the usual methods adopted by the Chinese and Koreans toward their
wounded prisoners, he felt tolerably certain that he would have been
barbarously destroyed while still unconscious--particularly as he had
been the direct means of bringing a dreadful death upon so many of his
assailants. As he thought of this he could only come to one
conclusion--he had been kept alive in order that, upon his arrival at
head-quarters, he might be examined, by torture if necessary, as to the
extent of his knowledge of the plot against the Government, and as to
the existence of any other schemes for bringing arms into the country.

Now, he had no intention of being submitted to the diabolically
ingenious torments practised by the Korean executioners; the important
thing, therefore, was to contrive, if possible, to escape while there
was yet time. But before thinking about escape it was absolutely
necessary that he should discover his own whereabouts, and the number of
men by whom he was at present guarded. He was now entirely unarmed,
having no doubt dropped his cutlass and one of his