My room here had a verandah overlooking a back
court, and here I sat at midnight, unseen by anyone, looking up to the
changeless stars in an unpitying sky; and as I stood thus there blew
from the gates of night and across the mountains a wind that made me
shiver less with physical cold than with a sense of loneliness and
captivity. For on to my verandah came four soldiers, and it seemed as if
the hour of death drew nigh; and as I looked again, first upon the
cloudswept sky and upon the cold and steely glitter of the stars, and
then again at the soldiers with their guns, I turned giddy, shuddering
at the darkness and the loneliness, and with a nameless fear lying at
the center of life like a lurking shadow of an unknown, unseen foe.
They addressed me, but I cared not what they said. I pretended I could
not speak Chinese, watched the quartet form a circle, and talk slowly
and low, and it did not need the mind of a prophet to see that they were
discussing how best they could capture me. Were they going to kill me?
My boy and the other friends I had in the place were sleeping
blissfully, ignorant that their master was in such trying straits. I was
asked my name, and the inquirers, not over civil, were told.
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