We were in the rags of beggary, prideless in the dust, and yet I was laughing heartily at some mumbled merry quip of the Lady Om when a shadow fell upon us.
It was the great litter of Chong Mong-ju, borne by eight coolies, with outriders before and behind and fluttering attendants on either side.
Two emperors, civil war, famine, and a dozen palace revolutions had come and gone; and Chong Mong-ju remained, even then the great power at Keijo.
He must have been nearly eighty that spring morning on the cliffs when he signalled with palsied hand for his litter to be rested down that he might gaze upon us whom he had punished for so long.
“Now, O my king,” the Lady Om mumbled low to me, then turned to whine an alms of Chong Mong-ju, whom she affected not to recognize.
And I knew what was her thought.
Had we not shared it for forty years?
And the moment of its consummation had come at last.
So I, too, affected not to recognize my enemy, and, putting on an idiotic senility, I, too, crawled in the dust toward the litter whining for mercy and charity.
The attendants would have driven me back, but with age-quavering cackles Chong Mong-ju restrained them.
He lifted himself on a shaking elbow, and with the other shaking hand drew wider apart the silken curtains.
His withered old face was transfigured with delight as he gloated on us.
“O my king,” the Lady Om whined to me in her beggar’s chant; and I knew all her long-tried love and faith in my emprise were in that chant.
And the red wrath was up in me, ripping and tearing at my will to be free.
Small wonder that I shook with the effort to control.
The shaking, happily, they took for the weakness of age.
I held up my brass begging bowl, and whined more dolefully, and bleared my eyes to hide the blue fire I knew was in them, and calculated the distance and my strength for the leap.
Then I was swept away in a blaze of red.
There was a crashing of curtains and curtain-poles and a squawking and squalling of attendants as my hands closed on Chong Mong-ju’s throat.
The litter overturned, and I scarce knew whether I was heads or heels, but my clutch never relaxed.
In the confusion of cushions and quilts and curtains, at first few of the attendants’ blows found me.
But soon the horsemen were in, and their heavy whip-butts began to fall on my head, while a multitude of hands clawed and tore at me.
I was dizzy, but not unconscious, and very blissful with my old fingers buried in that lean and scraggly old neck I had sought for so long.
The blows continued to rain on my head, and I had whirling thoughts in which I likened myself to a bulldog with jaws fast-locked.
Chong Mong-ju could not escape me, and I know he was well dead ere darkness, like that of an an?sthetic, descended upon me there on the cliffs of Fusan by the Yellow Sea.
CHAPTER XVI
Warden Atherton, when he thinks of me, must feel anything but pride.
I have taught him what spirit is, humbled him with my own spirit that rose invulnerable, triumphant, above all his tortures.
I sit here in Folsom, in Murderers’ Row, awaiting my execution; Warden Atherton still holds his political job and is king over San Quentin and all the damned within its walls; and yet, in his heart of hearts, he knows that I am greater than he.
In vain Warden Atherton tried to break my spirit.
And there were times, beyond any shadow of doubt, when he would have been glad had I died in the jacket.
So the long inquisition went on.
As he had told me, and as he told me repeatedly, it was dynamite or curtains.
Captain Jamie was a veteran in dungeon horrors, yet the time came when he broke down under the strain I put on him and on the rest of my torturers.
So desperate did he become that he dared words with the Warden and washed his hands of the affair.
From that day until the end of my torturing he never set foot in solitary.
Yes, and the time came when Warden Atherton grew afraid, although he still persisted in trying to wring from me the hiding-place of the non-existent dynamite.
Toward the last he was badly shaken by Jake Oppenheimer.
Oppenheimer was fearless and outspoken.
He had passed unbroken through all their prison hells, and out of superior will could beard them to their teeth.
Morrell rapped me a full account of the incident.
I was unconscious in the jacket at the time.
“Warden,” Oppenheimer had said, “you’ve bitten off more than you can chew.
It ain’t a case of killing Standing.
It’s a case of killing three men, for as sure as you kill him, sooner or later Morrell and I will get the word out and what you have done will be known from one end of California to the other.
You’ve got your choice. You’ve either got to let up on Standing or kill all three of us.
Standing’s got your goat. So have I. So has Morrell.
You are a stinking coward, and you haven’t got the backbone and guts to carry out the dirty butcher’s work you’d like to do.”
Oppenheimer got a hundred hours in the jacket for it, and, when he was unlaced, spat in the Warden’s face and received a second hundred hours on end.
When he was unlaced this time, the Warden was careful not to be in solitary.