"Didn't you know who I was until we stood together on the watch-tower?" asked Rob, curiously.
"No. I had not time for a good look at you until that moment. Even then I couldn't at first believe it really was you; it seemed so utterly impossible that you could be in China."
"Stay with you until I get you to a place of safety."
"But you will lose your position in the army if you leave your post."
"Aren't you almost certain to be killed if you are found in company with a foreigner whom you are aiding to escape?"
"And you are willing to risk your life, besides throwing away your career, for the sake of one of the very people who treated you so shamefully when you were in America?"
"It is a saying of the ancients," replied Jo, "that friendship shines among the brightest jewels in the ring of life; also, that life without friendship is as a barren fruit tree, and that for a true friendship life itself is not too high a price to pay. Therefore, may I not risk, and gladly, a life of little value, to save that of one who, though he is of a people who ill-treated me, is also the best friend I have in all the world? Did he not, even when we were strangers, fight to save me from abuse? and can I do less for him now that we are friends? So it is foolish for you to ask questions, since it is assured that until I can leave you in a place of safety your enemies are my enemies, your friends are my friends, and wherever you go there go I also."
"Then," said Rob, who was greatly affected by these words, "let us stay right where we are until morning, for I want to think over all you have told me."
After this the lads did not talk any more, but a few minutes later were sound asleep inside the very rain-god to which one of them would have been sacrificed had he been caught in that vicinity a few hours earlier.
Mongolians, including Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans, can get along with less sleep than any other of the world's people; and Jo, in spite of having travelled and learned to speak English, still was a true Mongolian. Therefore, he awoke quite refreshed after two hours of sleep, and, moving with the utmost caution, so as not to arouse Rob, he left their strange hiding-place, carefully closing and fastening its door behind him. Then he swiftly made his way back to the city, where he skirted its wall to the farther side, and forced an entrance through a now dry culvert or water-gate. After showing himself at the several guard-houses, that, if necessary, he afterwards might be able to prove his presence in the city that night, he went to his own quarters, where he made preparations for a journey. He ordered a horse to be brought, saddled, and ready for travel, and sent for his lieutenant, a man who, though older than he, was possessed of so little influence as still to be under the orders of his junior.