My preparations were now almost completed, provisions bought, horses hired, and saddles overhauled.  The Japanese authorities had made no sign, but they knew what was going on.  It seemed likely that they would stop me when I started out.

Then fortune favoured me.  A cablegram arrived for me from London.  It was brief and emphatic:—­

          “Proceed forthwith Siberia.”

My expedition was abandoned, the horses sent away, and the saddles thrown into a corner.  I cabled home that I would soon be back.  I made the hotel ring with my public and private complaints about this interference with my plans.  I visited the shipping offices to learn of the next steamer to Vladivostock.

A few hours before I was to start I chanced to meet an old friend, who questioned me confidentially, “I suppose it is really true that you are going away, and that this is not a trick on your part?” I left him thoughtful, for his words had shown me the splendid opportunity in my hands.  Early next morning, long before dawn, my ponies came back, the boys assembled, the saddles were quickly fixed and the packs adjusted, and soon we were riding as hard as we could for the mountains.  The regrettable part of the affair is that many people are still convinced that the whole business of the cablegram was arranged by me in advance as a blind, and no assurances of mine will convince them to the contrary.

As in duty bound, I sent word to the acting British Consul-General, telling him of my departure.  My letter was not delivered to him until after I had left.  On my return I found his reply awaiting me at my hotel.

“I consider it my duty to inform you,” he wrote, “that I received a communication on the 7th inst. from the Residency-General informing me that, in view of the disturbed conditions in the interior, it is deemed inadvisable that foreign subjects should be allowed to travel in the disturbed districts for the present I would also call your attention to the stipulation in Article V. of the treaty between Great Britain and Korea, under which British subjects travelling in the interior of the country without a passport are liable to arrest and to a penalty.”

In Seoul no one could tell where or how the “Righteous Army” might be found.  The information doled out by the Japanese authorities was fragmentary, and was obviously and naturally framed in such a manner as to minimize and discredit the disturbances.  It was admitted that the Korean volunteers had a day or two earlier destroyed a small railway station on the line to Fusan.  We knew that a small party of them had attacked the Japanese guard of a store of rifles, not twenty miles from the capital, and had driven them off and captured the arms and ammunition.  Most of the fighting, so far as one could judge, appeared to have been around the town of Chung-ju, four days’ journey from Seoul.  It was for there I aimed, travelling by an indirect bridle-path in order to avoid the Japanese as far as possible.