Volume One--Chapter Six.
“All’s well that ends well.”
To make a long story short, I may state briefly that in the second part of the action—the second act of a tragedy, it was for the Malays—both the bluejackets and the men of the Hankow Lin got off scot-free, not another casualty happening to swell the death-roll, or a fresh wound of any consequence being received by any of those engaged. The surprise to the pirates on finding they had “caught a Tartar,” instead of assailing a defenceless merchant vessel, as they had expected, was so complete, that, in nautical phraseology, they were “taken all aback.”
Not expecting any opposition to speak of, and confident that the ship they were attacking carried no guns—for how could even the most astute of the Malays have supposed, with all their prying and peeping, that the Hankow Lin had a set of Armstrongs on board her, headed up in hogsheads?—the pirates were stupefied by the first broadside they received; and, after that, their resistance amounted to nil, especially the more as one of the discharges killed their chief, when, of course, they had no one to lead them on or rally their drooping energies on the pinch.
The schooner, it was found, was none other than the Diavolo, a pirate craft commanded by a Portuguese renegade, who had already earned for himself a somewhat questionable reputation in Eastern seas; and how Captain Morton got wind of the intentions of the Malay crew to mutiny and bring his ship for destruction may be thus briefly told:—
Several large tea-traders having mysteriously disappeared on their voyage home to England, after shipping Malay crews on board, the English admiral on the station had conferred with the Chinese authorities, and from them learned that the Diavolo was suspected, and that a spy had discovered that an attempt would be made on the Hankow Lin, which was just loading at the time, and which had, like the other missing ships, shipped some Malay hands, in consequence of the loss of the main portion of her English crew on the voyage out.
Accordingly, precautions were taken to counteract the conspiracy of the Malay crew and capture the pirate by putting on board arms and munition—of which they supposed the ship to have none—and concealing in the saloon a force of blue-jackets to combine with the English part of the crew should the contemplated mutiny break out—the result of which precautions proved, as we have seen, to be eminently successful.
While the calm lasted, the bodies of the dead pirates were hove overboard, and the three bluejackets and Phillips who had lost their life in the first struggle with the Malays committed carefully to the deep with every solemnity; and then the Hankow Lin, as soon as the wind sprang up again, as it did by sundown, was headed towards Singapore in accordance with Lieutenant Meredith’s wish, although it was sorely against Captain Morton’s will to bear off from his direct course to England, which was almost right in front of him, the Straits of Sunda bearing a point or two off the lee beam.
However, Captain Morton lost nothing by his compliance with the lieutenant’s wish. The Hankow Lin when she arrived at Singapore was allotted a half share of the value of the pirate schooner and all she contained; and that craft being pretty nearly crammed full of plunder, which she had accumulated from the different ships that had been captured and scuttled by her in her nefarious career, the sum thus awarded to Captain Morton was more than sufficient to compensate his owners for any delay that had arisen through the Hankow Lin’s detention at the Dutch port, besides swelling the handsome bounty that was paid to each and all of the crew engaged in the affair.
This was not all, either.
At Singapore, Captain Morton was able to obtain what he could not have very well voyaged home without, and that was a supply of fresh hands to navigate the ship in place of the treacherous scoundrels who had engaged with him at Canton only to plot her destruction, although the captain had ample satisfaction for all this ere he left the place, for, as Bill the boatswain said in mentioning the fact afterwards, he “saw every mother’s son of them hung before he weighed anchor again.”
After bidding adieu to their late active comrades the blue-jackets, all went well with the old vessel, from Singapore to the Straits of Sunda, across the Indian Ocean, and round the Cape of Good Hope. Not an untoward event happened on the way home, not a mishap occurred, and, as Snowball said when he stepped ashore in the East India Dock, “All’s well dat ends well.” And so ended The Voyage of the “Hankow Lin.”