“What’s the matter?” asked the captain. And, with nervous glances about him, lest a pirate should catch him confiding to the kind-hearted man, the boy told him the story of the tragic night on the junk. Telling him to say nothing to anyone else, the captain, when the steamer arrived at Hong-Kong, stopped in the middle of the river, and hailed the police-boat. This arriving, the whole batch of passengers, numbering over a hundred, was lined up, and the boy made to pick out the seven pirates, who were taken prisoners and sent to the lock-up.
The people of Hong-Kong were in a fine stew over the matter already, for the previous evening one of the men who had been flung overboard had, by a miracle, succeeded in getting his hands and feet free, and, being a good swimmer, made his way to a small island near at hand, whence he took a fishing-boat to Hong-Kong and told his story. But though the authorities made inquiries none of the pirates were captured, except the seven mentioned, who were duly tried and hanged.
The terror which the pirates struck into the inhabitants of the small coast towns—and large ones, too—is clearly shown in the following story, told by Captain St. John, R.N., who commanded one of the gunboats detailed to tackle the rovers. He was cruising about the coast in 1865, shortly after the incident above-mentioned, when a sampan hailed him, and the fisherman in it cried excitedly:
“Have got pilong!” (pirate).
“Where?” he was asked.
“Can makee see,” was the answer. And he pointed to a couple of junks which were making out to sea. That was enough for St. John. After them he went, and the junks had no chance against the steam gunboat, which rapidly overhauled them. Before the British vessel could get alongside, however, a number of other junks swung out from the shore, and there began a miniature battle—much noise, much smoke, though probably not much damage on the part of the official junks, anyhow; for it was left to Captain St. John to effect the capture of the pirate junks. Anchoring off shore with his prisoners, the captain interviewed the mandarin who came aboard. In true Oriental fashion the latter thanked the Britisher for what he had done, considering it a vast achievement to have captured a couple of junks and twenty-one men.
“These two junks,” he said, “have given me a great deal of trouble for four days; they have blockaded the place; neither a fishing nor a trading junk has been able to get out!”
Naturally, Captain St. John was surprised that two miserable junks, with twenty-one men and a two-pounder gun, could have effectively shut up a port in such a way. The mandarin excused himself and his people by saying that they were very, very scared of pirates, and on being asked if he hadn’t any soldiers, replied that he had eight hundred ashore. Eight hundred soldiers, and a hundred or so junks knocking about the harbour, and yet the two pirate craft could hold up a whole port’s trade for over half a week! And the port had 4,000 inhabitants!
“Well,” said the captain to the mandarin, “if I were a Chinaman, I think I would turn pirate at once. They must lead very jolly, independent lives!”
“Yes, they do,” answered the mandarin, not appreciating the captain’s humour. “The only things they fear are English gunboats.”