Never were mortals so scared as were those poor pirates! Seven men—white men, Englishmen! So vast an army had come out against them! It was more than piratic endurance and pluck could stand; and over the side went the raiders, some being fortunate enough to drop into the boats alongside, others tumbling headlong into the water. Such a scene you never saw! Such yells of fear you never heard!
And four of those seven men were in a sampan that simply refused to be steered, but spun round and round and round, so that they could neither get aboard nor grab any of the pirates. Then, to add to the consternation of the ruffians, another boat, with more Englishmen, appeared in the entrance; and there were no men at the guns to fire the grapeshot which they had hoped would blow the sailors from the sea!
And instead of doing that the pirates splashed and scrambled about in frantic efforts to reach shore, all of them managing to do so except about half a dozen who were taken prisoners. Then the Englishmen had a bonfire, the junks forming the fuel for it.
Truly, pirate-hunting in the Far East is a fine sport!
A VOYAGE OF DANGER
The Mutiny on the Flowery Land
IT is significant to note that, in the merchant service, most of the mutinies on the record of shame have as their ringleaders—and rank and file—foreign sailors aboard British ships; and the mutiny on board the Flowery Land was no exception.
The Flowery Land, laden with wines, and a mixed cargo besides, left the Port of London on July 28, 1863, bound for Singapore. Crew and officers numbered twenty, the captain bearing the honest, if common, name of John Smith; with him, as a passenger, sailed his brother George.
They had not been at sea long before Captain Smith found that he had a very tough set of men to deal with. They were a cosmopolitan crowd—Spaniards, Turks, Greeks, Norwegians, Chinamen, and a sprinkling of Englishmen, these latter being Karswell, the first mate, and William Taffir, the second mate. The seamen, being far from sweet-tempered, and giving evidence every now and then of insubordination, had to be taken pretty strongly in hand, which took the form of rope’s-ending some of them occasionally to quell their unruly spirits. Such treatment, however, only seemed to arouse the antipathy of the crew, who secretly plotted against the captain and his officers; and when one day George Carlos, the Greek, after a particularly flagrant piece of insubordination, was hauled on deck and strapped to the bulwark for a while, it made them more determined than ever to get their own back. Not that this treatment of Carlos was anything out of the way; it was a very frequent form of punishment for the law-breaker at sea. And, as a matter of fact, Carlos did not get all he deserved, for Captain Smith took pity on him, and had him released sooner than he need have done, and went so far as to physic him and let him go to his bunk for a rest.
But what harsh treatment did not effect, kind was unable to, and Carlos nursed revenge in his heart. With his cosmopolitan comrades he worked up a mutiny which broke out on September 10, at about three o’clock in the morning.