Under the Chinese Dragon: A Tale of Mongolia

by F. S. Brereton

'Grandly done! Bravely done!' cried the Professor, showing not a little excitement. 'David, stand by to cut that chain. Hung.'

But Ho Hung was not there to acknowledge the summons. He had flown across the bridge of planks the instant David gave room for passage, while Lo Fing chased close on his heels. How exactly they ended the contest between the two rolling figures none of their own party ever knew; but end it they did.

Meanwhile a lamp flared suddenly in the cabin which David and his friends had so recently vacated, while shouts resounded from various parts. Then the half shattered door of the cabin was burst open with a bang, and a crowd of men swarmed on to the deck. They were met by another group ascending from the hatch by which the Professor had brought his party, and then by a solitary man, who shouted and bellowed at them.

'They have fooled us; they have slipped across into the other vessel. While we have been cutting holes through the roof of the cabin they have been transferring themselves and their possessions.'

The greeting which the news received was such that Dick winced, and felt almost unnerved for the moment. But the Professor reassured him; a glance at the leader showed that he was still drawing heavily at his weed, while his features and his general pose were almost jaunty.

'Shout yourselves hoarse, my beauties,' Dick heard him say. 'I fancy we've fooled you finely. Now, lad, you can strike your hardest.'

And strike David did, careless of the shots which two of the enemy aimed at him. He brought the edge of his axe down with a thud on the chain, and severed it easily. Then he leaped from the plank bridge and helped to throw the boards over.

'Moving asunder already, sir,' he said. 'Might just as well get under cover.'

'Quite so; it will want an active man to leap that breach. Get beneath the rail all of you,' commanded the Professor. 'Don't trouble to return their fire, for they cannot damage us easily, while we have already read them a handsome lesson. Ah, they are more than vexed, I fear.'

Through the rising gloom it was seen that the rail of the ship which had so lately borne David and his friends, and which had proved well nigh a death-trap, was lined with men. Some had clambered on to it, and held their places there with the aid of the rigging. All were shouting and gesticulating, all save the few possessed of fire-arms, and these rammed charges home with frantic haste, and poured their shot into the vessel slowly and steadily drifting away. If their defeat so far had enraged the piratical crews, their anger now was almost stifling. At the very beginning the feat of murdering the foreign devils, and of purloining all their possessions, was one not to be considered twice. Had the Professor been gifted with second sight, or had he had the help of some clever native detective, he would have learned that the rascally captain who had been so eager to charter his boat was already gloating over his gains when the ship set sail from Shanghai, while the leader of the pirates treated the whole affair as if already accomplished. There was to be a secret meeting, a sudden attack, and then cold-blooded murder. And see the result! Men here and there stark and dead on the deck or in the alley-way, others grovelling in the scuppers useless to their comrades, stricken hard by the knives of Hung and his fellows, or by the bullets of the foreign devils. Worse than all, the men whose death had been aimed at were drifting quietly away, not showing so much as a head, bearing with them all their possessions—yes, all their possessions. The pirate leader had already assured himself of that fact, exclaiming bitterly at it. David and his friends caught a glimpse of the man, a bull-necked, almost bald-headed Chinaman, with long, swinging pigtail, and possessed of most powerful arms and legs. They saw him standing on the rail, clinging to the rigging, brandishing a huge sword which, could it have come into close contact with them, would have done grave injury to more than one. The rascal seemed to be almost mad. The failure of a well-laid scheme, the loss of his own vessel on top of that, seemed to have combined to rob him of his wits. His eyes were staring. He frothed at the mouth, while the cruel lips curled back from a row of fangs as yellow as his own skin. And how he shrieked! Then he suddenly dropped back on to the deck, and they saw him beckoning to his comrades, rushing at those nearest him and dragging them along with him by main force. He drove them with threats from his weapon to the halyards, and shouted at them as they hauled at the rigging.