Blue Jackets: The Log of the Teaser

by George Manville Fenn

There was the answer to the signal, and there of course lay the junk, which in another five minutes we should have reached.

Mr Brooke pressed my arm, and we all sat listening to the beating of the oars, slow and regular as if the rowers had been a crew of our well-trained Jacks. Then the beat ceased, there was a faint rattling noise, which I know must have been caused by a rope, then a dull grinding sound as of a boat rubbing against the side of a vessel, and lastly a few indescribable sounds which might have been caused by men climbing up into the junk, but of that I could not be sure.

Once more silence, and I wondered what next.

Mr Brooke’s hand upon mine answered my wonderings. He pressed it and the tiller together, the boat’s sail filled gently once more, and we resumed our course, but the direction of the boat was changed more to the north-eastward. We were easing off to port so as to get well to the left of the junks, and for some distance we ran like this; then the hand touched mine again, and the rudder was pressed till we were gliding southward again, but we had not gone far when Ching uttered a low warning, and I just had time to shift the helm and send the boat gliding round astern of a large junk, which loomed up above us like ebony, as we were going dead for it, and if we had struck, our fragile bamboo boat would have gone to pieces like so much touchwood, leaving us struggling in the water.

“I don’t see what good this reconnoitring is doing,” I said to myself, as I sat there in the darkness wondering what was to happen next; but sailors on duty are only parts of a machine, and I waited like the rest to be touched or spoken to, and then acted as I was instructed. For from time to time Mr Brooke’s hand rested upon mine, and its touch, with its pressure or draw, told me at once the direction in which he wished me to steer; and so it was that, in that intense darkness, we sailed silently round those junks, going nearer and nearer till I knew exactly how they lay and how close together. But all the while I was in a violent perspiration, expecting moment by moment to hear a challenge, or to see the flash of a match, the blaze up of one of the stink-pots the junks would be sure to have on their decks, and then watch it form a curve of hissing light as it was thrown into our boat.

But not a sound came from the junks we so closely approached, and at last, with a sensation of intense relief, I felt Mr Brooke’s hand rest on mine for some time, keeping the rudder in position for running some distance away with the wind, before the boat was thrown up again full in its eye, and we came to a stand, with the mat-sail swinging idly from side to side.

Hardly had we taken this position, when once more from the direction of the river came the low beat of oars. As we listened, they came on and on, passed us, and the sounds ceased as before just where the junks were lying.

This time there was no signal and no answering light, the occupants of the boat finding their way almost by instinct, but there was a hail from the junk to our left, and we could distinguish the murmuring of voices for a time, and the creaking of the boat against the side as the fresh comers climbed on board.

“Ah, good information, Mr Herrick!” whispered Mr Brooke. “We have seen nothing, but we know that they have received reinforcements, and now in a very short time we shall know whether they are going to sail or wait till morning.”

“How?” I said.