“No; nor do I want them. We’ll make the hong our chess-board, and play the game of defiance with our brains.”
“I have some idea of what you mean,” said Stan, laughing, “but it is not quite clear.”
“I mean, we’ll set to and scheme how to meet our friends if they do come again. You see, one is sure to have warning. They can’t come down the river without; and I can’t help thinking that you and I ought to be able to contrive some kind of floating dodge which we could let down amongst the junks, and which would blow them up or set fire to them.”
“Yes; I see,” cried Stan eagerly. “Or why not try something with a big kite that we could drop down to explode on their decks. But of course I don’t know how.”
“There you are!” cried Blunt, clapping him on the back. “Bravo! The very thing!”
“Oh no,” said Stan quickly. “That was just the ghost of an idea.”
“True; but we’ll set to and make it something solid. The people here have wonderful kites, and I’ll be bound to say that you and I could contrive something chemical that we could send up and manage with a string till it was just over them, and then drop it where it would explode, so that it would scare them off even if it did not set fire to their junks. But wait a bit. We’ll see.”
“Yes; if you take it like that, I think we might contrive something. I say, why not some kind of torpedo that we could sink just off the wharf, connect it here with a wire, and have an electric battery to fire the charge? Why, if I had had such a thing here when the junks were all together off the place, I could have—”
“Blown them to smithereens, my lad,” cried Blunt. “Bravo! And we’ll have a little gun, too, that we can work easily—one that will send explosive shells. There! that will do. I’m going to fill up an order for one battery of cells, thirteen as twelve torpedoes, so many yards of insulated wire, and—Here, I say, we ought out of common humanity to send word up the river to all pirates to make their wills before they come for their next attack.”
“Or put up a big hoarding with a notice written in Chinese for all who come up and down the river to read.”