“Me know—I know,” piped Wing, who always seemed to be ready for everything but heavy manual labour such as might break his nails. “Wing been gone look outside off hong whooff. Big ship come all steam up livah. Shoot, shoot topside big junk. Numbee one topside junk go bottom. Numbee two topside junk float down livah go close ’longside. Allee ovey—junk lun ’way up livah. Steamship shoot, shoot, shoot two-bang gun.”
Poor Wing in his excitement suffered to such an extent from incoherency that his speech was hard to grasp; but helped by a lookout from the wharf, where the enemy was represented only by the dead, the state of affairs was fully grasped. For the masts and parts of the sails of two junks rose from the river a few yards from the wharf-edge; the wreckage of another lying over on its side was floating down-stream, while in response to the fire of a grim-looking grey gunboat, whose shells went through her sides as if they were papier-mâché, a fourth was settling down a couple of hundred yards away, and her late occupants were swimming for the farther bank across the river.
As Stan shaded his eyes, which were dim and painful from the effect of the smoke, he saw enough to prove that the fate of the other junks was sealed. They were sailing up-stream, but the grey gunboat was churning up the water astern as she stole after them like fate, every now and then sending forth a great ball of white smoke with a roar, followed by a stinging crack-like echo when a shell burst with unerring precision, the result being that the river seemed in the distance to be dotted in all directions with strange specks, all of which drifted for the farther shore.
“Ah, Uncle Jeff!” cried Stan suddenly, as he heard a sharp scratch, and turned to see a match burning in the bright sunshine.
“Yes, Stan, Uncle Jeff it is: come out to breathe and have a cigar. I’ve used up all my stuff, boy. Pumped out. Here we are, you see; safe, though, after all.—My word, how those Jacks can shoot! Did you see?”
“Yes, uncle. Why, that junk must be half a mile away.”
“Yes, splendid practice; but she’ll go no farther than to the bottom, and the lads will have a shell into that other directly.”
Uncle Jeff was right. It took two more shells as he sat smoking, and then the last of the six pirate junks was so much bamboo chip floating down the stream.
“Poor wretches!” he said. “It seems very terrible; but it would have been much worse if the poor warehouse had been smoking ashes now, and our bones beneath.”
“Yes,” said Stan, shuddering. “I say, uncle, this is a horrible place.—Ah, Wing! You there?”