Here they met several man-of-war ships, more than they expected to, and everybody had a real good time of it. Some of these ships of war were sent from the East India station hurriedly, their object being to protect British interests in these waters, and north beyond Corea, in the Sea of Japan.
Well, Japan seems, to look at it on a map, only a little, little island compared to that vast tract of land called China, that teems with its hundreds of millions. True, but Japan is civilized. Japan has a splendid army of fire-eating soldiers, and a navy fit to go anywhere and do anything, while China is still wrapped in the mists of heathendom, and ruled by a government as blind as it is ignorant. Foreigners are hated by the Chinese. Hated and hooted wherever they go. The country is two thousand years behind the age, and not even while I write is it yet opened up to commerce.
Well, Captain Leeward learned now for the first time that war-clouds were banking up in the eastern horizon, that the war-wind would blow from the east, and that soon the storm would burst in all its fury over Corea and the self-conceited Chinese.
No one knew the day or the hour when the first angry shot should go shrieking through the air.
It was a season of breathless suspense, like that which thrills the mariner's heart with its very silence, before the down-come of an awful hurricane at sea; when the stillness is a stillness that can be felt, when the very birds are silent and float listlessly on the smooth oily billows, or perch on the fins of some basking shark.
But a vessel was now sent round to Bombay, and here despatches awaited her which she was to carry back with her to the British fleet in Chinese waters.
We were, it must be remembered, quite neutral in this great and bloody war, but I think that the heart of every true-born Scot or Englishman went out towards the brave Japanese, and followed them with intense interest throughout all their glorious career.
I have no desire at this part of my story to be dry and technical. I am never so. I am built, I trust, on the keel of common sense, but I would rather laugh and be merry any day than talk politics, and would rather spin a good sailor's yarn than preach.
But still it will do the reader no harm to know somewhat of the provocation, that the brave Japanese received, before they let slip the dogs of war. I shall let the historian speak, however. The bone of contention really was the great Peninsula of Corea.
"The first complication in Corea," says the historian, "which threatened the peace of the three countries of the far east, happened in July, 1882. Kim-Ok-Kim and other Coreans had been over to Japan. Surprised and pleased at the wonders they had seen, they came back partisans of progress and enthusiastic supporters of Japanese influence. Their ideas were not favourably received by the ex-regent, or Tai-Wen-Kun, who was a hater of everything foreign, and he began to intrigue with the Min, a peaceful faction in Corea.