He brought up the biscuits, the two revolvers and a pocketful of ammunition and, taking his seat on the hatch edge beside the girl, opened the tin; then he went forward and hunted for water, found the water cask and, getting a tin pannikin from the galley, brought her a drink.
He had never loaded or fired a revolver; the girl had, and she shewed him how, the echoes of the cliffs answering to the ear splitting reports as he made a few practice shots, and the guillemots squalling and rising in clouds from their perches on the rock.
“We’re fixed all right now,” said he, “and we can have those chaps on board when they’re ready to come.”
“On board!”
“Oh, they’ll come right enough, they’ve got no grub on land.”
“Come—but do you mean to say you will let them?”
“Who’s to work the hooker out of the bay?” he answered, “Not you and me. We’ve got to get them aboard. There’s no harm in them now they’re licked.”
He spoke with a knowledge of men absorbed from the whole world over. The Chinese were licked and like dogs they would come to heel. He knew it, for he knew men. He had put the fear of God into them, he and the girl; the thing was over. Give the “Chinks” time to lick their wounds and swallow their gruel and they would be right as pie. He had seen a whole ship’s company licked by a little man of great will, and in hundreds of experiences and fights he had found that a beaten man, be he strong as ten, is to be led like a child. He was right. Next morning—they slept on deck that night keeping watch alternately—the “Chinks,” hungry and starving for a suck at their opium pipes appeared, the whole eleven of them, and coming down the beach like a troop of children stood in a line; then they began to wail.
Wail and wag their heads and wave their hands. Kerguelen, coming on top of the licking, had broken them to pieces. Then the whole lot kow-towed like one man, knees and forehead on the shingle.
Raft got into the boat and rowed off for the beach bringing them aboard four at a time and as each lot reached the deck they kow-towed to the girl and then trotted forward to the fo’c’sle, disappearing like rats, their teeth chattering from exposure during the night, stripped to the waist as they were, and never could one have imagined these little cringing harmless looking men the jackals of the day before.