“Hurrah, lads!” I shouted. “There is first blood to us. Keep the pot boiling; but don’t shoot until you can see somebody to shoot at!”
At this moment the weather bulwark of the junk became suddenly lined with men all armed with jingals, with which they proceeded to blaze away at us, and some half a dozen or more missiles went whizzing past most unpleasantly close to my head. Nobody was hurt, however, and our men returned the fire with commendable steadiness, scoring a few hits, if one might judge by the cries that arose on board the junk, and the suddenness with which some five or six of her people sank out of sight behind her bulwarks. Then fresh hands appeared, showing suddenly above the rail, taking rapid aim, pulling trigger, and vanishing out of sight, not always quickly enough, however, to dodge the bullets that our people sent whizzing about their ears.
Thus far not one of the Mercury’s people had been touched; but the critical moment was yet to come. It was now close at hand, however, for our figurehead had drawn up level with the stern of the junk, and there was not more than fifty fathoms of water between the two craft. We might expect their broadside at any moment, and I felt that it was scarcely possible for us to receive it at such very short range without receiving very severe punishment. I therefore exhorted our people to maintain a hot fire upon the ports of the junk, feeling-convinced that every bullet which passed through would be almost certain to find its billet in the body of a Chinaman, thus tending to flurry their gunners and possibly cause them to shoot wide.
We were now so close that I was able to see that the junk needed a trifle of lee helm to keep her close to the wind; and I had no sooner noted this fact than I saw a man show his head for an instant above the break of the junk’s poop and sign to the helmsman to put his helm hard down. I guessed in an instant what this meant. They were about to throw the junk into the wind, in the hope that she would fall aboard of us, when they would pour their starboard broadside into us and board amidst the smoke. They could not possibly have hit upon a plan more likely to succeed, or to be fatal to us; and, recognising the deadly nature of our peril, I yelled to our people at once to fling themselves flat on the deck, which they did with almost laughable promptitude. At the same time I seized my musket, which thus far I had not fired, and, kneeling down, with one of the poop hencoops as a rest, aimed straight at the body of the junk’s helmsman, just as he was thrusting the tiller hard down. I pulled the trigger the instant that I had the man covered, and down he dropped, motionless, the ponderous tiller escaping from his grasp and swinging heavily back amidships, with the result that the junk, which was already coming to, at once fell off again at the precise instant when her whole starboard broadside burst into flame and smoke, the missiles luckily passing just ahead of us and very considerably damaging our figurehead, but doing no worse injury. By a most fortunate chance I had made my lucky shot at the exact moment which alone could save us from disaster. To give the pirates their due, at least a dozen men instantly sprang up on the poop, and rushed aft to replace the injured helmsman; but our people had been watching through a number of peep-holes what was happening, and no sooner did they see the Chinese on the poop than they leaped to their feet, and opened fire upon them with such murderous effect that half of them dropped, while the other half turned and fled from the poop, seeking shelter under cover of their craft’s bulwarks.
Left thus to herself, the junk gradually fell broad off, presenting her quarter to us. The opportunity thus afforded to pour into her a partially raking fire was much too good to let slip, and I shouted to the boatswain and Chips to send the contents of their pieces into her starboard bulwark, hoping that some at least of the bullets would enter her open ports and do a certain amount of execution. The two men had evidently been expecting such an order and had got their pieces ready levelled. A couple of seconds later the two six-pounders barked out together, and the two hundred bullets peppered the junk’s bulwarks most handsomely, many of them penetrating the planking, as I could both see and hear; for the next instant a dreadful, ear-splitting yell arose from the deck of the craft, telling a tale of very severe punishment. But that was not all; the two round shot likewise crashed through the bulwarks very effectively, one of them dismounting a gun, while the other brought the craft’s mainmast down, thus effectually placing her hors de combat. Those two shots must have wrought terrible havoc among the junk’s crew, for not only did they not attempt to return our fire, but they allowed their vessel to run broad off before the wind, squaring away their foresail the better to do so; and presently the junk in our wake abandoned the chase and bore up to join her consort. We thus emerged marvellously well from a predicament that at one moment threatened to be exceedingly serious, and that, too, without the slightest injury to so much as a single one of our company.
It was remarked that Wilde had most scrupulously refrained from obtruding his presence on deck during our little brush with the junks, which exhibition of pusillanimity on the part of a man who aspired to the position of head and leader of the little community provoked a great deal of adverse criticism, and considerably reduced his influence and popularity.
On the fourth day following the above incident, with the appearance of dawn, we sighted land ahead, which, as we drew nearer, resolved itself into three islands lying close together, the largest of which measured about eight miles long by three miles wide, while the remaining two were roughly circular in shape, measuring about a mile in diameter. The two smaller islands presented the appearance of low pyramids with rounded tops, their highest points rising some eight hundred feet above the sea level, while the biggest of the three rose somewhat abruptly from the water to a height of about fifteen hundred feet at each extremity, and preserved that height pretty uniformly from end to end, but with an elevation rising perhaps three hundred feet higher almost in the middle of its length.
All three of the islands were well wooded; but the largest had been cleared to some extent of its timber, the cleared ground bearing evidences of being under cultivation. This, of course, indicated that at least the largest of the islands was already inhabited, and was therefore unsuited to the requirements of Wilde and his followers, who wanted to find a spot where they would be reasonably free from all risk of molestation by hostile natives. Nevertheless, it was decided to approach the islands a little nearer, if only for the chance of being able to procure some fruit and a few fresh vegetables, for which all hands were by this time pining. However, since we knew nothing of the character of the inhabitants, but were under a sort of general impression that the natives of all the islands of the Eastern seas were of a more or less treacherous character, while some at least of them were very strongly suspected of cannibalistic tendencies, we determined to adopt every possible precaution. The muskets were accordingly brought on deck and loaded, while every man who had not a musket served out to him took care to provide himself with a weapon of some sort, even though it were no more formidable than a belaying pin. I also insisted that the ship should be kept under way, in order that, upon the first suggestion of treacherous designs upon the part of the natives, we might be able to make sail and stand out to sea again.
Approaching the lee side of the biggest of the three islands, one hand was sent aloft into the fore topmast crosstrees to keep a sharp lookout for submerged rocks, while another was sent into the fore chains with the hand lead. Then we clewed up our courses, royals, and topgallantsails, and hauled down our flying jib and some of the lighter staysails, but furled nothing, leaving all in a state to be set again from the deck at a moment’s notice.
The water in the immediate neighbourhood of these islands was deep, no bottom being reached with the hand lead until we were within half a mile of the shore, at which distance we brought the ship to the wind and laid the main topsail to the mast, as it was seen that many natives had gathered on the beach, and were making preparations to launch their canoes, several of which were hauled up on the dazzlingly white sand. I kept the ship’s telescope steadily bearing upon these craft and the numerous natives who swarmed about them, and was greatly relieved to see that the latter all appeared to be busily engaged in loading the former with baskets of fruit, fish, and quantities of fowls, while nowhere could I discover anything resembling a weapon.