We kept a sharp lookout and it was not long until we heard the soft chug of oars off the starboard bow. Our whaleboat, which was manned and waiting, at once set off in a course which, we figured, would carry the towing line across the bow of the proa. A few minutes later we made out the other proa coming up astern on the port side. The pair of them got so close that it looked as though something had gone wrong with my torpedo and I was just about to divide our crew to meet them on both sides when there was a flash and a roar less than fifty yards away, and the complete success of my invention was demonstrated. The proa was thrown out of the water, turned over, and badly smashed up. We never knew how many of her crew were killed by the explosion but not many could have escaped. The other craft swung around to board us but we riddled it with full charges from the fore and aft carronades and it began to sink. The survivors took to the water and a lot of them attacked the whaleboat, which had towed the torpedo, as it was making its way back to the ship. The boat’s crew were prepared for them and their heavy cutlasses chopped off every hand that grasped the gunwale and split open every head they could reach.

At Singapore, where we discharged our cargo, our agents reported that Moy Sen was vowing vengeance on us for the loot we had wrested from him and the havoc we had spread among his fleet, and that he had caused the report to be actively circulated at Hong Kong that the “Leckwith” was not a private yacht but a pirate, preying on legitimate commerce. As a result many robberies with which we had nothing at all to do were being laid at our door, and we were advised to be cautious. We worked our way back to the rendezvous and, after consulting with Norton, I took my interpreter, Ah Fen, who was half “Chinkie” and half Malay, from the “Leckwith” and went to Hong Kong on the “Surprise” to see just what was going on.

CHAPTER VIII
“THE BEAUTIFUL WHITE DEVIL”

“THE Beautiful White Devil,” a woman pirate whom I at first regarded as a purely fanciful being, born of the unreal atmosphere of the East, came into my life, in which she was destined to play a most important part, at Hong Kong in the early days of 1876. I had gone there in search of authentic information concerning the attitude and plans of old Moy Sen, overlord of all the Chinese pirates, who was reported to have declared an intention to bury my harassing ships and all on board of them, in return for our vigorous operations against him. This threat had given a new interest to a game of which I was beginning to tire, for I had then been waging war on the pirates for more than a year, and it was getting monotonous. I landed quietly at night from the “Surprise,” which remained far out in the roadstead, and went to the old Queen’s Hotel, where I clung to my role of a rich English physician, travelling for his health, but assumed a new name, which I cannot recall. My “Chinkie” interpreter, Ah Fen, I sent on up to Canton to secretly gain such information as he could pick up from a relative in the camp of the boss buccaneer of the China Sea.

While waiting for his report I lounged around the hotel and steered my casual conversation with the habitués toward the subject in which I was most interested. Soon I began to hear weird stories of a woman pirate who, while never molesting honest merchantmen, preyed mercilessly and successfully on the Chinese and Malay pirates, just as Norton and I were doing. It was said that she was exquisitely beautiful of face and diabolically black of heart; that she led her band of cut-throats in person and gloried in the shedding of black and yellow blood by the barrel. Her recreation from wholesale butchery was found in the companionship of occasional white men whom she ran across and who gladly accompanied her to her retreat, located no one knew where, only to be killed when she wearied of them. According to these tales, which I at first regarded as purely imaginative, she travelled in a steam yacht of phenomenal speed and had never failed in her desperate exploits. Though she had been in the business for years no one in Hong Kong had ever seen her and she was known only as the “Beautiful White Devil,” which name, from all accounts, was well suited to her. It occurred to me at once that if such a woman really did exist it might have been her ship that came to our assistance on the night of our battle with the Malays on the deck of the British bark, and whose captain I had attended under strange circumstances, and I saw visions of a meeting and perhaps closer acquaintance with her; but they were only fleeting fancies, for I could not make myself believe the tales that were told me. Not but what I wanted to believe them, and tried to, for next to adventure I loved a beautiful woman; if the two could be combined, the result would be an absolutely ideal condition, even though the feminine fancy did run to murder; but my reason told me I was dreaming of the impossible.

However, after I had heard the report of Ah Fen, who returned in about two weeks, bubbling over with information and gossip, I put more confidence in what I had been told, for he repeated the same wild story, with elaborations and variations. It was a well established fact in the minds of Moy Sen and his followers, he said, that there actually was a woman pirate who preyed on and destroyed the regular pirates, and she was as much hated as we were, or more, for she had been following that calling, with much energy, for years. It was said she had inherited an avenging oath against the pirates from some male member of her family, who had been a terror to them before her, and she was carrying it out with fanatical fervor. This was the story brought in by pirates who had escaped from junks and proas she had attacked, and who gave thrilling accounts of her demoniacal fury in leading her men. Moy Sen, my interpreter reported, was swearing renewed vengeance on both of us but, inasmuch as the lady seemed to bear a charmed life, he proposed to go after me first. He attributed to me the destruction of some of his junks that I had never seen, while, to balance accounts, the robbery of some of his ships which I had looted was laid at the door of my woman contemporary. This convinced me that there was a woman pirate, or, which I still believed to be more likely, a man masquerading as a woman, and that the pirate chief had confused our exploits. He was setting some sort of a trap for me, according to the inside gossip picked up by Ah Fen, and was determined to sweep the sea clear of my ships, at least.

I had sent the “Surprise” away as soon as she landed me, with orders to return in a month, ostensibly in search of cargo, and pick me up. She was about due when a man called at my hotel one evening and asked if an English physician was stopping there. I was pointed out to him in the billiard room and as he came toward me I recognized Captain Deverell, but he was as formal as a stranger and I took my cue from that and did not indicate that I knew him. He asked if he could consult with me and I took him to my room, where he assumed a much more cordial air.

“I called,” he said, “to invite you to take a cruise with me so that we may get better acquainted and I can show you my appreciation of your kindness of a few weeks ago.”

“How long will you be out?” I asked.

“A week or a month; whatever time suits your pleasure.”