“Now I see that you want to swear at somebody,” Mr. Hemster went on, “and suppressed profanity is bad for the system; so I suppose you’ll prefer to swear at the person mostly to blame. Get into the launch with Mr. Tremorne here, who will translate for you, because our oaths, unlike our gold, are not current in every country. Go over to that black monstrosity; get aboard of her; find out what their game is, and swear at whoever is responsible. When we know their object we can take action, either by law, or by hiring some pirate to run her down and see how she likes it herself. I want to get at the bottom of this business.”
The upshot was that the captain and I got into the naphtha launch and made directly for the Chinese steamer. We went around her twice, but saw not a soul on board, neither was there any ladder alongside by which we could ascend, or even a rope; so, after calling in vain for them to throw us a line, the captain, with an agility I should not have expected of his years and bulk, caught hold of the anchor-chain and worked himself up over the bow. His head appearing over the rail must have been a stupefying surprise to the crew, whom he found lying flat on their faces on deck. I followed the captain up the anchor-chain route, though in somewhat less effective fashion, until I was at the captain’s heels. He had thrown one leg across the rail, when he whipped out a revolver and fired two rapid shots, which were followed by howls of terror. The crew had sprung to their feet and flashed out knives, but his quick revolver-shots stopped the attack even before it was rightly begun. We both leaped over the rail to the deck. The cowardly crew were huddled in a heap; no one had been killed, but two were crippled and crawled moaning on the deck; the rest had ceased their outcry and crouched together with that hopeless air of resignation to take stolidly whatever fate had in store for them, which is characteristic of the lower-class Chinese. They expected instant death and were prepared to meet it with nonchalance.
“Where is your captain?” I asked them in their own tongue.
Several of them made a motion of their head toward a low deck-house aft.
“Go and bring him,” I said to one who seemed rather more intelligent than the rest. He got on his feet and went into the deck-house, presently emerging with a trembling man who admitted he was the captain.
“What did you mean,” I asked him, “by trying to run us down?”
He spread out his hands with a gesture that seemed to indicate his helplessness, and maintained that it was all an accident.
“That is not true,” I insisted, but nothing could budge him from his statement that the steering-gear had gone wrong and he had lost control of the ship.
“Why didn’t you stop the engines when you saw where you were going?” I asked.