About eight bells in the afternoon the Sovereign was sighted dead ahead. She was driving along full speed with a bone in her teeth. That is, with the bow wave roaring off on either side in a snowy-white smother, looking like a great white streak against her dark cut-water.
She passed within hailing distance, and Craven kept below the rail and rubbed his wounded leg while he smiled grimly.
“I’ve a notion to let go at her,” said he to Camp. “We could slap a couple of twelves into her before she knew what was up. I’d like to see her skipper with a couple of shot through his teakettle before he knew where he was at. Jim, suppose you lay the port guns on her.”
But Collins had sense enough not to get the guns trained in time. In ten minutes the gunboat was a speck on the horizon.
Craven knew she would overhaul the brig in a few hours, but hoped his merciful attack on the junk’s crew would lessen the heat of the chase. He might have sunk her and escaped, but his fancy took a different turn, and he played his game out.
Before sundown he was rapidly nearing the China coast and several junks were made out ahead. All hands, tired as they were, turned out and stood by for a fracas. It was not long in coming.
The nearest junk was laid close under Craven’s lee and the Chinamen could be seen crowding about her decks. He was so close a conversation could be carried on with the men on the junk, and the rush of the foam under her forefoot sounded loud upon Camp’s ears.
Craven let go his port broadside into her without warning. In five minutes he had her alongside. Several of her crew were dead, but he lost no time in transferring the living to his junk and making them lend a hand to shift his guns again. Then he sailed away with his battery transferred for the second time.
Craven fought his way up the coast, shifting his guns and ammunition from vessel to vessel at every available opportunity. Towns that had been warned of his approach in a junk, would see a peaceful trading schooner come quietly into the harbor at dusk. Nothing would be thought of this until in the early hours of the morning a heavy cannonade would arouse his victims, and those who survived would see the finest vessel there standing out to sea in tow of a schooner that fairly disappeared in the smoke of her own guns. The pirate had ammunition in plenty within three days’ sail of Hong-Kong, and he dodged everything sent after him for nearly a year. He kept the sea with remarkable cunning, and his absolute fearlessness won him many recruits.
Once he was heard from far down the Straits of Malacca, where he engaged a Malay pirate for several hours whose crew outnumbered his ten to one. He finally sank her with all hands.