As I have been asked to assist in writing an account of the events which happened during the last few months of the commission of our dear old tub the Vigilant, I had better explain to you how they first arose.
We had been up to Shanghai, to be handy in case a serious effervescence of native feeling against Europeans should bubble over, and get out of the control of the local authorities. As it happened, the agitation fizzled out without our being required, and I think I can honestly say, to our great disappointment.
From there we steamed down to Tinghai Harbour in Chusan, the largest of the islands of the Chusan Archipelago, and anchored close to Joss House Hill and the tumble-down ramparts of the new town of Tinghai. All the islands of the archipelago simply abound with game. There are pheasants in every valley, and millions of duck, geese, curlew, snipe, and even wild swan are to be found on the marshes, paddy fields, and vast stretches of mud. It was for this reason that Captain Lester had obtained permission to come here, and he had chosen Tinghai because its harbour is the safest in the archipelago, as well as the most important, being the centre for a vast trade carried on with Ningpo and Shanghai on the mainland. Close inshore are always clustered a great number of fine merchant junks, loading and unloading, and anchored off the town is generally a small fleet of war junks. These are supposed to cruise round the islands and keep down piracy—as a matter of fact they don't. As an additional protection to the town and shipping, two little open batteries are built at each end of the harbour, mounting fairly modern breech-loading guns.
Half a mile inland, and only connected to the modern town by a rough causeway through the paddy fields, is the ancient town of Tinghai. It is surrounded by a deep moat and lofty mud walls, which are pierced by four gloomy archways. These are flanked by towers, closed in by heavy, iron-bound gates, and only approached over drawbridges whose rusty chains are probably not equal to the task of hauling them up.
It looks gloomy enough from the outside, but it is still more so inside, and the sullen, scarcely concealed hostility of the inhabitants of its dark, horrid-smelling streets makes one exceedingly glad to get out again into the daylight, with no more indignity than being spat at or hustled.
The natives of the seaport town have grown accustomed to white men, and if they do not exactly welcome them, they tolerate them amiably enough. Indeed, a missionary and his wife—Macpherson by name—have lived here for years, and are always dinning into our ears the number of converts they have made.
You can imagine that everyone who could get away shooting did so, and one evening I came back to the ship after a long day's tramping through paddy fields after snipe. I had been using my new hammerless gun for the first time, I remember, and hadn't quite got into the "hang" of it, and kept on forgetting to push up the "safety" catch. Snipe don't give you much time for fooleries of that sort, so I hadn't been very successful.
I noticed that a Chinese cruiser was anchored close to the Vigilant, but paid no special attention to her, because she often came in. It was getting dark, and I was in a hurry to get aboard, have a hot bath, and change for dinner. The skipper of the Ringdove, one of our gunboats, had been shooting with me; I put him aboard his own packet, and then pulled alongside the Vigilant, where Lawrence, our navigator, met me at the gangway very excited, and I saw at once that there was something the matter. He followed me into my cabin, and whilst I changed into uniform, told me what had happened.
The Chinese cruiser—the Huan Min she was—an old wooden corvette belonging to the Peiyang squadron, had been making one of her regular cruises among the islands, and yesterday morning she had picked up two Americans—an old man named Hobbs and his daughter—adrift in a boat. They had reported that they and their steam yacht, the Sally Hobbs, had been captured by pirates, and that somehow they themselves had managed to escape. Turning out of her course to search for the yacht, the Huan Min had run into a fog, and presently found herself "right on top" of a tramp steamer and the yacht herself. Both had made off inshore as quickly as possible, and the Chinese Captain, following them, had rammed the poor old Huan Min's nose firmly into the mud. He had scarcely commenced to go full speed astern, when she came under a heavy fire, either from the tramp steamer or the shore, a fire to which she was unable to reply with effect. She was hulled several times, and had had some men killed and wounded before the rising tide enabled her to back off into deep water and get out of range. She had come along to Tinghai as fast as she could, and Lawrence told me that the two Americans were already aboard the Vigilant, and that Captain Lester was furious at having to look after them.
"He's had rather a bad day's shooting, sir, and is in a bad temper."