Ford of H.M.S. Vigilant: A Tale of the Chusan Archipelago

by T. T. Jeans

But I don't mind confessing that to protect Sally Hobbs was uppermost in the minds of every officer and man who had landed that night, and the thought of her, surrounded by a howling mob of maddened Chinamen, was the spur which had urged everyone so wildly through the streets. Our failure and her probable fate, down in the burning town, made us bite our lips in great agony of mind. Fifty times during the night was I implored by my men to take them down into the town itself; but I knew that it would be useless, and that lost among those narrow, straggling streets, and unable to keep in touch with one another, we should be simply courting disaster. If I had been alone I suppose that I should have gone, and it was a great strain not to go, and take my eager men with me; but I had no right to risk their lives uselessly. It was quite another pair of shoes for Ching and his men, because they were among their own countrymen, and ran little risk by doing so. Ching, himself, as soon as Barclay had dressed his shoulder—it was most unfortunate that one of our people had wounded him—followed his men there and left us to ourselves. I told him that we should remain near the Mission all night, and resume our search in the morning. Poor fellow, I think he was as distressed as any of us were at the fate of the little American girl, for even his thin, usually expressionless face showed traces of the anguish which we all felt. In the house he had found a grey tam-o'-shanter cap which she had worn, and I saw him stuff it into his tunic, and, you may be sure, was in no mood to chaff him about it.

Mrs. Macpherson told me, before her husband took her away to the house of some native convert, that directly the fire had started down in the town, Sally Hobbs, poor little girl, had made her father take her down to see it, throwing a shawl over her head and hurrying away, just as she would have done in America, in spite of the earnest entreaties of Macpherson himself.

As day dawned, Ching brought his men back, their faces and uniforms blackened and torn. "I have no news, sir. Not a trace of her to be found;" and then he threw himself down on the ground, utterly exhausted. His men—Tartars of splendid physique—were as worn out as he was.

As I expected, Captain Lester sent me a fresh lot of men, and food for the few I had kept with me. I therefore started with them to make a more systematic search than it had been possible to make in the darkness, leaving my other fellows to share their food with their Chinese comrades. We searched the ground behind the Mission, examining every hut and outhouse as we went, and gradually spread out towards the left and towards a little bay or sweep of the coast, which here ran into the land. For an hour we searched without result, but then a seaman came running back with a uniform glove which he had picked up by the side of a small path running down towards the sea and that small cove. The glove might or might not have belonged to Travers, but I knew that he was probably the only one of us who would have worn gloves—he was rather eccentric about dress—so hoped that this might be some clue to his disappearance, and followed the path. Almost immediately another man picked up a handkerchief. The initials in one corner were H.C.L.—those of Lawrence, our navigator—but though he had not landed, I knew that Travers had a weakness for borrowing other people's things, and my hopes were again raised. I am afraid that my brain wasn't working properly—the terrible night was responsible for that—and for the life of me I could not imagine what reason could have brought Travers along this path. We yelled his name, my bugler boy blew the "close", but without result, except that all the mongrel curs in the neighbourhood started yapping and howling.

I followed that path till it dipped over the crest of a ridge and then led down to the little bay below us—a little bay with a curved mud beach. My men were on the point of rushing down to it, when Trevelyan, the Lieutenant who had brought them ashore and relieved Whitmore, suggested that we might find traces of footmarks to help us. I therefore sounded the "halt", and he and I went down alone. Trevelyan was quite right, the muddy shore was covered with footmarks in one place, and there were also three long furrows in the mud, evidently made by the keels of boats. These furrows led right up to high-water mark, and my brain was not too dense to appreciate the fact that three boats had been there at high water. We could trace the furrows for fifteen feet or more down the shore, and one went much farther than the others. "They shoved them off and had to push hard, sir," cried Trevelyan, bending down and showing me how deep some footmarks were, and how the mud was piled up at the back of them. "It was at the last tide too, sir, otherwise they would have been washed flat again." That was evident enough, but I couldn't think what he was driving at.

"When was Travers last seen, sir?"

"About one o'clock in the morning—there or thereabouts," I told him.

"Well, high tide was at about midnight, so these boats must have been shoved off about an hour and a half afterwards, half an hour or so after you lost Travers." He was getting quite excited, but, honestly, my brain wouldn't work.

"And this boat must have been later still, sir," and he pointed to the longer furrow.

Then there was a yell above us from some of the men who had been wandering about, and we saw several of them stooping over a clump of scraggy bushes, and one came down to tell me that they had found some dead Chinamen.