"Mr. Langham, sir," several of the mids cried; but he, getting red in the face, said it was Hamilton, the Engineer, and he put it on to Moore, the A.P., so I left them settling the subject, and only too glad that the piano was so effectually sealed.
I think that everyone did feel, as the gunroom did, that some day we should see them all aboard again—Travers, with his mad, chivalrous notions and "tired" manner, and the pretty little girl, with her winsome face and funny twang.
At the end of the third week after the fire at Tinghai, the United States gun-vessel, the Omaha, came down to place herself under the Skipper's orders and assist us in our search. She was larger than our gunboats, very much more modern, and was rather quaint looking, with one mast and an enormously long, thin smoke-stack.
"If that chap comes along here giving Old Lest advice, Old Lest will—— Umph!" the Skipper growled when she was sighted.
Her captain, a man named Parkinson, was a tall, gaunt, disappointed man, with grey hair, and as old as Captain Lester himself, though actually junior in rank to me. He came across to report himself, and I heard him say, "Guess my boys thought the old Omaha was a fixture in the 'chow-chow' water at Shanghai, and our mud-hook could never be hauled out again. Say, Captain, we are right pleased to come and assist you."
He was sent away cruising.
Another weary week went by, and still no news came.
Then it turned out—one of the gunboats actually caught them at it—that those war junks, on which the Skipper relied so greatly for information, simply went out of harbour, round the corner, and hid in a neighbouring creek till their provisions ran out, and they had to come back again for more.
This news put the finishing touches to the Skipper's bad temper, and he was mad with rage, and sent for the Taotai at once.
"Umph! A pretty how d'ye do! Those lumbering junks of yours simply skulk out of sight round a corner," he roared; and when this had been interpreted to the Taotai—I wondered how much the interpreter understood and passed on correctly—the frightened old man gesticulated feebly, and then out it came: "Taotai speaks, sir! If junks caught by Pilons, he makee buy new ones—he no caree."