As it happened, by great good fortune, there was no necessity to regret his decision, because just after dark we sighted the lights of a steamer, flashed the "demand" from our masthead lamp, and it turned out to be the Ringdove on the way back to Tinghai. I wasn't on the bridge at the time, and had only just reached the deck after she was reported to me, when I heard men cheering, and a midshipman rushed up, "Mr. Travers is on board, sir, and well, sir! Isn't that grand?"
It's extraordinary how good—and bad—news comes in lumps together, and this seemed suddenly to make me feel ten years younger. I was up that bridge in a "brace of shakes". We had stopped our engines, and the Ringdove was flashing across a long signal, and everyone bent eagerly forward to try and take it in, whilst the signalman wrote it down, and clicked the shutter of his hand lamp to show the Ringdove that he had taken it in correctly.
Most of us were so much out of practice that we only got a word or a number here or there, but enough to know that she and her junks had lost a lot of men. At last the Ringdove had finished, and the signalman brought his signal pad to the Captain.
"Read it out, Truscott; your eyes are younger than mine."
Someone held up a lantern, and I read: "Have rescued Lieutenant Travers uninjured from island of Chung-li Tao Group. No news of whereabouts of Hobbs or daughter. Tender Sally sunk by gun fire; tender Ferret wrecked and abandoned, guns saved. Losses—Ringdove, one man wounded, since dead, two wounded; Sally, four[#] men killed, Mid Morton, two men wounded; Ferret, two men killed, five wounded."
[#] Cooke, A.B., had died as a result of his injuries.
"Phew!" whistled the Skipper. "They've had a hot time! Read it again."
I did so.
"Do they mean young Morton's killed or wounded?"
"Ask them."