"As a preliminary to what?" Helston would ask.
"Well, you see, sir, we'd batter their forts to pieces, and then we'd land and secure them, and possibly might be able to turn any guns left in them on the blackguards down below."
Helston's own ideas, if he could have put them in definite form, were probably to try and starve the pirates into making a desperate sortie, and, if this should happen, he was perfectly confident of the result. This may have been the soundest scheme, but success depended on so many factors. First, it meant time—possibly a considerable time—and time meant money, and Ping Sang was already inclined to draw tight the purse-strings. Secondly, it meant a sufficient force to blockade, and that, Helston ruefully confessed, he did not possess; and thirdly, and most important of all, was the question whether the island could be starved out in, say, two months, or possibly three at the most.
On this last point the two Chinese captured from the sunken torpedo-boat were able to give information which effectually dispelled this hope. For the first day or two after their capture they had preserved a sullen silence, and expected instant death. As day after day went by, and they received food and blankets to sleep in, it dawned upon them that they were not being reserved even for torture, and they gradually became more communicative.
A Tsi, the silent, inscrutable, right-hand man of Ho Ming, interviewed them every day, at first with no success, but eventually he was able to bring them into a more amiable frame of mind, and they promised to give what information they possessed.
When their leg-irons were removed, and they were marched up on deck and taken aft between a file of marines, their thoughts again flew to death, and their terror was great, in spite of A Tsi's assurances that did they but speak the truth they need fear nothing.
Each one was separately examined in Captain Helston's cabin before the Captain, Dr. Fox, and Ping Sang.
The first, a tall Tartar of fine physique, was only held upright by the vigorous support of A Tsi, who bundled him into the cabin, his knees bending and knocking together under his huge body. Looking from one to another like a hunted animal at bay, he salaamed, with both hands to his forehead, to each one in turn, and a second time to Captain Helston.
His story, drawn out of him with difficulty, was this. He had been a sailor aboard a merchant ship captured by the pirates, and, on the promise of his life, had taken service with them, being sent aboard one of the old torpedo-boats on account of his knowledge of seamanship.
He had no complaint of his masters' conduct towards him, and they paid him two or three dollars a month, with which to buy tobacco and sweetmeats.