Yes; he had heard them many times lately, but his knowledge on all these points was vague in the extreme.
He could rattle off the names of all the merchant ships there, and seemed to have a sneaking regard for his old ship, for he plucked A Tsi nervously by the sleeve and talked excitedly to him, pointing to the Captain.
"What does he want?" asked Helston.
"He says, sir, that if you recapture the Tsli Yamen, the ship he belonged to formerly, he wants you to say a good word for him to the owners."
"Tell him that if he answers all our questions truthfully we will not forget him."
When this was explained to him he salaamed very vigorously, bending his long body three times to Helston.
"How many white men are there on the island?" asked Cummins.
He could not say. "Three?"
No, there were more than three—four, five, or six, maybe, but he could not say.
Asked as to the events just previous to the arrival of the squadron, he did not know much. Some two or three ships had been captured lately, no big ones, and the Hong Lu had come in the same day as the destroyers, only early in the morning, from the south, he knew, for a friend of his was aboard her and had told him.