In spite of the odds against them, one of the Mongolians leaped forward and had almost struck one of our men with his shovel before a shot killed him in his tracks. The other Chinaman submitted, and he at once was securely bound and dumped into a corner.
Dr. Gresham tried to question the prisoner in Chinese, but all the information he could get regarding the keeping up of steam on the Nippon was: “Maybe leave here soon!”
While the astronomer had been thus engaged, Ensign Hallock and some of his men were examining the coal bunkers, and they now reported that the vessel was stocked with fuel for a long voyage.
At this juncture, one of the deck watch came to announce that the moon was sinking near the mountaintops, and that if we hoped to get far down the channel before the light failed we would have to start promptly.
Detailing eighteen men to do the firing—with orders to get more steam as rapidly as possible—Ensign Hallock and the rest rushed to the engine room, where the three apprentice engineers already were at work. Finding everything all right there, the officer proceeded to the steering room, while some of us pulled in the gangplank.
The astronomer and myself next started to find the radio plant, to get into communication with the Mare Island navy yard. But here we encountered a set-back: The wireless plant had been removed! Kwo-Sung-tao, we could only surmise, had moved the set to a spot more convenient to the village. So, for the present, communication with the outside world was impossible.
During this brief period of putting the ship in sailing order, none of the sorcerers made an appearance; probably all the men they could spare were exploring the captured destroyer.
Soon steam was up; whereupon Ensign Hallock sent Dr. Gresham to the bow and myself to the stern to keep a close lookout, and himself ascended to the bridge and gave the order to start the engines and cast off. Before many moments the leviathan was moving away from the wharf.
The officer had found from the charts that there was a place only half a mile or so upstream where the fiord opened into a bay, or amphitheater. There, from all indications, room might be had to turn the ship around and head her down the channel. For this opening he now set his course.
Although we maintained a very slow speed, it was not long before we nosed our way into the bay. Here the walls of the fiord retreated far enough to form a considerable body of water; nevertheless, it was plain we would have close work turning the Nippon in such a space. It would be necessary to steam well over against the north bank, where there no longer was any moonlight and the shore line was swallowed up in inky blackness.