Miss Cecile, however, did not seem to care much about this point, and continued laughing as heartily as before. Hudson afterwards explained that, having found a chest of Chinese clothes in the cabin in which they were shut up, they had dressed themselves in them, in the hopes that thus disguised they should be the better able to make their escape.
Before night the Blenny hove in sight, and taking the boats on board and the junk in tow, the expedition returned to Hong Kong, where they found the frigate at anchor. Jack and Alick here bade the companions of their late adventure good-bye. Jack was a little sentimental when parting with Miss Cecile, but he very speedily recovered his usual state of feeling when he heard that she was about to be married to Mr Joe Hudson, the mate of the American brig.
While the Dugong and Blenny lay at Hong Kong, Captain Hemming was asked to take a poor young gentleman on board, who had suffered from the climate, and was very ill. A trip to sea might give him some chance of recovery. Hemming, in the kindness of his heart, at once consented, without asking who he was, and promised him a berth in his cabin. Scarcely had the stranger been lifted up on deck, than Jack recognised in his features, though pale and sunken, those of his old schoolfellow, Bully Pigeon. He was placed in the shade under an awning on deck. He had not been there long before he sent a boy to call Jack.
“Ah! Rogers,” he said, in a faint voice, “I dare say you scarcely like to speak to me; but I am not as bad as I was. I have been thinking a good deal lately, and a friend has talked to me and read to me, and I have seen my folly. I believe in the religion I once laughed at, and I see that, had I before believed in it, I should have been a thousandfold more happy than I was. I have thrown life away, for I shall soon die; but I am not miserable as I was lately, for I know that I shall be forgiven.”
The next day the frigate and brig sailed for the north. They had cruised for about a fortnight, when a steamer overtook them, and gave them notice that war had broken out once more between England and China, and that there would be plenty of work cut out for them before long.
Chapter Thirty Four.
Promoted.
The frigate and the brig which had the honour of conveying the three midshipmen between them, with the south-west monsoon blowing gently aft, proceeded northward among the numberless islands which stud the China seas, looking for the admiral and the rest of the fleet. They were surprised, as they sailed along the mainland, to observe the great number of towns and villages on the shores and vast tracts of country under cultivation. Several times they fell in with small squadrons of large government war-junks, with heavy guns, gaudy flags, flaunting vainly like peacocks’ tails, and stout mandarins sitting on their decks. Some tried to escape, and succeeded, but others were caught, and the stout mandarins either were or pretended to be very much astonished that their vessels were lawful prizes to the squadron of Her Britannic Majesty. They received very little commiseration, for it was well-known that they were in league with the pirates who infested those seas, and that when any grand piratical expedition was about to take place, they invariably kept out of the way. Sometimes they passed among whole fleets of tiny fishing-boats, to be counted by thousands, like shoals of fishes, themselves engaged in procuring food for the teeming multitudes on shore, and giving an idea of the vast numbers of the finny tribes which inhabit those seas. Frequently, too, there glided by one of those roguish, rakish, wicked-looking craft—an opium clipper, fleet as the sporting dolphin, and armed to the teeth, for she has foes on every side; the pirates long to make her their prey, and the mandarin junks ought to do so, but dare not.