Cover art
THE SKIPPER RECEIVES THE MANDARIN
Ford
of H.M.S. Vigilant
A Tale of the Chusan Archipelago
BY
STAFF SURGEON T. T. JEANS, R.N.
Author of "Mr. Midshipman Glover, R.N."
ILLUSTRATED BY WILLIAM RAINEY, R.I.
BLACKIE AND SON LIMITED
LONDON GLASGOW DUBLIN BOMBAY
1910
Preface
This story is written more or less on the same lines as my previous story of naval adventures—Mr. Midshipman Glover, R.M.—and describes events subsequent to those narrated in that book.
The proof sheets have been carefully read by messmates of different branches of the Service, and I am much indebted to them for correcting many technical errors.
Practically all the characters are drawn from life, and the cruisers and gunboats, British, American, and Chinese, taking part in the various operations are actual ships under altered names.
I therefore hope that the story gives an accurate representation of life in the Service under the war conditions described.
T. T. JEANS
Staff Surgeon, Royal Navy
H.M.S. ALBION
TO
E. R. W., K. G., AND E. M.
AS A SLIGHT RETURN FOR THEIR ASSISTANCE
WHILST WRITING THIS BOOK
Contents
CHAP.
- [How Dick Ford went to Sea]
- [Introduces Sally Hobbs]
- [The Vigilant under Orders]
- [The Loss of Lieutenant Travers]
- [Midshipman Ford's First Command]
- [The "Sally" goes into Action]
- [Mr. Rashleigh takes Command]
- [The Vigilant Sails Again]
- [Mr. Hoffman's Secret]
- [The Vigilant under Fire]
- [The Landing Party]
- [Midshipman Ford on his Mettle]
- [Mr. Ching to the Rescue]
- ["Old Lest" takes a Hand]
- [The Retreat]
- [Ford saves "Old Lest's" Life]
- [Goodbye to the Huan Min]
- [A Midnight Adventure]
- [The Captain Receives a Present]
- [Home Again]
Illustrations
[The skipper receives the Mandarin] . . . Frontispiece
["The Skipper took her up in his arms"]
[Plan of Creek (Hector Island)]
CHAPTER I
How Dick Ford went to Sea
Old Gurridge—Appointed to the Vigilant—Dick sends a Telegram—The Vigilant at Last!—"Dear Little Dicky!"—Dicky gives his Messages
Written by Midshipman Ford
I don't expect that you have ever heard of Upton Overy, in North Devon, but it is there where Captain Lester, of the Royal Navy, lives, and, at any rate, you must have heard of him. Everyone in the West Country knows him by name and most of them by sight, and whenever he comes back from sea the villagers won't do any work, and the bellringers ring peals and "changes" on the old church bells all day long, till you'd think that the top stones must be shaken off. The noise always makes my mother's head ache terribly. You see, my father is the parson of Upton Overy, and our house is so close to the church, that the noise seems to go through and through it.
If he happened to be at home, on leave or on half-pay, the Captain sometimes asked my father to go out shooting with him, and when I was quite a kiddy I was so fearfully keen to go too, that once I crept away and followed them. My father would have sent me back, had not the Captain growled out—and he had an awfully deep growling voice—"Let the nipper come along o' us, Padré;" and you may be jolly well certain that I did follow them, keeping close behind the Captain, without saying a word, and with my eyes glued on him, just to see exactly what he did. I got so tired, that if I hadn't been afraid of making a noise I should have cried.
"Send the young 'un to sea. He'll do," he had said when my father, very angry at having his day's sport spoilt, had at last to carry me back.
That is the first I remember of Captain Lester, and is why I remember what he said. Afterwards he would often let me go with him, and when I was big enough would let me hold his great mongrel dog "Blucher". The Captain used to take this dog to sea with him, and always brought him out shooting; but he used to get so excited that he would obey nobody, and if let loose, always ranged ahead of the guns, and put up every bird for miles. The result was that he was kept on the chain nearly all the time.
Although he was so useless, the Captain would never leave him behind. "I've spoilt the dog taking him to sea", he would growl; "I ain't going to spoil his bit of sport", and he always let him have a run "on his own" towards the end of the day.
Sometimes his eldest girl, Nan, used to come too, and as she worshipped her father just as much as I did, we became quite chums, and had many a jolly day together, while we hung on to old Blucher's chain, and he tugged us about.
She worried very much because she was a girl and couldn't go to sea, but of course that wasn't her fault—I told her so, often—and it always made me feel what a jolly good thing it was to be a man, and that I was going to sea. I had made up my mind to that, and had never forgotten what the Captain had said. I simply longed for the sea, and used to spend every moment I could down among the fishing boats, helping to spread the nets out along the shore to dry, and sometimes taking a hand in mending them. I made chums, too, of the boys in the smaller smacks, which worked close inshore, and one of them took me out several times in his uncle's boat.
But just skirting along the coast was not enough for me, so one night I did a very silly thing. Upton Overy owned six deep-sea trawlers, which were generally away on the fishing grounds for a whole week, and one night, I couldn't stand it any longer, and crept out of the house, round by the back of the church, down a cliff path to the harbour, crawled aboard one of these trawlers, and hid myself under the nets. I knew that they were all going out before daylight, and that I shouldn't be found till we were right out of sight of land.
When they did pull me out in the morning, old Gurridge—it was his boat I'd crept into—was rather beastly about it, and jawed at me till he was tired. He'd had some row with my father, and thought it a jolly good opportunity of having a "dig" at him, and the way he'd brought me up; but I didn't mind what he said—not in the least—for all round me was sea, no land whichever way I looked, and I simply felt mad with delight.
It came on to blow, too, and I don't think that old Gurridge could have taken me back, even if he'd wanted to—and he didn't want to either, because of that row with my father—and all the time he made me work, scrubbing and cleaning, and jawing at me for being so wicked as to run away.
Of course I got back safely, had a jolly good beating, and was sent to bed; but, honestly, I couldn't feel wicked, because, right down inside me, I knew that I'd done it because the Captain wanted me to go to sea, and, as I told you before, I simply worshipped him. Most people did—even the "grown-ups"—so it was no wonder that I did.
He heard about it too—my trip in the trawler, I mean—and that was one reason, I fancy, why he gave me a nomination for the Britannia, and when I had passed in, promised to look after me if I did well there.
I can't help remembering the first time I came home in cadet's uniform, and rushed up to the House to show myself to Mrs. Lester and the girls. Nan was most respectful, and she'd never been so before, and that pleased me more than anything else. I expect that I put on a frightful amount of "side", and must have been a horrid little bounder.
I only saw Captain Lester twice whilst I was in the Britannia, and then he commissioned the Vigilant for the China station. Of course, what I really wanted to do was to go to his ship, but I thought that probably he'd forgotten all about me. He hadn't, though; for when, during my last term, my father had to write out to him about some church repairs, he wrote in his reply, "Tell the young 'un he can come out to my ship, if he passes out of the Britannia well".
This news simply made me boil all over, and you may guess how hard I worked that term, and what I felt like when the lists came out. My name—Dick Ford—was seventh of my term, and next below me was Jim Rawlings, my best chum, and we both had just got enough marks to scrape out as midshipmen straight away.
Wasn't that splendid? It was grand, too, to see the little white badges sewn on the collars of our monkey jackets, and to know that we'd finished being cadets.
The next thing to do was to get Captain Lester to apply for me; but I funked asking Mrs. Lester, and my mother stood rather in awe of her too. However, it turned out that the Captain and Mrs. Lester between them had arranged it all, and one morning, after I'd gone home on Christmas leave, there was a large blue envelope for me in the postbag. I tore it open, and the first thing I saw was the name Vigilant scrawled in among the print. I yelled with delight, for there it was at last. It was grand, and at the end of the print was: "You are to embark on board the P. & O. Steamship Marmora by noon on the 14th January".
My mother ran up to her room directly I had read it aloud and she had looked to make certain, and my father frowned at me and said angrily, "You see what you've done? Broken your mother's heart," and that made me miserable again, though I couldn't feel miserable for long, and rushed up to the House to show the appointment to Nan and everyone I met. I shall never forget that day and the next three weeks, and at last driving off to the station, with my sea chest on top of the village cab, really, actually—I could hardly believe it—on my way to China—and Captain Lester.
Mrs. Lester and the girls were at the big gates, and I had to stop and wish them goodbye. Nan looked down her nose and pretended she wouldn't have given her soul to be coming too, and Mrs. Lester, before I knew what was going to happen, actually bent down and kissed me. My mother was so astonished that she left off crying, but I'm almost sure that Mrs. Lester had tears in her eyes. Of course I knew why—because I was off to join the Captain, and would—-with luck—see him in six or seven weeks.
She had a big box of things for me to take out to him too, and it took a great deal of hoisting up alongside my chest.
You can have no idea how many messages were given me for him. Of course everyone in the village knew I was going, and for the last fortnight, I should think, half the village had sent "best respects to the Captain", and news about their children or gardens or the fishing. I stuck them all down in a notebook so as not to forget them—my mother advised me to do this. At the station old Puddock, the station master, gave me a pot of cranberry jam his wife had made—she'd been cook up at the House before she married Puddock—"with our best respects for the Cap'en, Master Dick, and tell him we're both fair to middling, and I got first prize at Barnton Show for the pigs". Out came the notebook again, and we were off at last—my mother and I.
But the funniest thing of all happened at the next station—Bodington—for there Ned the Poacher—he was an awful nuisance for miles round, and spent half the year in prison—came sheepishly to the carriage and asked me to tell the Captain that he and his pals wouldn't be too hard on the pheasants this year, as they knew he was coming home for next year's shooting. "Tell the Cap'en they birds be mighty strong and healthy, and there'll be plenty of 'em next year when he comes home," and he shuffled away. I suppose he hadn't the face to come to me at Upton Overy itself.
I wasn't going to put that down in the notebook, but my mother said I had better do so.
When we went down to the docks next day and went aboard the Marmora, the very first person I saw was Jim Rawlings—on his way out to join another cruiser—and in the excitement of seeing him I hardly wished my mother "goodbye" properly, and it was only when the Marmora shoved off and left her standing alone in the rain, on the dock wall, that I felt what an awful brute I was, and wanted to jump across the bit of water just to say "goodbye" once again.
There were four cadets on board, as well; going out to join different ships. A lieutenant was in charge of all of us, and jolly nasty he made himself too; and we were all jolly glad when we found his ship lying at Singapore, and he cleared out. I'm not going to tell you all about the voyage. It would take too long, and there are too many exciting things for you to hear. For me they began there, and it was Jim who made the discovery. He'd got hold of a Singapore newspaper, and suddenly came flying along the deck, whooping like a madman, and shoved it into my hands. You can imagine how excited I was, for among the telegrams was this:
"Shanghai, February 22nd. Captain Lester, H.M.S. Vigilant, senior officer in the Chusan Archipelago, reports that the Chinese cruiser Huan Min has picked up Mr. Martin P. Hobbs and his daughter, adrift in a boat, and that their steam yacht has been captured by a gang of pirates in possession of a large steamer, and led by a European."
At the end of the telegram followed—"We understand that Captain Lester has been ordered to take the necessary steps to recapture Mr. Hobbs's yacht."
My Aunt! Wasn't that news? You can just fancy how I almost felt sick all over with excitement, and how frightfully important I felt at being the only one going to that ship, with a chance of chasing pirates. How I wished it was possible for Jim to come too. We thought and thought of any number of schemes, and then, "Let's telegraph to Captain Lester," he burst out; and we hunted out every penny we had in our chests, rushed ashore, jumped into a double rickshaw, and went off like mad to the Eastern Telegraph Office. The Marmora was lying at Tanjong Pagar wharf, and we needn't have gone fifty yards, if we'd known, but we drove right into the town.
When we got there our courage began to ooze away, because I knew it was a frightfully cheeky thing to do; but Jim bucked me up, and the telegraph people helped us, and put the best address they could think of. What we sent was: "Midshipman Rawlings chum mine wants come Vigilant—Ford Midshipman", and that took nearly all our money. Neither of us cared a "rap" about that, though, so long as Captain Lester would ask for Jim.
We were half-dead with funk at what we'd done when we got outside the office, but Jim cheered me up by saying, "we couldn't get hanged", and that they wouldn't send us home again, because of the expense, so we drove back fairly happy, though I couldn't sleep much that night for wondering whether the Captain would think me frightfully impertinent. He was terrible when he was angry.
We were a week punching up to Hong-Kong. It seemed a month, and when we did get there, both Jim and I were waiting at the gangway for the officer of the guard to board her, hoping to hear from Captain Lester. Of course there was nothing at all for us from him, and I was ordered to go across to H.M.S. Tyne, store-ship, for passage to the Vigilant, whilst Jim and the three cadets had to go aboard the Tamar, the receiving ship, always stationed there. Jim didn't say anything, but went down the gangway with his lips firmly pressed together, and I, very miserable, went across to the Tyne and wandered about her great ward room like a lost sheep all the afternoon, getting in everyone's way, till I got into a corner, and wrote a long letter home.
I couldn't keep miserable very long, though, because we unmoored directly after dark, and at last I was really off to join the Vigilant, and in the excitement forgot about Jim. Boats had kept coming and going, and I hadn't taken any notice of them, and they must have come over in the last boat, because just as we cast off someone banged me on the back, and there was Jim Rawlings, grinning all over his jolly ugly red face, and behind him was that ass Dicky Morton, the junior of the three cadets, with his silly little eyes almost sticking out of his head with excitement.
"We're both sent to the Vigilant," he squeaked out.
Well, Jim coming too made me just completely happy, although it was a bit toned down by having Dicky Morton with us too. "He's not a bad little chap when you get used to him," Jim told me, but that was Jim "all over". He was the most unselfish fellow you ever met in the world, would have given you his last shirt if you asked him, and was always standing by to give a leg up to silly idiots like Dicky.
He hadn't the least idea why he'd been sent; he'd just been given an order, signed by the Commodore, and he hadn't heard whether Captain Lester had telegraphed or not. We tried to think that our telegram had just done the trick, but then that did not explain why Dicky was here. We didn't worry about anything, though, for long, and simply counted the minutes, and kept our eye on the cherub log all the time. You can imagine what we felt like when we ran into a fog, three days out, and had to crawl along at about five knots, rolling about in a swell on our starboard bow. Our navigator was much too wily a bird to try and make the Chusan group of islands from the south in that kind of weather, and that meant another twelve hours steaming; but at last the fog blew away, the sun came out long enough for him to take a sight, and away we went again.
The fifth day out from Hong-Kong we made the islands—you can bet your boots we were on deck—dodged in between several of them, and then the harbour of Tinghai suddenly opened out, and far away, under a hill, we could just see a white spot. "That's your ship, the Vigilant," a signalman told us as he hoisted the Tyne's number. We got nearer and nearer; she got bigger and bigger. Presently the signalman hauled down the pendants, and we knew that the Vigilant had seen us, and I wondered whether Captain Lester would be frightfully angry or not. I was really in a funk at meeting him, chiefly because of that telegram.
We anchored quite close to her, over to us bobbed a steamboat with a big "V" on her bows—our steamboat—my steamboat some day perhaps—and we were presently bundled in and taken across, the midshipman of the boat winking at us patronizingly.
"Have you caught the pirates?" we all asked him.
"Not yet. You bet! but we're in for some fun. You're lucky beggars, I can tell you. They're only expecting one mid. Where the dickens d'you other two come from?"
The first bit made us fearfully excited, but the last part made me miserable again; for it made it quite certain that Captain Lester had not asked for Jim Rawlings, and I knew he would be angry with us both if he had received that telegram already, or if he ever did get it. We were alongside in a jiffy, I climbed up the ladder, and, in my excitement at being at last on board the Vigilant, I forgot to salute the quarterdeck, and so did Dicky, and the officer of the watch "jumped" on us both and sent us both down below with a flea in our ears. I got red all over with shame, and it hurt me more because Dicky and I were in the same box; it wouldn't have been so bad if it had been Jim. The Captain was ashore—I was jolly glad of that—and the Commander was asleep, and didn't want to be disturbed, so we were left to ourselves, and saw our chests lowered into the gunroom flat, jammed together into a dark corner, and then we sat down on them for company, swung our legs, and felt miserable.
We weren't left alone for long, though, and soon we were hauled into the gunroom, where the Sub-lieutenant—a huge, great fellow—made us stand in a row in front of him, and asked us silly questions, to make all the others laugh. Jim and I got through this all right, but Dicky made a perfect little ass of himself—we were frightfully ashamed of him—squeaking out all sorts of things about his family and his sisters, and everyone roared with laughter.
"What do they call you at home?" the Sub asked him.
"Dicky, sir," the idiot bleated.
"Don't they ever call you 'dear little Dicky'?" the Sub said coaxingly. He was enjoying himself immensely, and I could almost feel Jim grind his teeth with anger when Dicky smiled feebly, and answered, "Sometimes, sir."
There were shouts of "dear little Dicky" all round the room, and the ass never saw what an idiot he had made of himself. He was always called "dear little Dicky" afterwards, by the Sub's orders, though there was no need for orders to make them all do that.
It was a horribly bad beginning.
They hadn't any news of the pirates either to cheer us up. They had had one look for them, but had found nothing, and were now waiting for fresh orders.
Just before it got dark someone sung out that the Captain was coming back with the Fleet Paymaster. I hadn't the courage to go up on deck to let him see me, but just peeped out of a gunroom scuttle as he came alongside.
He was so broad and big, that he seemed to fill the galley's stern sheets. He was wearing the same stained old shooting-suit he always wore at Upton Overy—I never could remember seeing him in any other—Blucher, thinner than ever, was squatting between his knees, and the Fleet Paymaster, with white beard and a still older shooting-suit, was sitting next to him. He threw away the stump of a cigar, helped Blucher scramble on to the ladder, gave a gruff order to the coxswain, and followed Blucher. He looked so stern, and I felt so afraid of him, that I popped my head in again lest he should see me, and waited, hot and cold, expecting him to send for me. I wasn't so silly as to think that he would want to see me, but I knew that he would want to hear all about Mrs. Lester and the girls.
Jim knew how frightened I was, and promised that directly I was sent for, he and Dicky would bring along the packing-case which Mrs. Lester had sent, and put it outside his cabin door, so that I could get at it very quickly.
And then I remembered that pot of cranberry jam, and hunted for it in my chest. I couldn't find it anywhere. Jim asked what I was looking for, and he helped too. Suddenly he stopped, his face quite white.
"Was it a white jar with the top covered with brown paper?"
"Yes, it was," I told him, and knew that something awful was going to happen.
"I emptied it," he groaned; "ate the whole lot, half-way from Aden."
I went cold all over, and just then the sentry sang out that the Captain wanted me, and I shuffled aft, knocked at the door, heard the Captain's growl "Come in!" could hardly turn the handle for fright, went in, and stood before him absolutely speechless.
He was reading a letter—we'd brought a mail with us in the Tyne—and didn't look up for a moment or two, and just in that time, jolly old Blucher stretched himself, came over, smelt me, got up on his hind legs and licked my face before I could prevent him. I could have hugged him, because that did the trick, and made me forget all about the jam and the telegram—for the moment.
"Hello, Dick! Got here at last?" and the Captain looked up, and held out his great red hand. "How's the Missus and the girls? Where's that box of things she tells me she gave you?"
"Outside, sir," I squeaked—like Dicky—and simply rushed out. Jim and Dicky had just brought it along, and I dragged it in.
"Umph! Don't spoil my carpet. Where's Willum? Willum!" the Captain shouted, "come and open this box." "Willum"—I never knew his surname—was his valet, and between us we soon had the box open, the Captain all the time asking me questions.
"I had a number of messages for you, sir, from people in Upton Overy. I've got them all—nearly all of them—down in my notebook."
"Where is it?" he growled. "Read 'em out."
But I'd left it down in my chest purposely, so that I could get a "breather", and when I ran down to get it, Jim was waiting for me.
"Anything about the telegram or the jam?" he asked anxiously.
"Not yet; things are going all right so far;" and I raced back and began reading the messages, till I came to the station master's, and then I got red and spluttered a bit and didn't read it, but went on to Ned the Poacher's about the pheasants.
"Like his darned cheek!" the Captain roared, purple in the face. "I'll shoot him the first time I catch him! He knows that, and keeps clear when I'm about. What's become of his wife and kids?"
I told him, and then—I knew it must come out sooner or later—blurted out, "and Puddock, the station master, asked me, sir, to tell you that they were both 'fair to middling', and 'his pigs have won first prize this year at Barnton'. Mrs. Puddock, sir, sent you a pot of cranberry jam, but—but——"
"Where is it, Dick? She's made me a pot every year since I went to the Britannia. Bring it out."
Well, there was nothing else to be done. I simply quaked with fear and stuttered out: "Jim ate it, sir—I mean we both ate it," and then, before he could say anything, I explained that Jim Rawlings had thought it was mine, and that it would be a good joke to eat it without my knowing.
I suppose I looked so terrified that he hadn't the heart to be angry. He gurgled and growled and got red in the face, and I waited to see whether it was going to be with amusement or anger, and oh! I was so thankful, it was only amusement.
He sent me away then. "You'll shake down all right; glad to have you in my ship;" and though I longed to ask him whether there was any chance of going for those pirates, I hadn't the pluck to do so, and bolted like a rabbit.
H.M.S. "Vigilant"
CHAPTER II
Introduces Sally Hobbs
News of the Pirates—Mr. Hobbs Tells his Story—The Chinese Captain—The Pirates—Three Cheers for Miss Hobbs!—The Skipper gets the Telegram
Written by Commander Truscott, H.M.S. Vigilant.
As I have been asked to assist in writing an account of the events which happened during the last few months of the commission of our dear old tub the Vigilant, I had better explain to you how they first arose.
We had been up to Shanghai, to be handy in case a serious effervescence of native feeling against Europeans should bubble over, and get out of the control of the local authorities. As it happened, the agitation fizzled out without our being required, and I think I can honestly say, to our great disappointment.
From there we steamed down to Tinghai Harbour in Chusan, the largest of the islands of the Chusan Archipelago, and anchored close to Joss House Hill and the tumble-down ramparts of the new town of Tinghai. All the islands of the archipelago simply abound with game. There are pheasants in every valley, and millions of duck, geese, curlew, snipe, and even wild swan are to be found on the marshes, paddy fields, and vast stretches of mud. It was for this reason that Captain Lester had obtained permission to come here, and he had chosen Tinghai because its harbour is the safest in the archipelago, as well as the most important, being the centre for a vast trade carried on with Ningpo and Shanghai on the mainland. Close inshore are always clustered a great number of fine merchant junks, loading and unloading, and anchored off the town is generally a small fleet of war junks. These are supposed to cruise round the islands and keep down piracy—as a matter of fact they don't. As an additional protection to the town and shipping, two little open batteries are built at each end of the harbour, mounting fairly modern breech-loading guns.
Half a mile inland, and only connected to the modern town by a rough causeway through the paddy fields, is the ancient town of Tinghai. It is surrounded by a deep moat and lofty mud walls, which are pierced by four gloomy archways. These are flanked by towers, closed in by heavy, iron-bound gates, and only approached over drawbridges whose rusty chains are probably not equal to the task of hauling them up.
It looks gloomy enough from the outside, but it is still more so inside, and the sullen, scarcely concealed hostility of the inhabitants of its dark, horrid-smelling streets makes one exceedingly glad to get out again into the daylight, with no more indignity than being spat at or hustled.
The natives of the seaport town have grown accustomed to white men, and if they do not exactly welcome them, they tolerate them amiably enough. Indeed, a missionary and his wife—Macpherson by name—have lived here for years, and are always dinning into our ears the number of converts they have made.
You can imagine that everyone who could get away shooting did so, and one evening I came back to the ship after a long day's tramping through paddy fields after snipe. I had been using my new hammerless gun for the first time, I remember, and hadn't quite got into the "hang" of it, and kept on forgetting to push up the "safety" catch. Snipe don't give you much time for fooleries of that sort, so I hadn't been very successful.
I noticed that a Chinese cruiser was anchored close to the Vigilant, but paid no special attention to her, because she often came in. It was getting dark, and I was in a hurry to get aboard, have a hot bath, and change for dinner. The skipper of the Ringdove, one of our gunboats, had been shooting with me; I put him aboard his own packet, and then pulled alongside the Vigilant, where Lawrence, our navigator, met me at the gangway very excited, and I saw at once that there was something the matter. He followed me into my cabin, and whilst I changed into uniform, told me what had happened.
The Chinese cruiser—the Huan Min she was—an old wooden corvette belonging to the Peiyang squadron, had been making one of her regular cruises among the islands, and yesterday morning she had picked up two Americans—an old man named Hobbs and his daughter—adrift in a boat. They had reported that they and their steam yacht, the Sally Hobbs, had been captured by pirates, and that somehow they themselves had managed to escape. Turning out of her course to search for the yacht, the Huan Min had run into a fog, and presently found herself "right on top" of a tramp steamer and the yacht herself. Both had made off inshore as quickly as possible, and the Chinese Captain, following them, had rammed the poor old Huan Min's nose firmly into the mud. He had scarcely commenced to go full speed astern, when she came under a heavy fire, either from the tramp steamer or the shore, a fire to which she was unable to reply with effect. She was hulled several times, and had had some men killed and wounded before the rising tide enabled her to back off into deep water and get out of range. She had come along to Tinghai as fast as she could, and Lawrence told me that the two Americans were already aboard the Vigilant, and that Captain Lester was furious at having to look after them.
"He's had rather a bad day's shooting, sir, and is in a bad temper."
This was Lawrence's story, and excited enough he was about it and the chances of our having a "show". "Strangely enough too, sir," he said, "the First Lieutenant of that ship is an old chum of mine—a man named Ching. He was doing a year's training in the old Inflexible when I was a Mid in her. A jolly chap he was—we all liked him—and he's coming over after dinner to have a yarn, if he can get away."
I had to dine with the Captain that night—he positively refused to entertain the two Americans by himself—and I learnt from the old father, Mr. Martin P. Hobbs—I had seen his name in the papers—he was a wealthy railway magnate—the details of their extraordinary escape. This is what he told me, and you can take it for what it's worth; but he was such a weird, cunning little object, that I, somehow or other, found myself doubting his story. He and his daughter Sally, who was as pretty as paint, although her hair had been clumsily cut off, and who was now trying to twist the dear old bully of a Captain round her little finger, had been wandering about the Northern Treaty Ports, and at Shanghai had met some Boston people who were, what he called, doing a "splash". They'd been somewhere up country with a caravan of their own—somewhere where no one else had ever been—and in order to go one better, nothing would content Miss Hobbs but that her father should buy a small steam yacht, which happened to be for sale, and start away for a thousand-mile trip up the Yangtse. The skipper of the yacht—they'd named it the Sally Hobbs—seems to have been a dare-devil sort of scoundrel, according to Hobbs, and instead of taking them up to Hankow, got them to alter their plans, and brought them down among the islands.
One night they had anchored close to an island, and woke up to find the yacht in possession of a crowd of Chinamen, simply swarming all over the decks. They were forced down below and locked in their cabins, and there they stayed for a whole day, while the yacht steamed away. Some time during the next night Hobbs was roughly gagged and bound, a long, blue, Chinese coat pulled over him, and he was made to get into a boat alongside. He found his daughter lying in the sternsheets, gagged and covered with another blue native coat. He heard a scuffle on deck, but it was too dark to see anything distinctly. He thought he heard the voice of the old Scotch engineer of the yacht, and then someone cast off the boat and they drifted quickly away in the darkness.
In the morning they had been seen by the Huan Min, taken on board, were in great danger whilst she was trying to fight the pirates, and were afterwards brought along here.
That was his story, and as I said before, it did not convince me. If the whole scheme had been arranged, and he implied that the skipper of the yacht was the arch villain, how on earth had he allowed Hobbs to escape so easily? He must have known of his enormous wealth, and would surely have kept close guard on him to extort a ransom later on.
However, there was his daughter, and no doubt her hair had been roughly cropped off, and from what I know about women, especially pretty ones, they wouldn't lose their hair if they could possibly help it, and when I looked across at her, the very picture of innocence, and heard her tell the Skipper how they'd shorn it off, putting her hands through the irregular bits left, her lips quivering, and her eyes filling with tears, I was bound to believe that there was some truth in it.
It was amusing to watch the change in the Skipper's manner. He had sat down to dinner with a scowl on his face that would have melted the paint off the bulkhead, and snarled whenever he spoke; but now he was telling her all about his wife and daughters, and she was holding up her wrists to show him where they had been bound and bruised, and had completely mollified him.
Presently Hobbs ventured to ask him if he would try and recapture the yacht, and then the Skipper flared up again and roared at him, "that American citizens should get their own ships to do their own dirty work". The Skipper's language was never too refined, but the little man wasn't to be browbeaten. "Guess the Sally Hobbs was flying your own red ensign, Captain," he answered defiantly.
"Darn my rags! Why didn't you say so before?" shouted the Skipper, and got purple in the face. "Those pirates dare touch anything under our flag? I'll go after 'em to-morrow."
"I rather fancy she was," put in Miss Hobbs. "Poppa and I were in such a hurry, we'd only time to paint Sally Hobbs on the stern and the lifebuoys, and didn't reckon it counted, altering the registration."
Well, that put matters in a new light, and I felt pleased at the prospect of our taking a hand in the game.
I happened to think of Lawrence finding his chum on board the Huan Min, and told the Captain about the strange coincidence. "He's probably on board now, sir; he was coming over after dinner, if he possibly could."
"Umph! I'd like to see him. He would probably be useful," growled the Skipper, and sent "Willum" for him.
He came in presently, a fine-looking fellow in his black silk tunic with gold dragons round the sleeves, tall and upright, with a determined, prize-fighting jaw, which took the Skipper's fancy directly.
He sat down, couldn't keep his eyes off Miss Hobbs, and told us the story which you know already. He was very bitter about everything: his guns were worn out, his ammunition rotten, and his shells wouldn't burst, and, he added, wincing, that they had not had sufficient medical stores for their wounded.
The Skipper, who, I could see, was much attracted by him—it was his square jaw that did it—offered to send carpenters over to help repair damages next morning (our doctors had already taken charge of the wounded), and promised that he would take the Vigilant down to investigate the island.
I waited only long enough for the Skipper to make out his orders for raising steam in the morning, and slipped away to bed.
Next day we sent Hobbs and his daughter ashore—they were to stay with the Macphersons at the Mission House—and steamed down to the island, off which the Huan Min had received such a hammering.
Though we spent the whole day examining not only the coast line, but the interior itself, not a trace could be found of the existence of any pirates or any battery. In fact, the island appeared to be uninhabited, and we steamed back somewhat out of patience with ourselves.
The next day the Taotai from the old town of Tinghai came on board in great state, amidst the firing of three gun salutes from the war junks and the Huan Min. The Captain of that ship came with him, and Ching also, to act as interpreter. I don't quite know what their idea was, but they imagined that the Skipper could do anything, and they implored him to do something. The poor, feeble old Taotai seemed to be at his wits' end, and must have stayed a couple of hours on board, pouring his woes into the Skipper's extremely unsympathetic ears. It appeared that he was responsible for the maintenance of order throughout the archipelago, and that piracy had lately been increasing to an alarming extent. From island after island memorials and petitions had been pouring in for the last six months, and the old man quite broke down when he told us how impossible it was to do anything, and how he dare not report the whole state of affairs to his Viceroy on the mainland.
"Why not?" growled the Skipper, glaring at him.
"He'd probably be dismissed, sir, or lose his head," Ching answered.
"And a good thing too. Umph!" the Captain muttered. "Tell the old chap that I'm sending a gunboat up to Shanghai to-morrow or the next day, and will report everything to the Admiral, and must wait his orders. It's no use me looking for that yacht by myself—might as well look for a needle in a haystack. Umph!"
What annoyed him was that the Taotai wouldn't send out his war junks. We didn't know the real reason for some weeks, but the old Taotai almost cried when he said that if the Huan Min could be beaten off by them, the feeble junks wouldn't stand a chance. There was a good deal of sense in that.
Of course, instances of piracy are always cropping up among these islands—we had been long enough in Chinese waters to know that—and we knew, too, that unless they became very numerous in the same locality, the authorities did not take much notice of them. You see it was only in times of bad trade, when perhaps the fishing had been a failure, or when the crops had been destroyed by one of the typhoons which used to devastate the islands lying in its track, that the inhabitants, practically threatened with starvation, would take to piracy as a means of tiding over the bad time.
Just imagine the temptation of seeing some lumbering great junk becalmed off your village, or stuck fast in the mud, if everyone was hungry and desperate, and imagine what an easy thing it was to man all your boats, surround her, and capture her. The chances were that she was full up with foodstuffs, beans, or rice or fish, and there was little to fear from the authorities, far away in Tinghai. They would never hear of it either, if you knocked the crew on the head. That is practically what would happen, and one lucky capture would set a village "up", till next harvest enabled them to carry on their peaceable pursuits.
Sometimes, of course, it happened that their appetites would be so whetted with their success, that they would lay in wait for every favourable opportunity, and every crawling junk which passed. Sooner or later it would be known that it was dangerous to take that channel, and sooner or later, if the trouble continued, a war junk or two, or perhaps one of the Peiyang corvettes, would be sent there to burn the village and hang a few of the inhabitants.
That is what you may call the ordinary course of events, and so long as someone did get hanged and some village was burnt, all went smoothly, and very little notice was taken of it.
But now, according to the old Taotai and Ching, it was a very different pair of shoes. There was organized piracy now; pirate junks cruised in twos and threes, cutting out junks anchored in front of their own villages, appearing from where no one knew, disappearing as mysteriously, but scattering death and ruin wherever they did appear.
A whole fleet of merchant junks, crowded together for safety, had recently been attacked by half a dozen pirate junks, and but one had escaped, throwing her cargo overboard, and flying before the wind to bear the news.
Not only were they evidently organized, but they also must have had spies in the principal centres, because, not two months ago, a war junk carrying the monthly salt tax to the mainland had been surrounded by pirates and forced to surrender, in sight of land. She had put up a good fight, and was well armed—for a war junk—and not the least notice had been taken of several merchantmen sailing with her for protection. This outrage was the real reason why the Huan Min had been sent down.
Merchant junks always do carry four or five small muzzle-loading carronades, and these pop-guns had, up to now, been generally sufficient to scare away any sea robbers. Now, however, these gentry had got possession of such powerful weapons, that antiquated smooth bores were out-ranged entirely.
For months junks hardly dare quit an anchorage, unless they sailed in company with others, and if a strange lateen mat sail was sighted, would huddle together, and be only too glad to escape by disabling one of their own number, and leaving her a prey to their pursuer. You can understand the fright of these poor wretches, as they beat or drifted through the narrow channels, burning joss-sticks on their high poops, to implore the protection of one of their sea gods, and scuttling down below in abject fear when a pirate junk swooped down on them like a hawk, showing no mercy and giving no quarter, if any resistance was offered.
It was then, in this plight, that the Taotai had implored Captain Lester to give him assistance, and you can imagine that he was only too eager to take the matter up, especially as the capture of the Sally Hobbs under our flag gave him the excuse and opportunity he needed.
But he could do nothing till he had communicated with the Admiral and asked for more gunboats. This is what he did immediately, sending despatches up to Shanghai by the Ringdove.
After that we had to be content to await events, and we had to wait for nearly three weeks, as something went wrong with the mails.
During this time the Tyne storeship arrived with a lot of gear for us, as well as three youngsters. Only one of them—Ford—had originally been appointed to this ship, and I was much annoyed at two more being sent, because our gunroom was already overcrowded, and I'm always having trouble there, Langham, the Sub, having peculiar ideas of running the "show" with which I don't always agree. Hobbs and his daughter seemed to have taken up their quarters permanently at the Mission House, and one day, before we eventually sailed, came off to tea with me—they'd asked themselves, and I could not well refuse—and brought with them a German named Hoffman, one of the finest specimens of a man I have ever seen. He caught the Skipper's eye immediately, and the two were soon engaged in trying various feats of strength, at which, as far as I can remember, the German generally won, very much to the Captain's annoyance. Little Miss Hobbs bothered me till I let her go down into the gunroom to have all the "dear little midshipmen", as she called them, introduced to her. She made herself so popular there, that they sang "For she's a jolly good fellow", which made her fly back, in double-quick time, with tears in her eyes, to my cabin, where her father was smoking my cigars, and spitting, most accurately (and frequently), into my fireplace.
Hobbs told me that Hoffman was the original owner of the Sally Hobbs, had heard of her capture from some of the Ringdove fellows at the Shanghai Club, and had come across country to Ningpo, and from there to Tinghai in a junk. Mighty keen, too, he was to get hold of her, because her rascally skipper, who had pretended to be his agent, had naturally never paid over the purchase money.
He rather foolishly asked Captain Lester whether he could be of any assistance to him in his search for her; but this made the Skipper flare up and say that he hadn't orders to do anything, and "if he did get them", he growled, "it was time enough when 'Old Lest'", as he always called himself, "had proved himself a blooming fool". I softened the Skipper's fierceness as much as I could, for Hoffman was evidently hard "hit" by his money loss, and, as he had lived all his life in China, I thought that he very possibly would be of some assistance when we really did come to business.
Well, at last, after we'd almost thought the Admiral had forgotten us, the Ringdove did arrive, and little Rashleigh, her Lieutenant Commander, came on board, purple in the face because he would wear his sword belt too tight, waved some official letters at me, and went down aft.
It was not many minutes before I was sent for, heard the Skipper roaring to Rashleigh to "throw away that cabbage stalk he was smoking", and to Willum, "bring those eighteen-penny Havanas of mine", so knew, before I saw him, that the news was good, and found him rubbing his hands together and grunting with pleasure. "We've got to go for 'em, Truscott, got to go for 'em. The Admiral's sending me a couple more gunboats, as well as the Ringdove, and I'm to have a free hand. We've got to get back that yacht, and Old Lest will give 'em a lesson not to meddle with the British flag. Umph!"
As he went over his correspondence I saw him read a telegram and turn round furiously. "Dash my wig, Truscott, look here, here's impertinence! What the dickens is the Service coming to?" and he handed it to me.
I couldn't help laughing. It read, "Midshipman Rawlings chum mine wants come Vigilant—Ford Midshipman," and was sent from Singapore.
"Well, he's managed to get here somehow or other, sir."
"Both of 'em, drat 'em! and brought that useless rubbish Morton with 'em too! Umph!"
The Skipper was really angry, but I managed to smooth things down.
"Pretty plucky thing to do, sir, and both Ford and Rawlings are not half-bad boys. They don't know much, of course, but will do well."
"Umph!" he grunted. "Plucky, do you call it? I don't. I'll see them both presently."
It was lucky for them that the Admiral's letters had brought such good news. As a matter of fact, we fully expected that they would, and in the meantime the Skipper had obtained a vast amount of information from the Taotai ashore, and had already roughly drawn out his scheme for dealing with the pirates.
"If you want a good day's rabbiting," he said, "stop the holes, stop 'em up, Truscott."
His main idea was that the pirates must have, somewhere in the archipelago, a base from which they operated, where they repaired and revictualled their ships, and where they warehoused their captured goods before selling them. The authorities on the mainland had assured him that no such dépôt existed on the mainland, so he only had the archipelago to trouble about, and now he determined, first of all, to examine every island. The archipelago is roughly divided into five great groups, and his scheme was to examine each group, one at a time. The three gunboats and the Huan Min, which had been placed under his orders by the Viceroy, were to do the exploring work, and he was going to steam slowly, backwards and forwards to leeward, in order to catch anything that tried to escape. You must understand that junks can hardly beat to wind'ard, and would fly "down" wind.
His orders to Rashleigh and to the skippers of the other two gunboats, the Sparrow and Goldfinch, which arrived a day or two later, were—"You fellows, go in and turn out the game, umph! and Old Lest'll bag it when it comes down to him;" and his orders were the same, though not in those words, to the Captain of the Huan Min.
Once the last gunboat had arrived, he did not lose any time, but weighed anchor the very next morning, and with the clumsy old black corvette and the three little white gunboats puffing after him, steered for the north.
He chose to examine the northerly group first, because the winds, at that season of the year, always had a good deal of "northerly" in them, and, as I said before, junks beat to wind'ard so slowly that they would never think of trying to escape in that way.
A Ting Hai War Junk (from a photograph)
CHAPTER III
The Vigilant under Orders
"Seven Bell" Tea Time—Sally Hobbs is Entertained—Mr. Rashleigh—The Pirates Raid a Monastery—A Fire on Shore—"A" Company Lands—"A" Company Doubles—A Fierce Tussle—Mr. Travers is Missing—The Return
Written by Midshipman Ford
Jim Rawlings and I managed to hold our end "up" all right in the gunroom, and hadn't been aboard a week before the Sub begun to leave us alone. We had hoped that that wretched telegram had been lost somewhere, but it turned out that it had only been "hung up" at Shanghai, and when the Ringdove came down with the Admiral's answer to the Captain's letters, she brought it with her. Dicky was on watch, heard Mr. Rashleigh tell someone that he had a telegram a fortnight old for the Captain, guessed it was ours, and rushed down to the gunroom flat to tell us. He looked as frightened as we felt. Jim suggested asking Willum to try and steal it from the Captain's table, and we did, but Willum didn't like midshipmen, and told us that the Captain had his hand on top of it too, so we could do nothing but huddle up on our chests and wait.
Presently someone shouted down that we'd been ordered to recapture the yacht and go for the pirates, and everyone began yelling and shouting and cheering; you could hear the cheers as the news passed along from one mess to the other. It was so exciting, that Jim and I forgot all about that wretched telegram, and we all made a fearful row in the gunroom, and Mr. Hamilton, the big Engineer Lieutenant, hammered out "Rule, Britannia" and "We won't go home till morning" on the piano. It was simply grand.
It was just about "seven bell" tea time when we heard the news, and when we'd let off steam Mr. Langham banged on the table for silence. "Gentlemen," he shouted, "on this great occasion, before you commence to stuff yourselves with bread and jam, we will perform the time-honoured ceremony of 'over the main top', the last midshipman down to have no 'seven bell' tea. Stand by!" and we all tried to get a good position near the door. "One! Two! Five! Go!" and we all scrambled out, helter-skelter up on deck, flattening out the sentry on the Captain's cabin, who did not get out of the way in time, up to the boat deck, into the starboard main rigging, clambered up it, into the fighting top, jumped across in a mob, down the port main rigging, half sliding and getting our hands trodden on, and dashed back to the gunroom, where the Sub-lieutenant and the A.P. were sitting with their watches in their hands, to see whether any records had been beaten.
I was amongst the first few, because I had got a good start, but Jim was nearly last—I'd seen him helping Dicky to haul himself into the fighting top. Dicky and Ponsonby—he was called Pongo for short—a fat little cadet, were actually the last, coming in together and both claiming not to be last. Dicky, like an ass, squeaked out, "He trod on my thumb," and held it up to show the blood, "going up the ratlines," and Pongo gasped, horribly out of breath, "I couldn't climb into the top, I couldn't really; I nearly fell," and we all yelled with delight. "You climb into you hammock fast enough, you fat little beast," said Mr. Langham. "The first three are Mr. Webster, Mr. Smith, and Mr. Johnson. Mr. Pongo and Mr. 'Dear Little Dicky' are last—a dead heat; neither of them will have any seven bell tea. Fall out! Dismiss'"
It had just struck seven bells too, and Ah Man, the Chinese messman, and Hong Cho, his steward, had covered the table with cups and plates, loaves of bread, tins of salt butter, and pots of jam. We all scrambled for places—there wasn't room for us all to sit down together—and grabbed at Ah Man's long white coat as the fat old chap came along, with his big teapot, and tried to get an early whack of tea. "No can do, Gen'l'men! Makee too muchee bobberee; no can do, all same one time," the old chap shrieked in his funny voice, as he pushed his way between the table and the bulkhead.
Poor Dicky and Pongo had to wait on the Sub, cut him slices of bread, spread them with butter, pile them up with jam, and then stand to attention, whilst he very slowly ate them, and made funny remarks with his mouth full—we had to laugh at them, whether we thought them funny or not.
"The great thing in life, Mr. Pongo," he said, stuffing a huge piece of bread and jam into his mouth, "is to be moderate in everything," and when he could speak again, "You, Mr. Dear Little Dicky, may suck your bleeding thumb if you're thirsty, and don't take it out again until I tell you."
So there Dicky had to stand, with his thumb in his mouth, looking an ass, and awfully miserable.
"There is still a chance of your getting some tea, my pet lambs," he went on. "Jones and Withers will be here in five minutes" (they were the midshipman of the watch and signal midshipman, and came off watch at 4 o'clock), "and they'll have to go over the 'main top' before I can make my final decision."
It wasn't much of a chance, and when they did come down and were ordered over the "main top", they were back again in a very much shorter time than Pongo or Dicky had taken.
"I am so very sorry," said the Sub, chaffing them, "but for my sake, do try and keep alive till dinner-time!"
"Now do, just for our sakes!" shouted nearly everyone—except Jim, who was angry, and I rather fancy I didn't, because I was angry too, for it really wasn't fair sport to make fun of such an ass as Dicky.
The buglers sounded off "evening quarters" just then, so Pongo and Dicky escaped any more "rotting", though they dare not have any tea or cake, even when the Sub's back was turned, because that was against the rules.
Directly after the "dismiss" was sounded, Jim and I were sent for by the Captain. All our excitement simply fell out of us, and we were fearfully frightened—Jim was as pale as a sheet. We went in together and stood to attention in front of him, quaking all over.
"Umph!" he growled. "What's the meaning of this?" and he held out the hateful telegram; but we hadn't the pluck to say anything—words wouldn't come. "Infernal cheek, that's what it was, and must have cost you a pretty penny," and he glared at us over his cigar smoke. "A pretty penny, eh?"
Jim managed to tell him "One pound fifteen, sir."
"Umph! silly young fools," and then he hunted through drawer after drawer in his knee-hole table, we didn't know in the least what was going to happen—Jim told me afterwards that he thought he was hunting for a cane—found a couple of sovereigns and gave us each one—I nearly dropped mine, I was so surprised—and growled out, "Off you go; don't do it again."
We just had the presence of mind to say, "Thank you, sir," and streaked out like lightning, feeling happier than I can tell you, for now we hadn't a worry in the world—well, hardly, for the Sub didn't really count, nor Dicky either—and we had nothing to spoil our thinking about the pirates.
That very afternoon Mr. Hobbs and Miss Hobbs came on board to tea with the Commander, and he presently sent down to tell the Sub to have the place "tidied up", as she wanted to come down and see the gunroom. She came, too, in a few minutes, and those of us who could not escape were introduced to her, and then she sat down at our old "jingly" piano and sang nigger songs to us, and we got over being shy, and the others gradually came in, and we crowded round her, standing on the benches and table, and joined in the choruses.
She was so absolutely "ripping", that when she went away we all sang "For she's a jolly good fellow", and did the hip! hip! hooray! part jolly well—because we meant it. She got quite white, I don't know why, some tears actually ran all down her face, she put her hand on Mr. Langham's arm—he looked jolly uncomfortable, but couldn't move away because he kicked up against the gunroom stove—and said, "Guess you're all too sweet for words," and slipped away back to the Commander's cabin, where her father was. That made us quiet again—the tear part, I mean—and she looked such a regular "brick", that we all would have done anything for her, and it made it still more exciting to know that it was her yacht which we were going to try and get back. Jim swore that he'd "scupper" the brute who'd cut off her hair, if he could find him, and I'm certain that we all wanted to have a jolly good try too.
Well, at last we did get away, one exciting morning, the Ringdove, Goldfinch, and Sparrow coming along with us, and the Huan Min simply making the whole sky behind us as black as your hat. The smoke she made was so thick, that it looked as if it didn't like coming out of her funnel.
For a week we wandered backwards and forwards to leeward of one of the groups of islands, all of us in double watches at night, so as to keep a better look-out, but nothing happened, and after that we chose another group and waited outside while the gunboats searched it. Still nothing happened, and I don't mind telling you that this wasn't our idea of excitement and pirate chasing. A third week had nearly gone by when our first news of the pirates came.
Very early one morning the Ringdove was sighted coming towards us very fast, and presently her Captain, Mr. Rashleigh, bounced on board. He was quite purple in the face with excitement, and looked fatter than ever. "The Skipper hasn't turned out yet," the Commander told him, as he took him down below. "You'd better be careful. He's a bit 'livery' in the morning." He hadn't been below three minutes before he bounced up on deck again, looking "down in the mouth", went back to his gunboat without saying a word to anybody, and the Ringdove steamed away.
The Commander had to go to the Captain immediately, and through the open skylight I heard the Captain bellow, "that fat little blockhead has let 'em slip through his fingers. He drives the crew of a junk ashore, and never stops to see what becomes of 'em. I've sent him back, and we'd better follow him." Then I heard him give a terrific "Umph!"
Dicky found out all that had happened from the coxswain of the whaler which had brought Mr. Rashleigh across. He had slipped down the ladder directly, which was rather a smart thing to do. The coxswain had told him that yesterday evening, just as it was getting dark, they had sighted a junk becalmed under an island. Her crew could be seen getting out their sweeps and working at them frantically to try and escape, but Mr. Rashleigh had turned on the Ringdove's searchlight, and, so the coxswain said, thrown a drum of oil on the fires. At any rate, he jolly soon began to overhaul her rapidly, and as she came up, the junk's crew jumped overboard and swam for the shore. Mr. Rashleigh immediately sent a cutter's crew away to board her. Fortunately there had been some little delay in shoving off, and before they could pull halfway the junk blew up, which proves that she must have been a pirate. The cutter was so close that pieces of burning wood actually fell into the boat, and it was jolly lucky that they weren't actually alongside.
Mr. Rashleigh had only waited to pick up the cutter, and had then steamed back to us.
The Vigilant didn't wait long after the Ringdove had gone back again, and followed her to the island, but by the time we'd got there, there wasn't a trace of the junk. Then came more excitement, for "A" small-arm company—that was my company, the left half of it at any rate—was "piped" to fall in. I had to get my gaiters on, and a revolver and a cutlass, and then superintend the serving out of ammunition. Mr. Travers, a tall, very aristocratic Lieutenant, was in charge, and the Commander came too—more excited than anyone—and we were all sent ashore. The Commander sprang into the soft mud with a whoop, and more or less waded ashore, and we all followed him. I got covered with mud up to my knees, and that pair of trousers was never of any use afterwards except for dirty work. It was only a bit of an island, with a small village on the opposite side, so we spread out in skirmishing order and crept down on it, expecting to have shots fired at us every second. There seemed to be a lot of smoke about, and there was a burning smell in the air, and when we'd got within three hundred yards the Commander gave another whoop and sang out, "Rush 'em, boys!" and we all raced down as hard as we could, but the only living things, there, were some pigs and dogs, which ran away squealing and yapping. There was only one hut which hadn't been burnt to the ground—some were still smouldering—-and down on the beach were two dead corpses—ugh! They were the first I had ever seen, and though I didn't really want to do so, I couldn't help going down to look at them closely. Some of my men turned them over with their feet, to see how they'd been killed, and then I had to go away.
Presently some of the villagers began to creep back, and then we learnt from them what had happened, through a Chinaman whom we had brought with us as an interpreter. In the middle of last night a band of men had swooped through the village and set fire to the huts. Whilst the frightened people were trying to escape or put out the fires, they'd cut the mooring ropes of a junk lying close inshore, and had sailed away. It was their only junk, too, and the poor brutes were absolutely ruined. Before we left the village they'd all come back, and were moaning and wringing their hands, but doing nothing to help themselves. I shall never forget one poor old woman, just a wrinkled bag of bones she was, sitting on a stone in front of one of the half-burnt huts. They had brought one of the corpses to her, and she was swaying from side to side, making a funny noise, and looking past everything, as though she was mad. One of the bluejackets gave her some tobacco as we went by. "Here, mother!" he said, "here's a bit of navy prick,"[#] and she snatched it from him, stuffed some of it into her mouth, and went on swaying and moaning.
[#] Navy Prick—Navy tobacco is served out in the raw leaf, and after being rolled and squeezed together by the men, is known as Navy Prick.
When we got aboard again—I'd never been so dirty in my life—the Captain was simply furious. I heard him say, "If that little fool had only stayed where he was, he'd have caught 'em," and we steamed back to our cruising ground.
That didn't end the day's excitement—not by a long chalk—for presently we sighted a solitary junk, thought it might be the one in which the pirates had escaped, and chased her. However, it turned out to be one of the Tinghai war junks looking for us, and bringing letters from the Taotai and Mr. Hobbs.
The news must have been very serious, for the Commander and the Navigator and the Engineer Commander were all sent for, and we could hear the Captain's bellowing voice talking very fast.
We soon knew why; Willum and the sentry told us. The pirates had raided the monastery of Tu Pu, cleared out all the monks' hoards, and left them hardly anything except what they stood up in. The Taotai had written imploring us to go back to Tinghai.
We didn't understand how important this was till the A.P. (Moore, the Assistant Paymaster) heard of it, and then he whistled, "My aunt! you chaps, it's the richest monastery in North China, and you can see it from the top of Joss House Hill—it's not twenty miles away."
Well, that made it exciting enough for anyone, and showed how daring these pirates were becoming; and we all expected to go back at once, but someone heard the Captain growl, "I've made my plans, and I'm not going to fly this way and that way, every other second, for all the blooming Taotais and pirates in the world." So we didn't go back till the Saturday afternoon—as we had arranged. No sooner had we anchored under Joss House Hill, than the Taotai and Mr. Hobbs came on board, the old Chinaman in a great state of funk. They brought two other Chinamen with them, and they turned out to be two of the servants at the monastery. Six days ago the monks had given shelter to some seamen, who had knocked at the great gates and told a yarn of having been shipwrecked. At night these chaps had knocked the doorkeepers on the head, opened the gates, and let in a whole crowd of Chinamen, and while some of them kept the monks in their quarters, the others had looted the treasury and carted away everything of value. One of these two men had been too frightened to notice anything, but the other said that he had managed to escape, had hidden in a swamp down by the sea, and had seen two steamers, one large and the other small, close inshore, and that the robbers all went away in them.
"That's Hobbs's yacht and the tramp steamer, I'll bet you anything," the Sub said.
The Captain came up to see the Taotai and Mr. Hobbs over the side, and we heard him ask Mr. Hobbs: "What's become of that great German chap Hoffman, eh?"
"He streaked across to squint at that collection of old monks right away. Says he'll get information from them at first hand, and means to find that yacht of his before he's much older, I guess."
"Where's Darter Sally?" asked the Captain.
"Staying up at the Mission House. Guess she's gotten a shy fit and wouldn't come on board," and the little man smiled, whilst the Captain snorted, as if that was the last thing in the world he could believe.
We had been away from Tinghai for nearly three weeks, and of course we had run out of fresh grub down in the gunroom, so you can bet your boots the very first thing that Mr. Langham did was to send Ah Man ashore to buy some; and he came back with a sampan loaded down with things, mutton and fowls and ducks and eggs, and any amount of green stuff. We had a grand "blow out" at dinner that night, and afterwards the band played on the quarterdeck, and the ward room officers sent down to ask us to join forces in two double sets of "lancers".
Several officers from the gunboats, and that ripping Chinese friend of Mr. Lawrence, had come on board too, and we had a great time. Jim Rawlings was on watch, so he turned Dicky over to me as my partner, with a handkerchief tied round his leg, below the knee, to show that he was a lady; and though he spoilt the dance, because he didn't much care for the free fight part of it, that did not matter much, as we never finished it. Just when we were in the middle of the "grand chain", down came a signalman to report that there was a fire on shore, and everyone stopped to look at it. Then another started some distance from the first, and then a third, till soon flames were shooting up from several parts of Tinghai, close down by the water's edge, and we could hear a great row going on. Somebody suddenly sang out, "There's a rifle shot", and we all listened, and in a moment or two could distinctly hear rifles going off; and then tom-toms banged furiously all over the town, and one of the junks fired three guns and burnt a red light.
We all stopped dancing and watched the flames. We could see them eating their way along the water front, bending and curling as the breeze swept them in front of it, and spreading up the sides of Joss Hill. Seen through our telescopes, it was a very grand sight, for the native houses burnt fiercely, and soon the whole of the harbour between us and the town was glowing with the fire. We could see the trading junks hurriedly trying to cast off from the shore before the flames reached them, drifting across the reddened water, and disappearing like black ghosts. We could also presently hear the actual crackle and splutter of the fire, and even the shouts of the Chinese. The Commander had been all this time fidgeting round the Captain, evidently wanting to suggest something, but not quite liking to do so, and I heard him whisper to the Gunnery Lieutenant to get everything ready to land the fire engines. Mr. Whitmore went away with a grin on his face to do this, very quietly, and we all watched the Captain to see if he was going to give the order, and almost shivered with excitement at the prospect of being sent ashore—at any rate, I know that I myself shivered. The Commander still fidgeted round the Captain, when suddenly there was such a furious burst of flames, that he plucked up courage, and we—we were all listening and longing for him to speak—heard him say: "It's getting pretty bad, sir. It seems to be working its way uphill towards the Mission House, and there seems to be a good deal of rioting going on, sir."
"Umph!" the Captain growled, sticking his cigar into the corner of his mouth, so that he could use his night-glasses better. The Commander knew that it was very inadvisable to actually suggest landing the fire engines, because the Captain hated anything being suggested to him; but we saw that he was getting more and more nervous, and at last he broke out again: "It's not more than half a mile from the Mission House now, sir, and a native crowd is very apt to get out of hand. I hope the mission people and those Americans can clear out in time."
"I suppose you want to land and put it out, do you?" grunted the Captain. "All right, do what you like, umph! Teaching your grandmother to—— Umph!"
You may be pretty certain that we all heard every word, and were off that quarterdeck in a twinkling, rushing down below to change into our oldest uniform, even before the bo'sn's mate, who was standing by to pipe it, yelled out: "Away fire engines for landing," and then "'A' and 'B' small-arm companies fall in," whilst the bugler sounded off the marines' call.
Dicky came down to help me find my things—he was not to land—and the strange little beggar excitedly strapped on my gaiters, to save time. As you know, I was one of the Mids of "A" company, and was on deck again in a brace of shakes to see my half company of twenty-five men fall in, my heart simply thumping with delight when I saw one of the gunner's mates passing round ball cartridge. I don't know anything which gives you more of a thrill than the feel of a handful of loose cartridges, when you know that you may have to use them, in a few minutes, for the real thing.
In twenty minutes we were halfway ashore, towed by the steam pinnace. Looking back, we could see the sides of the Vigilant and the gunboats, simply looking as if they'd been painted red and glowing; and as we drew nearer the shore, it seemed to us that the whole town was on fire, the flames roaring and crackling in the most terrifying manner. Right up above the flames and the smoke we saw the Joss House on top of the hill all lighted up too, and perhaps what was the weirdest thing of all, was that funny strange sound that a frightened mob always makes.
Mr. Travers, the lieutenant of "A" company, formed up directly we landed, about fifty yards from the edge of the water, and we had to keep back an excited crowd which began to gather, while "B" company and the marines scrambled ashore and dragged the fire engines and hoses out of the boats.
I don't think that I had ever been so excited in my life. It was rather nervous work too, for the Chinese began pressing against us—an evil-looking crowd they were, come from the old town, we learnt afterwards—but Mr. Travers was simply splendid. He is a tall, thin, frightfully lackadaisical and aristocratic-looking man, and he stood there, in front of "A" company, and never stirred a muscle, though the natives thronged around him and hustled him. You would have thought that he did not even see them. Presently some stones began flying amongst us from somewhere at the back of the mob, and my men began to get impatient—you could feel that, even without watching them shuffling from one foot to the other, or jamming their caps down on their heads, or pulling their chin stays down, as if they were getting ready for a scrap. The crowd got bolder then, and began to press still more closely. I was nearly separated from my half company, and was really rather nervous, when Mr. Travers sang out: "'A' company, at 'shun! Fix swords!"[#] I repeated: "Left half company! Fix swords!" and was very relieved to do so, I need hardly tell you, and drew my dirk. The men all bent down to the left, and it was very comforting to hear the rattle of their bayonets being snapped on the rifles. "'A' company! Stand at ease!" sang out Mr. Travers, and you could see the two lines of bayonets, like streaks of light, looking jolly sharp and pointed.
[#] Bluejackets' bayonets are always spoken of as "swords" in the navy, and the order is always, "Fix swords". The Royal Marines give the order, "Fix bayonets".
The Chinese didn't stay too close after that, especially as the remainder of the men had landed by this time, and we began to advance up the beach and into the town. It was very unpleasant at first, because the flames seemed so close and almost scorched us, roaring in places so loudly that we could not hear any orders. We had to move aside, too, every now and then, to avoid burning pieces of wood that fell, but we gradually worked round in front of the fire, to make our way uphill towards the Mission House, and pressed along through the streets which had not yet been attacked. A Chinese street is bad enough in the daytime, but it was perfectly horrid now, and we had to force our way along, pressing a yelling "smelling" mob in front of us. These streets were almost dark, too, which made it all the worse, and I don't know how we managed to get along as well as we did, stumbling at every other step, and lurching into each other. I tried to keep as close to Mr. Travers as possible, but it was almost like a free fight, and we shoved and pushed for all we were worth, sometimes having even to use our fists to clear a way. More often than not, I was simply carried forward by the pressure of my men behind me, and all the time we could hear the fire roaring and crackling only two or three streets off. We had first to make a wide sweep round to the right, then go uphill to get round the fire and above it, and then back again to the left in order to get between it and the Mission, where, of course, we knew that the missionary, his wife, Mr. Hobbs, and his daughter must be in great danger. We fought our way along as fast as we could, and presently got into a broader street, where the crowd did not bother us so much, and where we made much better progress, but were right to leeward of the burning town, and were smothered with smoke and sparks. Just then Jim Rawlings rushed up—he was acting as "doggy" to the Commander—bringing with him a native, covered with blood. "The Commander wants you to hurry on as fast as you can," he told Mr. Travers; "they're looting the Mission. This man will show you the way; he's one of the Mission servants."
"My God, that's what I feared!" groaned Mr. Travers, and shouted to the men to "double". "Double, men! double!" and 'A' company, spitting and choking and coughing, because of the smoke, commenced running. From somewhere in the rear the Commander joined us, Jim panting behind him. He had his sword drawn, and looked terrible. "I've brought ten more men, Travers," he gasped, and had enough breath to shout: "Keep it up! Keep it up, men! There are women to be saved!" The men yelled, and went even faster than before, panting and sweating. We'd got above the town, well clear of the fire, but we could still feel its heat, and were wet through with sweat. The Chinese servant couldn't keep up with us, but that did not matter, for we suddenly turned a corner and saw, three hundred yards ahead of us, the white walls of the Mission House, and saw that it was surrounded by a howling mob of natives.
I heard the Commander give a groan, a funny kind of sob it was, and he and Mr. Travers and Jim and I simply tore along. We hadn't more than four men with us, because the others, with their rifles in their hands, were not able to run so fast; but I don't think anybody would have stopped, even if he had been alone, and the mob had been twice as big. You thought of nothing but pretty little Sally Hobbs with her great eyes and her cropped hair. Suddenly, from a street on our left, darted a tall figure, brandishing a sword and followed by twenty or thirty more. They rushed out from the dark shadows of the houses, and we thought they were going to attack us—at any rate, I did—and I don't mind confessing that I felt frightened, though chiefly, I think, because a scrap with them would hinder us from rescuing Sally Hobbs. One of our men fired his rifle, we heard a yell of pain, and then, before we could do anything more, the leader came out into the firelight, and we saw that it was Lieutenant Ching, of the Huan Min. "Come on, sir!" he shouted, and we all mixed together in a crowd, and ran as fast as we could. Two huge Tartar bluejackets panted beside me, their felt boots hardly making the least noise, and I don't think that I shall ever forget them, or their white faces, or the sound of their breathing as they ran alongside me, making not the least noise with their feet.
The mob was so busy, trying to fight a way for itself into the Mission, that they didn't see us till we were right among them. Mr. Ching got there first, then the Commander and Mr. Travers, and I and the two Tartars plunged in after them, and fought our way towards the little gate. Just as we plunged in, the mob gave a great howl of delight, and I saw flames shoot out from the downstairs windows. This took their attention away from us, but it was awful, and we hit all the harder. They didn't oppose us much till we got to the gateway, and there we met a stream of them coming back from the house, loaded with chairs and clothes and all sorts of things. We had a fierce tussle for a minute or two, knocked them over or brushed them aside, and rushed up the path to a verandah. It was then that I missed Mr. Travers. I had simply been following close behind, squeezing into the gap he made in front, but now, all of a sudden, I missed him.
A FIERCE TUSSLE
The remainder of "A" company had arrived by this time, and we could hear them at the back of the mob, fighting their way through to us. Some of them began shooting, so the Commander sent me back to steady them—a jolly difficult job, too, and I didn't like going through the crowd by myself; but they seemed to clear aside, and I managed to get hold of one or two of the petty officers, and gradually got the men into something like order. There wasn't any need to shoot, because the crowd had now fallen back in alarm, and were only booing and yelling and throwing stones.
Then I saw a commotion in the crowd, and suddenly that big German, who had come on board once with Mr. Hobbs, and beaten the Captain at weight-lifting, burst through and rushed past me, his face all drawn and haggard. "She's lost, mein Gott! She's lost! Too late!" and he dashed into the burning house, and I heard him roaring, "Sally!"
Jim Rawlings came up panting and asking for ten men, and disappeared with them among the sparks and smoke, into the darkness behind the house, which was now a mass of flames from top to bottom, with big flames licking out from every window. The heat was intense. It was really a most awful time, with the burning house behind me and that mob of wild people below, all longing to cut our throats, only not daring to rush us, because they had no one to lead them. I could still hear the Commander's voice bellowing inside the house and calling the missionary and Mrs. Macpherson, and Mr. Hobbs and Sally, by name—but no one answered, and there was no sign of any of them. For one moment Mr. Ching appeared at an upper window, then the roof began to fall in, but they both crawled out on to the verandah before it collapsed altogether with a crash.
They would have been buried and burnt alive if they had stayed another second.
"That German man has just gone in, sir."
"He's dead by now," the Commander answered grimly, and my blood seemed to go quite cold, as the flames rushed up into the sky, hundreds of feet up, and I knew that Mr. Hoffman was being burnt to ashes.
The rest of our people—the marines and "B" company, with the fire engines—came up now, and the crowd split in two to let them pass, and I had an insane hope that even then they might be able to save that German; but by the time they had dragged the hand pumps up the path, and got their hoses led to a little stream at the back of the house, they might just as well have tried to put the fire out by spitting at it.
Seeing that there was no chance of looting any more, the crowd seemed to melt away. Probably they went off to loot elsewhere. They were more of the old town mob, and weren't going to waste time, I expect.
The Commander ordered the pumps to stop heaving—it was really silly to go on with them—and then we scattered in little parties to search the hill behind the house. The Commander was fearfully angry because Mr. Travers was not there to take charge of his men. "He's never where he's wanted," he said, and took most of "A" company away with him.
"Where can Mr. Travers have gone?" I kept on wondering, but hadn't much time for thinking, as I only had been left a very few men to guard the burning house, and there were still a good many prowling Chinese sneaking round, and I had to make my men keep them away. It seemed an awfully long time before suddenly we heard a shout and a cheer from somewhere up the hill. "Thank God, sir, they've found that pretty little American lady!" one of my petty officers said. "It's worth spoiling our clothes for that;" and in a minute or two Mr. Ching came out from the darkness into the glare, bearing in his arms a woman. It wasn't Sally Hobbs, however, but Mrs. Macpherson—I could see her black hair. As he came into the light I saw him look down at her face with a strange expression, and then he gave a groan—I was near enough to hear—laid her on the ground somewhat roughly, and disappeared again. Her husband came too—he was a "rotter".
"Where's Sally Hobbs?" I asked, jumping across.
He shook his head, as he supported his wife. "Don't know. She and her father went out to see the fire directly it started, and we've not seen them since."
That sent the blood to my feet again and I felt terrible, and almost thought of taking my men down into the town to try and find her, though, of course, that would have been idiotic; and, too, I had to stop where I was till the Commander came back. However, I sent an able seaman to find the Commander, and presently I heard the bugles sounding the "retire" and the "fall in", and gradually the men came scrambling out of the dark and formed up in the road in front of the ruins of the house. Lieutenant Ching and his men came back too.
"What's to be done now," the Commander asked, when he had heard the missionary's story. Mr. Ching turned a haggard face towards the town, where the fire had nearly burnt itself out, and the greatest noise was the noise of the mob, and I saw him shake his head in a terribly sad way, "You no good there. I take my men down and try and find news." He had no sword—he must have dropped it—but in his hand was a grey tam-o'-shanter hat, and I recognized it as the one Sally Hobbs was wearing that day she came down into the gunroom. He was clutching it very tightly, and suddenly fell on the ground. Our Surgeon, Dr. Barclay, was over him in a moment. He had only fainted, but then it turned out that he had been struck by that bullet, which one of our men had fired, just as he and his men had joined us on the road. It had gone clean through his left shoulder, and he had lost a tremendous lot of blood. How he had managed to keep "going" all this time, Dr. Barclay couldn't understand, and I wondered how he had managed to carry Mrs. Macpherson, and then remembered that he had put her down rather clumsily, and understood why. He called to one of his men, gave him some hurried orders, and then they all disappeared towards the town. "Sent them to try and find news," he told the Commander. It was practically dark now because the fires had gone out, but presently the Vigilant's searchlights were turned on to us and made it less horrid. Some Chinese soldiers also came running up, followed a little later by the Taotai himself from the old city, in his sedan chair, and surrounded by more soldiers.
He was in a terrible fright when he found that he was too late, and that Mr. Hobbs and his daughter had not been found. He did not stay long, and took his men down to the town to keep order and find news of them.
As there was nothing more to do till daybreak, the Commander sent most of the men back to the ship with the fire engines, and I had to go back with "A" company, as Mr. Travers had not appeared. It was horrid work finding our way back to the sea, but I hardly remember it, for I was very sleepy and awfully miserable, and simply stumbled back, half asleep, thinking of Sally and her father and that German, and of what could have happened to Mr. Travers.
We got aboard about half-past three in the morning, and I turned into my hammock, tired and miserable, and pretended that I was asleep when Dicky tried to ask for news, although I wasn't able to sleep for thinking, and for being so miserable.
CHAPTER IV
The Loss of Lieutenant Travers
No News of Sally Hobbs—A Discovery—Those Villainous Pirates!—The Skipper is Furious—Weary Waiting—The Skipper Rages—"I'll do 'em yet"
Written by Commander Leonard Umfreville Truscott, R.N.
You have already heard of that disastrous fire at Tinghai, and of our failure to rescue the American, Mr. Hobbs, and his daughter Sally, the strange disappearance of Travers, and the death of that German fellow, so that I will tell you of what happened afterwards.
After sending Whitmore, our Gunnery Lieutenant, back to the ship with the fire engines, the marines, and "A" company, I waited for daylight, guarding what was left of the Mission House with "B" company. Our failure to save little Sally Hobbs and her father cast a great gloom over my men, which was still further increased when it became evident that something serious must have happened to account for the absence of Travers. Young Ford was most positive that he had seen him enter the Mission gate, but after that no one seems to have seen him. However, we fully expected him to turn up at daybreak, and could do nothing to assist him till then, if he had in some way or other lost his way in the darkness.
But I don't mind confessing that to protect Sally Hobbs was uppermost in the minds of every officer and man who had landed that night, and the thought of her, surrounded by a howling mob of maddened Chinamen, was the spur which had urged everyone so wildly through the streets. Our failure and her probable fate, down in the burning town, made us bite our lips in great agony of mind. Fifty times during the night was I implored by my men to take them down into the town itself; but I knew that it would be useless, and that lost among those narrow, straggling streets, and unable to keep in touch with one another, we should be simply courting disaster. If I had been alone I suppose that I should have gone, and it was a great strain not to go, and take my eager men with me; but I had no right to risk their lives uselessly. It was quite another pair of shoes for Ching and his men, because they were among their own countrymen, and ran little risk by doing so. Ching, himself, as soon as Barclay had dressed his shoulder—it was most unfortunate that one of our people had wounded him—followed his men there and left us to ourselves. I told him that we should remain near the Mission all night, and resume our search in the morning. Poor fellow, I think he was as distressed as any of us were at the fate of the little American girl, for even his thin, usually expressionless face showed traces of the anguish which we all felt. In the house he had found a grey tam-o'-shanter cap which she had worn, and I saw him stuff it into his tunic, and, you may be sure, was in no mood to chaff him about it.
Mrs. Macpherson told me, before her husband took her away to the house of some native convert, that directly the fire had started down in the town, Sally Hobbs, poor little girl, had made her father take her down to see it, throwing a shawl over her head and hurrying away, just as she would have done in America, in spite of the earnest entreaties of Macpherson himself.
As day dawned, Ching brought his men back, their faces and uniforms blackened and torn. "I have no news, sir. Not a trace of her to be found;" and then he threw himself down on the ground, utterly exhausted. His men—Tartars of splendid physique—were as worn out as he was.
As I expected, Captain Lester sent me a fresh lot of men, and food for the few I had kept with me. I therefore started with them to make a more systematic search than it had been possible to make in the darkness, leaving my other fellows to share their food with their Chinese comrades. We searched the ground behind the Mission, examining every hut and outhouse as we went, and gradually spread out towards the left and towards a little bay or sweep of the coast, which here ran into the land. For an hour we searched without result, but then a seaman came running back with a uniform glove which he had picked up by the side of a small path running down towards the sea and that small cove. The glove might or might not have belonged to Travers, but I knew that he was probably the only one of us who would have worn gloves—he was rather eccentric about dress—so hoped that this might be some clue to his disappearance, and followed the path. Almost immediately another man picked up a handkerchief. The initials in one corner were H.C.L.—those of Lawrence, our navigator—but though he had not landed, I knew that Travers had a weakness for borrowing other people's things, and my hopes were again raised. I am afraid that my brain wasn't working properly—the terrible night was responsible for that—and for the life of me I could not imagine what reason could have brought Travers along this path. We yelled his name, my bugler boy blew the "close", but without result, except that all the mongrel curs in the neighbourhood started yapping and howling.
I followed that path till it dipped over the crest of a ridge and then led down to the little bay below us—a little bay with a curved mud beach. My men were on the point of rushing down to it, when Trevelyan, the Lieutenant who had brought them ashore and relieved Whitmore, suggested that we might find traces of footmarks to help us. I therefore sounded the "halt", and he and I went down alone. Trevelyan was quite right, the muddy shore was covered with footmarks in one place, and there were also three long furrows in the mud, evidently made by the keels of boats. These furrows led right up to high-water mark, and my brain was not too dense to appreciate the fact that three boats had been there at high water. We could trace the furrows for fifteen feet or more down the shore, and one went much farther than the others. "They shoved them off and had to push hard, sir," cried Trevelyan, bending down and showing me how deep some footmarks were, and how the mud was piled up at the back of them. "It was at the last tide too, sir, otherwise they would have been washed flat again." That was evident enough, but I couldn't think what he was driving at.
"When was Travers last seen, sir?"
"About one o'clock in the morning—there or thereabouts," I told him.
"Well, high tide was at about midnight, so these boats must have been shoved off about an hour and a half afterwards, half an hour or so after you lost Travers." He was getting quite excited, but, honestly, my brain wouldn't work.
"And this boat must have been later still, sir," and he pointed to the longer furrow.
Then there was a yell above us from some of the men who had been wandering about, and we saw several of them stooping over a clump of scraggy bushes, and one came down to tell me that they had found some dead Chinamen.
I went up and saw two—disgusting objects they were—with their noses and lips cut off. I couldn't stand the sight; I'd had no breakfast, and walked away, feeling dazed and sick, and opened my mouth and drew in the sea breeze to drive the smoke fumes away from my head.
Trevelyan joined me in a few minutes. "One of those fellows has been shot at very close quarters, for his clothes are singed and blackened, and the other has had his head battered in. Look, sir! they must have been dragged along there," and he pointed to a broad mark, running along the mud from the bushes to the furrows.
He ought to have been a detective, ought Trevelyan, and was off in a "jiffy" to search for fresh traces. "Footmarks! bootmarks! plenty of them, sir," he shouted presently, and I saw him bending down and measuring them with his handkerchief. "Ours, I expect," I sang back; but he shook his head, and presently came up to me in a great pitch of excitement—he had taken his own boots off by this time to avoid making any more marks—"There are at least three different sizes down there, sir! European bootmarks too. One of them might belong to Travers, but there are some very much larger ones than his, and I don't think that one man made them all. There must have been several Europeans down here early this morning. This must be where the pirates landed and shoved off again, sir—two of the boats more or less together, and the third half an hour or so later—but I'm bothered if I can make out those two corpses, and what they are doing here."
I dragged him away. He was very reluctant to go, and kept turning back and scanning the shore with his glasses. Suddenly he took me by the shoulder—I was so "jumpy" that his touch gave me quite a shock—"Look there, sir! What's that?" and before I could say anything he darted back, began to undress, and then wading and swimming, and clinging to some fishing stakes which jutted out from the shore, he made his way to where something hung from the farthest fishing stake. I could see that it was something coloured, and as he came back with it I recognized it as a shawl belonging to Mrs. Macpherson, and remembered that she had told us that Sally Hobbs had borrowed one before going down to the fire.
I knew what it all meant now—her disappearance—the bootmarks on the shore—the furrows of those boat keels—and the shawl—and that the poor little girl had again fallen into the hands of those fiends of pirates. One cannot explain, or describe, how one feels on occasions like this, though I do know that when Trevelyan rejoined me presently, blue in the face with cold, and with his teeth chattering, but bringing the shawl, and intensely eager to solve the mystery, I felt as though I wanted to hit him, and hated to have to tell him all it meant.
"Give it to me," I said harshly.
"No, sir; I cannot. I found it, and if it turns out as you say, I'm going to give it back to her."
We said not a word as we trudged back to the Mission House, neither of us caring to speak of what we feared. Ten minutes ago I should have been inexpressibly pleased to have found Travers, but now I eagerly hoped that he had been kidnapped too, and that, in some way or other, he might be able to protect her—for her father I cared not two straws, nor did I place reliance on any effort of his to save either of them.
Fortunately Captain Lester was waiting for us near the ruins of the Mission House, and it was a relief to find him in a bad temper. He didn't wait to hear what I had to tell him, but, shaking his fist at me, bellowed out, "This is the work of those villainous pirates"—he was hardly able to speak for rage. "Set fire to the town—right under my nose—made a fool of Old Lest, and cleared out again without a scratch. And that little lass too! What's become of her and of that fool Travers? I can't trust a single one of my officers. Umph! Here you go ashore to put out a fire, don't save anyone, and shoot that chap Ching. Umph! I'd like to—— Umph!"
I rapidly told him all that had happened.
"Poor little lass! Poor little lass!" he groaned, and all the anger died out of his face. He came down with me to that bay, saw the bodies and the marks on the shore, sent people to scour all the neighbourhood; but nothing more could be discovered, and we went back again.
Presently the missionary came up—he'd been down to see those bodies too. He was shaking like a leaf, and his sunburnt face was quite ashen in colour. "Ah, mon!" and he wrung his hands, "but one o' those puir dead things was my servant. I know him by his clothes—the one with his head fair smashed in."
I had had too many puzzling events suddenly sprung on me that morning, and, honestly, couldn't try to explain this last, and could only say feebly, "Poor chap! Poor chap!"
"A vairy faithful mon, an' vairy leetil expense," moaned the missionary. Trevelyan showed him the shawl, and he recognized it at once as the one Sally Hobbs had thrown over her head before leaving the Mission, so our last faint hope vanished.
Fortunately young Rawlings relieved the grimness of everything just then. He is a most pugnacious youngster, and though I had sent him on board with Whitmore, he had managed to come ashore again. He had got into trouble with two coolies—I suppose he had found them looting—and had gone for them with his fists, and was laying about him in fine style. One had taken to his heels, but the other stood his ground, and kept banging at him with a piece of wood. The Skipper caught sight of them too, and, for all the bad temper he was in, smiled grimly, and chuckled out, "Go it, youngster!" Rawlings had already received a nasty cut over the forehead, and would have been "knocked out" in another minute, if I hadn't stepped forward and knocked the fellow down. I don't mind telling you that I put more "beef" into that blow than was absolutely necessary. Somehow or other I felt I must hit somebody, and it was unlucky for that Chinaman.
"Go down to the boat, Mr. Rawlings. Umph! what d'you mean by brawling?" growled the Skipper, suddenly remembering himself.
The Skipper told me, as we walked back to the landing-place, that several Europeans had been seen during the night, and that they were evidently in command of parties of Chinamen, who had prevented the inhabitants extinguishing the flames when they first started. This made it positive that it had been the work of the pirates, and confirmed the rumours that Europeans had frequently been seen among them at different times, and when any outrage on a large scale had been carried out.
What made the Skipper so furious was that they had so completely outwitted him; and he became purple in the face with fury at their daring to swoop down on the town, under his eyes, as it were, burn half of it, kidnap Hobbs and his daughter, probably Travers too, and get away scot free.
He took it as a personal insult, and I can't tell you all the mad things he suggested. He felt very much as I did—he wanted badly to batter somebody's face, but he soon quieted down, and walked beside me with great strides, grunting and growling, and screwing up his face, and I knew that he was trying to work out some plan in his bull-dog brain.
But you can't hit a man till you've caught him, that was the difficulty, and we had to catch him first, and knew well enough that among these islands were a thousand places where those two steamers—the tramp and the yacht—could lie concealed for years.
"Unless they want to make money over 'em, they're as good as done for," the Skipper said, as we went on board. "Poor little lass, not more'n a couple of years older than my lass Nan!"
I had served with "Old Lest" seven years, and I would do any mortal thing for him. He pretended he was a thundering bully, and was really as gentle as a child; and the men worshipped him, his gruff voice and great red face—even his bad temper. I was extremely sorry for him too, because the responsibilities resting on him were so great, prompt action so necessary, and the difficulties so enormous.
He did what I suppose was the best, and sent the gunboats and the Huan Min cruising, whilst we remained at Tinghai, with fires "banked". Leave to officers and men was forbidden, and that meant, of course, that the Skipper himself did not go ashore, and had to give up his shooting, which was the one thing for which he lived. The Vigilant was, in fact, kept ready to start within an hour of receiving any news.
Meanwhile natives—as trustworthy as Ching and the Taotai could procure—had been scattered through the archipelago, and the war junks also had been induced to leave Tinghai and endeavour to procure information. The Skipper seemed to depend upon these particularly, because they had naturally more intimate knowledge of the islands and the character of the people. They could cruise, too, without attracting so much attention as our gunboats. They generally cruised for a week, and at the end of that time came sailing back to Joss House anchorage, covered with flags and firing off guns, but with never a particle of news.
Week after week went by, and not a trace of the pirates could be found. Indeed, they seemed to have disappeared off the face of the seas, and not a single outrage had been reported since they had burnt Tinghai. Rashleigh, coming back in the Ringdove, did certainly report that he had one night heard what he thought was the sound of guns somewhere off the Chung-li Tao group, but had discovered nothing when he steamed in the direction of the noise. "Silly fool!" roared the Skipper to me, "he don't know the difference between thunder and guns."
These weeks of weary waiting were most depressing, and the constant confinement on board, without any exercise, most bad for our health—and tempers.
We now felt sure that someone, probably the dead Mission servant, had guided Travers down to the shore that night; that he, like the mad fellow that he was, had rushed off alone, hoping to rescue Sally and her father single-handed, and that he had been kidnapped with them. I forgot to tell you that Barclay, our Surgeon, had found the bullet in the body of the mutilated Chinaman, and that it was a service Webley revolver bullet, so it was quite possible that Travers had shot him. There probably had been a scuffle, and the Mission servant, not being worth capturing, had been killed and mutilated to prevent recognition.
We all were so worried and depressed, that two days of strenuous work, coaling ship from a collier, and another day of cleaning ship afterwards, came as a welcome relief. It's precious seldom that one does welcome that job, but we did then.
For some long time I had not heard the noise of the gunroom piano. Someone or other would be banging it at all hours of the day, and as the gunroom was immediately beneath my cabin, the noise was a continual source of annoyance to me. My messenger used to be always taking down fiery messages to the Sub, Langham. The absence of this noise was now a blessed relief, and when I mentioned it to Langham, he asked me to go down and see for myself the reason of it. I went down, and found that the piano was shut, and that Vigilant cap-ribbons had been glued across, to prevent it being opened. "Miss Hobbs was the last to play it, sir, and the Mids and all of us have sworn that no one shall play it again till she does, and till she cuts those ribbons with the senior mid's dirk."
"Who suggested that?" I asked, smiling.