few days previously from Tchen-tcheou, a town about six hundred miles
from the mouth of the river, with a valuable cargo of sandalwood
intended for Tien-tsin; but on passing the spot where the old bed of the
river used to lie before the channel was diverted, she had been attacked
by no fewer than five large and heavily-armed junks, crowded with men.
Before the crew could even place themselves in a position for defence,
the junk had been seized and the men cut to pieces by the ruthless
pirates. The two men standing on the _Su-chen's_ deck had escaped as by
a miracle, for, after taking all her cargo out of the junk and throwing
dead and wounded overboard, the leader of the pirates had indulged his
humour by binding the two survivors and laying them on the deck,
afterwards firing the junk and setting her adrift. The men had secured
their freedom by one of them gnawing the other's bonds loose, and they
had then managed to extinguish the fire.
But--would not the honourable captain take his ship up the river, and
wipe the pirates out, lock, stock, and barrel? Frobisher informed them
that such was his intention; and, after asking the two men whether they
would accompany him as guides, and receiving their assurance that they
desired nothing better, he set the junk adrift again, since she was
absolutely useless, and continued his journey.
At nine o'clock the next morning one of the two new men, who had been
looking keenly ahead for a few moments, came up to Frobisher and pointed
out what appeared to be a large, square, stone-built castle, or fort,
standing some distance back from the river bank, upon the top of a knoll
of rising ground.
"That," he announced, "is the pirates' head-quarters. There is a little
bight just at the junction of the old and the new channels, and it is
there that they lie in ambush with their junks. Now, sir, you can
perhaps see their masts standing up behind that low bank yonder?"
Frobisher looked, and counted, indeed, five masts. They were, then,
evidently those belonging to the pirate junks which had attacked the
Chinese merchantman on the preceding day; and the fort on the hill,
yonder, was the pirates' lair which he had been specially dispatched
from Tien-tsin to destroy. He rubbed his hands gleefully and gave
orders to clear for action; then, with his telescope fixed unwaveringly
on the fort, he leant over the bridge rail, watching, while the
_Su-chen_, her engines working at full pressure, stemmed the muddy tide
on her errand of retribution.
CHAPTER ELEVEN.
TCHEN-VOUN-HIEN.
The _Su-chen_ was about five miles away when the fort first came into
view, and for about a quarter of an hour she steamed ahead without any
sign of life or of alarm becoming perceptible in the vicinity of the
pirates' head-quarters. Frobisher was beginning to hope that fortune
was so far favouring him that perhaps the freebooters might have set out
on some buccaneering expedition inland upon this particular morning, and
that he might thus be able to land, seize and destroy the junks, and
occupy the fort during their absence; at the same time preparing an
unpleasant little surprise for the pirates when they returned.
But his hope was doomed to disappointment. Still keeping his eye glued
to the telescope, he suddenly observed a flash and a puff of white smoke
leap out from a corner tower of the fort, and a few moments later the
dull "boom" of a fairly-heavy gun made itself heard. At the same moment
a tiny ball soared aloft to the head of the flagstaff on the
battlements, which ball presently broke abroad and revealed itself as a
large yellow flag of triangular shape, the apex of the triangle, or fly,
being circular instead of ending in a point. There was also a design of
some description embroidered on the flag in the favourite Chinese blue,
but what the design represented Frobisher could not imagine. He had
never beheld anything like it in his life, so he turned to Quen-lung,
who was, as usual, standing alongside him, and, handing him the
telescope, told him to take a look at the piece of bunting and say what
the decoration on the flag was intended to represent.
Quen-lung obediently placed the eyepiece to his eye, and a few seconds
later Frobisher observed the man turn pale and stagger backward, almost
dropping the telescope as he did so. The man's eyes were dilated, his
face turned the colour of putty; his lower lip had dropped, and his
hands were trembling as though palsied. He presently recovered himself,
however, and the colour gradually returned to his face. Frobisher asked
what ailed him.
"Oh, sir," he answered, "turn back; turn back before it is too late. I
have read the design on that flag, and know we can never hope to succeed
against those who fight under its folds. I may not say--no man who
knows may tell what those characters signify; but the men who belong to
the Society that flies that ensign have never been conquered, and not a
single one among them has ever been captured, although troops have been
sent against them time after time. No one has ever returned alive to
tell what happened; and we can only guess. They have sworn enmity
against the whole human race, and their numbers are always being
increased by the addition of men who have wrongs to redress, or believe
themselves to have been injured by their fellows; and it is said that
they always put their captives to death in an unspeakably horrible
manner, although no witness has ever returned to tell the tale. I am
sure that, if the admiral had known who the people were whom he wants to
destroy, he would never have sent the expedition at all."
Frobisher looked the man up and down for a few seconds, as though he
thought that the fellow's mind had given way. Then he said, sternly:
"What child's talk is this, Quen-lung? Do I hear a man speaking, or is
it a boy, frightened by a bogy? What are you dreaming about, that you
tell me I had better return without attacking these pirates? I am most
certainly going to attack them, and my orders are to exterminate the
whole crew of them; so you will very soon be able to disabuse your mind
of the belief that they are invulnerable, as you seem to suppose. You
say that no man has ever escaped them; but there are two men on board
now to contradict that statement--the men we rescued from the junk. No,
no, my good man; you've been listening to some old woman's tale and
allowed it to frighten you. You'll see that you will be quite all right
as soon as the fighting begins; you will do your part as well as the
best of us."
This he said in the hope of infusing a little backbone into the man, who
was shaking like a leaf; but his words had no effect. Quen-lung was
terrified, there was no doubt of that, and it seemed to Frobisher that
his terror arose not so much, from fear of the pirates themselves as
from some supernatural power which he appeared to attribute to them.
"Well, master," he said resignedly, "if you insist on attacking them,
you must; but you will not win. I know it; I can see it!" And without
another word he walked to the other side of the deck and leant over the
bulwarks, his chin resting on the palms of his hands, staring moodily
down into the muddy water.
By this time the _Su-chen_ had approached to within a distance of about
a mile from the fort and the small bight in the river, inside which lay
the five junks, and Frobisher determined to try a sighting shot at the
building, to accustom the men to a changing range. He therefore ordered
the men to load the four-inch gun forward, bring it to bear on the
square tower from which the pirates' signal-gun-had been fired, and
discharge it when ready.
The gun was loaded and trained, and the gunner laid his finger on the
firing key; there was a deafening report, the boat quivered from truck
to keelson, and Frobisher, watching, saw the shell strike and burst full
on the centre of the tower, in which a ragged hole immediately
afterwards appeared.
"Good shot!" he ejaculated, laying down his telescope. "Let us try a
few more of the same kind, men. That will soon show those fellows that
we mean business. Where's their invulnerability now, Quen-lung--eh?"
His words were drowned by a terrific discharge from the fort, the whole
eastern front of which seemed to break out into flame and smoke, while a
perfect storm of shot, shell, and small-arm missiles swept the ship,
striking down men, ripping up planking and bulwarks, cutting rigging,
and generally doing a tremendous amount of damage.
From all over the decks came the cries and groans of wounded men,
mingled with execrations from the unwounded who had seen their friends
shot down. Frobisher himself, when he had wiped the blood out of his
eyes which had flowed into them from a small wound on his forehead
caused by a flying splinter, was astounded to observe the amount of
damage and the number of casualties that had resulted from that one
discharge. The pirates had somehow managed to get the range to a
nicety, and every shot had come aboard. There were no less than nine
men killed and wounded, and the crew of the four-inch gun were all down.
Unconquerable or not, the pirates were certainly marvellously clever
gunners, and their weapons must be both heavy and modern.
At the same moment Frobisher observed a movement among the masts of the
junks; and presently, to his amazement, he saw that they were coming out
from behind their shelter, evidently with the intention of fighting him
from the river as well as from the shore. Well, he would make short
work of them, anyway. They were only made of wood, and a few
well-directed shots between wind and water should send the whole fleet
to the bottom in short order. With this end in view, he ordered every
gun that could be brought to bear to be fired at the junks, meaning to
clear them out of the way before turning his attention entirely to the
fort; for he could see that they were crowded with men, and it might be
rather awkward for his ship's crew if they managed to get alongside.
The gunboat's sides were low, and it would be an easy matter to board
her from craft standing as high out of the water as those junks.
The men sprang to their posts with alacrity, and soon the duel was in
full swing. The junks were, like the fort, very heavily armed--much
more heavily than Frobisher had in the least anticipated--and their
accurately-aimed shot came ripping and tearing through the _Su-chen's_
wooden bulwarks and sides with terrible effect. In addition to solid
shot the pirates were using shell, and the air was soon full of flying
pieces of metal, which struck men down in every direction. Only inside
the iron casemates did there seem to be any protection from that deadly
storm, and there the Chinese sailors were serving their guns coolly and
with excellent aim. Shot after shot struck one or other of the junks,
and Frobisher could see them actually reel under the impact; but so far
no shot had been lucky enough to strike below or on the water line, and
so sink any of them.
The _Su-chen_ was now, he considered, quite close enough to both fort
and junks; he therefore rang for half-speed, at which the vessel just
held her own against the current, the junks themselves having anchored
in order to avoid being swept down under the _Su-chen's_ guns.
So the battle went grimly forward. Frobisher soon discovered that his
big body was being made a target for small-arm fire, and was shortly
obliged to leave the bridge, in order to avoid being shot. He therefore
took up his post in the forward starboard casemate, from which position
he could observe the enemy and at the same time encourage his crew to
greater efforts. This he was obliged to do by signs, for at the
beginning of the battle Quen-lung had vanished, and Frobisher was unable
to catch a glimpse of him anywhere. He had doubtless sought the
seclusion of his cabin, in the hope that there he might find safety,
oblivious of the fact that the enemy were using such large and powerful
guns that the wooden sides of the gunboat offered little more protection
than he would have obtained out on deck. Frobisher determined to go and
find him, when he could spare a moment or two from the matter in hand,
bring him up on deck, and thus teach him, by the most practical of
methods, how to stand fire without flinching.
At present, however, he had more than enough to occupy him, without
thinking of Quen-lung. The fort had brought all its guns to bear on the
_Su-chen_ directly the gunboat became practically stationary, and it, as
well as the junks, was making such excellent practice that Frobisher at
length began to realise that he was in a very warm corner indeed, out of
which it would tax his skill to the utmost to extricate himself, to say
nothing of carrying out his expressed intention of destroying the pirate
stronghold. There was, of course, still time to retire, to return to
Tien-tsin and bring reinforcements, explaining to the admiral that one
small gunboat was utterly inadequate to undertake so important an
enterprise as this was proving to be; and this would doubtless have been
his wisest plan. But this particular Englishman happened to be one of
those who do not know when they are beaten, and the mere idea of retreat
never so much as entered his mind.
He therefore went about from gun to gun, cheering and encouraging the
men, sometimes training one of the weapons himself, and all the while
impressing upon the crew--as well as he could by signs--the necessity
for holing and sinking the junks as speedily as possible, and so
reducing to some extent the severe gruelling to which the _Su-chen_ was
being subjected.
At last his constant exhortations began to have their effect. A
well-directed shell from the four-inch gun--laid, as it happened, by
Frobisher's own hands--struck the junk at the end of the line nearest to
the gunboat full upon the water line, and exploding, blew a hole in her
nearly a yard square; while from the interior of the smitten junk arose
a chorus of screams, groans, and yells, proving that the flying
splinters of the shell had done other work as well. Those on board the
_Su-chen_ saw the water pouring into the pirate vessel in a very
cataract; she heeled farther and farther over, and in less than a minute
after the shell had struck, righted herself for a second, and then
plunged below the surface, carrying with her the greater portion of her
crew.
"Hurrah, boys!" shouted Frobisher, "that's one gone. Repeat the dose
with the next fellow, and we'll soon put the whole crowd of them out of
business!"
The rousing cheer with which his men responded to words which they could
not possibly understand, but the meaning of which was sufficiently
clear, was answered by a yell of rage and defiance from the pirates,
accompanied by another furious bombardment from their guns and
small-arms; and Frobisher, gazing at the havoc caused by the discharge,
and the bodies with which his decks were strewn, realised that the
destruction of that one junk had but animated the pirates to fresh
exertions, and that the victory was not yet even half-won.
Realising that it was imperative to silence the fire from the junks if
success was to be obtained at all, he signed to the gunners to load and
direct all their pieces upon the next junk, firing together, in the hope
that the combined discharge might effect the desired result. And so it
did. The missiles all struck the craft almost on the same spot, and a
few minutes later she, too, took herself and her crew to the bottom,
leaving only three junks to deal with--and the fort, which was blazing
away merrily and doing a good deal of damage, though not so much as the
junks, the gunners on board which appeared to be specially-trained
marksmen.
The enthusiasm of the Chinese sailors at this second stroke of luck was
immense, and they threw themselves into their work with unabated energy,
despite the fact that fully a quarter of their comrades were lying dead
or wounded around them.
The cries of the wounded for water were dreadful, despite all that could
be done to help them. Frobisher had already told off as many men as he
could spare to carry water, but it seemed impossible to quench the poor
wretches' thirst; their cry was always for more, even though they had
drunk but a moment previously. The unwounded men appeared to be quite
indifferent, however, both to their own comrades' sufferings and their
own chances of death or mutilation, and went on serving the guns as
calmly as though they were at target practice. Frobisher realised then,
as numbers of white men have realised since, that the Chinese soldier
and sailor, properly trained and properly led, constitutes some of the
finest fighting material in the world; and that, if a leader ever
arises, capable of drilling and controlling the vast mass of material
which China contains, it will be a very bad thing indeed for the white
races. A properly-drilled, well-trained, well-armed, and capably-led
army of perhaps fifty million fighting men would be invincible; an
invasion of Europe by such a force could not possibly be withstood.
That dreadful day is, however, far in the future, let us hope.
Frobisher now turned his attention to the third junk, still carrying out
his plan of sinking them one at a time, and determined to lay and fire
the four-inch gun again himself, in the hope of repeating his former
successful shot. The shell and cartridge were rammed home and the
breech closed and screwed up, and having trained the gun, he pressed his
finger to the firing key, springing back directly afterward to avoid the
recoil. But to his astonishment there was no report: the weapon did not
discharge. He therefore set and pressed the key again, but once more
there was no result. It was evidently a miss-fire. The young man knew,
of course, that sometimes a cartridge will "hang fire", and that many a
gun's crew have been blown to pieces by prematurely opening the breech,
but he forgot all about that now in his anxiety, and unscrewed and
opened the breech-piece immediately. Nothing happened. There were the
marks of the percussion-pin upon the primer of the cartridge, but the
ammunition had failed to explode.
Hastily calling for another cartridge, he withdrew the faulty one and
thrust in a fresh one, closing the breech and repeating his first
operation; but again the cartridge failed to explode. Something was
seriously wrong somewhere--but what? Was it the powder that was faulty
or damp, or the primer that was ineffective? It was impossible to say
without examination. Another cartridge and still another were tried,
and every time the result was the same, until Frobisher began to feel
seriously alarmed.
Encouraged by the cessation of fire from the _Su-chen_, the junks had
redoubled their own, and the gunboat was rapidly becoming as riddled as
a sieve, while men were falling fast in every direction. The ship's
funnel was as full of holes as a cullender, the shrouds of the foremast
were cut to pieces on both sides, the mainmast had long since been shot
away, and the wooden deck-houses were mere heaps of splintered wood,
while the bulwarks were in a perfectly ruinous condition. Clearly
something must be done, and done quickly, or the _Su-chen_ would be sunk
beneath their feet.
Ordering his men to leave the four-inch for the time being, and to blaze
away with the smaller pieces and machine-guns, Frobisher ran below to
the magazine to try to discover what was wrong. He found the men there
passing out shell and cartridge quite calmly, unaware that there was
anything wrong on deck, and of course taking no precaution to examine
the stuff before sending it up the hoist.
Frobisher's first action when he got to the magazine was to examine the
outside of the brass cases, and he soon saw--or thought he saw--what was
the matter. When the _Su-chen's_ ammunition had been overhauled at
Tien-tsin, cartridge for the four-inch was one of the sizes of which
there was a shortage, and Frobisher had had a fresh supply put on board.
That fresh supply, he had observed at the time, was stencilled with
Chinese characters in red paint, while the old stock had been stencilled
in black; and he now observed that all the cartridge being passed up
carried the black stencil, and was therefore old stuff--how old he did
not care to think. He at once told the men by signs not to send up any
more black-marked cartridge, but to use only the red-marked; and then,
for the second time that day, he received a shock.
The four-inch gun had been fired more frequently than any other gun, and
the whole of the fresh supply of cartridge of that size had been
exhausted. There was not a single charge left! How bitterly he blamed
himself for not having hove every scrap of the ship's old ammunition
overboard, and filled up entirely with new! But it was no time for
regrets now; the only thing to do was to rectify matters, if possible;
and if not, to make the best of them. Perhaps it might be the primers
that were faulty, he thought, and if so, the situation might yet be
saved, for there was a supply of new primers on board.
Seizing one of the cases in his arms, he rushed on deck with his load,
and there, under cover of one of the casemates, drew the load,
exercising the utmost care, that the powder might not be exposed to any
flying sparks. Then, springing to the gun, he thrust in the empty case,
slammed the breech shut, and pressed the key.
There was a loud, smacking report, and a little thread of smoke curled
up from the muzzle of the gun. The primers, then, were in good order,
so--good heavens!--it must be the powder that was wrong, and Frobisher
felt the beads of sweat gather on his forehead. He would make quite
sure, though.
Running back to the casemate, he snatched a handful of powder, spread it
thinly on deck, well away from the load, and placed a lighted match to
it. There was no flame or puff of smoke, no explosion--nothing! The
match simply burnt up and went out. Then the _Su-chen's_ captain took a
pinch of the stuff between his fingers and put it in his mouth, tasting
it. A moment later he spat it out on deck with a cry of horror and
amazement, for what had passed for powder in all those old cartridges
was nothing but granulated charcoal! Then Frobisher recollected
Wong-lih's accusation of peculation on the part of mandarins and other
high officials who filled their pockets at the expense of their country,
and how the admiral had said that it would be a bad thing for China if
she had to go to war under conditions such as then obtained.
This, then, was one of the results of such peculation. Some contractor
or official had been paid to provide powder, and he had provided
charcoal, pocketing the difference.
Frobisher ground his teeth and muttered several very bitter things.
Here he was, engaged with a vastly superior force, handicapped most
horribly for want of ammunition--for possibly the rest of the supply,
intended for the smaller guns, was in the same condition. What would
have happened if he had not had the forethought to examine superficially
the contents of the magazine at Tien-tsin, and order a fresh supply on
his own responsibility, he hardly dared to think. There would
undoubtedly have been not a single cartridge capable of being
discharged, and the _Su-chen_ and her crew would by this time
undoubtedly have been the prize of the pirates. And all this that some
pampered mandarin or contractor might have a supply of unearned money
wherewith to buy luxuries that he neither deserved nor needed. It was
disgraceful!
But there was nothing to be gained by repining, he reminded himself.
Fortunately the cartridge for the smaller guns seemed to be holding out
satisfactorily; and while Frobisher had been investigating the matter of
the larger cartridge his men had made so good practice with them and
their rifles that the third junk was already in a sinking condition.
Even as he looked she disappeared like her consorts to the bottom, in a
swirl of broken water, dotted with the forms of struggling pirates.
The one big gun being now useless, and the _Su-chen_ herself in a very
parlous condition, it was obviously out of the question to think of
attempting to conclude the fight by means of the light guns and
small-arms alone; the ship would not float long enough for that. Some
other plan of action must therefore be adopted, and Frobisher gave his
attention to the idea for a few minutes. Then he resolved upon a scheme
which, though extremely hazardous, seemed to offer the best, if not the
only, hope of success. It was a case of either destroying the pirates
or being destroyed himself together with his crew; and of the two he
naturally preferred that the sufferers should be the pirates. To
explain his intentions it would be necessary, however, to call in the
assistance of the interpreter, otherwise he could never hope to make the
men comprehend exactly what was required--and his every hope of success
hinged upon this.