*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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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?"