The Captain had found out that those war junks never cruised at all,
simply hid round a corner out of sight, and as he depended a great deal
on them for news of the pirates, he was simply furious when he heard of
it, and sent ashore and bought six of the biggest merchant junks.
I was with the party of men under Mr. Whitmore sent to bring them off.
The steam pinnace was to tow them, one by one, but got a rope round her
screw, and delayed everything whilst it was being cleared. I happened
to be on board one of them with six men, preparing to be taken in tow,
and it struck me that it would be a jolly good "wheeze" to sail off.
Mr. Whitmore sung out that I might try, and I did, and got her off quite
comfortably, without breaking anything when I came alongside.
I had had a jolly lot of experience in sailing at Upton Overy, both
before and after going to the _Britannia_, and I don’t want to be cheeky
or anything like that, but it seemed to come quite naturally to me to
sail any boat, and I always seemed to be able to feel exactly what was
wanted to make it sail its best.
The Captain was very pleased with me for doing this, and that is how I
got the command of my junk.
He had all of us Midshipmen and Cadets fallen in on the quarterdeck,
glared at us and growled, "Now, you young gentlemen, you’ve got a job to
do at last—no skrim-shanking about it either—jolly hard job—and I want
those of you who can sail ’em best to take charge of ’em. You’ve got to
get hold of some of those pirate fellows for me—don’t care how you get
’em, but get some of ’em alive. Can’t get anything out of the dead ’uns,
umph!"
You can’t imagine how excited that made all of us, and when the six
junks had all been lashed alongside, we had to clean them first and fit
them out afterwards.
The Commander told me that I could have the one which I had sailed off,
and told me that I could choose one of the cadets to go with me. Dicky
came and offered to do any mortal thing for me if I would take him—he
was nearly blubbing with keenness—so I said I would, and we both had to
start the job of cleaning her out. The Commander gave me twelve hands,
and it was a jolly beastly job. She was perfectly filthy, and we had to
scrape away half an inch of stuff from her inside with shovels before we
could even commence scrubbing. The smell in the holds was almost enough
to knock anyone down, and we worked till long after it was dark, and
they had hoisted big yardarm group lights to make it easier for us.
It rained too, but we didn’t worry about that in the least, because we
were so jolly happy. I’d never seen Dicky like it before. He was
chirping about like a bloated sparrow, and was much too happy even to
speak.
You can see what the junk was like by the picture. The great stern place
was where we all had to live, and it was something like a huge pigeon
loft with three sliding-door places in it. One opened from the deck
into a fairly big place, where the rudder head came up through the stern
and the long tiller worked. The ten bluejackets were to live there.
Above it and under the poop deck were two little places about eight feet
square, and only just a little more than four feet high. In one of them
Dicky and I were going to live, and the two petty officers who were
coming had the other.
[Illustration: H.M.S. Sally]
A narrow platform was below the two upper doors, with a ladder running
down on deck at one end, and one running up to the poop at the other.
It looked exactly like a pigeon loft.
All the time we were busy scraping and shovelling and scrubbing, the
carpenters and blacksmiths were busy fitting two great balks of timber
with some cross-pieces to take a six-pounder Hotchkiss quick-firer and
its mounting. They were bolting them down to the deck and the sides of
the junk, just in front of the mainmast, and on the top of the poop they
mounted a Maxim gun. The _Vigilant_ hadn’t enough Maxim guns for all
six of the junks, so three had had Nordenfelt machine guns from the
gunboats. I had never seen the ship so busy; she was humming from
morning to night, and for most of the night too, for four whole days.
Besides the carpenters’ and blacksmiths’ work, the anchor gear and all
the standing and running rigging had to be refitted or overhauled. I
only wish, as you will know by and by, that more of it had been
refitted, because it really was not strong enough.
You can just imagine how excited Dicky and I were when they did at last
lower a six-pounder down into our junk, and we saw it sitting in its
mounting, and knew we might soon have to use it.
We got most of the filth out of ours by the middle of the second day,
and the holds didn’t smell so badly, though we could never get the
Chinese kind of smell out of the living places under the stern. What
troubled us most were the fleas and bugs and cockroaches. They were
perfectly awful, and we couldn’t get rid of them in the few days we had.
We must have drowned thousands of them, but there seemed to be just as
many left, and we were itching all over and covered with bite marks,
even whilst we were only working in her.
The cockroaches would watch us cleaning the bottom boards, and when we
went on to another spot they would swarm down over the clean places, and
squashing the brutes made them dirtier than ever again.
It was Dicky who first thought of giving our junk a name. I wanted to
call her _Nan_, because Nan was my chum, but then I thought perhaps the
Captain wouldn’t like it, and Dicky suggested _Sally_ instead. It
turned out that all the others wanted the same name, but Dicky was the
only one of them that got it. You see, the letters had to be cut out in
wood first, and as all the carpenter people were so frightfully busy, it
was almost impossible to get anything extra done at all. But Dicky had
made great friends with the old Boatswain and Carpenter. He used to go
and yarn with them in their cabins on the other side of the gunroom
flat, and used to take refuge there sometimes when we had driven him out
of the gunroom with our chaff, and sometimes hide there when he was
afraid of being bullied, and Jim was not there to protect him. It was
really owing to this that we were the only ones who did manage to get it
done, and then Dicky actually had the pluck to ask the Commander for
some gold leaf to gild the letters. He volunteered to do that too, and
I went with him to the Commander’s cabin—outside the door—to give him
courage. When he knocked timidly, and we heard the Commander sing out,
"Yes, what is it?" in his gruff voice, Dicky looked as if he would have
bolted away—I expect he would have done so if I hadn’t been there and
the sentry as well—but he just squeezed his lips together, wriggled in
at the side of the curtain, and squeaked out, "Please, sir, gold leaf,"
and couldn’t say another word, he was so frightened. I went in then,
"Please, sir, we’ve got Mr. Williams, the Carpenter, to cut out _Sally_
for our junk—in big wooden letters—and we want gold leaf, please."
The Commander grinned at us—he was a perfect ripper—took a book of gold
leaf out of a drawer, and gave it to Dicky. "D’you boys think I’m made
of gold leaf?" We didn’t even thank him, we were so excited, but rushed
for’ard to the "paint shop" under the fo’c’stle to see old Modley, the
painter, and ask him to put the gold leaf on for us. We couldn’t get
anything out of him, though. He was a bit of a sea lawyer, and he
"wasn’t going to do nothink but what he’d orders to do from the
Commander or the First Lootenant".
We didn’t know what to do then, and went on deck and climbed down to the
junk, feeling miserable. Scroggs was there screwing the letters on to a
board—Scroggs was the petty officer who was coming with us—and we told
him all that had happened, and how we’d got the gold leaf, but couldn’t
get Modley to gild the letters.
"You just give it to me, sir," he said; "that ’ere Modley be a bit of a
’ard nut, but we both comes from the same village down Dorset way, an’
’is missus goes to the same chapel as my old missus, and ’e may do it
for me."
He managed to get round him somehow, and when, next morning, Dicky and I
ran up on deck in our pyjamas, as soon as it got light, to have another
look at the junk, the first thing we saw was the board on her stern, and
the letters all beautifully gilded. We had to climb down, just as we
were, and lean over and look at them. They looked simply gorgeous, and
there were Scroggs, and Sharpe, the other petty officer, and one of the
carpenter’s crew, and old Modley grinning at us. They had just finished
fixing the board to the stern. "Thank you very much," was all we could
think of saying; and when we all climbed up aboard the _Vigilant_ again,
the ship’s cocoa was just being served out, and Scroggs brought us a
bowl of it and said, "Here’s luck to the _Sally_," and we all sipped it,
and Modley said, "May the Lord have mercy on the little lass!" but the
carpenter’s crew didn’t say anything religious, because he burnt his
mouth.
Then we jumped down below before the Commander could see us on deck in
pyjamas, and rolled ourselves in our hammocks again—we were jolly cold.
We had a good bit of gold leaf left, and I nudged Jim, whose hammock was
next mine, to tell him that he could have it. I knew he wanted it very
badly to make his junk look smart, and when we woke him and he knew
about it he gave a whoop! and tumbled out and woke the others; and Dicky
and I watched them having a grand pillow fight, till we couldn’t stand
it any longer, and joined in, and got splendidly hot—even Dicky joined
in!
All that day we were busy getting ammunition on board, and it was simply
grand to see the boxes being lowered into the hold and jammed there, so
that they would not fall about. There were 200 cartridges for the
six-pounder—the long brass cartridge and the little shell all in one—and
three thousand rounds for the Maxim gun. Then there were the casks for
the water, and a boat’s stove to be secured, and one of the _Vigilant’s_
dinghies to be lashed down amidships.[#] We took the native boat, which
you can see in the picture hanging over the stern, so that we should
look more like an ordinary junk. Then there was all our own gear and
boxes of biscuit and corned meat, and any amount of stuff. Dicky and I
got heaps of things from old Ah Man—jam, sardines, ginger-bread
biscuits, and things like that—and when we’d got them all into our
little square pigeonhole, and our sea boots, mackintoshes, greatcoats,
and a uniform tin case between us, there was hardly any room left for
our hammocks, and, of course, it wasn’t possible to stand up inside—it
was much too low. When everything was ready we took her away to
practise sailing, and the Captain came with us, and was jolly pleasant,
and Mr. Whitmore, the Gunnery Lieutenant, came too, and we tried the
guns and, I must say, made very wretched shooting.
[#] See page 77.
After that we had to wait for the gunboats to come back from cruising,
fill up with coal, and take us away in pairs.
The only thing that did make Dicky and me feel rather sad was that Jim
hadn’t a junk all to himself. But he was going with Mr. Trevelyan, and
as he was a splendid chap, we knew that they would have a grand time
together.
They called their junk the _Ferret_. The Captain had said, "Ferret ’em
out for me, Trevelyan," so we all thought the name was jolly
appropriate. They only had it painted on the stern, not done with big
wooden letters as ours was. They had tried to use the rest of our gold
leaf, but had made a mess of the job and wasted it all, which was rather
a pity.
The Commander sent Mr. Langham a list of all the fellows who were to go
in the six junks, and he stuck it on the notice board in the gunroom.
This is a copy of it, and will explain how they were "told off", and who
were to go in them.
_H.M.S. Vigilant_,
_Tinghai Harbour._