Junk No. 5, { Lieutenant Benjamin Langham.
{ Midshipman Percy Jones.
Junk No. 6, { Midshipman Steven J. Johnston.
{ Naval Cadet John E. Smith.
Two petty officers and nine seaman ratings and one signal rating will be
detailed to each tender, also one native pilot.
The tenders will act under the orders of the Commanding Officer of the
gunboat to which they are attached, and will be prepared to leave
Tinghai after the gunboats have completed with coal and provisions.
CHAS. E. LESTER,
_Captain._
We had nothing to do now but wait for the _Ringdove_, so Mr. Trevelyan
took his junk and our junk the _Sally_ away sailing every day, till we
really got quite good at managing the clumsy gear and the huge matting
sails. We did some more gun practice as well.
The _Goldfinch_ and _Sparrow_ took their junks away before our gunboat
arrived, and we gave them a jolly good send-off. At last our turn came,
and the _Ringdove_ finished coaling, and we were given orders to be
ready to start at daybreak.
The evening before we had to start there hadn’t been a breath of wind,
and Dicky and I sat up whistling for it till very late. This was the
first time we had spent the night aboard, and we really couldn’t sleep
because of the excitement and the fleas. The wind did come by the
morning, but from the wrong direction, and the _Ringdove_, to save time,
simply towed us away behind her.
It wasn’t a very glorious start, but they gave us a grand cheer, and the
Captain had shouted, "Good luck, Dick! pull your pound for the good old
West Country," and that made me gloriously happy, because he had never
called me "Dick" since the first day I joined.
When we had got round the corner, out of sight of the _Vigilant_, and
knew that we were in for any amount of adventures, we felt simply
ripping, and the sun came out too, and we sat on deck and dried our
things.
We were so close to the _Ferret_ that we could talk to Jim, and
presently he came out of his "kennel"—he called his a "kennel", and we
called ours a "rabbit hutch"—and yelled across to us to look. He had a
huge cake in both hands. "You’ve got one too, I expect," he shouted,
and we crawled into our hutch; and in a corner, under the sea boots, was
just such another, all covered with icing, and "Chin Chin Joss from Ah
Man" scrawled on it in sugar. Wasn’t that jolly decent of the old
messman? Of course we’d spent no end of money getting sardines and jam
and biscuit from him—those sovereigns the Captain had given Jim and
myself had come in jolly useful—but we never expected anything like
this, and it just made us completely happy, and we had a piece each on
the spot, and waved across to Jim whilst he and Mr. Trevelyan had slices
too.
The pilot who came to us was named Ah Chee, a funny-looking old chap,
and I’m sure you wouldn’t have guessed his age within twenty years. He
could talk a little "pidgin" English, and volunteered to do the
cooking—in a tiny little galley place over a brazier belonging to the
junk, and that boat’s stove which we had fitted up—and did it jolly well
too, except when he’d been smoking too much opium.
As I told you before, Scroggs was the name of one petty officer, a fine
great chap, and Sharpe, a fat, good-natured little man, the other. They
were both jolly good at their job, and the Commander had given us a good
lot of seamen too.
When it got dark they started a "sing song", and Dicky and I each sang a
song. I sang "We’ll rant and we’ll roar", and Dicky sang "Clementine",
and we had an awfully jolly time, and were just as happy as anything,
but for those wretched crawling and jumping things.
The _Ringdove_ towed us along for two whole days, and on the morning
after the second night Mr. Rashleigh had towed us to wind’ard of the
Chung-li Tao group of islands. He then stopped her engines and hauled
us alongside for orders. We took our charts with us, Mr. Trevelyan and
I, and he told me I was to cruise to the eastward and search all the
channels, and rejoin him to leeward of a certain island within four
days—I forget the name of the island; and he told us a lot more of what
we must do in case the weather or the wind changed, but as he had
written it all down, it was not necessary to remember it. Then he said
goodbye, wished us good luck, and his final orders were: "Keep your guns
covered up with old tarpaulins, don’t let your people show themselves
when you’re close to a village or a junk, and don’t attempt to look too
smart. Don’t hoist your sails as if you were in a blooming hurry, and
if you’re not sure where you are, anchor for the night. You’re intended
to be ordinary merchant junks, and you’re just bits of bait—sprats to
catch a whale—and you have to get hold of some of these fellows for the
Captain, and get ’em alive too—he doesn’t want dead ’uns. If you meet
more than you can tackle, just run down to me, and," he added solemnly,
"if other things happen, keep one cartridge in your revolvers for
yourselves."
That made me feel rather creepy and coldish, but not exactly frightened,
because Mr. Rashleigh is so plump and so—well—funny looking that,
however solemnly he tried to say anything, you really wanted to laugh.
Just before we went away Dr. Hibbert, the jolly Surgeon of the
_Ringdove_, gave Mr. Trevelyan and myself two big wine bottles each.
They were marked "Foretop" and "Maintop". He winked cheerily at us:
"You’ll find ’em useful, you fellows. If any of your chaps gets a pain
below the belt, shove in a big whack of the ’Maintop’ bottle; if he gets
a pain above the belt, give him half a dozen whacks of the ’Foretop’."
I marked mine "Above" and "Below", and stowed them away very carefully
in a corner. He gave me some tobacco too; for though I oughtn’t to have
smoked—I wasn’t eighteen—it was rather different when I was away from
the ship. I had brought my pipe with me, but, like an ass, had
forgotten any tobacco.
Well, we shook hands and then off we went, the "Ringdoves" cheering us,
and all of us cheering each other. She steamed off to the north’ard to
get to leeward of the islands, we went away towards the sun, and the
_Ferret_ the opposite way, Jim waving from the poop and sending a last
"Luck to _Sally_!".
There was quite a good breeze blowing, and when we’d got all our sails
hauled up and the leeboard down, we went flying along, heeling over till
the lee gunwale raced through and under the water. It was simply grand.
The sun came up too, and made it all the more cheerful, although there
wasn’t much warmth in it, and when the _Ringdove_ and the _Ferret_ had
both got out of sight, Dicky gave a great sigh of contentment.
I must say that, at first, I felt frightened at being alone, and should
have been jolly pleased to see the _Ringdove’s_ masts and funny little
funnel sticking up over the horizon; but presently I forgot to be
nervous, because the junk sailed so well, and it was simply ripping to
be in command, all by myself, with a six-pounder and a Maxim gun, and
all those two hundred shells down below, and to think of the surprise we
should give any junk which tried to take us, because, you see, none of
them had ever known what a bursting shell was like. There was Scroggs
to fall back upon too, if one really got into a tight fix and couldn’t
make up one’s mind. He was such a huge chap, that he could have lifted
Dicky and me up with each hand; but he would always talk about his
missus and his "kids" if we gave him the slightest opening,
and—well—neither Dicky nor I were the least enthusiastic about them
after the second day, and I’m quite certain that Sharpe felt just the
same—he had to live with him, too—because I heard him say, "Now chuck
it, if you don’t want to drive me off’n my blooming rocker."
To show you how the pirates had scared everything off the sea, we never
saw a single junk all those two days we were being towed by the
_Ringdove_, and now we had the sea all to ourselves. Our first island
was right ahead, and we soon got up to it, and Ah Chee came out of his
pigeonhole and sniffed and looked, and sniffed and looked again, and
smiled, so we knew everything was all right, from the "running-on-rocks"
point of view. I didn’t tell you before, but Mr. Trevelyan had had a
great idea before we left Tinghai, and bought enough loose-fitting blue
Chinese short coats, and enough native caps to go round his men and mine
too; so now, as we got quite close to the land, we made the men stick
them on, and Dicky and I put ours on, and looked jolly funny, I expect.
I couldn’t help thinking what my mother would imagine had happened if
she’d been able to see me rigged up like this, and I was pretty sure
that Nan would say something to make me get red and angry. But it was
grand fun, all the same.
We had one of the _Vigilant’s_ dinghies, besides that native sampan hung
over the stern, and it had to be covered up with a tarpaulin, so that
its shape wouldn’t show through. Good old Ah Chee seemed to understand
our game, and ran in quite close, and when we were nearing a small
village, began gesticulating and signing to me to lower the sails a
little. "Too plenty quick—plenty too quick—pilons thinkee you no
got"—and he pointed down to the hold, and I suppose meant "cargo"—"no
good makee catchee." We lowered our mizzen altogether—it wasn’t doing
much good anyhow—and slacked off the sheets, and went past very slowly,
Dicky and I looking through our telescopes, and hoping to see something
coming after us. There was nothing there, though, and Ah Chee shook his
head—"Too plenty good fellow can do."
One or two small junks were hauled up above high-water mark, with their
masts out—to make it all the more difficult for pirates to carry them
off, I suppose—a few children were playing with the dogs and the pigs on
the shore, and one or two miserable wretches were hauling in handlines
and picking small fish off the hooks—we could see them glitter in the
sun as they wriggled.
Then Ah Chee signed to us to go faster, so we hoisted the mizzen again,
and hauled in our sheets and boomed along. We spent all that day doing
this, running down one channel and beating up another, and only once saw
any junks. There were two beating to windward very slowly, and when we
sighted them Dicky and I were very excited, and brought Ah Chee out to
look at them. He only shook his head and repeated, "Plenty good fellow
can do."
Dicky suggested that we should see how fast we could sail and try and
overhaul them, and we were getting on finely, gaining every minute,
though we could see them doing their best to go faster; but presently Ah
Chee, who had borrowed my telescope, made us slow down, shaking his
head, "Plenty bad joss can do—if too plenty quick go—him Chinaman," and
he pretended to dive overboard. Dicky understood what he meant
first—that the Chinaman would think us pirates, and would jump overboard
if we overhauled them, so we lowered our foresail, just to comfort them,
and eased down.
We had to keep under way that night, because the next lot of little
islands which we had to examine were about nine miles away, and the
breeze had fallen considerably. I slept jolly soundly till midnight—I
rolled myself in my blanket and slept on deck, to escape the bugs under
the poop—and then relieved Dicky for the middle watch.
It was jolly cold, but the stars peeped out every now and again, and it
was just light enough to see rocks or land a hundred yards ahead, so
there was very little danger of our running ashore.
It was the first night I had spent at sea under sail since the Upton
Overy days, and this made me think a lot of the old village, and to
wonder what they were doing at home. It was so jolly to know, after all
the time—the years, in fact—that I’d been longing to come to sea with
the Captain, that I was now doing quite an important job for him, and
that I might be lucky enough to help him, and even be able to find Mr.
Travers and Sally Hobbs and her father. It was grand, and I did so
enjoy myself that night, with, everyone, except myself and the men at
the helm and a lookout man for’ard, sound asleep.
I had only the foresail and mizzen set, because there was no reason for
going fast, and I was rather nervous about squalls. You couldn’t see
them coming at night—at any rate I couldn’t, because I’d had so jolly
little experience.
I stood up alone on the poop, near the Maxim gun, and kept my eye on the
sails and the long, narrow deck below me, and I don’t know whether you
will understand what I mean, but I felt frightfully proud and conceited.
I’d felt like that ever since we left the _Ringdove_, but I’d done my
best not to let it ooze out, for fear that Dicky and the men should
think me an ass, or too cocky, and now it seemed to swell up from my
boots, and gave me an awfully funny feeling all over.
We sighted the island about six bells, and then I tacked away again, as
it was no use to go in close till daylight. Scroggs relieved me at four
o’clock, and I felt almost sorry, but crept in alongside Dicky, as it
was raining, and went to sleep directly, without disturbing him.
It didn’t seem many minutes before Scroggs woke me. "The breeze is
steady, sir, and the island’s on our port bow, and I think, sir, that
something is following us and just smelling ’around’."
I crawled out like a shot. It was raining gently, and the sails were
all damp and dripping, but I couldn’t see anything at first except the
long dark line of the island to the east.
Scroggs pointed down to leeward, and I thought I made out, just for a
second, three great sails.
"She’s there, sure enough, sir; I’ve seen her, off and on, for the last
half-hour, and she’s working up to wind’ard, as if she wanted to have a
look at us."
I watched and watched, my heart thumping like mad, and presently I
caught sight of her dark sails again.
We went off on the other tack, and, sure enough, the next time I saw her
she’d done so too.