*CHAPTER IX*
*Mr. Hoffman’s Secret*
Bored Travers—Bored Travers Continues—"Old Lest" in Form—"We’ve
Got ’em at Last"—A Dirty Night—"Old Lest" Unfolds a Tale—Mr.
Hoffman’s Tale—"Old Lest" and Hoffman—A Marvellous Old Chap
_Written by Commander Truscott_
At the time of parting company with the _Ringdove_ the weather was
extremely unpleasant—heavy rain squalls and a bitterly cold northerly
wind—but it was snug enough down below, and, to celebrate the return of
Travers, we gave him a great dinner in the ward room.
It is hardly necessary to tell you that we were all in the very
brightest spirits, and spent a most jovial and riotous evening—all
except, funnily enough, Travers himself. He was always a bit bored at
these shows, and "turned in" early, only too glad to find himself once
more in his own bunk. He was known throughout the fleet as
Bored-Travers, or "B.-T.", his full surname being Gore-Travers, and was
rather a weird chap, with a superior, supercilious,
"Bond-Street-on-a-swagger-morning air" about him, which, somehow or
other, gave everyone the idea that he looked "down" upon everybody else.
You couldn’t help liking him, however, for all that. I had never seen
him enthusiastic about anything except a pretty girl or a game of
cricket, and now after dinner he looked bored to distraction, leant
wearily against a stanchion, and told Lawrence and the others his yarn.
It was like drawing teeth out of a horse, to get him to tell anything at
all.
"Oh! that night, um! Oh yes! I remember. One of those Mission native
chaps got hold of me when I’d got inside the gates—couldn’t shake him
off—too much bore altogether, you fellows. He was so jolly earnest, I
just went along with him. He said something about Old Hobbs and his
daughter being carried away, or something. I had to go, you know—had
never seen the girl—all you fellows said she was pretty—forgot ’A’
company wasn’t coming along too."
He stopped in the most irritating way to fill his pipe. "Same beastly
old tobacco in the mess—can’t get it to draw—never could."
"Didn’t you find them, and have a scrap down there on the beach?"
Trevelyan asked. "There was a Chinaman down there—dead, with a Webley
revolver bullet in him."
"Did I kill him?" he asked, without the faintest display of interest.
"I knew the beastly revolver would go off some day and hurt someone.
Someone took it away after that—lots of them—shoved a beastly cloth over
my head, and shoved me into a boat. They seemed to want me to stay
still, so I did."
"Did they knock you about much?" "Didn’t you see Sally?" several asked,
and Trevelyan very eagerly added, "How many boats did you see? We
thought there were three. We saw the keel marks of three in the mud."
He seemed quite amused at their eagerness.
"Well, you chaps, I think they must have knocked me on the head. I
didn’t remember much about it—didn’t see anything I could swear
to—rather fancy, though, there were two boats, and, now you mention it,
that I did hear a girl’s scream just before. Don’t remember anything
else till I woke up, with a beastly headache, and a mouth like a
limekiln, in a jolly sight better cabin than I’ve got on board here."
"That must have been Hobbs’s yacht! What happened then?"
"Nothing at all—couldn’t shave—had forgotten to bring my razors and"
(yawning) "my dressing case with me—there wasn’t a towel there, or water
even—and there they kept me till they shoved me ashore, where young Ford
found me."
"Ford?" I said, chipping in. "I thought Rashleigh did that." The
Skipper had just shown me his report.
"Rashleigh! No, sir. He was shoving out of it as hard as he could go.
Young Ford came along and picked me off—he and the rest of his junk’s
crew—in the _Ringdove’s_ cutter. The Chinamen wasted a lot of good
ammunition over the lot of us, and I’d have made ’em pay for it if I’d
been in" (yawning) "charge of ’em.
"Plucky chap that," he went on placidly, ordering the marine servant to
bring him more sugar for his coffee. "I told him so. Hope it won’t make
him more conceited than he is.
"How about that Chinese cove who came along with me in the _Ringdove_!"
he asked, with some little display of interest.
"He’s all right, B.-T.," someone said. "Came aboard with the wounded."
"Um! I thought I’d given him the slip. Promised him a hundred dollars
for getting me out of it, and" (yawning several times) "I haven’t got a
hundred cents in the world."
"That’s all right. You’ve got your last month’s pay due to you," Old
Bax growled impatiently. "But, man alive, shove on with your yarn."
Travers simply opened his eyes a little more widely, looked amusedly at
him, and yawned again.
"What did you do all the time?" "Give you decent grub?" "Did you see
the boss of the show?" Questions simply poured in, but he languidly
helped himself to more sugar, and stirred his coffee.
"Why the dickens can’t our cook make better stuff than this? The grub
was beastly, and I grew a beastly beard, and everything was" (yawning)
"beastly. There was a chap there—an old Scotch engineer fellow—seemed
to belong to the show—came across to yarn once or twice—said he was
tired of having no one to talk to—but he bored me, so didn’t come
often."
"Weren’t you excited when you heard the firing?" the young Padré asked.
"Interested," Travers drawled; "I’m never excited—just interested," and
he put on his most superior look, and the young Padré retired in
confusion. "There was a bit of a shindy—guns, and all that—about a week
after I’d been there. It was rather interesting—at any rate the coves
there thought so."
I remembered now that Rashleigh had reported having heard the sound of
guns in the direction of the Chung-li Tao Group about that time, and had
had his head snapped off by the Skipper for his pains. He may have been
right, after all. "What happened? Who were firing?" I asked.
"I don’t know, sir; think they must have had a bit of a ’pick up’ among
themselves. I did mention it to the old Scotchman, but he wasn’t giving
anything away just then, and I never thought of asking him again."
"Was he a prisoner too?" I asked. He was very irritating.
"Oh no! Think he bossed the show—when he was sober. Told me one day
that they’d sent the Old Yank and Sally somewhere, where we’d never find
them. Seemed to know a good deal about it, and seemed sorry for the
girl too."
"I’m going to turn in now, you fellows, if you don’t mind. Thank you
very much, but I haven’t slept in a bed for six" (yawning) "weeks," and
he stretched himself and yawned again and went away.
Trevelyan disappeared with him and came back triumphantly. He had that
glove which we had picked up behind the Mission House. "We were right,
after all, sir! That was his glove, and he had borrowed Lawrence’s
handkerchief. I’ve got that much out of him. He says he’ll never stuff
a handkerchief up his sleeve again. He’d given a couple of pounds" (if
there had been anyone to borrow from) "not to have dropped it."
"It’s the first thing I’ve ever got back after he once borrowed it,"
Lawrence sang out, and we all laughed with him.
The Skipper came in presently (Hoffman had been dining with him, but had
turned in directly afterwards), and we dragged Old Bax, the Fleet
Paymaster, to the piano and made him sing, "Tam Pearce, Tam Pearce,
bring me my grey mare"; and the Skipper joined in the chorus and smoked,
and Old Bax "cadged" his best cigars from him and smoked them, one after
another. The Skipper grunted and growled, and was redder in the face
than ever, took off his mess jacket and loosened his braces, and beat
everyone else at feats of strength, and was as happy as a sand-boy. He
went down into the gunroom to say a few words, as he put it, and I went
with him. He squeezed himself in, and, as they all stood up, growled
out, "Umph! Sit down, please! ’Old Lest’ will give you all a show—later
on. If those two steamers are there when we get in to-morrow afternoon,
umph! we’ll go in and sink ’em. If there ain’t enough water for the
boats, we’ll swim" (huge yells of delight). "Good night, gentlemen;
three of you have done a bit of fighting, the Fleet Surgeon hopes to get
Morton off the sick list in a day or two, and I hope you others will do
as well. Umph! You can have half an hour’s extra lights."
They made a perfect deafening noise, gave three cheers and a "tiger",
and then he came back to the ward room, and stayed there till after
midnight—the youngest of the lot of us—he and Old Bax chaffing each
other in broad West Country dialect. Old Bax had "wiped his eye", the
last time they had gone shooting, by bagging a woodcock which the
Skipper had missed with both barrels, and never lost an opportunity of
reminding him of it.
Whitmore and I slipped away long before the ward room singsong was
finished, and the ship quiet again, because we had to make all
arrangements for manning and arming boats if necessary. You see, we had
so many seaman ratings away, that it was rather difficult to fill their
places.
Hoffman had his breakfast in his cabin, and spent two hours alone with
the Skipper during the morning, and I did not see him again till we were
nearing the Hector Group late in the afternoon. He then came up and
helped Lawrence pick his way among the islands towards the one where he
said that Hobbs and Sally were imprisoned.
We all hoped to discover the tramp steamer and the yacht anchored there,
but very much feared that the prisoners might have been spirited away
again in one or other of them. The anxiety grew greater as we drew
nearer, and was shared by every soul on board, for everyone knew by this
time all that I myself knew.
It struck me as peculiar how intimate and accurate was Hoffman’s
knowledge of the local pilotage. There seemed to be some strange "bond"
between him and the Skipper, and I felt sure, from the Skipper’s manner
to him, and from his silence to me, that there was something which I did
not know, and which would explain a good many things when I did know it.
One thing indeed the Captain had told me, blurting it out when I
reported "defaulters" to him, and found him and Hoffman together.
"Hoffman tells me that that rascally Englishman, who sold that yacht of
his to Hobbs, is bossing this show. He’s hanging on to Hobbs and Sally,
and trying to force the poor little lass to marry him—umph! or make her
father pay a pretty penny. He’ll skin him out pretty thoroughly, I’ll
be bound."
"If you don’t get hold of her quickly, Captain, I believe she’ll
consent," Hoffman said.
"Just to save old man Hobbs’s dollars, eh? Poor little lass, eh?" the
Skipper grunted.
"Partly that and partly because he is such a handsome, dare-devil
scoundrel, that I don’t think she’d be unwilling;" and Hoffman moaned
and buried his face in his hands. He was still as weak as a rat, and
couldn’t control his feelings.
"Poor little soul!" the Skipper said softly. "God help us to get her
out of his clutches!"
At about five bells (2.30 p.m.) in the afternoon we eventually sighted
the island, a low irregular line on the horizon right ahead, a gloomy
enough prison under its dark sullen banks of rain clouds. The wind had
gone down during the morning watch, and the sea was fairly smooth, but
the rain still came down mercilessly, and everything was dripping with
moisture and extremely uncomfortable. "Masthead lookout!" roared the
Skipper from the fore bridge, "keep your eye lifting for two steamers
lying under the land," and to assist him sent up the sharpest eyed
signalman.
In spite of the drenching downpour, the fo’c’stle and under the fore
bridge was crowded with men, all their eyes glued on the land as we very
slowly forged towards it through the muddy yellow water. I don’t
suppose that there was a single field glass or telescope in the ship not
in use.
Then there came a yell from the masthead which made us all look up.
"Yes, sir, I can see them—two steamers under the land, right ahead,
sir;" and we all stared ahead, and in a few minutes could see them
ourselves, and, quite without orders, everyone cheered and waved his
cap, looking up at the Skipper from the fo’c’stle to see whether he was
looking happy. The cheers were as much for sighting the steamers as for
knowing that now "Old Lest" would have a chance of paying off old
scores, and the Skipper, looking bigger than ever in his dripping
tarpaulins, roared out to ask me if I’d ever been aboard a man-of-war
before, and knew what discipline was; so I sent my midshipman down to
stop the noise.
"Umph! Truscott, we’ve got ’em at last;" and he slowly dug his fingers
into the palms of his hands, as if he was crushing something, glared at
me, and shook them in my face.
We slowly steamed along, till we took soundings under six fathoms, and
then anchored. "Can’t go in any farther," I heard Hoffman tell
Lawrence, and again wondered how he had picked up all this knowledge.
The cable had scarcely finished rattling out before the Skipper, turning
to me, said, "Man and arm boats, Commander; I’ll go in directly. Old
Lest ain’t going to let grass grow under his feet."
"We’ve only got about two hours more daylight, sir," I told him,
thinking that there was scarcely time for the boats to get ashore.
"Umph!" he growled, and went down below.
In forty minutes I’d got them all away, the steam pinnace, with the
Skipper and Hoffman aboard, towing the launch and sailing pinnace, and
the steam cutter towing the barge and the two cutters. We were so short
of men that Marshall and his marines had to man the sailing pinnace, and
very few men were left aboard to give them a cheer as they shoved off,
only about half a dozen seamen, a few marines, and the stokers.
I had thought of keeping Trevelyan on board, but the Skipper growled
out, "Send him in with me. ’Old Lest’s’ brain’s not as sharp as it was.
He’ll smell out something."
It was still raining hard, but the sea remained smooth. Personally, I
thought it rather unwise not to wait for the morning; but the Skipper
was so anxious not to give the pirates a moment’s rest, and to start by
sinking those steamers or driving them ashore—to do anything, in fact,
to prevent them escaping—that the risk was probably worth taking. The
steam pinnace had her fourteen-inch torpedo dropping gear fitted, and
the Skipper’s main idea was to blow holes in the steamer and the yacht,
and so effectually to prevent them moving. Once more, it was not so
much our chief object to destroy the pirates or recapture the yacht, as
to rescue the little American girl and her father. We hoped that we had
now found where they were concealed, and our first object was to prevent
them being smuggled away again.
We kept the boats in view till they disappeared in the gathering dusk
and the heavy rain, and then could only wait for them to return. It was
so cold on deck, that I went down to warm myself in front of the ward
room fire. Mayhew, the Fleet Surgeon, was sitting cosily in front of it,
and made room for me. "Heard or seen anything?" he asked. "I shall
have them all on the sick list if they ever do come back. I’ve never
seen a night I should less like to spend in an open boat."
I hadn’t been there five minutes, when the quartermaster came clattering
down from the quarterdeck in his dripping oilskins and sea boots. "We
can see some flashes ashore, sir. I think our boats are firing as well,
sir."
Both of us ran on deck. Several dull "booms" gave us the direction in
which to look, and every now and again we could see the twinkle of a gun
flash a very long way off, generally a single one, then perhaps two or
three quickly, one after the other. It was just as if someone a hundred
yards away was striking matches, which the wind blew out as they were
struck. The reports came along a few seconds later, and among them we
could hear quite distinct sharp cracks. These were from our boats’
guns, I expect. In spite of it being so wet, every soul on board was on
deck, staring through the darkness and the incessant rain, to try and
make out the boats returning. We ran a searchlight, throwing the beams
vertically upwards to guide them, and could do no more. This beam
lighted up the raindrops, and made everything even more depressing than
it was before.
I only wish that all men were obliged to supply themselves with oilskins
or thick pea-jackets, for, as it was, hardly one in twenty away in those
open boats had them, and I could imagine pretty plainly the state they
were in now.
By ten o’clock there was no sign of them whatever, and I was very
anxious. Midnight came (I don’t know what foolhardy ideas hadn’t
occurred to me in the meantime), and shortly afterwards we heard the
sound of more guns, and a muffled, long-drawn-out "boom", which made me
almost jump out of my skin, my nerves were so very much on the stretch.
"That’s a torpedo, sir," the signalman said. I didn’t much care what it
was; I really was so thankful to know that they were still in existence.
The noises ceased almost immediately, and I again trusted that they were
on their return journey. A long, dreary wait followed, and then one of
the people on the bridge spotted flames from the steam pinnace’s funnel.
We watched them flicker out every now and again, drawing steadily
nearer, and I sent down to Mayhew to have everything ready in case there
were any wounded. Presently she came close enough to hail, and to see
that she was towing the launch, sailing pinnace, the barge, and the
cutter. She had a good deal of "list" to port, and I thought at first
that she must have been damaged, but then saw, as she rounded up to come
alongside, that she had dropped her starboard torpedo, which accounted
for it. The boats ran alongside, and the Skipper came up the gangway.
"What luck, sir?" I asked him. "Where’s the steam cutter and the second
cutter? Anyone hurt, sir?"
His face was purple blue with the cold, but he was in the highest
spirits. "Blown a hole in that tramp steamer; made the little yacht run
up inside the creek. That’s a good beginning for ’Old Lest’, eh?
Haven’t had a man touched, and left the second cutter and the steam
cutter inshore to come off at daybreak. Got the galley fires alight?"
he asked, before he went below. "The men are pretty well dead with the
cold and the wet."
"I’d thought of that, sir," I told him; "they shall have some hot cocoa
and pea soup directly they have fallen out."
I had never seen such a washed-out crowd of people as clambered on board
that night. Even though those in the boats had pulled their oars on the
way off to the ship, they were simply blue and shivering and stiff. You
may guess that I got all the gear replaced, and the men dismissed to
their messes as quickly as possible.
When I went in to report to the Captain, he was standing in front of his
blazing fire in a thick dressing gown. He had a great bowl of pea soup
in his hands, and Blucher was leaning up against his legs. "Umph!
that’s good," he said, smacking his lips and rubbing himself. "Warms
one’s inside, eh?" and he roared to "Willum" to bring his eighteenpenny
Havanas, and made me smoke one: I should have very much preferred a
pipe.
"Willum" had been sent round to collect all those officers who had been
away, and they came trooping in in all kinds of rigs, all looking jolly
pleased with themselves, and Willum served them out hot drinks, and the
Skipper said, "Here’s luck to the little lass and the old _Vig_," and
when they were thoroughly warm sent them all away to turn in.
"They’re not going to turn in yet, sir," I told him; "they are going to
have a sardine supper in the ward room."
"Umph! Good idea that! ’Willum’," he roared, "make me some sardine
sandwiches, and put plenty of onions in ’em."
"How about sending the steam pinnace inshore with some hot soup for the
people in the boats you left behind?" I asked him, after he’d devoured a
plateful of sandwiches and had sent Willum for more.
"No good; couldn’t find ’em in the dark. I’ve stuck ’em right in under
the guns, in the middle of the creek which runs up there. They’ve got
to fire a Very’s[#] light, if the yacht tries to get away, so tell ’em
to keep a good lookout on the bridge."
[#] A Very’s light is somewhat the same idea as a Roman candle firework.
It throws out one very brilliant ball of coloured light.
"It was grand work in those boats," he continued; "they couldn’t see us,
and went on firing and wasting ammunition. I kept on running away in
the steamboat, easing off a few shells at them, and then going back
again, and they’d fire off twenty or thirty rounds where she had been."
"I expect you had some pretty narrow shaves, for all that, sir?"
He growled out "Umph!" and winked at me very slowly.
Now that he and I were alone, I saw that he had something which he
wanted to tell me, and when presently he had sent Willum to bed, he
lighted a fresh cigar and began. "You know that man Hoffman? What
d’you think of him, eh?"
"I can’t quite say, sir. Can’t quite ’place’ him."
"What would you say if I told you he _is_ the pirates—bosses the show,
or did. What d’ye say to that?"