Part 23

I had six long letters from my mother, the first I had had since leaving home, and I sat on my chest in a corner by myself and read them, and it was very jolly to hear all that had happened at home; but they made me miserable, for although she tried to write cheerfully, I knew that she was really very worried. You see, my father would put all the little money he had into silly swindly things which he saw advertised in the papers, and my mother often told me that some of the religious papers had more swindling advertisements in them than ordinary daily papers, and of course my father, being a parson, often saw these. I don’t know much about it, but she used to tell me that if he saw an advertisement telling anyone to send, say, five pounds to a man and he would be sure to make it into ten or twenty pounds in a week—by some certain plan he had invented for dealing in stocks and shares—my father would nearly always do it, if he could manage to scrape any money together.

I know that my mother often cried about it, and I’ve often heard him say, "Well, my dear, they seem to know what they are talking about. They can’t be all swindlers, or else the editors wouldn’t print their advertisements, so I’ll just try, this once."

He always lost his money, and I know, for a fact, that my mother only had one new dress all the time I was on the _Britannia_, so as to have enough money to pay for me there.

I know that this is rather a "sniffy" chapter, but I can t help it, and I’m telling you just what happened, and how I felt about everything.

The Captain sent for me before I had read my letters more than twice, and I shoved them into my chest and ran aft to his cabin.

He was sitting at his knee-hole table in his shirt sleeves, smoking a cigar, with heaps of letters all around him, and "Blucher’s" head close to his elbow.

"Good news from home, I hope, Ford? Here’s something for you from my girl Nan," and he gave me a folded-up piece of notepaper with "Dick" scrawled across it.

I was running out again when he gurgled: "Arm all right? Let me see you move your fingers. Umph. You’ll be all right. Umph! I wrote to the missus to tell her you’d shot that chap who tried to cut me down; wrote to your mother too, to tell her you were going on well—told her about it as well. Umph!"

"Did you really, sir?" I gasped. "Thank you very much indeed, sir!"

"Umph! Do you know where we are going? Yokohama!—to-morrow; got orders to-night; off you go."

I rushed off to tell everybody, and was awfully happy again—everyone was; but what made me so happy was to know that Captain Lester himself had written about me saving his life, and that everyone at Upton Overy would know about it. I knew how my mother would love her letter, and keep it, and read it over and over again. Nan wrote an awfully spidery kind of a fist, and wanted me to bring her a whole lot of "curios" when we came home. She said that I had promised to do so, and that this was just a "reminder". It was jolly to hear from her, and she sent her love to old "Blucher", and wanted to know whether he had had any of his "fits" lately.

My face was nearly all right again by this time, but the forehead was darker on the left side, and Dr. Barclay said that he thought it would always be like that.

I didn’t really mind, because it would always be something to show, and to remind me of everything.

As a matter of fact, I was rather pleased about it, but had to pretend I wasn’t.

*CHAPTER XVII*

*Goodbye to the Huan Min*

Out of Danger—Goodbye to Ching—Mr. Rashleigh’s Report—at Hong-Kong

_Written by Commander Truscott_

I thank God that I am not lying under the muddy water rolling round the Hector Group, with Withers and those other poor fellows of ours.

It was to Marshall and his marines that I owe my life, and I wish that it was in my power to repay them. In attempting to rescue young Ford that night he was captured, I had been shot clean through the body, below the left ribs, and two of the marines—I do not know which two, and they have never come forward to tell me—carried me back to the walls of that battery, whilst Marshall kept the Chinese at bay. It was Barclay who told them to carry me as gently and smoothly as possible, as this was my only chance, and they carried me as if I had been a baby asleep, although the Chinese were closing all around them. They got me down the mud shore, and into the barge, only just in time, and it was whilst I was being lifted in that Marshall received the blow on the head which knocked him over. There was a most desperate fight to save him, and then poor young Withers managed to drive them off with his gun.

When they got me aboard the _Vigilant_, Mayhew would not give me any opinion as to what my chances were. "Look here, Mayhew!" I told him, "I’m not a baby; tell me;" but he only said, "Wait for three days, and eat nothing till then. I cannot tell you before."

I had to be content with that, and to lie in my bunk, with the pictures of my wife and my two boys smiling at me out of their frames, and watch the hands of the little clock she had given me crawling round its face, and wondering, whenever I had a twinge of pain inside me, whether the trouble which Mayhew feared had commenced, and whether the end was near.

Mayhew used to come to my cabin half a dozen times a day, feel my pulse, and take my temperature. "Hungry still, Commander?" he would say, and smile and go away, and each time I would watch his face to see if the smile was only there to cover his real feelings. No one who has not been through a time like this can imagine how awful is the suspense.

On the morning after the Skipper had come back with the landing parties, bringing Sally, her father, young Ford, and our missing men with him, Mayhew found my temperature and pulse normal. He gave a whoop. "You’ll live to enjoy your pension all right, Truscott," and told me that I was practically out of danger. Barclay came in and confirmed his opinion. I lay back, too filled with emotion to speak. Those photographs seemed to smile even more at me—they represented all I had to live for—and life seemed very good.

Neither of the doctors had had any sleep during the night, as they had been busy with the wounded, and Barclay looked pretty ghastly. He had had a blow on the head during the fight in that square, but fortunately the sword edge had been turned by his cap.

The Captain came in almost immediately afterwards, growling very fiercely to hide his feelings. "Umph! I’ve kept back the _Ringdove_ till I heard about you from Mayhew this morning. Going to send her up to Shanghai at once. I’ll be off and write a letter to your missus. Umph! You want shaving—badly;" and he gripped my hand and went out again.

I finished my letter home—as you can imagine I finished it—the sentry outside was waiting for it, I heard the boat shove off to take it to the _Ringdove_, and I thanked God once more and felt inexpressibly at peace.

At the same time that she heard the news of my wound, my wife would hear that I was out of danger, and this, too, caused me to be very thankful.

Some little time afterwards the curtain was pushed aside, and young Ford’s extremely disfigured face peeped through. I smiled at him, and he gave me a frightened cheerful smile and drew it back again.

Poor little chap! he’d been pretty badly knocked about. I ought never to have let him go on that "fool" errand of his. But he was as happy as a lord, because he had saved the Skipper’s life.

In a week’s time I was allowed to sit up for an hour or two a day, and in ten days’ time to walk about a little.

Then the _Ringdove_ arrived with six weeks’ mails, and orders from the Admiral to proceed at once to Yokohama with the gunboats, to land all the wounded still requiring hospital treatment, and to join the flagship somewhere off the coast of Corea. We were to proceed with "despatch", as political complications in Europe threatened war with a country which maintained a considerable fleet in Chinese waters.

The Captain of the _Huan Min_ had received orders by the _Ringdove_ as well, and had to continue the search for the remainder of the pirates—those who had escaped in the junks.

Ching and his Captain dined with our Skipper that night, and, for him, "Old Lest" was extraordinarily gentle. He felt, I am sure, that he was leaving them in the lurch, with all this work still in front of them, and thought it was hardly "playing the game", after the magnificent way in which they had helped us.

I heard him tell Ching: "Umph! But for you, Ching, we should never have done it, never have rescued the little lass" (I saw Ching wince), "and everyone would have called ’Old Lest’ a silly old fool. I only wish that we could stay and help you; but we can’t. There’s trouble comin’ along, and the Admiral wants every ship he can get hold of, so we’ve got to be off." He grunted and growled a few times, and then burst out fiercely with, "’Old Lest’ will never forget you."

He gave Ching a photograph of himself, and a silver cup he had won years ago as a midshipman. It was the Admiral’s cup for the Channel Fleet in the old days, and he valued it more than anything else he had in his cabin. I told Ching so afterwards, in order that he should appreciate it all the more.

He had written to the Foreign Office as well, about Ching, and we all hoped that eventually he would get his promotion.

To continue the search for the fugitive and scattered pirates was like hunting for the button in a Christmas pudding after the thimble and sixpence had been found—a good deal of trouble, and not worth the bother when you did find it.

Little Sally was the thimble, and the yacht and the tramp steamer the sixpence, and we all knew well enough that Ching wanted the thimble, and didn’t care in the least for anything else.

He had told me that he was hoping to be sent back to Shanghai, and I know that he wanted another chance of seeing Sally, and that the prospect of cruising alone among those bleak, fog-bound islands, now that she had been rescued and had gone out of his life, was very dreary to him.

Before he went back to his antiquated old tub, he was taken into the ward room, where they gave him a great "send-off". Everyone knew that but for him Sally would not have been rescued, everyone on board admired his pluck and gallantry, and everyone was extremely sorry to part with him.

At daybreak next morning the _Huan Min_ got up her clumsy anchor and steamed away, and we all manned ships and cheered her as she passed us, and waited on deck till she had disappeared round the island, out of sight, and nothing of her remained but a dense cloud of oily black smoke.

"Umph! There goes a confounded fine chap", the Skipper growled, as he went below. We ourselves, with our gunboats, left shortly afterwards for Yokohama, and Parkinson in the _Omaha_ came along too. There are small English and United States naval hospitals still kept up in this Japanese town, and all the bad cases were sent ashore to them.

Parkinson, after having landed his, left for Chemulpo in Corea, and we gave him and his officers a great farewell dinner to commemorate the termination of the expedition.

I did not take part in this, however, because Mayhew forced me to go to hospital with Whitmore, Ford, and seven others of our men.

I was very loath to go, because I felt as fit as a fiddle, and war troubles were brewing, and my place ought to be on board. However much I dreaded a big naval war, there was always the chance of some promotion, and I hated to be left behind.

However, Mayhew wouldn’t hear of my coming, and we had to watch the old _Vigilant_ steam away past the breakwater without us.

I rather fancy that the doctors were a little too careful about me, for, as a matter of fact, I never felt better in my life.

Before the _Vigilant_ sailed, the Skipper brought "Blucher" up to the hospital to say goodbye to us, and told me many things. One was that he had allowed the old Scotch engineer, whom we had brought with us from the island, to go ashore and disappear.

"Umph!" the Skipper growled. "Had enough evidence to hang him a dozen times; but he helped our people in that house, and Ford and those two fellows would have been scuppered but for him, so I sent him ashore at night, gave him a ten-pound note, and told him to clear."

The ten-pound note was out of his own pocket, I knew well enough.

He was asking my opinion as to whom he should mention by name in his despatches, and, just as he was going, said, "Umph! Truscott, I sent that Report of Proceedings back to Rashleigh with a copy of Trevelyan’s and young Ford’s. Told him to rewrite his. Told him that I wouldn’t forward it to the Admiral till I was satisfied with it, and he’s written quite a different yarn. Umph! I told him what I thought of him—pretty plainly."

Young Ford had been bothering me, time after time, to do something about that Chinese gun which Whitmore, Travers, and Marshall had captured, and which Rashleigh had claimed and kept. From all that I had gathered, especially from Whitmore, there was no doubt that Rashleigh had no earthly right to it. I took this opportunity of mentioning the subject.

"Umph! I know the fat little beggar’s got no right to it. Thought he had when he asked me for it, so gave it him, and let him take it away; but when ’Old Lest’s’ given anything away—umph!—he don’t go back on his word. It belongs to me, I suppose, and I can do what I like with it, eh?"

After he had gone I let Ford know what he had said about that Report, and he was extremely delighted; but the possession of that gun still rankled very deeply, and I felt sure that he would not be content whilst it remained aboard the _Ringdove_.

From a few things Ford said, more or less under his breath, I had a dim suspicion that if it wasn’t handed over to the _Vigilant_, the gunroom meant to do something or other.

"What’s the game?" I asked him; but he wasn’t going to give away any secrets.

For four weeks we were left to ourselves, and young Ford and myself were able to have many pleasant little excursions up country, and each day’s excitement was the arrival of Reuter’s telegram at the English Club on the Bund, with news of the gathering war clouds.

As war seemed to be becoming imminent, both of us felt our position very keenly. Poor Whitmore with his smashed thigh was, of course, totally helpless, but, as I said before, I was as strong as a horse again, and Ford’s arm did not entirely incapacitate him.

Just, however, as we thought that war was only a question of hours, the war clouds disappeared, to our intense relief, and presently the _Vigilant_ came back to pick us all up again, the Skipper having orders to proceed to Singapore, and to act as Senior Officer there till it was time for us to go home and pay off.

I was fit for duty now, even Mayhew couldn’t deny that, and right glad I was to get back to my work and to my own bunk.

We called in at Nagasaki for coal, took in four hundred tons, and then left for Hong-Kong, where we arrived in the middle of June, just before the hot weather had commenced, and made fast to one of the buoys off Murray Pier.

It was very pleasant being back there, and we were obliged to remain for a whole week, whilst the dockyard made a few slight repairs.

The only other man-of-war in the harbour besides the _Tamar_ and the old _Wyvern_, moored off Kowloon, was the _Ringdove_, secured to another buoy farther inshore.

Young Ford can tell you better what happened there during that week than I can.

As a matter of fact, I am not supposed to know anything about it, and don’t _officially_.

*CHAPTER XVIII*

*A Midnight Adventure*

Sent to Hospital—The Subscription—The Sub’s Plan—An Exciting Moment—Mr. Rashleigh Rages—Jim is Safe

_Written by Midshipman Ford_

I was very sorry indeed to say goodbye to Mr. Ching—we all were—and, of course, I had had such a lot to do with him in that walled house, that I ought to have been more sorry than anyone else.

The day before we separated from the _Huan Min_, Mr. Lawrence and I went aboard her and had lunch with him. It was a funny kind of meal, and with only one hand I couldn’t help myself very well, so Mr. Ching cut my food up into little pieces, and sent for a pair of chopsticks. If you have ever tried chopsticks, you will know that the first time you try them you cannot do much, and I could hardly pick up anything at all, and didn’t do more than taste anything before the others had finished theirs, and my plate was taken away.

They thought it was jolly amusing to watch me, and though I was as hungry as a hunter, I had to pretend that I wasn’t, and that I didn’t mind. There were all sorts of curious things there, and I had so wanted to eat them all.

Afterwards, Mr. Lawrence and Mr. Ching began yarning about old times when they were midshipmen together in the _Inflexible_ years and years ago, so they didn’t want me, and I slipped away and went round the ship, and when I saw any man who had been in the walled house that awful night, I shook him by the hand, because I was so glad to see him again.

I think they liked me doing it, and they all grinned and saluted very smartly.

Mr. Ching gave me one of the gold-lace dragons from the sleeve of one of his uniform coats. I wanted that more than anything, and still have it, and I gave him my stamp album. It only had a few stamps stuck in here and there, but there was a dark-red English penny stamp which, I believe, was rather valuable, and I had nothing else worth giving away. He seemed very pleased with it, and made me stick my name in it, so that he could remember me. I did hope that he would.

Mr. Hobbs and Sally had not given him anything at all. Wasn’t that nasty of them, after all he had done? But he still kept that tam-o’-shanter she had worn; I saw it in his cabin.

Then the _Huan Min_ went off, to carry on hunting for pirates by herself, and we went up to Yokohama, and when we arrived, the Commander, Mr. Whitmore, myself, and seven of our men were sent to hospital.

I rather liked going, because it was so uncomfortable on board, with only one useful arm; but then we heard that there might be a war, and it was perfectly horrid to see the _Vigilant_ steaming away without us.

Still, I Was jolly happy, because, after she had gone, the Commander told me all that the Captain had said about Mr. Rashleigh and his Report of Proceedings. That didn’t square up everything, not by a long chalk. We wanted that gun, and we were going to have it, too, and before I’d been sent to hospital, Mr. Langham and everyone else in the gunroom had sworn to get it back, and had begun inventing plans for doing so.

Then three weeks went by, my arm had been put in plaster again, and back the _Vigilant_ came. There wasn’t to be any war, and she took us all down to Hong-Kong, and we found the old _Tyne_ there, which made me think of the first time I had seen her, and of how miserable and happy, in turns, I had been on board her.

But just ahead of the _Tamar_ was the _Ringdove_, quite close to where we made fast to one of the outer buoys, and when she was swung by the tide in one position, we could see that Chinese gun just at the foot of her main mast.

That made us all "bristle" up again and get most frightfully angry. We had almost forgotten all about it in the excitement of knowing that we were going south to Singapore, to wait for our relief ship to come out from England, and then go home to pay off.

At dinner that night we were as hot about it as ever, and we made up our minds again to get it, somehow or other. It was jolly difficult to know how we could manage it, and nobody seemed to have any good schemes to suggest. Webster’s idea was to run alongside during the dinner hour, when probably only the quartermaster would be awake, but that was silly. We couldn’t possibly do it in the daytime, and we couldn’t even think of a plan for doing it at night without being discovered. We knew jolly well that if we were found out, there would be a most awful fuss, and we should get into hot water with the Captain.

We made such a jolly row, all shouting and suggesting things, and calling each other silly idiots, that Mr. Langham stuck his fork into a beam overhead.

That is a signal for all the midshipmen and cadets to clear out of the gunroom, and as the last "out" always had his "extra" bill stopped for three days, so could not get any sardines or pickles from Ah Man, we were all out in a jiffy, and left Mr. Langham, Mr. Hamilton the big Engineer Sub, and the "A.P." to work out a scheme between them.

They wouldn’t let us come back again, and I know that they didn’t decide upon anything; but during the middle watch that night something happened which showed us the way.

It was Mr. Langham’s "watch", and at about five bells there suddenly had been a lot of shouting under the bows, and he, the quartermaster, and the signalman had all run for’ard to see what was the matter, and found that a junk had fouled the buoy, drifted down against our bows, and carried away a mast.

They got her clear, but it took a quarter of an hour to do it, and, of course, during that time there had been no one aft at all, and anything might have happened there without anyone knowing of it.

Now, don’t you see what the idea was?

Mr. Langham didn’t tell us what he was going to do exactly, for fear that we should be asses enough to talk about it to everyone, and that the "Ringdoves" would hear about it as well; but he went aboard the _Ringdove_ in the morning to see the navigator, who was a pal of his (except for the "gun question"), and came back again very excitedly.

"I had a good look at that gun, you chaps, without pretending to do so. The wheels are simply lashed down to some ring bolts, lashed down with rope, and we could cut them adrift as easy as winking."

He and Mr. Hamilton went ashore together and came off late at night, and we all waited for them, and knew that something was in the "wind", but they wouldn’t say what, and only told us that they wanted twenty pounds. Mr. Langham said that he would give ten (he was very well off) if we would subscribe the rest, and you may bet your best waistcoat we got that other ten pounds pretty quickly.

We hadn’t the faintest notion why he wanted it till two nights after, and then, just before "lights out" in the gunroom, he sent for us all and told us.

My aunt! it was jolly exciting.

He had bought a sampan—one of the Chinese sailing boats which used to bring us off from the shore if we missed the ordinary ship’s boat—and had had two large holes made in the bottom, with plugs fitted in them and ropes made fast to each, so that a jolly good strong jerk would pull them out. He had had her loaded with stones, so that she would sink quickly after they’d been pulled out.

"I’m going to sail her across the _Ringdove’s_ bowsprit," he said, "and shall get my rigging foul of her, if possible. If I can’t, I have a grapnel, and shall catch hold of her cable, and when the sampan can’t drift away, I shall pull out those plugs and begin "hullabalooing" like a Chinaman. When she sinks I shall hold on to the buoy and go on squealing till the quartermaster comes along, and when he hears where I am he’ll probably get into the dinghy to pick me up.

"I sha’n’t be there when he comes," he added, grinning. Of course, in a small gunboat the only man on watch at night is the quartermaster, and if there wasn’t much of a row, he probably would not call anyone else.