Part 13

Nor were they wrong in their supposition, for at the end of ten days' monotony, ten days during which not a sail nor the smoke of a steamer had broken the empty circle of the horizon, everyone became impatient, and no one more so than the nervous, highly-strung Helston.

He knew well enough that every day which elapsed meant a further encroachment on the funds of the China Defence Association, and if he had perchance forgotten this fact, Ping Sang was there at his elbow to jog his memory and counsel a more active policy.

"My dear Captain," he would say, patting Helston's still empty sleeve, "we can't remain here for the remainder of our lives. I've already spent nearly a million and a half, and we seem as far off as ever from securing these pirates. With all your guns and with all your fine English sailor men, you surely ought to be able to knock the pirate syndicate and their Chinese bandits on the head."

Nothing that Helston or anyone else could tell him would make him understand the rashness of opposing ships to forts, especially ships with but scanty reserves of ammunition (in the hold of the stout little _Sylvia_), and with no place of refuge in case of damage.

Hunter, the lion-hearted, was also for trying the weight of his metal against the shore guns.

"As a preliminary to what?" Helston would ask.

"Well, you see, sir, we'd batter their forts to pieces, and then we'd land and secure them, and possibly might be able to turn any guns left in them on the blackguards down below."

Helston's own ideas, if he could have put them in definite form, were probably to try and starve the pirates into making a desperate sortie, and, if this should happen, he was perfectly confident of the result. This may have been the soundest scheme, but success depended on so many factors. First, it meant time--possibly a considerable time--and time meant money, and Ping Sang was already inclined to draw tight the purse-strings. Secondly, it meant a sufficient force to blockade, and that, Helston ruefully confessed, he did not possess; and thirdly, and most important of all, was the question whether the island could be starved out in, say, two months, or possibly three at the most.

On this last point the two Chinese captured from the sunken torpedo-boat were able to give information which effectually dispelled this hope. For the first day or two after their capture they had preserved a sullen silence, and expected instant death. As day after day went by, and they received food and blankets to sleep in, it dawned upon them that they were not being reserved even for torture, and they gradually became more communicative.

A Tsi, the silent, inscrutable, right-hand man of Ho Ming, interviewed them every day, at first with no success, but eventually he was able to bring them into a more amiable frame of mind, and they promised to give what information they possessed.

When their leg-irons were removed, and they were marched up on deck and taken aft between a file of marines, their thoughts again flew to death, and their terror was great, in spite of A Tsi's assurances that did they but speak the truth they need fear nothing.

Each one was separately examined in Captain Helston's cabin before the Captain, Dr. Fox, and Ping Sang.

The first, a tall Tartar of fine physique, was only held upright by the vigorous support of A Tsi, who bundled him into the cabin, his knees bending and knocking together under his huge body. Looking from one to another like a hunted animal at bay, he salaamed, with both hands to his forehead, to each one in turn, and a second time to Captain Helston.

His story, drawn out of him with difficulty, was this. He had been a sailor aboard a merchant ship captured by the pirates, and, on the promise of his life, had taken service with them, being sent aboard one of the old torpedo-boats on account of his knowledge of seamanship.

He had no complaint of his masters' conduct towards him, and they paid him two or three dollars a month, with which to buy tobacco and sweetmeats.

"He looks half starved. Ask him if they get enough to eat," asked Helston.

"He says they get plenty," answered A Tsi, smiling, "but North Chinaman he never gets fat."

"What does he know about the store of provisions on the island?"

He seemed to know a good deal about these. He had formed one of a working-party a fortnight ago to unload a captured ship laden with tinned meat and flour, and they had to leave a large part of it in the open, covered with tarpaulins, because the go-downs were already full.

"At the end of the time each man was allowed to take away what he wanted," finished A Tsi, whilst the Chinaman spread his hands apart and tried to express a vast quantity.

At each question there would be a rapid flow of queries and answers in Chinese between A Tsi and the prisoner, the latter gesticulating excitedly to explain his answers, and, whilst the former was interpreting, he would try to follow him with pantomimic gesture and alterations of expression, looking from one to another in an imploring manner.

He was asked the number of men on the island. He could not tell.

"Many?"

"Yes, a great many."

"A thousand?"

"Yes, more than a thousand."

"Two thousand?"

He screwed up his face and evidently did his best to calculate.

No, he could not tell; a thousand, yes; but two thousand he could not say, and solemnly shook his head long after A Tsi had finished.

Being a sailor, he could give more definite information about the ships. There were four cruisers and eight or nine torpedo-boats, not counting the one to which he had belonged nor the two that were wrecked.

"Has he seen the two destroyers, and are they damaged?"

Yes, he had seen them come into the harbour, and many men had been sent aboard them, but he did not know whether they were damaged.

The names of three of the cruisers were _Yao Yuen_, _Mao Yuen_, and _Tu Ping_. These were the three of which Ping Sang had originally informed Helston. Another he mentioned, the _Hong Lu_, was evidently the cruiser which had beaten off "No. 2" and "No. 3".

"Ask him if they are very fast."

"_Yao Yuen, Mao Yuen_?" and he shook his head. "_Tu Ping_?" he shook his head still more vigorously. "_Hong Lu_?" and he opened his hands quickly and nodded, nodding so fast that Cummins, who had just entered the cabin, with the inevitable toothpick in his mouth, chuckled "He! he! he! you'll lose your pigtail, old chap, if you aren't more careful."

"What speed can she go?"

No; he did not know.

"As fast as a torpedo-boat?"

He drew in his breath with a whistling noise, and tried to show by gestures her extreme speed.

"What size is she?"

He did not know, nor what guns she carried. He was taken on deck to look at the _Strong Arm_, lying quietly half a mile away, and then brought down again.

No; she was not so large, but how large he could not say.

As to the forts, all that could be got out of him was that there was one on each side of the entrance, and, as far as he knew, none anywhere else.

He did not even know how many guns they had.

"Have they done much practice firing from them?"

Yes; he had heard them many times lately, but his knowledge on all these points was vague in the extreme.

He could rattle off the names of all the merchant ships there, and seemed to have a sneaking regard for his old ship, for he plucked A Tsi nervously by the sleeve and talked excitedly to him, pointing to the Captain.

"What does he want?" asked Helston.

"He says, sir, that if you recapture the _Tsli Yamen_, the ship he belonged to formerly, he wants you to say a good word for him to the owners."

"Tell him that if he answers all our questions truthfully we will not forget him."

When this was explained to him he salaamed very vigorously, bending his long body three times to Helston.

"How many white men are there on the island?" asked Cummins.

He could not say. "Three?"

No, there were more than three--four, five, or six, maybe, but he could not say.

Asked as to the events just previous to the arrival of the squadron, he did not know much. Some two or three ships had been captured lately, no big ones, and the _Hong Lu_ had come in the same day as the destroyers, only early in the morning, from the south, he knew, for a friend of his was aboard her and had told him.

She had brought two white men with her.

"Could he describe them?"

He pretended to limp. Evidently one was Hamilton, the lame Englishman, and the other, from his description, might have been Hopkins.

"Are there any white men prisoners on the island?" It was Cummins who asked this, and he, in fact, had asked most of the questions since he had come down to the cabin, Captain Helston almost unconsciously giving way to him.

"No prisoners, only engineers and soldiers. One white man in charge of the forts, two others in charge of all the ships' engines.

"They keep no white men prisoners. If they find one aboard a captured steamer they send him to the mainland in a junk."

"Are there any white women on the island?"

"No. Once there were two, but he thinks the white men began to quarrel amongst themselves, so they sent them away very quickly."

"No chance of winning a wife here, sir," added Cummins, chuckling.

"I'm not so certain about that," replied Helston, the hard lines on his careworn face softening.

"Still thinking of that little minx Milly," growled Dr. Fox to himself.

Cummins then showed the prisoner a rough plan of the island, copied from Ping Sang's original chart, and, after A Tsi had explained it, the Chinaman roughly indicated the position of the forts, go-downs (warehouses), the white mens' houses, the anchorage of the men-of-war and the captured merchant ships.

"I think that we have obtained all we want to know from this man," Helston concluded. "Except about the amount of food on the island, he does not seem to know much. Does anyone want to ask him any further questions?"

Cummins wanted to know what stock of coal there was on the island.

As far as the man knew, there were enormous stacks of it on shore, and several ships laden with coal.

"Does any ship ever leave the harbour by the small channel at the back of the island?"

"Only small steam-boats and junks," the prisoner said.

"I've nothing more to ask him," said Cummins, so the man was marched away and given a cigar to smoke as a reward.

"We shall not starve them out, sir," was Cummins's only comment.

Helston shrugged his shoulders.

The second man was brought in, a cunning-looking rascal with unshaven head, his repulsive face made still more hideous by several scars. More scars were visible on his sunken-in chest, and altogether he was a most disagreeable-looking specimen of the human race.

He talked more freely than the other man, and told his story very volubly.

He had been a "boss" workman in the engine works at the Foochow Arsenal, and had been recruited with many others by the German Schmidt, and shipped to Hong Lu without any knowledge of the character of the employment.

"Does he complain?"

"Oh no, rather not!" He was paid well, spent nothing except a little on tobacco, and had not much work to do. After working for some months on board the merchant steamers, he was put in charge of the engines of the ill-fated torpedo-boat, and that was why he was aboard her that night.

"What did he do aboard the merchant ships?"

He seemed to have been a leading hand of shipwrights, and had had many men under his orders. He quite warmed to the subject, and told of all the jobs he had done for the last six months.

He had lengthened the funnel of one steamer, added a fo'c'stle to another, altered the bows of a third, and the masts of a fourth.

"My aunt!" chuckled Cummins, as A Tsi interpreted this, "I see now how these people make their fortune. They capture a steamer, bring her in here, alter her so that her own builders would not recognize her, and then take her down to some quiet port on the mainland and sell her. Ask him, A Tsi, if that is so."

Yes, that was so; and the Chinaman looked surprised at their ignorance.

The syndicate, it appeared from what he said, had constructed a ship-repairing yard, and kept it most of the time working at high pressure. Sometimes they kept a ship as long as six months, but whenever a ship did leave, no one could possibly recognize her as the one which had been brought in.

On all other points this prisoner corroborated the first, and dotted down on another rough plan of the island the positions of the forts, ships, &c., very much as he had done it.

As to food and coal, they had enough to last "many moons".

"Mountains of coal" was his description.

Asked by Cummins why the other torpedo-boats had not come out, he promptly replied that their engines were unfit for any speed, and that their crews were probably frightened.

Directly Ping Sang heard the man's statement about reconstructing steamers captured and altering their appearance, he went away to his cabin, and returned carrying some papers.

At the first opportunity he asked the prisoner, speaking in Chinese, and with very unusual excitement, if ever he remembered the capture of a ship named the _Fi Ting_.

He remembered her quite well; had worked aboard her. "She had one funnel and three masts ('Yes,' nodded Ping Sang), and they built a covered-in fo'c'stle, took out one mast, and shortened the other two."

"Yes, yes," nodded Ping Sang excitedly; "anything else?"

"We altered the bridge, built it ten or twelve feet farther forward, and put up several cabins between it and the funnel."

"You did! you did! And what name did you give her?" shrieked Ping Sang.

The man thought a little and shook his head, evidently in some fear of the fat little merchant.

"He won't say, sir; says that he cannot remember; he only did what he was told; it was not his fault," said A Tsi, to whom the man had turned.

Another flow of language came from Ping Sang, before which the wretched Chinaman flinched, and eventually he gave the name _Ling Lu Ming_.

"I knew it! I knew it!" roared Ping Sang, rolling from side to side, and getting red in the face with indignation, which just as suddenly turned to a broad smile, and with a twinkle of his eyes he told Captain Helston that he had bought the _Fi Ting_ for L150,000, lost her six months later, and then bought the _Ping Lu Ming_ cheaply for L120,000 in Amoy.

"I always suspected she was the same," he added cheerfully.

It was one of the amusing characteristics of this little man that his wrath always vanished as quickly as it grew, and was followed by envy of the "cuteness" which had got the better of him, and he bore not the least malice, only looking forward to a future opportunity of "squaring the account".

The prisoner, seeing Ping Sang's benign, amused expression, took courage and ventured a smile too--a cunning, treacherous enough smile; but it quickly died away, and the colour fled from his yellow skin, for Ping Sang, catching sight of it, jumped from his chair, and shaking a fat little finger at him, let flow a torrent of words which left him speechless with anger, only to recover his usual urbanity a moment later when Captain Helston asked him what he had said.

"Nothing, nothing, Captain; only assured him that I would have his liver torn out and make him eat it if he did not stop grinning."

He meant it, too, for, if half the stories which were told of Ping Sang were to be credited, although he was as gentle as possible under the British flag, yet woe to anyone who crossed his path when not under that protection.

At this moment the signal midshipman came running down from the bridge in a state of great excitement, and reported smoke on the horizon coming from the south-east.

The prisoners were sent away, and everyone immediately went on deck.

On deck all was animation. It was about half-past four--the men's supper-hour--all being below except the watch-keepers; but directly the word had flown round the mess-decks that a steamer had been sighted, every man Jack poured up to see and hear news of the approaching stranger.

Already signals had been made to "No. 2" to steam to meet her, and leisurely she gathered way, though by the little puffs of black smoke that came from her funnels quickly, one after another, one knew that her stokers were shovelling coal on her furnace gratings for all they were worth.

Gradually the column of smoke mounted up over the horizon, and from the foremast-head a sharp-eyed signalman sang out that she was a man-of-war with fighting-tops, and was making straight for the island.

If she was a man-of-war she might be yet another of the pirate ships, and there was the welcome chance of a "scrap"; but even if this did not turn out to be true, there was something else almost as welcome: she might bring a mail, and it is only those who "go down to the sea in ships" who know what that means.

Then "No. 2" began to signal, and the yeoman of signals, saluting, reported to Captain Helston "The _Undaunted_, sir!" (The _Undaunted_ was one of the armoured cruisers of the British China Squadron.)

"Can't capture her, I suppose?" suggested Ping Sang, with a smile.

"She may be coming up here to capture us, though," answered Helston, looking worried. "The Admiral would hardly have sent her out of her way unless he had important communications to make. I trust sincerely that she brings no bad news."

"Cheer up, old croaker!" said Dr. Fox; "we'll get some mails at any rate."

By this time the naked eye could easily identify her white side and yellow funnels and cowls glistening in the setting sun, and the white ensign flying at her gaff, as fair a sight as any British naval man ever wants to see.

"No. 2" was following her towards the squadron, looking like some disreputable little terrier keeping a respectful distance from a stately St. Bernard. More signals flew backward and forward, presently the semaphores began to jerk their arms up and down, and the _Undaunted_ slowed as she came abreast the _Laird_, and stopped her engines.

"Away first cutter! Away galley!" yelled the bos'n's mate, and rapidly these boats were lowered, and in a couple of minutes Captain Helston was being pulled across to the _Undaunted_ by six strong pairs of arms, whilst the cutter, with that signal flying from the _Undaunted_, "Send boat for mails", was not much behind-hand. In half an hour both boats were back again, and the bulky mail-bags hauled aboard by willing hands. Then letters for home, already written and only waiting for closing up, were sent across, and the _Undaunted_ slowly began to move away.

As she steadied on her course her crew "manned and cheered ship", three ringing cheers coming across the water, and one cheer more for luck.

The _Laird's_ were not slow to answer, and the crew ran aloft, crowded along the port side, and, taking time from little Cummins, who, with his cap in his hand, yelled as best he could with a toothpick in his mouth, sent back cheer for cheer.

The _Strong Arm_ sent her cheers, too, and the _Sylvia_, "No. 2", and "No. 3" joined in with their more feeble shouts.

Down they poured out of the rigging, eager to get their mail, which the Master-at-Arms was already distributing, the _Undaunted_ slipped away on her errand to the north (a mission-house had been burnt down somewhere or other, somebody or other had to suffer for the deed, and she was away to see that somebody or other did suffer for it), and the little squadron was left alone again with its pirate island--a lonely-looking island and a rather lonely little squadron after its fleeting glimpse of its own white ensign, reading its letters from home in the failing daylight, with a job to do which seemed too big for it.

As Dr. Fox rather vulgarly expressed it to Helston, "You've bitten off a bigger piece than you can chew, old chap."

"Well, perhaps so, Fox; we'll see."

Captain Helston's letters--his official ones, at any rate--were certainly a worry to him. He had hardly finished reading them when sunset was reported, and up he had to go to superintend the scattering of the squadron for the night, and to make the rendezvous for the early morning.

He came down to dinner, but let it go untouched.

"Come up on deck, Fox, and get some exercise on the quarter-deck," he said at length. "I want a yarn with you." (Dr. Fox usually dined with him.)

"Never take a man away from his food to tell him bad news," growled the Doctor, after they had paced the quarter-deck twenty times without saying a word. "Let me know the worst."

"My arm's hurting me, Doc. Can't you ease it?" exclaimed Helston in his most worried expression of voice.

"Well, well, stay still, and I'll just rearrange it, old chap. Now, that's more comfortable, eh? Hand a bit too low; blood too much in the fingers, eh? Have it in the sleeve in another week. Feel better now?" And Dr. Fox made him more comfortable, speaking as if his patient were a little petulant child. "Now, tell me all about it."

"It comes to this," began Helston, wheeling round and rapidly walking up and down. "The Admiral is going to communicate with me in one month from this date, and, in case I cannot report any material progress, he has orders from home to assist me.

"You know very well what that means. My chance of promotion is gone unless I manage to capture the island in four weeks."

Dr. Fox was well aware that a month was all too short a time. He knew only too well Helston's limitations as a commander, and his inability to formulate or to adhere to any plans involving grave issues. He knew, too, the bad effect of this mental indecision and anxiety on his health, his growing inability to sleep, and his increasing irritability of temper, yet he could not, merely as senior doctor of the expedition and old friend of its commander, accept the responsibility of making any suggestion either for further delay or for immediate action.

"It is not my job, and I will not originate anything."

But one thing he did know, and that was that if anybody could do the work it was Cummins, and to Cummins the decision should and must be left.

"Send for Cummins, Helston; tell him what you have told me; give him twenty-four hours to arrange a course of action; don't attempt to influence him in any way, and act upon his advice. On no account ask either Bannerman, who is a mere talker and a braggart, or Hunter, who is a magnificent, a splendid man, but a fool."

Now, as has been said before, Captain Helston was jealous of his Commander. He would have been the first to resent the imputation; but there it was, call it what you may, the necessary sequence of a feeble will hardly yet conscious of its weakness in the presence of the strong and overmastering will of a junior officer.

"You're right, Fox, I know you're right. I'll send for him and see what he suggests."

"That is not enough, Helston, you must decide to act upon his suggestions." And Dr. Fox argued with him for half an hour or more as they paced that deck. At last Helston agreed, and Cummins was sent for.

He came shuffling aft, a queer, grotesque little figure in the darkness (no lights were burnt or shown at night-time), took a glowing cigar from his mouth, and saluted.

Helston told him of the admiral's letter.

"That means all U.P. with us, unless we do the trick in a month; eh, sir?" he chuckled. "They are not any too liberal at home, are they?"

"I have sent for you," continued Helston, and Dr. Fox noticed a constrained tone in his voice, "to ask you for your advice as to what is to be done."

"Do you intend only to consider my suggestions, or do you intend to act upon them, sir?" replied Cummins, and Dr. Fox saw his figure stiffen to attention, could almost hear his jaws clench together, and saw his cigar go whizzing overboard and extinguish itself in the sea.