Part 9

He was an extraordinary man, this old soldier. He never went ashore without coming off half-drunk, and, as Helston often said, "he's always most drunk when he's most sober", and it was only by his preternatural solemness, or by noticing that he occasionally carried the dishes round the table at the double, that one knew that he had been making a brute of himself ashore.

Time after time Helston had dismissed him and sent him for'ard to rejoin the Marine Detachment, but always, next morning, he was stealthily creeping about Helston's cabin, folding up and brushing his clothes, and waking him at exactly the same time with "Six bells just gone, sir", and "'Ere's your cup of tea".

He had once managed to get rid of him by giving him "five days' cells", but before he had finished this punishment Helston's hair required cutting. No one could do this so well, so he was brought aft to do it, and, the job being satisfactorily concluded, Helston gave him one of his cigars, and twenty minutes to smoke it, before he was locked up again.

On the sixth morning it was "Six bells, sir, just gone, sir, and 'ere's your cup of tea", and he was now as much a permanent institution as the ship's bell or the ship's cat.

Ping Sang had gained much interesting but no valuable information from the Englishman.

"Hamilton is his name. I knew him well several years ago, before he disappeared, and he was always up to some devilment or other. If he could not manage to work for his living, he could certainly live by his wits.

"He gave me a very interesting account of his whole scheme. He, Hopkins, and the German, Schmidt--the 'Mysterious Three' of Tientsin--had put in fifty thousand dollars apiece, and many wealthy Chinese had subscribed very large sums in what he called 'our venture'. 'We've done pretty well. We have quite a respectable little fleet, and have captured thirty million dollars' worth of ships and cargoes, to say nothing of the ransoms some of our prisoners have paid for their freedom. We have friends throughout the country, and our prisoners know that if they talk too much when they get back, they will get their throats cut one fine night. We have had to do it to several already--just as a warning.'

"I asked him if he did not fear capture.

"'Capture!' he laughed, highly amused. 'You will never see any of us again, unless you happen to come as paying guests. Hopkins made a fool of himself, but he won't be caught napping again, and ten times your little fleet could not get into our island.'

"I asked him what became of all the crews of the many ships he had captured. Had he hanged them?

"'Hang them? Rather not!' he told me. 'One or two of the first few, perhaps, but ever since, directly they see what a fine life we are having there, they volunteer to join us, and make splendid recruits.'"

"Did you discover how he was going to get back to his precious island?" asked Helston.

"No, I did not. I asked him several times, and kept my eyes and ears open, but not a thing could I discover. He had nothing there except the junk, as far as I could see, and they gave me complete liberty to go about the island as much as I liked."

"How did you spend your time?" asked Dr. Fox.

"Playing cards with him, like a fool," said Ping Sang, wreathed in smiles; "and I lost nearly ten thousand dollars, and have promised to send them ashore directly we reach his island. He is going to send a junk for them as soon as we get there, and he had the cheek, too, to ask me to bring up all the things he had left behind him in the Victoria Hotel.

"Oh yes, I promised," laughed Ping Sang; "he amused me so, I couldn't help promising him."

Dinner being over, Hunter and the Captain of the _Sylvia_, Commander Bannerman, came across in their galleys, and they and Cummins of the _Laird_ joined a council of war, to determine the future plan of operations.

It was a curiously impressive little scene in Captain Helston's fore-cabin that night--the polished table littered with documents and lighted by the hanging crimson-shaded electric lamps; the grey clouds of tobacco smoke eddying among the steel deck-beams overhead and curling through the after 12-pounder gun-ports; the glitter of the polished brass-work of the gun-mountings, one on each side of the cabin--a grim reminder of war; and the serious, eager faces of Helston and his three Commanders as they bent over the various papers and argued their plans and proposals.

The last time they had all met together round that table they had drunk success to the squadron, and gaily hoped that the pirates would give them a chance of "doing something".

Now they had done something--one of their three destroyers was at the bottom, and five of her men had gone down with her; nine of the _Strong Arm's_ men were dead (three had died of their wounds), and thirty or more were wounded--and though they had destroyed a cruiser, still she had not previously entered into their calculations, and her appearance on the scene rudely interfered with their plans and expectations of only meeting old, half-repaired Chinese men-of-war. There might be more like her, acquired secretly, and with the memory of those nine bodies waiting to be buried in the quiet cemetery in the Happy Valley next morning, and the unknown strength of the enemy they were now going to meet, the council took their places round Helston's table with a certain solemnity.

Captain Helston himself, gaunt and thin, sat at the head, his long, thin face haggard in the electric light, his right hand nervously fidgeting with some papers in front of him, and his left arm still bandaged to his side, his empty sleeve sewn across his chest.

At the other end of the table sat Hunter of the _Strong Arm_, a man with a great red face and great red hands, a clumsy-looking giant, more grieved at the loss of his men than elated at the destruction of the pirate cruiser. A typical bluff, good-hearted sailor was he, not devoid of brains, but seldom troubling to use them. To see him in a football "scrum", and to hear his lusty roars of encouragement to his side, did one good, and one knew immediately what kind of man he was.

Use his brains! Why? God had given him a great body which never knew fatigue, a mind which never knew fear, and he was one of the "range-up-alongside-and-blow- the-beggar-out-of-water-and-if-he-won't-sink-ram-him" school of naval officer.

Antiquated in his ideas he may have been, but he was possessed, as are most men like him, of an enormous personal magnetism, and every man Jack of his crew would follow him to the death.

On Helston's right sat Ping Sang, bubbling over with humorous details of his escapade, red in the face, his eyes twinkling with appreciation of his good dinner. As he was beautifully dressed in his favourite colour of dark claret silk, and had a gold-knobbed skull-cap of the same colour on his head, his gay attire contrasted strangely with the more sober mess jackets of the others.

As usual, he was smoking a cigar, and had in front of him a big despatch box, from which he drew rolls of papers, spreading them in front of him with a due sense of their importance.

No one who had seen him on board "No. 1" the day before, standing calmly near the after funnel under a heavy fire, could help but praise his contempt for danger; but his first remark when he was taken off in the _Strong Arm's_ boat and saw the destroyer slide under the sea was, "There goes four hundred thousand dollars", and when it was discovered that she had carried three men down with her, in addition to the two who had been knocked overboard, all he said was, "Men very cheap; plenty more to take their places".

It was very evident that everything was precious to him except the lives of the people whom he was paying to risk their lives for the protection of his vast trade. Already Helston and the others had lost some of their first admiration for the good-natured, plucky little man, and could not feel in sympathy with a nature so completely indifferent to death and suffering. Still, he was not a European, and allowance had to be made for the stoicism and callousness of the Celestial.

Next to him sat Cummins, an odd little figure, his tie up round his ears, smoking a stale old pipe, and chuckling to himself as some humorous fancy passed through his active brain. Nothing, however solemn or tragic, but had its amusing side for him.

Opposite him, and on Helston's left, was Bannerman of the _Sylvia_, a tall, restless man, with light tawny hair and cleanly-trimmed beard. He had employed all his social and service influence to be appointed to Helston's squadron, and always had a grievance that the _Sylvia_ was only a store-ship. The other Commanders chaffed him unmercifully about his four little 12-pounders--the only guns she carried--and to ask him how much coal he had for them was always sufficient to get a "rise" out of him.

He was not popular, and when in a bad temper nagged his officers and men till they in turn were white-hot with silent rage. It was always with him: "My ship moored very smartly this morning, Cummins", or "Beat you yesterday unmooring, Hunter", or some other of the two or three evolutions the store-ship could take part in.

He did not disguise his knowledge that if anything happened to Cummins or Hunter he would get the vacancy, and, though he naturally never said so in so many words, it was quite plain he looked forward to such an event occurring.

His one idea was promotion, and he would stick at nothing to obtain it, caring not at all who suffered in the process.

Dr. Fox was there too, reading the _Hong-Kong Evening Mail_ in an easy-chair by the side of the fire, and making some caustic remark from time to time.

A strange little group of fighting men it was: Helston, broken in health, and only eager for promotion because promotion meant his marriage to little Miss Milly; Bannerman craving for it for the power in its train; big-hearted Hunter caring not a jot, so long as he got plenty of fighting; and little Cummins, caring little for anything, so long as he could work out practically his scientific theories of modern warfare.

The island occupied by the pirates was called Hong Lu--merely a small dot on the Admiralty chart, lying in the middle of the Straits of Formosa, half-way between the Pescadores and Amoy. Ping Sang had had copies made of the rough map, drawn by the English merchant captain a year ago, and passed them round.

From these it appeared that Hong Lu was about five miles long, shaped somewhat like a horse-shoe, and that the harbour, inside the loop, was connected with the sea by a narrow passage between high cliffs, formed by the curved-in ends of the island.

At the loop end there was also another outlet to the sea even more narrow than the first.

The English captain had roughly marked the places, on each side of the entrance, where he had seen them mounting guns, and Ping Sang knew that, among the cargoes of the three steamers captured outside Nagasaki eighteen months ago, there were six 6-inch modern guns and many smaller quick-firers. As these had been intended for a new Chinese fort on the Min river, and as all their mountings and ammunition had also been on board, it would be an easy matter to mount them efficiently.

"They'll give us some trouble," smiled Hunter, gleefully rubbing his big red hands together; "take any amount of hammering if the beggars only fight 'em properly."

"I only hope they won't," muttered Dr. Fox from his easy-chair. "We've had quite enough poor fellows killed already, and I don't want any more work patching up the wounded."

"And here is the list of ships," continued Ping Sang.

This was the list of Chinese men-of-war which had been run ashore after the battle of the Yalu, and had apparently been salved by some Europeans--the "Mysterious Three".

It included the _Yao Yuen_ and the _Mao Yuen_, sister ships, ten years old, and of about three thousand tons. Each carried two Krupp 8-inch and six 4.7-inch guns. Then there was the _Tu Ping_, somewhat larger and still older, carrying a 10-inch Krupp in the bows and nine 6-inch besides--all of them old-fashioned guns.

These were probably the three sighted by the English gun-boat whilst cruising in the Chusan Archipelago a few months previously.

In addition, two or three corvettes belonging formerly to the Yangtze squadron had disappeared. These, however, could never be made serviceable against modern ships.

"That little lot ought not to give us much trouble," said Hunter rather sadly; "they dare not come out and fight us in the open."

"They have ten or twelve torpedo-boats," interposed Cummins, who was a devoted believer in the possibilities of the torpedo, "and if those three destroyers, which must have been handed over by the Patagonian Government since we left them at Colombo, reach this precious island of theirs, they will give us no end of trouble."

"Yes, perhaps they will," said Hunter cheerfully. "It will add to the excitement, won't it? Make a more level game, eh? 'No. 2' and 'No. 3' ought to be pretty busy with that little lot. Almost wish I was in command of one myself."

"I should think it would make a more level game," came from behind Dr. Fox's newspaper satirically--"much more level."

"Well, what shall we do?" asked Helston. "Those three destroyers have at least twelve hours' start of us, and I don't suppose it will be possible to catch them, for, of course, we cannot leave until after the funeral of your men, Hunter. Directly the funeral parties have returned we will weigh and proceed north."

"Certainly, sir, we shall be ready," replied Bannerman and Hunter, the latter, adding, "Of course, sir, I could not leave till I had buried my men."

"Excuse me, sir," interposed Cummins, chuckling in his nervous manner; "those destroyers could not take all the crew of the _Hai Yen_ and her stores without being unseaworthy. They must have had some other ship there, and if she had been a man-of-war we should have seen something of her. Don't you think that must have been so, sir?"

"Certainly; I half suspected it myself."

"Well then, sir, they must have had a merchant steamer, and a pretty small one at that, otherwise they could not have got her in close enough to transfer all those stores in one night, the water is so shallow."

"Certainly, certainly," nodded the others.

"Therefore, if she was small, there are but few such steamers that can steam more than ten knots, and this, or more probably less, will be her speed to Hong Lu, and the destroyers would be pretty certain to convoy her, and so we might catch them as well."

"You want us to start immediately?" asked Helston.

"Certainly, sir, and at your highest speed, sending 'No. 2' and 'No. 3' ahead, if possible, and with luck we might bag them and Hopkins, and the lame Englishman in addition."

"But," interposed Bannerman, "your whole plan is based on mere conjecture, Cummins, and you must remember that my ship cannot steam faster than ten knots herself."

"You can come on afterwards," replied Cummins, adding maliciously, for he loved to goad Bannerman, "You won't want an escort, I suppose. Haugh! haugh! haugh!"

"Well, well," Helston interfered, seeing that Bannerman was rapidly losing his temper, "the conjecture may turn out to be incorrect, but it is better to act upon it than upon nothing at all."

"What time can you get your funeral parties on board again, Hunter?"

"Not before noon, sir; their mess-mates would never forgive me if they could not do this."

"When I turn up my toes," said Bannerman snappishly, "I don't mind what happens to me; they can chuck me overboard if they like."

"Well, old fellow," answered Hunter, "when my turn comes, I should like to know that my own men looked after me."

"Very good, gentlemen," concluded Helston. "The _Strong Arm_ will follow the squadron, the remainder of which will leave at daybreak."

Before Hunter went back to the _Strong Arm_ he drew Captain Helston aside and put in a good word for Pattison of the ill-fated "No. 1", but the latter shook his head: "Plucky, of course, he was, but a man in command of a destroyer wants more than pluck--brains and common sense."

"Those two midshipmen, sir, Glover and Foote, behaved with great coolness for youngsters under fire for the first time, and Harrington, who I hear is doing well in hospital, did magnificently.

"Could you manage to send Foote to 'No. 3', sir? The two boys are great chums and he deserves another chance."

"All right, Hunter, I will not forget him; good-night."

Shaking hands with Helston the little council of war broke up, the Commanders going back to their ships, leaving him and Dr. Fox alone. Ping Sang was by this time sound asleep, unable to withstand the influence of his good dinner, so they left him where he sat, and the two old friends had a last pipe together before turning in. Going through the fore-cabin again before saying "good-night" they woke Ping Sang, who was still asleep with his head on the table.

He sat up with a start, and with a yell of triumph banged at the table till the tumblers rattled.

"Ho Ming's butler, the butler himself, I'll have his liver torn out if ever I can get him across to the mainland!"

"Whatever's the matter?" they both asked, thinking his dinner had had too much effect on him.

"He's that brute who betrayed me to the lame Englishman Hamilton. I felt sure that I had somewhere before seen the man who went aboard those junks so hurriedly, and that's the man--Ho Ming's butler, the white-livered scoundrel!"

He was in a frantic rage, and wanted to go ashore immediately and tell Ho Ming; but Captain Helston and Dr. Fox managed finally to calm him, and induced him to go to bed.

*CHAPTER XIII*

*The Avenging of Destroyer "No. 1"*

Off in Pursuit--Horribly Sea-sick--A Neck-and-Neck Race--Commence Firing!--Running into Danger--"No. 1" Avenged--The Dinghy Capsizes--Plucky Little Ogston

_The Narrative is continued by Mr. Glover_

We had had a jolly good day at Sin Ling Island, and Mr. Parker let me go aboard the _Hai Yen_ with the other midshipmen, and a grand time we had scrambling about her. I brought back a scraggy cat--half-witted I think he was, for he walked about with his head on one side in the funniest manner possible, "meaowing" from morning to night. His fur was burnt off one side, but we got some ointment stuff from the medicine chest aft, and with some bandages made him ship-shape--a comical sight he looked, I can tell you.

We didn't get much sleep that night, because, after coming back, we had to fill up with coal again, get in fresh provisions, and then bring our torpedoes over from the _Sylvia_. It was not till three o'clock that I crept into the Gunner's bunk (he was on watch), and got a couple of hours' sleep.

Then we all unmoored, and whilst I was busy seeing everything secured aft, who should come alongside but Tommy Toddles in one of the _Laird's_ cutters. He was wildly excited, I could see, and, after reporting himself to Mr. Parker, came dancing along the deck and told me that Captain Helston had sent him to join "No. 3". We got his chest out of the boat, but there was very little room for it anywhere, and Mr. Parker, who swore very loudly when he saw it, made him take out the things he wanted most and then sent it back to the _Laird_.

"You two youngsters will have to share the same chest," he said. But we didn't mind in the least, it was so jolly to have Tommy.

Well, "No. 2" and we shoved off and left the _Strong Arm_ behind, looking very forlorn in the half daylight with her ensign at half-mast. It seemed quite strange, too, without "No. 1", and, when we were running past the _Sylvia_, we saw Mr. Pattison on the bridge, looking, we thought, very down on his luck.

Directly we were clear of Hong-Kong and were on our proper course, we were sent ahead at full speed, and then had not much time to think of anything else, for there was a big loppy sea and a strong breeze on our starboard bow.

We were doing twenty-five knots and began to get very lively.

I thought that nothing would ever make me sea-sick, but this did, and as I had nothing to do on deck, and neither Tommy nor I wanted to yarn, I crept into the Gunner's bunk again; but the Sub came down a few minutes after to get his oil-skins and found me there. He turned me out, ordered me on deck, and made me take the wheel from the quarter-master and steer.

We were pitching tremendously, our bows burying themselves up to the conning tower. Down, down they would go till I thought, with an awfully empty feeling inside me, that they would never stop. Up they would come again, tons of water pouring off them, and the wave catching her amidships would roll her over to leeward.

Roll! Why, several times I thought she would go right over, and once or twice, as we heeled, I caught hold of the edge of the bridge to steady myself; but Collins had his eye on me all the time, and cursed me pretty hard.

"Keep her into it, you young ass! Don't let her pay off like that," he said. And another time: "If you let her swing more than two points off her course again, I'll give you half a dozen over the ward-room table."

I would do my best, and would put the helm over to steady her, feeling horribly sick and dreadfully miserable, for I was wet through and very cold.

Mr. Parker came up presently in his oil-skins to relieve Collins, smoking a pipe, the very sight of which made me feel green, and after looking cheerily at "No. 2", which was on our beam, and having as bad a time as ourselves, said, with his body jammed securely between the chart-table and the 12-pounder; "We shall break the old girl's back if we keep at this much longer, Collins. Give me a light, old chap; all my matches are wet through."

I devoutly wished she would break her back, and actually looked aft to see if there were any sign of such good fortune.

We slowed down shortly afterwards and fell back to the _Laird_; but she must have been doing nearly twenty knots, and though she did give us somewhat of a lee, we had a horrible time of it.

Mr. Parker sent me down below, and I had to hold on pretty hard to get safely aft, and I found poor Tommy lying on the after 6-pounder gratings in a worse state even than I was.

This cheered me a little.

The night was almost as bad, and though I was dead tired and wet through to the skin and longed to die, it was impossible to lie in a bunk. I was thrown out of the Sub's bunk twice--you see there were not enough bunks for all, so I had to use the one belonging to the man on watch--and spent most of the night on the deck of the ward-room, clinging to the legs of the ward-room table, till even these gave way at one extra heavy lurch. We went clattering to leeward and woke the Engineer, who kicked me out and wanted to know "What I meant by choosing that time of night to play musical chairs?"

Then I crept up on deck and held on to the after steering screen, really too frightened to go below again, we were rolling so horribly. I tell you all this just to let you know what it is like to be in a destroyer in heavy weather for the first time. People see destroyers dashing in and out of harbour, and think what a jolly life it must be on board; and so it is, too, when once you are used to it, and have learnt that they can stand on their heads one moment, roll till the sea comes half-way up to their funnels the next, and be none the worse for it.

But doesn't it want a lot of hanging on?

Tommy joined me behind the screen presently, and a miserable pair we were, I can tell you, and wished ourselves back again in the _Laird_, swinging in our hammocks.

In the middle watch Jones, one of our petty officers and the captain of the 12-pounder, came aft to take the log and found us there.

"'Ello, sir! what be you two young gen'lemen a-doing of there?" he said.