Chapter XII A Council of War
The “Strong Arm” Returns—Boarding the “Hai Yen”—Jenkins—The Council of War—Ping Sang’s Chart—Cummins has a Plan—Ping Sang Remembers
Captain Helston, with his left arm bandaged to his side, and one empty sleeve of his monkey jacket flapping in the wind, was on deck to see “No. 1” slip from her buoy and start on her fatal voyage. No sooner had her dark hull disappeared in the morning mist than he began to regret having sent her. A fit of his old irresolution returned, and he would have recalled her had she been within signalling distance.
He sent for Cummins—a grotesque-looking object in the early morning, unshaven and wearing a pair of huge sea-boots.
“You know, Cummins,” he began, “I have a feeling that something will happen to her. There is no knowing but that she will poke her nose into some trouble. What induced me to trust to their word of honour I don’t know, and it may simply be a trap to recapture Hopkins.”
“Ha! ha! ha!” chuckled Cummins, chewing his toothpick, “it’s too late now, sir; we can’t communicate with her.”
“Well, don’t you think it might be advisable to get up steam and follow her.”
“Can’t manage it, sir. They are refitting the starboard low-pressure piston-ring, and it won’t be ready for another twenty-four hours. You might send the Strong Arm, though. I was always averse to trusting that Englishman’s word.”
Helston, to tell the truth, was somewhat nettled at Cummins’s influence on board and his somewhat arbitrary manner, and the implied “I told you so” irritated him to a degree. So, saying sharply, “Very well, we’ll let her go alone,” went down to his breakfast.
But ten minutes later he again changed his mind, and made a signal which resulted in the Strong Arm’s rapid departure.
He expected both ships back by four o’clock at the latest, and as the hours went by and there was no sign of either, he became extremely nervous and restless, pacing up and down his after-cabin all that afternoon. At dinner he scarcely touched anything, and was just on the point of going out himself aboard “No. 2” or “No. 3”, when the signal midshipman reported that the Strong Arm was entering the harbour and making her number.
He ran up on deck to see for himself, and quickly a signal blinked across from the Strong Arm’s mast-head lamp that she had driven a strange cruiser ashore, and rescued the crew of “No. 1”, which had been sunk.
The news rushed like wildfire round the ship, and officers and men crowded on deck to see her slowly creeping to her buoy and signalling for medical assistance.
Helston went aboard her immediately, and Dr. Fox and the other doctors of the squadron worked all night with the wounded, many of whom had to be sent to the Naval Hospital next morning, including Harrington, whose condition was very grave.
Helston obtained a rapid report of the day’s happenings from Hunter, and congratulated Ping Sang on his escape.
The identity of the strange cruiser was unknown, and even Ping Sang, who had more information than anyone else as to the resources of the pirates, had been unable to recognize her. However, it was a great achievement to have destroyed so powerful a vessel at the cost of one destroyer, though the loss of life was much to be regretted.
“You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs, I believe,” was Ping Sang’s comment, as he calmly puffed his cigar on the sacred quarter-deck.
The loss of life evidently did not worry him in the slightest degree.
Helston was most severe with Pattison, for, though praising his intrepidity and personal behaviour, he censured him strongly for his manoeuvring of “No. 1”.
“What induced you to run straight at her instead of taking to your heels and escaping, I cannot think, and to leave the bridge in charge of a midshipman at the most critical moment seems to me to show a great want of judgment. You had no torpedoes on board, and it was impossible for you to damage her.”
Except for the fact that his action delayed the cruiser, and ultimately led to her destruction, Helston would have sent him home forthwith.
This was not his hasty judgment, for he made no remarks at the time, but was given two days later when all the circumstances had been investigated more closely. In fact Harrington, the Sub, who had been so badly injured in his attempt to rescue people from the stokehold, was the only one belonging to “No. 1” who came in for any praise, and he was too ill in hospital to appreciate it.
This opinion was general throughout the squadron, and poor Pattison, who was sent to the Sylvia for duty, more or less in disgrace, felt it very keenly.
“I did the first thing that came into my head,” he said, “and it wasn’t till we were right on top of her that I remembered we had no torpedoes on board.”
The morning after the return of the Strong Arm, this ship, with Helston aboard, and the two remaining destroyers in company, steamed to Sin Ling Island.
The strange cruiser was found still lying on the rocks—a melancholy-looking object. Her after magazine had evidently blown up, and she was a total wreck aft of her main-mast—a mass of warped and twisted plates and deck beams.
On her twisted stern was her name Hai Yen in Chinese characters, the gilt scorched by fire; but this name did not identify her, and her origin and history were still a mystery.
No complaint could be made of the Strong Arm’s captains of guns, for their shooting had been marvellously effective, and her upper works were riddled with shell holes. Two guns had been dismounted, and her funnels were pierced in a hundred places.
Helston and Hunter had come to the conclusion that she had been escorting the three destroyers from the south, chiefly from the certain fact that they had neither guns nor torpedo-tubes aboard when first seen by “No. 1”. These spare tubes and guns might still be aboard the Hai Yen. So a thorough search was made through the whole ship, and, though none of these things were found, it was discovered that the ship had been pretty thoroughly stripped of everything movable, and that the upper deck was covered with coal-dust. The coal must have been brought up after the action, because in places it covered great smears of blood, and the only inference was that the three destroyers had coaled from her bunkers during the night, removed all her remaining portable stores—even her small quick-firers had disappeared—and also taken her crew aboard them.
To make certain that the crew were not still on the island, Helston landed two hundred men and thoroughly explored it. It was but a small rocky outcrop from the Chinese coast, not a mile long, but by the time this had been done daylight was beginning to fail. No traces of the crew were discovered.
During this time the midshipmen had been allowed to inspect the ship, and, needless to say, returned with much spoil. One of them had an undamaged chronometer, another actually brought off the steering-wheel from the conning tower, two of them lowered the ship’s bell into their cutter, whilst a daring youngster swarmed up to the foremast-head and secured her gilt weather-vane.
They were all vastly pleased with themselves and their trophies.
Everybody being aboard again, the Strong Arm steered to the north, and, on passing the island where “No. 1” had exchanged Hopkins for Ping Sang, sent the two destroyers inshore to reconnoitre; but though they entered the little bay where “No. 1” had been so neatly trapped, and explored the whole of the coast with their searchlights, no sign of any ship or junk could be found.
The three ships then returned to Hong-Kong, Helston taking Ping Sang back to the Laird with him.
Ping Sang and Dr. Fox dined that night with Helston, and that merry old Chinese gentleman, vastly pleased to be sitting once again in front of a good dinner, was amusing in the extreme.
He made even the surly Doctor smile at his adventures, and very droll were the descriptions of himself sweating along the main road to Aberdeen loaded down with sugar-canes (“Beastly stuff! I can’t think why they eat it. Never knew what it was to earn a living of ten cents a day”); of being hauled along by his pigtail through a malodorous crowd of his countrymen to the police station (“Never knew I hated them before, till they began kicking me in the back”); of his struggles and protestations when the Englishman withdrew the charge and took him back to the junk; of his voyage to the island, shut down below in the stinking hold (“They didn’t go across that night, but hid round a corner till the next”), and of his imprisonment on the island, where he was a guest of the same Englishman (“That man is a precious scoundrel, I tell you, and his food was worse; but he did give me some decent clothes, I’ll say that for him”).
The only one without a smile on his face was Jenkins, Helston’s marine servant, who had persisted in accompanying his master; but this was due, as Dr. Fox well knew, to the fact that he had been ashore that afternoon, and was now assuming an air of extreme sobriety only to be accounted for by a too liberal consumption of beer.
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.