Ford of H.M.S. Vigilant: A Tale of the Chusan Archipelago Read online

  *CHAPTER II*

  *Introduces Sally Hobbs*

  News of the Pirates--Mr. Hobbs Tells his Story--The Chinese Captain--The Pirates--Three Cheers for Miss Hobbs!--The Skipper gets the Telegram

  _Written by Commander Truscott, H.M.S. Vigilant_.

  As I have been asked to assist in writing an account of the events whichhappened during the last few months of the commission of our dear oldtub the _Vigilant_, I had better explain to you how they first arose.

  We had been up to Shanghai, to be handy in case a serious effervescenceof native feeling against Europeans should bubble over, and get out ofthe control of the local authorities. As it happened, the agitationfizzled out without our being required, and I think I can honestly say,to our great disappointment.

  From there we steamed down to Tinghai Harbour in Chusan, the largest ofthe islands of the Chusan Archipelago, and anchored close to Joss HouseHill and the tumble-down ramparts of the new town of Tinghai. All theislands of the archipelago simply abound with game. There are pheasantsin every valley, and millions of duck, geese, curlew, snipe, and evenwild swan are to be found on the marshes, paddy fields, and vaststretches of mud. It was for this reason that Captain Lester hadobtained permission to come here, and he had chosen Tinghai because itsharbour is the safest in the archipelago, as well as the most important,being the centre for a vast trade carried on with Ningpo and Shanghai onthe mainland. Close inshore are always clustered a great number of finemerchant junks, loading and unloading, and anchored off the town isgenerally a small fleet of war junks. These are supposed to cruiseround the islands and keep down piracy--as a matter of fact they don't.As an additional protection to the town and shipping, two little openbatteries are built at each end of the harbour, mounting fairly modernbreech-loading guns.

  Half a mile inland, and only connected to the modern town by a roughcauseway through the paddy fields, is the ancient town of Tinghai. Itis surrounded by a deep moat and lofty mud walls, which are pierced byfour gloomy archways. These are flanked by towers, closed in by heavy,iron-bound gates, and only approached over drawbridges whose rustychains are probably not equal to the task of hauling them up.

  It looks gloomy enough from the outside, but it is still more so inside,and the sullen, scarcely concealed hostility of the inhabitants of itsdark, horrid-smelling streets makes one exceedingly glad to get outagain into the daylight, with no more indignity than being spat at orhustled.

  The natives of the seaport town have grown accustomed to white men, andif they do not exactly welcome them, they tolerate them amiably enough.Indeed, a missionary and his wife--Macpherson by name--have lived herefor years, and are always dinning into our ears the number of convertsthey have made.

  You can imagine that everyone who could get away shooting did so, andone evening I came back to the ship after a long day's tramping throughpaddy fields after snipe. I had been using my new hammerless gun forthe first time, I remember, and hadn't quite got into the "hang" of it,and kept on forgetting to push up the "safety" catch. Snipe don't giveyou much time for fooleries of that sort, so I hadn't been verysuccessful.

  I noticed that a Chinese cruiser was anchored close to the _Vigilant_,but paid no special attention to her, because she often came in. It wasgetting dark, and I was in a hurry to get aboard, have a hot bath, andchange for dinner. The skipper of the _Ringdove_, one of our gunboats,had been shooting with me; I put him aboard his own packet, and thenpulled alongside the _Vigilant_, where Lawrence, our navigator, met meat the gangway very excited, and I saw at once that there was somethingthe matter. He followed me into my cabin, and whilst I changed intouniform, told me what had happened.

  The Chinese cruiser--the _Huan Min_ she was--an old wooden corvettebelonging to the Peiyang squadron, had been making one of her regularcruises among the islands, and yesterday morning she had picked up twoAmericans--an old man named Hobbs and his daughter--adrift in a boat.They had reported that they and their steam yacht, the _Sally Hobbs_,had been captured by pirates, and that somehow they themselves hadmanaged to escape. Turning out of her course to search for the yacht,the _Huan Min_ had run into a fog, and presently found herself "right ontop" of a tramp steamer and the yacht herself. Both had made offinshore as quickly as possible, and the Chinese Captain, following them,had rammed the poor old _Huan Min's_ nose firmly into the mud. He hadscarcely commenced to go full speed astern, when she came under a heavyfire, either from the tramp steamer or the shore, a fire to which shewas unable to reply with effect. She was hulled several times, and hadhad some men killed and wounded before the rising tide enabled her toback off into deep water and get out of range. She had come along toTinghai as fast as she could, and Lawrence told me that the twoAmericans were already aboard the _Vigilant_, and that Captain Lesterwas furious at having to look after them.

  "He's had rather a bad day's shooting, sir, and is in a bad temper."

  This was Lawrence's story, and excited enough he was about it and thechances of our having a "show". "Strangely enough too, sir," he said,"the First Lieutenant of that ship is an old chum of mine--a man namedChing. He was doing a year's training in the old _Inflexible_ when Iwas a Mid in her. A jolly chap he was--we all liked him--and he'scoming over after dinner to have a yarn, if he can get away."

  I had to dine with the Captain that night--he positively refused toentertain the two Americans by himself--and I learnt from the oldfather, Mr. Martin P. Hobbs--I had seen his name in the papers--he was awealthy railway magnate--the details of their extraordinary escape. Thisis what he told me, and you can take it for what it's worth; but he wassuch a weird, cunning little object, that I, somehow or other, foundmyself doubting his story. He and his daughter Sally, who was as prettyas paint, although her hair had been clumsily cut off, and who was nowtrying to twist the dear old bully of a Captain round her little finger,had been wandering about the Northern Treaty Ports, and at Shanghai hadmet some Boston people who were, what he called, doing a "splash".They'd been somewhere up country with a caravan of their own--somewherewhere no one else had ever been--and in order to go one better, nothingwould content Miss Hobbs but that her father should buy a small steamyacht, which happened to be for sale, and start away for a thousand-miletrip up the Yangtse. The skipper of the yacht--they'd named it the_Sally Hobbs_--seems to have been a dare-devil sort of scoundrel,according to Hobbs, and instead of taking them up to Hankow, got them toalter their plans, and brought them down among the islands.

  One night they had anchored close to an island, and woke up to find theyacht in possession of a crowd of Chinamen, simply swarming all over thedecks. They were forced down below and locked in their cabins, andthere they stayed for a whole day, while the yacht steamed away. Sometime during the next night Hobbs was roughly gagged and bound, a long,blue, Chinese coat pulled over him, and he was made to get into a boatalongside. He found his daughter lying in the sternsheets, gagged andcovered with another blue native coat. He heard a scuffle on deck, butit was too dark to see anything distinctly. He thought he heard thevoice of the old Scotch engineer of the yacht, and then someone cast offthe boat and they drifted quickly away in the darkness.

  In the morning they had been seen by the _Huan Min_, taken on board,were in great danger whilst she was trying to fight the pirates, andwere afterwards brought along here.

  That was his story, and as I said before, it did not convince me. Ifthe whole scheme had been arranged, and he implied that the skipper ofthe yacht was the arch villain, how on earth had he allowed Hobbs toescape so easily? He must have known of his enormous wealth, and wouldsurely have kept close guard on him to extort a ransom later on.

  However, there was his daughter, and no doubt her hair had been roughlycropped off, and from what I know about women, especially pretty ones,they wouldn't lose their hair if they could possibly help it, and when Ilooked across at her, the very picture of innocence, and heard her tellthe Skipper how they'd shorn
it off, putting her hands through theirregular bits left, her lips quivering, and her eyes filling withtears, I was bound to believe that there was some truth in it.

  It was amusing to watch the change in the Skipper's manner. He had satdown to dinner with a scowl on his face that would have melted the paintoff the bulkhead, and snarled whenever he spoke; but now he was tellingher all about his wife and daughters, and she was holding up her wriststo show him where they had been bound and bruised, and had completelymollified him.

  Presently Hobbs ventured to ask him if he would try and recapture theyacht, and then the Skipper flared up again and roared at him, "thatAmerican citizens should get their own ships to do their own dirtywork". The Skipper's language was never too refined, but the little manwasn't to be browbeaten. "Guess the _Sally Hobbs_ was flying your ownred ensign, Captain," he answered defiantly.

  "Darn my rags! Why didn't you say so before?" shouted the Skipper, andgot purple in the face. "Those pirates dare touch anything under ourflag? I'll go after 'em to-morrow."

  "I rather fancy she was," put in Miss Hobbs. "Poppa and I were in sucha hurry, we'd only time to paint _Sally Hobbs_ on the stern and thelifebuoys, and didn't reckon it counted, altering the registration."

  Well, that put matters in a new light, and I felt pleased at theprospect of our taking a hand in the game.

  I happened to think of Lawrence finding his chum on board the _HuanMin_, and told the Captain about the strange coincidence. "He'sprobably on board now, sir; he was coming over after dinner, if hepossibly could."

  "Umph! I'd like to see him. He would probably be useful," growled theSkipper, and sent "Willum" for him.

  He came in presently, a fine-looking fellow in his black silk tunic withgold dragons round the sleeves, tall and upright, with a determined,prize-fighting jaw, which took the Skipper's fancy directly.

  He sat down, couldn't keep his eyes off Miss Hobbs, and told us thestory which you know already. He was very bitter about everything: hisguns were worn out, his ammunition rotten, and his shells wouldn'tburst, and, he added, wincing, that they had not had sufficient medicalstores for their wounded.

  The Skipper, who, I could see, was much attracted by him--it was hissquare jaw that did it--offered to send carpenters over to help repairdamages next morning (our doctors had already taken charge of thewounded), and promised that he would take the _Vigilant_ down toinvestigate the island.

  I waited only long enough for the Skipper to make out his orders forraising steam in the morning, and slipped away to bed.

  Next day we sent Hobbs and his daughter ashore--they were to stay withthe Macphersons at the Mission House--and steamed down to the island,off which the _Huan Min_ had received such a hammering.

  Though we spent the whole day examining not only the coast line, but theinterior itself, not a trace could be found of the existence of anypirates or any battery. In fact, the island appeared to be uninhabited,and we steamed back somewhat out of patience with ourselves.

  The next day the Taotai from the old town of Tinghai came on board ingreat state, amidst the firing of three gun salutes from the war junksand the _Huan Min_. The Captain of that ship came with him, and Chingalso, to act as interpreter. I don't quite know what their idea was,but they imagined that the Skipper could do anything, and they imploredhim to do something. The poor, feeble old Taotai seemed to be at hiswits' end, and must have stayed a couple of hours on board, pouring hiswoes into the Skipper's extremely unsympathetic ears. It appeared thathe was responsible for the maintenance of order throughout thearchipelago, and that piracy had lately been increasing to an alarmingextent. From island after island memorials and petitions had beenpouring in for the last six months, and the old man quite broke downwhen he told us how impossible it was to do anything, and how he darenot report the whole state of affairs to his Viceroy on the mainland.

  "Why not?" growled the Skipper, glaring at him.

  "He'd probably be dismissed, sir, or lose his head," Ching answered.

  "And a good thing too. Umph!" the Captain muttered. "Tell the old chapthat I'm sending a gunboat up to Shanghai to-morrow or the next day, andwill report everything to the Admiral, and must wait his orders. It's nouse me looking for that yacht by myself--might as well look for a needlein a haystack. Umph!"

  What annoyed him was that the Taotai wouldn't send out his war junks.We didn't know the real reason for some weeks, but the old Taotai almostcried when he said that if the _Huan Min_ could be beaten off by them,the feeble junks wouldn't stand a chance. There was a good deal ofsense in that.

  Of course, instances of piracy are always cropping up among theseislands--we had been long enough in Chinese waters to know that--and weknew, too, that unless they became very numerous in the same locality,the authorities did not take much notice of them. You see it was onlyin times of bad trade, when perhaps the fishing had been a failure, orwhen the crops had been destroyed by one of the typhoons which used todevastate the islands lying in its track, that the inhabitants,practically threatened with starvation, would take to piracy as a meansof tiding over the bad time.

  Just imagine the temptation of seeing some lumbering great junk becalmedoff your village, or stuck fast in the mud, if everyone was hungry anddesperate, and imagine what an easy thing it was to man all your boats,surround her, and capture her. The chances were that she was full upwith foodstuffs, beans, or rice or fish, and there was little to fearfrom the authorities, far away in Tinghai. They would never hear of iteither, if you knocked the crew on the head. That is practically whatwould happen, and one lucky capture would set a village "up", till nextharvest enabled them to carry on their peaceable pursuits.

  Sometimes, of course, it happened that their appetites would be sowhetted with their success, that they would lay in wait for everyfavourable opportunity, and every crawling junk which passed. Sooner orlater it would be known that it was dangerous to take that channel, andsooner or later, if the trouble continued, a war junk or two, or perhapsone of the Peiyang corvettes, would be sent there to burn the villageand hang a few of the inhabitants.

  That is what you may call the ordinary course of events, and so long assomeone did get hanged and some village was burnt, all went smoothly,and very little notice was taken of it.

  But now, according to the old Taotai and Ching, it was a very differentpair of shoes. There was organized piracy now; pirate junks cruised intwos and threes, cutting out junks anchored in front of their ownvillages, appearing from where no one knew, disappearing asmysteriously, but scattering death and ruin wherever they did appear.

  A whole fleet of merchant junks, crowded together for safety, hadrecently been attacked by half a dozen pirate junks, and but one hadescaped, throwing her cargo overboard, and flying before the wind tobear the news.

  Not only were they evidently organized, but they also must have hadspies in the principal centres, because, not two months ago, a war junkcarrying the monthly salt tax to the mainland had been surrounded bypirates and forced to surrender, in sight of land. She had put up agood fight, and was well armed--for a war junk--and not the least noticehad been taken of several merchantmen sailing with her for protection.This outrage was the real reason why the _Huan Min_ had been sent down.

  Merchant junks always do carry four or five small muzzle-loadingcarronades, and these pop-guns had, up to now, been generally sufficientto scare away any sea robbers. Now, however, these gentry had gotpossession of such powerful weapons, that antiquated smooth bores wereout-ranged entirely.

  For months junks hardly dare quit an anchorage, unless they sailed incompany with others, and if a strange lateen mat sail was sighted, wouldhuddle together, and be only too glad to escape by disabling one oftheir own number, and leaving her a prey to their pursuer. You canunderstand the fright of these poor wretches, as they beat or driftedthrough the narrow channels, burning joss-sticks on their high poops, toimplore the protection of one of their sea gods, and scuttling downbelow in abject fear when a pirate ju
nk swooped down on them like ahawk, showing no mercy and giving no quarter, if any resistance wasoffered.

  It was then, in this plight, that the Taotai had implored Captain Lesterto give him assistance, and you can imagine that he was only too eagerto take the matter up, especially as the capture of the _Sally Hobbs_under our flag gave him the excuse and opportunity he needed.

  But he could do nothing till he had communicated with the Admiral andasked for more gunboats. This is what he did immediately, sendingdespatches up to Shanghai by the _Ringdove_.

  After that we had to be content to await events, and we had to wait fornearly three weeks, as something went wrong with the mails.

  During this time the _Tyne_ storeship arrived with a lot of gear for us,as well as three youngsters. Only one of them--Ford--had originallybeen appointed to this ship, and I was much annoyed at two more beingsent, because our gunroom was already overcrowded, and I'm always havingtrouble there, Langham, the Sub, having peculiar ideas of running the"show" with which I don't always agree. Hobbs and his daughter seemedto have taken up their quarters permanently at the Mission House, andone day, before we eventually sailed, came off to tea with me--they'dasked themselves, and I could not well refuse--and brought with them aGerman named Hoffman, one of the finest specimens of a man I have everseen. He caught the Skipper's eye immediately, and the two were soonengaged in trying various feats of strength, at which, as far as I canremember, the German generally won, very much to the Captain'sannoyance. Little Miss Hobbs bothered me till I let her go down intothe gunroom to have all the "dear little midshipmen", as she calledthem, introduced to her. She made herself so popular there, that theysang "For she's a jolly good fellow", which made her fly back, indouble-quick time, with tears in her eyes, to my cabin, where her fatherwas smoking my cigars, and spitting, most accurately (and frequently),into my fireplace.

  Hobbs told me that Hoffman was the original owner of the _Sally Hobbs_,had heard of her capture from some of the _Ringdove_ fellows at theShanghai Club, and had come across country to Ningpo, and from there toTinghai in a junk. Mighty keen, too, he was to get hold of her, becauseher rascally skipper, who had pretended to be his agent, had naturallynever paid over the purchase money.

  He rather foolishly asked Captain Lester whether he could be of anyassistance to him in his search for her; but this made the Skipper flareup and say that he hadn't orders to do anything, and "if he did getthem", he growled, "it was time enough when 'Old Lest'", as he alwayscalled himself, "had proved himself a blooming fool". I softened theSkipper's fierceness as much as I could, for Hoffman was evidently hard"hit" by his money loss, and, as he had lived all his life in China, Ithought that he very possibly would be of some assistance when we reallydid come to business.

  Well, at last, after we'd almost thought the Admiral had forgotten us,the _Ringdove_ did arrive, and little Rashleigh, her LieutenantCommander, came on board, purple in the face because he would wear hissword belt too tight, waved some official letters at me, and went downaft.

  It was not many minutes before I was sent for, heard the Skipper roaringto Rashleigh to "throw away that cabbage stalk he was smoking", and toWillum, "bring those eighteen-penny Havanas of mine", so knew, before Isaw him, that the news was good, and found him rubbing his handstogether and grunting with pleasure. "We've got to go for 'em,Truscott, got to go for 'em. The Admiral's sending me a couple moregunboats, as well as the _Ringdove_, and I'm to have a free hand. We'vegot to get back that yacht, and Old Lest will give 'em a lesson not tomeddle with the British flag. Umph!"

  As he went over his correspondence I saw him read a telegram and turnround furiously. "Dash my wig, Truscott, look here, here'simpertinence! What the dickens is the Service coming to?" and he handedit to me.

  I couldn't help laughing. It read, "Midshipman Rawlings chum mine wantscome _Vigilant_--Ford Midshipman," and was sent from Singapore.

  "Well, he's managed to get here somehow or other, sir."

  "Both of 'em, drat 'em! and brought that useless rubbish Morton with 'emtoo! Umph!"

  The Skipper was really angry, but I managed to smooth things down.

  "Pretty plucky thing to do, sir, and both Ford and Rawlings are nothalf-bad boys. They don't know much, of course, but will do well."

  "Umph!" he grunted. "Plucky, do you call it? I don't. I'll see themboth presently."

  It was lucky for them that the Admiral's letters had brought such goodnews. As a matter of fact, we fully expected that they would, and inthe meantime the Skipper had obtained a vast amount of information fromthe Taotai ashore, and had already roughly drawn out his scheme fordealing with the pirates.

  "If you want a good day's rabbiting," he said, "stop the holes, stop 'emup, Truscott."

  His main idea was that the pirates must have, somewhere in thearchipelago, a base from which they operated, where they repaired andrevictualled their ships, and where they warehoused their captured goodsbefore selling them. The authorities on the mainland had assured himthat no such depot existed on the mainland, so he only had thearchipelago to trouble about, and now he determined, first of all, toexamine every island. The archipelago is roughly divided into fivegreat groups, and his scheme was to examine each group, one at a time.The three gunboats and the _Huan Min_, which had been placed under hisorders by the Viceroy, were to do the exploring work, and he was goingto steam slowly, backwards and forwards to leeward, in order to catchanything that tried to escape. You must understand that junks can hardlybeat to wind'ard, and would fly "down" wind.

  His orders to Rashleigh and to the skippers of the other two gunboats,the _Sparrow_ and _Goldfinch_, which arrived a day or two later,were--"You fellows, go in and turn out the game, umph! and Old Lest'llbag it when it comes down to him;" and his orders were the same, thoughnot in those words, to the Captain of the _Huan Min_.

  Once the last gunboat had arrived, he did not lose any time, but weighedanchor the very next morning, and with the clumsy old black corvette andthe three little white gunboats puffing after him, steered for thenorth.

  He chose to examine the northerly group first, because the winds, atthat season of the year, always had a good deal of "northerly" in them,and, as I said before, junks beat to wind'ard so slowly that they wouldnever think of trying to escape in that way.

  A Ting Hai War Junk (from a photograph)]