Under the Dragon Flag My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War

CHAPTER I

The fol­low­ing nar­ra­tive is a record of my ex­pe­ri­ences dur­ing the late mem­orable war be­tween Chi­na and Japan. With­out go­ing in­to any de­tailed ac­count of my ear­li­er life, some few facts con­cern­ing my­self are prob­ably nec­es­sary for the bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the cir­cum­stances which led up to the events here pre­sent­ed. It will be ob­vi­ous that I can make no claim to lit­er­ary skill; I have sim­ply writ­ten down my ex­act and un­adorned re­mem­brance of in­ci­dents which I wit­nessed and took part in. Now it is all over I won­der more and more at the slight­ness of the haz­ard which sud­den­ly placed me at such a pe­ri­od in so strange an ex­pe­ri­ence.

I am the son of a Lan­cashire gen­tle­man who ac­cu­mu­lat­ed con­sid­er­able wealth in the cot­ton trade. He died when I was still a boy. I found my­self, when I came of age, the pos­ses­sor of up­wards of L80,000. Thus I start­ed in life as a man of for­tune; but it is due to my­self to say that I took prompt and ef­fec­tu­al mea­sures to clear my­self of that in­vid­ious char­ac­ter. Not to mince mat­ters need­less­ly, I ran through that eighty thou­sand pounds in some­thing short of four years. I was not in the least “horsey”; my sphere was the gai­eties of Paris and the gam­ing-​ta­bles of Monte Car­lo--a sphere which has made short work of for­tunes com­pared with which mine would be in­signif­icant. The pace was fast and fu­ri­ous; I threw out my bal­last lib­er­al­ly as I went along, and the harpies, male and fe­male, who sur­round­ed me, picked it up. Bright and fair enough was the prospect as I start­ed on the road to ru­in; gloomy the clouds that set­tled round me as I ap­proached that dis­mal ter­mi­nus. Then, when too late, I be­gan to re­gret my fol­ly. I seemed to wake as if from a dream, from a state of help­less in­fat­ua­tion, in which my acts were scarce­ly the ef­fect of my own vo­li­tion. The gen­er­al out-​look be­came de­cid­ed­ly un­invit­ing.

About eleven o'clock one spring night of the year 1892, I was stand­ing close to the rail­ings of the Whit­worth Park in my na­tive city of Manch­ester, to whose dull provin­cial shades I had re­tired at the en­forced close of my cred­itable ca­reer. I re­mem­ber that I was en­gaged in won­der­ing what on earth I could have done with all my mon­ey, the on­ly tan­gi­ble re­turn for which ap­peared to be an in­ti­mate and pe­cu­liar knowl­edge of the French lan­guage and of cer­tain un­de­sir­able phas­es of French life. The hour, as I have said, was late, and Moss Lane, the street in which I stood dis­con­so­late, dark and de­sert­ed. Present­ly there came along to­wards me a man whose un­cer­tain gait was strong­ly sug­ges­tive of the in­flu­ence of al­co­hol. He stopped up­on reach­ing me, and asked if I could di­rect him to Vic­to­ria Park. This is an ex­ten­sive se­mi-​pri­vate en­clo­sure, where num­bers of the plu­toc­ra­cy of Cot­to­nop­olis have their res­idences. One of its sev­er­al gates is near­ly op­po­site the spot where Moss Lane leads in­to Ox­ford Street, which fact I com­mu­ni­cat­ed to my ques­tion­er. To my sur­prise he, by way of ac­knowl­edg­ment, struck his hand in­to mine and shook it fer­vent­ly.

“Shake hands, shake hands,” he said; “that's right--you're talk­ing to a gen­tle­man, though you mightn't think it.”

I cer­tain­ly should not have thought it. He was a short, thick-​set man, of about five feet and two or three inch­es, shab­bi­ly dressed; and his un­steady lurch, swollen fea­tures, and odor­ous breath, told plain­ly of a heavy de­bauch. Amused by his man­ner, I en­tered in­to con­ver­sa­tion with him. He was, it ap­peared, a sailor, a Lan­cashire man, and, if he was to be be­lieved, very re­spectably con­nect­ed in Manch­ester. I gath­ered that he had end­ed a boy­hood of con­tu­ma­cy by run­ning away to sea, his peo­ple, though they had prac­ti­cal­ly dis­owned him, al­low­ing him a pound a week. This al­lowance had for some time past been stopped, and he was com­ing up in per­son to in­ves­ti­gate the why and where­fore. Hav­ing a week or two be­fore come off a voy­age at Liv­er­pool, he had at that port drawn L75 in pay, which he had spent in two days and nights of rev­el­ry, an as­ser­tion to which his per­son­al ap­pear­ance bore strong cor­rob­ora­tive tes­ti­mo­ny. He ap­peared, on the whole, to con­sid­er him­self an ex­ceed­ing­ly ill-​used per­son. “I'm a hout­cast,” he re­peat­ed­ly said. I asked him in what ca­pac­ity he served on ship­board. “A.B.,” he replied, “al­ways A.B.;” and cer­tain­ly, in speech and ap­pear­ance, he seemed noth­ing bet­ter than a fore­mast man, al­though, shak­ing hands with me again and again, he each time as­sev­er­at­ed that it was the hand of a gen­tle­man. At length he went on his way, and I stood watch­ing his re­ced­ing fig­ure as he reeled down the street. I was just turn­ing away, when I heard a loud out­cry; the “hout­cast,” about a hun­dred yards dis­tant, was hail­ing me. On what tri­fles does des­tiny de­pend! My first im­pulse was to walk off with­out tak­ing any no­tice of his shouts, and on the sim­ple de­ci­sion to stay and see what he want­ed, turned the whole fu­ture. It ap­peared that whilst talk­ing with me his ob­fus­cat­ed mind had lost the di­rec­tions I had giv­en him as to the lo­cal­ity of Vic­to­ria Park. Hav­ing noth­ing in par­tic­ular to do, I vol­un­teered to walk along with him, and keep him in the right di­rec­tion, and ac­cord­ing­ly we en­tered the park to­geth­er. With con­sid­er­able dif­fi­cul­ty, he found out the road and house he was in search of; I doubt if, with­out my aid, he would have found it at all in his then con­di­tion. He had not, he in­formed me, been in Manch­ester for years, and those he was look­ing up had changed their res­idence. The ex­te­ri­or of the place, when found, seemed to bear out his state­ment as to the so­cial po­si­tion of his rel­atives. I asked him what sort of re­cep­tion he thought he would get from them.

“He did not,” he replied, “care a d----n what it might be, but he was go­ing to see why they had stopped his quid, and no mis­take about it.”

He ex­tend­ed to me an in­vi­ta­tion to come in with him “and have a drink,” a cour­tesy which, need­less to say, I de­clined. He then left me, af­ter an­oth­er ve­he­ment hand­shak­ing, and pro­ceed­ed up the drive in front of the house. A feel­ing of cu­rios­ity to see what kind of greet­ing the drunk­en, wastrel “hout­cast” would com­mand from his folk, all un­con­scious of his dis­agree­able prox­im­ity to their em­inent­ly re­spectable res­idence, in­duced me to fol­low him. I paused at a point where, con­cealed by some shrub­bery, I had a view of the hall door, which, up­on my friend's ring­ing, was opened by a smart maid-​ser­vant. Sway­ing up and down on the steps in a most lu­di­crous man­ner, the “hout­cast” ad­dressed her, al­though I was too far off to make out the words, but to judge by her looks she felt no pre­pos­ses­sion in his favour. Af­ter a while she went away, leav­ing the door open and him stand­ing on the steps. In about a minute a stout, mid­dle-​aged gen­tle­man ap­peared from the bright­ly-​light­ed hall, his whole as­pect pre­sent­ing the strongest pos­si­ble con­trast to that of the seedy mariner. The con­fer­ence be­tween them was brief and an­gry, and ter­mi­nat­ed with the gen­tle­man's re­turn­ing with­in and slam­ming the door in the oth­er's face, who, with his hands in his pock­ets, stood for some time plant­ed where he was, star­ing at the _vis­age de bois_ as if dum­found­ed. Then he ap­plied him­self vig­or­ous­ly to the bell, and pulled with might and main. This course of treat­ment hav­ing no ef­fect, he com­menced shout­ing a se­ries of ob­jur­ga­tions much too vig­or­ous to be here set down. No re­sponse, of course, was forth­com­ing, and at length the dis­com­fit­ed vis­itor turned slow­ly away from the in­hos­pitable man­sion. I re­joined him as he stag­gered past me. He showed no sur­prise at see­ing me again, but con­tent­ed him­self with sim­ply ask­ing me where the ---- I had been. From what he said in an­swer to my ques­tions, it ap­peared that they had had the bru­tal­ity to tell him to call when he was sober,--“as if,” said he, with a good many curs­es, “I wasn't sober enough for them. Wouldn't even give me a night's shel­ter. But it's al­ways how they've treat­ed me--a hout­cast, that's what I am--a hout­cast.”

Ap­par­ent­ly hard hit, the “hout­cast,” who for the time be­ing cer­tain­ly had some grounds for so styling him­self, leaned with his back against the gate, as if the ef­fort to stand up­right was too much for him on the top of his re­cent dis­ap­point­ment. His plight was un­doubt­ed­ly pitiable. He had no mon­ey, it was well af­ter mid­night, the city was dis­tant, and more­over the search for a lodg­ing would in his con­di­tion be a mat­ter of time and dif­fi­cul­ty. Tak­ing pity on his for­lorn state, I of­fered him the shel­ter of my own roof for the night, an of­fer he was not slow to ac­cept, re­mark­ing that one gen­tle­man should help an­oth­er; and that if I had any “tidy brandy” he would be able to get on well enough un­til to-​mor­row. So we set out for my lodg­ings in Ce­cil Street.

This chance meet­ing was the be­gin­ning of a long and in­ti­mate ac­quain­tance. In the course of con­ver­sa­tion I dis­closed to Charles Web­ster--such was his name--the des­per­ate state of my af­fairs, with the gloomy prospect they en­tailed. The rem­edy he pro­posed--and when sober he spoke well and sen­si­bly--was dras­tic and by no means un­fea­si­ble. “Cut it all and go to sea,” he said. “You've en­joyed your­self while your mon­ey last­ed, and what's the good of mon­ey but to spend? You've spent yours--now go to sea and get some more. That's how I do--have a reg­ular good blow-​out when I draw my pay, and then ship for an­oth­er voy­age.”

“That is all very well for you,” I replied, “but how can I, with­out ei­ther train­ing or ex­pe­ri­ence, get a berth on board ship?”

“I can do it for you,” replied Web­ster. “Lots of ves­sels are or­dered to sea in a hur­ry, and not par­tic­ular in pick­ing up a crew, or per­haps a tri­fle over-​load­ed or not prop­er­ly found, and short-​hand­ed in con­se­quence. That's the sort of craft I'd look out for you, and if one wouldn't take you, an­oth­er would. I'd tog you out like an A.B., and swear you knew your du­ty.”

“And what when they found I didn't?”

“Wouldn't mat­ter a straw when we were afloat. All they could do would be to d----n my eyes or yours and make the best of it. It's done ev­ery day. Cer­tifi­cates go for noth­ing, they're so eas­ily ob­tained. When the voy­age was over, you'd be up to a thing or two, and the skip­per would rather sign your pa­pers than be at the both­er of go­ing and swear­ing you weren't a thor­ough sea­man; then you could get an­oth­er job with­out me. It's done con­stant­ly, I tell you, and why not? No­body can do any­thing with­out learn­ing. You take a trip with me, and I'll make a sailor of you. You've stood by me like a gen­tle­man, and I'll give you a lift if I can.”

Well, to cut the sto­ry short, I re­solved, af­ter some cog­ita­tion, to fol­low his ad­vice, as, in the cir­cum­stances to which I had con­trived to re­duce my­self, I saw noth­ing bet­ter to do. My in­tro­duc­tion to a sea­far­ing life was ef­fect­ed pret­ty much on the lines in­di­cat­ed in the fore­go­ing con­ver­sa­tion. The change from the ex­is­tence of a volup­tuary, squan­der­ing thou­sands on the wan­ton plea­sure of the mo­ment, to that of a com­mon sailor, was at first any­thing but agree­able, and of­ten and bit­ter­ly did I curse the fol­lies of the past. How­ev­er, we learn from ex­pe­ri­ence, and prob­ably I have prof­it­ed by the un­palat­able les­son. Web­ster was a firm al­ly, and showed that de­spite his dis­so­lute and reck­less mode of liv­ing, he re­al­ly did pos­sess some­thing of the char­ac­ter which he claimed, that of a gen­tle­man. Un­der his tu­ition, and be­ing more­over, like Cud­die Head­rigg, “gleg at the up­tak,” I made rapid progress in knowl­edge.

We made sev­er­al voy­ages to­geth­er. In the sum­mer of the year 1894 we were in San Fran­cis­co, and rather at a loose end; Web­ster with a good deal of mon­ey in his pos­ses­sion, and spend­ing it as usu­al in ri­otous liv­ing. We were in­ti­mate at this time with a man named Fran­cis Chubb, an Aus­tralian by birth, an able sea­man, and a very reck­less, dar­ing, and res­olute char­ac­ter. To him it is ow­ing that I have this tale to tell. One night as we were sit­ting over our pota­tions, he made us a sin­gu­lar com­mu­ni­ca­tion and a sin­gu­lar propo­si­tion. A ship­per and mer­chant of the place, by whom he had of­ten been em­ployed, had, he said, asked him if he was open to run a car­go of war­like stores for the use of the Chi­nese sol­diers in the strug­gle which had just bro­ken out, there be­ing ru­mours that the Chi­na­men were ill-​pre­pared for a con­test, and bad­ly in need of sup­plies. Chubb added that he had prac­ti­cal­ly closed with the of­fer, and was look­ing about for men whom he could de­pend up­on to join him in the en­ter­prise, which his em­ploy­er, fore­see­ing from the turn events were tak­ing that the Chi­nese ports were like­ly soon to be block­ad­ed, meant as a “feel­er” to test the fa­cil­ities for, and the prof­it like­ly to arise from, the or­ga­ni­za­tion of a sys­tem for sup­ply­ing those mu­ni­tions of war of which the Ce­les­tials were stat­ed to be in want, some large or­ders be­ing al­leged to have been lodged with Amer­ican firms on their be­half. Chubb was to com­mand the ves­sel, and he of­fered to Web­ster and my­self the posts of first and sec­ond hands. The re­mu­ner­ation was very hand­some, and we, not ad­verse to the prospect of a lit­tle ad­ven­ture, had lit­tle hes­ita­tion in clos­ing with the pro­pos­al, much to Chubb's sat­is­fac­tion, who said we were “just the sort he want­ed.” His em­ploy­er, Mr. H----, I no soon­er heard named, than I re­mem­bered to have heard de­scribed as a very keen hand, and not over-​scrupu­lous.

The ves­sel which he placed at our dis­pos­al was a screw steam­er of about 2000 tons, long, low, and sharp; an ex­ceed­ing­ly fast boat, ca­pa­ble of do­ing her twen­ty knots an hour even when heav­ily laden, as, in a des­per­ate emer­gen­cy, we were soon to find out. Ar­ti­cles signed, our car­go was pro­cured and shipped--can­non, ri­fles, re­volvers, car­tridges, fus­es, medicines, etc., etc. We cleared with­out dif­fi­cul­ty, weighed, stood out, and laid our course straight across the North Pa­cif­ic.

Our ship, the _Columbia_, proved a beau­ty, in ev­ery way fit for the risky busi­ness we were en­gaged up­on. Need­less to say she had not on­ly been se­lect­ed for speed, but was ren­dered in ap­pear­ance as un­ob­tru­sive as pos­si­ble. Be­sides ly­ing low in the wa­ter, she was paint­ed a dead grey, fun­nels and all. The sort of coal we used, an­thracite, burned with very lit­tle smoke, and even that lit­tle was ob­vi­at­ed, as we ap­proached the seat of war, by a hood on the smoke-​stack. She slipped through the wa­ter silent­ly and noise­less­ly as one of its nat­ural denizens, and on a dark night, with all lights out, could hard­ly have been per­ceived, even at a short dis­tance, from the deck of an­oth­er ves­sel.

With­out the ship's log to re­fer to, I can­not be cer­tain of dates and dis­tances, but it was in the lat­ter days of Au­gust that we were steam­ing up the Yel­low Sea, where, by the way, the wa­ter is _bluer_ than I have ev­er seen it else­where. In some places it presents, on a moon­lit night, the ap­pear­ance of liq­ue­fied ul­tra­ma­rine, though it cer­tain­ly is mud­dy enough about the coasts. Our des­ti­na­tion was Tientsin, one of the most north­ern of the treaty ports, and of course we kept in with the Chi­nese main­land as close­ly as pos­si­ble to avoid the Japanese cruis­ers. All had gone well, and we were fast ap­proach­ing the en­trance to the Gulf of Pechili, when we en­coun­tered one of those tem­pests which are on­ly to be met with in the East­ern seas--pitch-​black dark­ness, rain in one sheet­ed flood, like a sec­ond Del­uge, blind­ing flash­es of forked light­ning more ter­rif­ic than the gloom, and an al­most un­in­ter­rupt­ed crash of thun­der amidst which the up­roar of a pitched field would be in­audi­ble. With our enor­mous steam-​pow­er we held our own for a while al­though un­able to make much head­way; but at last a tremen­dous sea took us right abeam on the port side; the main hatch had been left open, a small Ni­agara poured down it, and doused our fires. No can­vas would have stood the hur­ri­cane that was blow­ing, and for some time we were in a se­ri­ous way. Be­fore our en­gines, which for­tu­nate­ly held firm, were work­ing again, we had drift­ed help­less­ly over to the Core­an coast, and it was all we could do to claw off-​shore un­til the tem­pest abat­ed, which it did very sud­den­ly, as it had risen.

As the wind fell, we ran un­der the lee of an is­land, ob­long, high, and thick­ly wood­ed, not far from a heavy promon­to­ry of the coast. Here we lay for two or three hours re­pair­ing dam­ages. Of course we had no ac­cu­rate idea where­abouts we had got to, but we reck­oned that we could not be far from Chemulpo, a very un­de­sir­able neigh­bour­hood from our point of view, as the port was in the hands of the Japanese, who were en­gaged in land­ing troops there, and whose armed ships would of course be in the vicin­ity. It was, there­fore, nec­es­sary for us to spend as lit­tle time there­about as pos­si­ble. As soon as things were ship-​shape once more--and luck­ily for our­selves we had sus­tained no re­al in­jury--steam was got up to re­gain our for­mer course. It was al­ready quite dark as we passed out from be­neath the land; two bells in the first night-​watch, or nine o'clock, had just struck. Tru­ly that was a case of out of the fry­ing-​pan in­to the fire, for no soon­er had we round­ed the ex­trem­ity of the is­land than we found our­selves in most un­pleas­ant prox­im­ity to a ship of war. I was alone on the bridge at the time, and at once caused the en­gines to be re­versed, in the hope of slip­ping back be­hind the land from the cov­er of which we had just emerged. Too late; we were per­ceived, and the cruis­er's search-​light blazed forth, il­lu­mi­nat­ing the dark wa­ters, sky, and coast­line with a vivid glare. Si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly we were hailed loud­ly, al­though the dis­tance was too great to per­mit of the words be­ing dis­tin­guished, keen­ly as I strained my ears to catch them.

See­ing that we were de­tect­ed, and know­ing that the ap­pear­ance of flight would in­crease sus­pi­cion, I stopped the steam­er, de­vout­ly hop­ing that our un­wel­come neigh­bour might be a de­tached ves­sel of some Eu­ro­pean squadron. That she could be Chi­nese there was lit­tle hope, as we were aware that the Ce­les­tial fleet was in the Gulf of Pechili. Al­most be­fore our en­gines were stopped, one of the cruis­er's boats was in the wa­ter and danc­ing to­wards us. Chubb and Web­ster ran up from be­low, and as we await­ed the boat, we un­easi­ly spec­ulat­ed as to the char­ac­ter of the craft that had despatched it, as she lay with­in a quar­ter of a mile of us, the white muz­zles of the guns in her tops and tur­ret seem­ing, as she rolled with the swell, to dip in the wave. Formidable in­deed she looked, and there was an ev­ident stir of of­fen­sive prepa­ra­tion on board her; yet in spite of our dan­ger, I could not re­sist a feel­ing of sur­prised and won­der­ing ad­mi­ra­tion of the wild pic­turesque­ness of the scene--the ma­jes­tic war­ship, the glit­ter­ing, rolling ex­panse of the sea, and the black lines of the shores, un­der that in­tense and vivid ra­di­ance, which might fit­ly have em­anat­ed from one of those phan­tom-​craft with which mar­itime su­per­sti­tion peo­ples the deep. Ev­ery­thing it touched took a ghost­ly and un­re­al look.

There was rather a heavy sea on, and the boat took some while to reach us. At length, how­ev­er, she was along­side, and then came clam­ber­ing up a lit­tle lieu­tenant, who dis­played to our dis­mayed vi­sion all the phys­ical pe­cu­liar­ities of the Japanese. He ad­dressed us in En­glish, a lan­guage bet­ter un­der­stood than any oth­er amongst the Mika­do's sub­jects.

“You are Amer­ican?” he asked, point­ing to the star-​span­gled ban­ner on the pole-​mast. “What is the name of your ves­sel?”

We in­formed him, and re­ceived in re­turn that of the war­ship, but in our con­ster­na­tion we paid lit­tle heed to it, and none of us could af­ter­wards re­mem­ber it. The lieu­tenant pro­ceed­ed to ques­tion us as to our busi­ness, speak­ing very cred­itable En­glish. We had pre­vi­ous­ly agreed that in such a dilem­ma we should de­scribe our car­go as con­sist­ing of salt, rice, and cloth stuffs, and we had tak­en the pre­cau­tion to ship a quan­ti­ty of those com­modi­ties, in bales and casks which were three parts full of car­tridges to econ­omize space, be­sides hav­ing fic­ti­tious in­voic­es, etc. These valu­able tes­ti­mo­ni­als Chubb, who was out­ward­ly as cool as ice, read­ily pro­duced when the of­fi­cer de­mand­ed to see our pa­pers. He scru­ti­nized ev­ery­thing care­ful­ly, and, still dis­sat­is­fied, said he would in­spect our car­go. Of course we could not ob­ject, and blank in­deed were our looks as the en­emy walked over to the side to call up two or three of his boat's crew to as­sist him in the in­qui­si­tion.

“Nev­er mind,” said Chubb, “it's not all up with us yet, and it won't be even if he finds out what we have aboard.”

“What shall we do then?” asked Web­ster and I.

“Sling them over­board and run for it,” said Chubb; and I knew by his de­ter­mined air that he meant what he said.

“What! from un­der those guns?” said Web­ster.

There was no time for more. The Japanese lieu­tenant, with his men, re­joined us, and mo­tioned us to lead the way be­low. We com­plied, and in­tro­duced them to our “car­go,” the bar­rels ly­ing ev­ery­where three or four deep above the con­tra­band of war. How con­sum­ing was our anx­iety as they poked about! Things went well enough for a while; they nev­er pen­etrat­ed in­to the casks which they caused to be opened deep enough to find the car­tridges, or hoist­ed out enough of them to come at what was be­neath. Our spir­its were be­gin­ning to rise, when an un­lucky ac­ci­dent sent them down to ze­ro. The hoops of one of the bar­rels han­dled were in­se­cure, and com­ing off, the staves fell apart, and along with a de­fen­sive cov­er­ing of slabs of salt, a neat as­sort­ment of re­volver car­tridges came tum­bling out. The Japanese lieu­tenant smiled till his lit­tle oblique op­tics were scarce­ly per­cep­ti­ble.

“Very good,” said he, pick­ing up one of the pack­ages; “very nice--nice to eat.”

We were thun­der­struck, and had not a word to say. All was up now, of course; the Japs pros­ecut­ed the search with re­newed keen­ness, and the na­ture of our lad­ing soon stood re­vealed.

“I shall be obliged to de­tain this ship, gen­tle­men,” said the lieu­tenant po­lite­ly, to Web­ster and my­self. “Where has your cap­tain gone?”

I looked round for Chubb; he was not vis­ible.

“I sup­pose he must have gone on deck,” said I.

The lieu­tenant and his men hur­ried up, Web­ster and I fol­low­ing. Chubb was con­fer­ring with a group of the sailors. The search-​light was still flar­ing away, and I was hor­ri­fied to see that our formidable neigh­bour had crept up to with­in two or three hun­dred yards. The lieu­tenant walked sharply to the side, and shout­ed some di­rec­tions to the boat's crew. The words were scarce­ly out of his mouth when I heard Chubb say, “Now.” The men with whom he had been speak­ing rushed up­on the Japanese, seized them, and in the twin­kling of an eye hove them over­board in­to their boat, or as near it as they could be aimed in the hur­ry of the mo­ment. Si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly “Full speed ahead” was rung from the bridge, and the steam­er sprang for­ward as the hare springs from the jaws of the hound. For a mo­ment there was no sound ex­cept the rush of the wa­ter foam­ing at the bows. Then the war­ship opened fire on us. Gun af­ter gun re­sound­ed, and we held our breath as the pon­der­ous shot hur­tled past us. The first few were wide of the mark, but we were not long to go scathe­less. One of the ter­ri­ble pro­jec­tiles struck the wa­ter by the star­board quar­ter, rose over the side with a tremen­dous ric­ochet, bowled over one of the men, and smashed the top of the op­po­site bul­wark. Im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter an­oth­er tore trans­verse­ly across the decks, play­ing, as Chubb af­ter­wards said, “all-​fired smash” with ev­ery­thing it en­coun­tered, and killing an­oth­er of the men, who was cut lit­er­al­ly in two, the up­per por­tion of his body be­ing car­ried over­board, the low­er half re­main­ing on the deck.

“He's mad,” roared Web­ster, mean­ing Chubb; “we ain't go­ing to be sunk to please him,” and he rushed on the bridge to put a stop to our flight.

Chubb in­ter­posed to pre­vent him; they closed, grap­pled to­geth­er, and fi­nal­ly fell off the bridge, still strug­gling.

The cruis­er had to stop to pick up her boat, and the de­lay prob­ably saved us; we must, more­over, have been a very un­cer­tain mark in the un­nat­ural light, which doubt­less would be no aid to gun­nery prac­tice. On we tore, with the steam-​gauge un­com­fort­ably near dan­ger point; the war­ship in hot pur­suit, look­ing, wreathed as she was in the smoke and flame of her fierce­ly worked guns, and the elec­tric glare of the vivid shaft which still turned night in­to day, more like some fab­ulous sea-​mon­ster than a fab­ric con­trived by man. She plied us with both shot and shell; one of the lat­ter burst in the air over our bows; two men were killed and sev­er­al in­jured by the frag­ments. We were struck nine or ten times in all, but they were glanc­ing blows, which nev­er fair­ly hulled us. Chubb held on res­olute­ly; we in­creased our dis­tance fast, and at length ran out of range. Nev­er be­fore had I felt so thank­ful as when those fear­ful pro­jec­tiles be­gan to fall short. From that point we were safe. We were five knots bet­ter than our pur­suer, and the on­ly dan­ger lay in the chance that some oth­er cruis­er, at­tract­ed by the fir­ing, might be brought across the line of our flight. None, how­ev­er, ap­peared, and our great speed dropped the en­emy long be­fore day­light.

The dam­age to the ship was con­fined to the up­per works, and could soon be put to rights, but five of the crew had been killed and twice that num­ber wound­ed, and un­used to such work as I was, I felt strong­ly in­clined to blame Chubb for in­cur­ring this sac­ri­fice of life for what ap­peared to me an in­ad­equate ob­ject. He laughed it away.

“They take the risk,” said he, “they know it, and they are well paid for it. We've saved ship and car­go; that's all old H---- will think about, and all we need care for.”

It was far, how­ev­er, from be­ing all I cared for as I looked up­on the man­gled corpses late­ly filled with life and vigour. I had em­barked on the en­ter­prise in a spir­it of lev­ity and care­less­ness, re­flect­ing lit­tle on what it might en­tail, and there was some­thing shock­ing in thus sud­den­ly com­ing face to face with the dread re­al­ity of war. But what­ev­er may have been the source of the feel­ing, it soon passed away, and when the dead had been sewed up in their ham­mocks and laid to their last rest in the deep--a cer­emo­ny we per­formed the day af­ter our es­cape--Richard was him­self again, and the old care­less buoy­an­cy swelled up once more.

Prayer-​books had been omit­ted in our out­fit, and we were at a loss for the buri­al ser­vice. How­ev­er, we laid our heads, or rather our mem­ories to­geth­er, and most of us be­ing able to rec­ol­lect a scrap of it here and there, we con­trived to patch it up suf­fi­cient­ly to give our un­for­tu­nate ship­mates Chris­tian buri­al. I should men­tion that an­oth­er of the wound­ed men died af­ter our ar­rival at Tientsin, and was in­terred in the En­glish ceme­tery. He was the man who was first hit; his name was Massinger, and he claimed to be a de­scen­dant of the drama­tist. He was known on board chiefly as “Hair-​oil,” from his ad­dic­tion to plas­ter­ing his bushy black hair with some shiny and odor­ous com­pound of that na­ture. Both his legs were bro­ken by the shot that struck him.

As to my friend Web­ster, adorned with a black eye, he nev­er ceased, dur­ing the re­main­der of the voy­age, to de­claim against Chubb's fool­har­di­ness and up­hold his own pro­ceed­ings on the event­ful night. For his own dis­com­fi­ture he sought con­so­la­tion in rum, protest­ing that it was a mir­acle that any of us had sur­vived to taste an­oth­er drop of that liq­uid com­forter.

“But I'm a hout­cast,” he would wind up in­vari­ably, as his pota­tions over­came him; “that's where it is--who cares what a ---- hout­cast thinks?”

Chubb took no fur­ther no­tice of him than to laugh­ing­ly threat­en to put him un­der ar­rest for mutiny. It must not be sup­posed that the “hout­cast's” be­haviour on the oc­ca­sion in ques­tion was due to any want of courage. Es­cape seemed im­pos­si­ble; the risk of the at­tempt was tremen­dous, and I am con­vinced that if the mat­ter had been left to my own judg­ment, I should not have dared it. But Chubb was one of those men whom noth­ing can daunt, and who are nev­er more com­plete­ly in their el­ement than when run­ning some des­per­ate haz­ard.