Under the Dragon Flag My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War by Allan, James - CHAPTER VII

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

CHAPTER VII

A very queer craft is a Chi­nese junk. Few Eu­ro­peans have any de­fined idea what they are like. They are of dif­fer­ent sizes, most of them suit­ed to the nu­mer­ous rivers and canals which in­ter­sect the coun­try in ev­ery part. The largest are of about one thou­sand tons bur­den. The whole mode of build­ing is most pe­cu­liar. In­stead of the tim­bers be­ing first raised as with us, they are the last in their places, and the ves­sel is put to­geth­er with im­mense spiked nails. The next pro­cess is dou­bling and clamp­ing above and be­low decks. Two im­mense beams or string pieces are then ranged be­low, fore and aft, and keep the oth­er beams in their places. The deck-​frames are an arch, and a plat­form erect­ed on it pro­tects it from the sun, and from oth­er in­juries oth­er­wise in­evitable. The seams are caulked ei­ther with old fish­ing-​net or bam­boo shav­ings, and then paid with a ce­ment called chi­nam, con­sist­ing of oys­ter-​shells burnt to lime, with a mix­ture of fine bam­boo shav­ings, pound­ed to­geth­er with a veg­etable oil ex­tract­ed from a ground nut. When dried it be­comes ex­ces­sive­ly hard; it nev­er starts, and the seams thus se­cured are per­fect­ly safe and wa­ter-​tight. All the work about her is of the rough­est kind. The trees when found of a suit­able size are cut down, stripped of their bark, and sawn in­to con­ve­nient lengths; the sides are not squared, but left just as they grew. No ar­ti­fi­cial means are re­sort­ed to for any bends; a tree or branch of a tree is found with the req­ui­site nat­ural cur­va­ture. There is not in the build­ing, rig­ging, or fit­ting-​up of a Chi­nese junk one sin­gle thing which is sim­ilar to what we see on board a Eu­ro­pean ves­sel. Ev­ery­thing is dif­fer­ent; the mode of con­struc­tion; the ab­sence of keel, bowsprit, and shrouds; the ma­te­ri­als em­ployed; the mast, the sails, the yard, the rud­der, the com­pass, the an­chor--all are dis­sim­ilar.

The ves­sel in which I now found my­self, the _King-​Shing_, was of about sev­en hun­dred tons. She was built en­tire­ly of teak, and her skip­per, or Ty Kong, as he is called, al­leged that she was more than a hun­dred years old, and said that one of her crew who had re­cent­ly died, had served in her for fifty years. Her ex­treme length was one hun­dred and six­ty feet; breadth of beam, twen­ty-​five feet and a half; depth of hold, twelve feet; height of poop from the wa­ter, thir­ty-​eight feet; height of bow, thir­ty feet. Her most at­trac­tive por­tion was the sa­loon, or state cab­in, the beau­ty of whose fur­ni­ture and dec­ora­tions formed a cu­ri­ous con­trast to the rude and rough work­man­ship of the cab­in it­self. Its carved and gild­ed en­trance was pro­tect­ed by a sort of sky­light, the sides of which were formed of the pre­pared oys­ter-​shells so com­mon­ly used in Chi­na in­stead of glass, the lat­ter be­ing too ex­pen­sive for gen­er­al pur­pos­es. The en­clo­sure was thir­ty feet long, twen­ty-​five broad, and eleven in height. From the beams over­head were sus­pend­ed num­bers of the dif­fer­ent kinds of lanterns used in Chi­na. They were of ev­ery imag­in­able form, size, and va­ri­ety of ma­te­ri­al. The sides and deck-​roof were of a yel­low ground, and cov­ered with paint­ings of flow­ers, leaves, fruit, in­sects, birds, mon­keys, dogs, and cats; some of those lat­ter an­imals were what in heraldic lan­guage would be called _queue-​fourchee_. The place was filled with a vast as­sort­ment of cu­ri­ous and beau­ti­ful ar­ti­cles, gath­ered to­geth­er dur­ing the long ex­is­tence of the ves­sel. To give a list of them would re­quire pages; brought to Eu­rope they would have made the rep­uta­tions of a dozen mu­se­ums.

At the end of the sa­loon was the Joss-​house, or idol-​house, con­tain­ing the idol Chin-​Tee, hav­ing eigh­teen arms, with her at­ten­dants, Tung-​Sam and Tung-​See. The rich­ly-​gilt idol was made of one sol­id piece of cam­phor-​wood, and had a red scarf thrown round it. An al­tar-​ta­ble, al­so of cam­phor-​wood, and paint­ed red, stood in front of the Joss-​house, with an in­cense burn­er placed up­on it. The red ground of the ta­ble had gilt carv­ings of flow­ers and in­sects, and the im­pe­ri­al drag­ons with the ball of flame be­tween them. On each side of the front was a square place paint­ed green, with words in Chi­nese invit­ing wor­ship­pers to bring gold and agate stones as of­fer­ings.

The sleep­ing berths of the crew were all _aft_, on a low­er deck. Close by these was the most as­ton­ish­ing part of the ves­sel, the colos­sal rud­der, not hung with pin­tles and gud­geons, the ves­sel hav­ing no stern-​post, but sus­pend­ed to two wind­lass­es by three large ropes made of cane and hemp; one round a wind­lass on the next deck, and two round a wind­lass on the up­per deck of all, so that it could be raised or low­ered ac­cord­ing to the depth of wa­ter. When low­ered to its full ex­tent it drew about twen­ty-​four feet, be­ing twelve feet more than the draught of the ves­sel. It was steered on this berth-​deck when ful­ly low­ered. It was al­so drawn close in­to the stern, in­to a kind of sock­et, by means of two im­mense bam­boo ropes at­tached to the bot­tom of the rud­der, pass­ing be­neath the bot­tom of the ves­sel, and com­ing over the bow on the up­per deck, and there hove in taut and fas­tened. When let down to its great­est depth it re­quired oc­ca­sion­al­ly the strength of fif­teen men to move the large tiller.

On as­cend­ing to the next deck, one passed un­der a cov­er­ing made of oys­ter-​shells, sim­ilar to that over the en­trance to the sa­loon; un­der this hung a flag which had been borne be­fore the Em­per­or on one of the most solemn re­li­gious pro­ces­sions. On a piece of wood near one of the wind­lass­es was in­scribed--“May the sea nev­er wash over this junk.” Close by was the sailors' Joss-​house, con­tain­ing the de­ity of the sea with her two at­ten­dants, each with a red scarf. Near the prin­ci­pal god­dess was a piece of the wood from the first tim­ber of the junk that was laid; this was tak­en to one of their prin­ci­pal tem­ples, there con­se­crat­ed, and then brought on board, and placed as sym­bol­ic of the whole ves­sel's be­ing un­der the pro­tec­tion of the de­ity. A small earth­en pot, con­tain­ing sa­cred earth and rice, stood in front, in which Joss-​sticks and oth­er in­cense was burnt. A light­ed lamp, too, was here al­ways kept burn­ing; if it had gone out dur­ing a voy­age it would have been con­sid­ered an omen of bad luck. On the right and left, be­fore com­ing to this Joss-​house, were paint­ings. One pan­el rep­re­sent­ed the Man­darin Ducks; an­oth­er, a Chi­nese la­dy at her toi­lette; a third, a globe of gold-​fish. On this deck were cab­ins for pas­sen­gers and su­per­car­goes, the doors paint­ed with dif­fer­ent de­vices. Above was the lofty poop-​deck, with one of the rud­der-​wind­lass­es on it, and the mizzen-​mast, fifty feet long, and placed on one side, in or­der to al­low the tiller to work when in shal­low wa­ter. The main-​mast was nine­ty-​five feet in length, and ten feet in cir­cum­fer­ence at the bot­tom. It was one spar of teak, and just as the tree grew with mere­ly the bark tak­en off. It was not per­fect­ly straight--a de­fect with us, but not so con­sid­ered by the Chi­nese, who pre­fer a mast with a bend in it to one with­out, think­ing it adds to the strength, and is con­clu­sive ev­idence of the good­ness of the spar. This mast was hooped round, in con­se­quence of be­ing cracked while un­der­go­ing the pro­cess of hard­en­ing. The mode adopt­ed for this pur­pose by the Chi­nese is to bury the tim­ber for a con­sid­er­able time in marshy ground; thus treat­ed, they say teak be­comes hard as iron. The mast did not go with­in four feet of the bot­tom--the ship hav­ing no kel­son--but, to use the tech­ni­cal term, was “tog­gled” to two large pieces of wood which an­swered as part­ners. To these were added two oth­er heavy pieces as chocks, which were in­tend­ed to keep the huge spars in their places. Nei­ther stays nor shrouds were used. The main yards were made of teak quite rough; the up­per one was sev­en­ty-​five feet long, and the low­er six­ty.

The sails were made of close­ly-​wo­ven mat­ting, a sub­stance much lighter than can­vas. It holds the wind bet­ter, and rarely splits, be­cause it nev­er shakes in the wind. So large and heavy was the main­sail of the _King-​Shing_, that it re­quired forty men with the aid of the cap­stan to raise it. With­out the cap­stan eighty men would have been need­ed. It had eigh­teen reefs. The sails were reefed by be­ing low­ered, which pre­clud­ed any ne­ces­si­ty for go­ing aloft.

The vane was in the shape of a fish, the body formed of rat­tan work, the head and gills of paint­ed mat­ting, with two pro­jec­tions like the an­ten­nae of a but­ter­fly. The tail was fur­nished with long stream­ers, and lit­tle flags were stuck in the body for ad­di­tion­al or­na­ment. There were al­so Chi­nese char­ac­ters paint­ed on the body sig­ni­fy­ing “Good luck to the Junk.” Be­tween the main-​mast and fore-​mast were two large rough wind­lass­es stretch­ing across the deck, and used for get­ting up the an­chor. By the en­trance to the fore­cas­tle were two wa­ter-​tanks, ca­pa­ble of hold­ing one thou­sand five hun­dred gal­lons each. The fore-​mast was sev­en­ty-​five feet from the deck. It raked for­ward, and was sup­port­ed by a large piece of wood on the af­ter part, and se­cured sim­ilar­ly to the main-​mast. The an­chors were of wood, the flukes shod with iron, and at­tached to the shank by strong lash­ings of bam­boo. The stock was com­posed of three sep­arate pieces of wood lashed to­geth­er by rat­tan ropes, and was fixed to the crown. As the Chi­nese drag their an­chors on board in­stead of cat­ting and fish­ing as oth­er sea­men do, this po­si­tion of the stock of­fers no im­ped­iment. The flukes were of the same di­men­sions as those of sim­ilar sized an­chors with us; they were straight and not round­ed, and there were no palms. There was al­so a kedge, with on­ly one fluke. The ca­bles were of rat­tan. The junk had no bitts, but to sup­ply their place the strong beams across the deck had large holes for stop­pers. The “wales” formed an­oth­er sin­gu­lar fea­ture of the ves­sel--air­tight box­es, pro­ject­ing three feet from the side; their ob­ject was to make the ves­sel more buoy­ant, to en­able her to car­ry more car­go, and pre­vent her rolling, but this last, in my opin­ion, was chiefly pre­vent­ed by the size and po­si­tion of the rud­der.

The cook-​house was placed dif­fer­ent­ly from the gal­leys of Eu­ro­pean ves­sels, be­ing aft of the main-​mast. The low­er part was built of brick, with two square holes in front for the fires. Troughs of wa­ter were placed in front of these holes, so that any ig­nit­ed fu­el that might drop out would be at once ex­tin­guished. Wood was the fu­el used. For cook­ing they used iron pans sur­round­ed by red tiles. One was cov­ered by a kind of half cask; this was used for boil­ing the rice, the cov­er be­ing to pre­serve the steam af­ter the wa­ter was boiled away, which caus­es the rice to be beau­ti­ful­ly done and not sod­dened, as is of­ten the case in our cook­ing. It al­so pre­vents it from be­ing thrown out when the ves­sel rolls. The quan­ti­ty of rice for each man was about three pounds dai­ly. All wash­ing of dish­es, etc., was per­formed on a stage out­side the gal­ley so that it might be kept per­fect­ly clean. The prop­er al­lowance for each mess was de­liv­ered in front. Close to the cook-​house was a wa­ter-​tank of wood, paint­ed in im­ita­tion of bricks, and ca­pa­ble of hold­ing three thou­sand gal­lons.

Such was the _King-​Shing_ junk, and such are most of the craft of the Ce­les­tials. They would ap­pear to be grad­ual­ly com­ing round to West­ern ideas in the mat­ter of ships, and in fact have done so en­tire­ly for war pur­pos­es, but the fash­ions of their an­ces­tors are still good enough for most of them, and the junk is to be seen ev­ery­where. Not a mere thing of yes­ter­day is the junk. Ves­sels es­sen­tial­ly sim­ilar to the one I have de­scribed were nav­igat­ing the Chi­nese seas and rivers when the fleets of Rome and Carthage were con­test­ing the suprema­cy of the Mediter­ranean, and long be­fore. Rome and Carthage, and many an­oth­er mighty mar­itime pow­er, have risen and passed away ut­ter­ly, like bub­bles, or dreams, but the Chi­na­man and his ev­er­last­ing junk are still here.

The ves­sel be­longed to some man­darins at Shang­hai, who used it for trad­ing to Cochin-​Chi­na. It had re­cent­ly, how­ev­er, been despatched with a car­go to Cheefoo, had been blown away north by a gale, and forced to run in­to the har­bour at Port Arthur to es­cape the Japanese. There it had lain un­til the place fell. The crew num­bered fifty-​four, all told.

Af­ter float­ing off the sand-​bank, and get­ting an off­ing, we were with­in the Gulf of Pechili, and de­ter­mined to make for one or oth­er of its ports, but on the first day we en­coun­tered a very heavy nor'-west­er, which blew us far out of the Gulf. When, af­ter last­ing a day and a night, the gale abat­ed, we were well down the Yel­low Sea, and the skip­per, or Ty Kong, whose name was Sam-​Sing, de­ter­mined to hold on for the port where the junk's own­ers dwelt. I had no ob­jec­tion to make to this, nor had the man­darin, who pos­sessed friends and rel­atives in the south. The sol­diers on board, how­ev­er, were very dis­con­tent­ed and muti­nous, and as they con­sid­er­ably out­num­bered the crew I be­gan to fear trou­ble. They were all from north­ern provinces and had no de­sire to go south. Their lan­guage was scarce­ly in­tel­li­gi­ble even to their nom­inal coun­try­men. The im­mense di­ver­si­ty of di­alects in Chi­na is, in fact, a great hin­drance to progress by pre­vent­ing the uni­fi­ca­tion of the peo­ple. Af­ter some ex­cit­ed dis­cus­sion they were pre­vailed up­on to ac­qui­esce by the solemn promise of the man­darin to make ar­range­ments with the au­thor­ities for their re­turn to their own parts, or fail­ing that to send them back at his own ex­pense; be­sides, the rep­re­sen­ta­tion that to turn north again would most like­ly end in cap­ture by the Japanese ves­sels, through whose present cruis­ing-​ground the gale had luck­ily blown us, had great weight.

I was vast­ly amused, dur­ing my voy­age in the _King-​Shing_, by the su­per­sti­tions of her crew. Their de­vo­tion to their idols was in­deed tru­ly ed­ify­ing. A re­li­gious man, ac­cord­ing to his lights, was Sam-​Sing, and rigid­ly punc­tu­al in the dai­ly ob­ser­vance of in­cense-​burn­ing, gong-​bang­ing, and oth­er rites sup­posed to be pro­pi­tia­to­ry of the de­ity. He was al­so, how­ev­er, great­ly ad­dict­ed to opi­um-​smok­ing, and when un­der the in­flu­ence of the drug, of which, as an old stager, he could con­sume great quan­ti­ties with­out be­ing stu­pe­fied, the idea of the oc­cult pow­er of the god­dess, nev­er ab­sent from his mind, was turned com­plete­ly up­side down. When free from the fumes of opi­um no­body could have been more re­spect­ful to the Joss­es, but when in­tox­icat­ed, and with the weath­er threat­en­ing, he open­ly poured up­on them abuse, re­vil­ing, and sus­pi­cion. He usu­al­ly start­ed a pipe of opi­um about noon, and the change in his de­meanour came round grad­ual­ly dur­ing the af­ter­noon. In the morn­ing he was sober and pi­ous, in the evening in­tox­icat­ed and blas­phe­mous, par­tic­ular­ly, as I have said, when the weath­er was bad. “As for that in­fer­nal Chin-​Tee,” he would say in ef­fect, shak­ing his fist in the di­rec­tion of the idol, “it's all her fault we're in this mess. What's the use of her--lazy har­ri­dan! Much she cares what be­comes of us”--and so on till over­pow­ered by ex­cess. When by the next morn­ing he had slept off his de­bauch, and came round to rec­ol­lec­tion of his enor­mi­ties, his pen­itence knew no bounds; he would pros­trate him­self in the Joss-​house, and in the most ab­ject terms im­plore for­give­ness for his in­tem­per­ate lan­guage over-​night. Then he would gen­er­al­ly ab­stain for two or three days, but at the first sign of bad weath­er, he took to his pipe, and Chin-​Tee came in for an­oth­er blast of abuse. The rest of the crew were al­ways hor­ri­fied by the shock­ing impi­ety of the Ty Kong, and on more than one oc­ca­sion I re­al­ly feared that they were about to pro­ceed to Jon­ahize him. They were by no means all opi­um-​smok­ers; some of them smoked to­bac­co, of a vile qual­ity, in met­al pipes, with an un­der-​hang­ing curved por­tion con­tain­ing wa­ter, through which the smoke passed. The opi­um-​pipe is a quite dif­fer­ent thing. It is a reed of about an inch in di­am­eter, and the aper­ture in the bowl for the ad­mis­sion of the opi­um is not larg­er than a pin's head. The drug is pre­pared by boil­ing and evap­ora­tion to the con­sis­tence of trea­cle. Very few whiffs can be tak­en from a sin­gle pipe, but one is enough to have an ef­fect on a be­gin­ner, as I have al­ready de­scribed in my own case, but an old hand, like the Ty Kong, can smoke for hours.

The in­cense burned be­fore the idols con­sist­ed most­ly of pieces of aro­mat­ic wood, called Joss-​sticks, sil­vered pa­per, and tin-​foil. One of their most revered ob­jects was the mariner's com­pass, and be­fore it they would place tea, sweet cake, and pork, in or­der to keep it faith­ful and true! It is well known that the Chi­nese were ac­quaint­ed with the phe­nomenon of the mag­ne­tized nee­dle cen­turies be­fore it was known in Eu­rope, and their com­pass dif­fers ma­te­ri­al­ly from ours; in­stead of con­sist­ing of a mov­able card at­tached to the nee­dle, theirs is sim­ply a nee­dle of lit­tle more than an inch in length bal­anced in a glazed hole in the cen­tre of a sol­id wood­en dish, fine­ly var­nished. It has on­ly twen­ty-​four points, and with its use they com­bine some of their most an­cient as­tro­log­ical ideas. The broad cir­cum­fer­ence of the dish is marked off in­to con­cen­tric cir­cles, in­scribed with mys­ti­cal fig­ures. We say the nee­dle points to the north; they hold that the at­trac­tion is to the south, and there­fore colour that end of the nee­dle red, a hue that ap­pears to have a mys­te­ri­ous ef­fi­ca­cy in their eyes. I have al­ready told how the Joss­es were wrapped in red scarves, and bits of red cloth were tied on the rud­der, ca­ble, mast, and oth­er prin­ci­pal parts of the ves­sel, as safe­guards against dan­ger. There was al­so a large paint­ed eye on ei­ther side of the bow, to en­able the junk to see her way! At first I could not un­der­stand the mean­ing of this, and told Chung to ask the Ty Kong for an ex­pla­na­tion. “Have eye,” trans­lat­ed Chung, “can see; no have eye, no can see.” On oc­ca­sions of spe­cial re­li­gious demon­stra­tion these op­tics were dec­orat­ed with strips of red cloth. On one oc­ca­sion when a steam­er sus­pi­cious­ly like a Japanese cruis­er hove in sight, they tied red rags to their an­tique guns, or gin-​galls, and with this con­se­cra­tion on their de­fen­sive ar­range­ments, seemed to feel per­fect­ly se­cure. I sup­pose the En­glish-​trained crews of their navy must have been per­suad­ed out of these amaz­ing no­tions, and taught the Eu­ro­pean com­pass, but the ideas of Sam-​Sing and his mer­ry men were as old as their ves­sel.

I have not yet de­scribed my man­darin friend. His name was Ki-​Chang; he was a man­darin of the fifth class, his dis­tinc­tive mark be­ing a crys­tal but­ton on the top of his cap. He was forty-​six years old, in­tel­li­gent, ami­able, and gen­tle­man­ly. He and I had much in­ter­course dur­ing the voy­age, with Chung for an in­ter­preter. I taught him a lit­tle En­glish, and how to write his name in En­glish, an ac­com­plish­ment of which he seemed ex­treme­ly proud. Like most of the ed­ucat­ed Chi­nese, he wrote his own lan­guage very beau­ti­ful­ly. He was a wealthy and in­flu­en­tial man.

The _King-​Shing_ showed her­self a re­mark­ably good sea-​boat, but des­per­ate­ly slow. No de­vice could get more than eight knots out of her, and this was much above her av­er­age. We en­coun­tered one or two vi­olent storms, in which she be­haved won­der­ful­ly. One night the wind, af­ter veer­ing all round the com­pass with vivid light­ning and thun­der, set­tled in the south-​west and blew a per­fect hur­ri­cane. All sails were low­ered, ex­cept half the fore-​sail, and twen­ty-​five men were re­quired at the mam­moth rud­der. We were obliged to start some eight tons of wa­ter out of the deck tanks, and ev­ery­thing on deck, fore and aft, was se­cured. The junk laboured heav­ily, but shipped no wa­ter. At day-​break the weath­er mod­er­at­ed, and we were able to set more sail; but in two or three hours the wind chopped round to the north-​west, and blew more fierce­ly than ev­er, at­tend­ed by squalls of hail­stones as big as mar­bles, the knocks of which made my coun­te­nance look as if I had come off sec­ond-​best in a mid­dle-​weight “scrap.” We low­ered the main-​sail again, and set four reefs of fore-​sail to scud un­der. At three o'clock the ves­sel took a tremen­dous lurch, and washed away our lee-​quar­ter boat. It was dark, and the sea bare­ly dis­cernible at a dis­tance of thir­ty yards, be­ing blown in­to a thick mist. At six the hur­ri­cane con­tin­ued with un­abat­ed fury with ter­rif­ic squalls; a fear­ful sea struck the ship and near­ly broached her to. The sea was a mass of foam, and run­ning very high, but kept down to some ex­tent by the vi­olence of the wind. Lat­er we were run­ning un­der bare poles. Again the gale went down, and again we got up sail, but with­out warn­ing a tremen­dous squall struck us and laid us on our beam ends. A boat was blown away, the fore-​sail split, and through the care­less­ness of the men at the rud­der they jibed the main-​sail; it came over with ter­rif­ic force, but for­tu­nate­ly did no harm. Luck­ily the sails could be very eas­ily and rapid­ly low­ered. One on­ly had to let go or cut the hal­yards and down they came. Through­out all this the junk be­haved in a man­ner which as­tound­ed me. She ac­tu­al­ly nev­er shipped any wa­ter, that which came aboard be­ing tops of seas blown off. But the very qual­ities which made her so steady-​go­ing mil­itat­ed against her speed. She was a safe boat at all points. One night we had to an­chor off a dead lee-​shore; the crew dec­orat­ed their ca­bles with some ex­tra red rags, and with death grin­ning un­der our lee, went to sup­per with a seren­ity which I should have been glad to be able to im­itate. But their con­fi­dence was as well ground­ed as their an­chors, which held with an un­shak­able tenac­ity.

Though so long ac­quaint­ed with the com­pass, the Chi­nese have al­ways been as un­en­ter­pris­ing in sailor­ing as in ev­ery­thing else, and sel­dom lose sight of the land, if they can help it. Their fond­ness for hug­ging the coast was very no­tice­able to me, and, un­used to the con­stant vig­ilance and care which a long sea voy­age de­mands, their sys­tem of du­ty was very lax and care­less. There were no prop­er watch­es; at night­fall the Ty Kong used qui­et­ly to low­er about three reefs of the main-​sail and the whole of the mizzen. All the crew would then go to their cab­in, leav­ing the helms­men alone on deck. At mid­night a sup­per was pre­pared, and the sleep­ers awak­ened. The meal end­ed, the helm would be re­lieved and the men re­tired to their berths again.

At this rate it may be sup­posed that we made slow progress, and more than one in­cip­ient mutiny had to be dealt with, some of the crew re­fus­ing to work, and the sol­diers com­plain­ing on the far from un­rea­son­able ground that they had not enough to eat. We spoke sev­er­al north­ward-​bound ves­sels, both na­tive and for­eign, to whom we wished to en­trust the dis­con­tent­ed war­riors, but these ships one and all grate­ful­ly but firm­ly de­clined the com­pli­ment. By dint of ne­ces­si­ty, aid­ed by the man­darin's promis­es, we strug­gled along, and as ev­ery­thing must come to an end some time or oth­er, we reached our port at the be­gin­ning of Jan­uary.

I have lit­tle more to add. Ki-​Chang showed him­self grate­ful, and not on­ly en­ter­tained me roy­al­ly, but gave me sub­stan­tial pe­cu­niary aid, a thing I was in very press­ing need of. Of course I have long since re­paid his loan.

I ob­tained a pas­sage in a French steam­er to Callao, whence I made my way over­land to San Fran­cis­co. I called on Mr. H----, who in­formed me that the _Columbia_ (not then in port) had made an­oth­er suc­cess­ful trip, but with re­sults so di­min­ished in the pe­cu­niary sense that he had de­ter­mined not to risk her again for in­ad­equate prof­its. _Columbia_, I may say, was not the steam­er's re­al name.

I next met Web­ster at Syd­ney. The ex­pla­na­tion of my be­ing left be­hind at Port Arthur was sim­ple enough. The “hout­cast” had tak­en so many “caulk­ers” of rum dur­ing the day that he be­came obliv­ious to the fact of my be­ing ashore, and Chubb took it for grant­ed that I had re­turned on board, es­pe­cial­ly as I had sent back the boat in which I land­ed with the Chi­nese agent. My ab­sence was not not­ed un­til the small hours of the en­su­ing morn­ing, when the swift steam­er was far enough away. Web­ster want­ed to put back for me, but Chubb, whose re­gards were strict­ly con­fined to num­ber one, de­cid­ed against it, cool­ly say­ing that they could pick me up next trip, and that as it was Web­ster's fault I had been left, he, Web­ster, might if he liked swim back for me. This un­mess­mate-​like con­duct, when re­count­ed to me, so ex­cit­ed my ire, that if the wor­thy Chubb had been with­in kick­ing dis­tance at the time, he should have known some­thing fur­ther about it. I have not, how­ev­er, seen him since.

Such were the things I saw and did where the Drag­on Flag waves in splen­did im­po­tence. I took no notes of any­thing, ex­cept­ing as to the build and fit­tings of the junk, and that mere­ly for my own in­for­ma­tion, and it was not un­til long af­ter that the idea of writ­ing an ac­count of these oc­cur­rences en­tered my mind; but I can trust my mem­ory for the main events. If my lit­tle nar­ra­tive should for on­ly a few fur­nish not mere­ly en­ter­tain­ment but ad­mo­ni­tion, I shall not have gone through quite use­less­ly my var­ied and painful ex­pe­ri­ence of life.

THE END

Richard Clay & Sons, Lim­it­ed, Lon­don & Bun­gay.

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