A Chinese Command Part 10

"That I have practically no knowledge of the Chinese language," replied Frobisher. "To be of any real use as captain of a cruiser it seems to me that a thorough acquaintance with Chinese is an absolute necessity."

"If that is your only objection," exclaimed Wong-lih in a tone of relief, "you may dismiss it at once. I had not overlooked the fact that you might be ignorant of Chinese; but we shall do for you exactly what we are doing in the case of Captain Foster of the battleship _Chen-yuen_, who is also an Englishman. We shall provide you with an efficient interpreter, whose sole duty it will be to remain constantly at your side and translate your wishes and commands into Chinese; so, you see, there will be no difficulty at all on that score. Now, if you are quite ready, shall we go? I have no time to spare, and, moreover, the atmosphere of this place is anything but agreeable."

As he spoke, the admiral opened the heavy door and, courteously signing to the Englishman to precede him, allowed Frobisher to pa.s.s out into the stone-flagged corridor. Thence they followed the route by which the Englishman had been brought on the previous day, until they came to the room in which he had been cross-examined by the commandant of the fort; and there they found the latter, with the Governor and several other officials, all of whom respectfully rose to their feet upon the admiral's entrance.

With a somewhat curt gesture Wong-lih directed them to be seated; and then ensued a rather lengthy conversation in Chinese, the princ.i.p.al part of which was borne by the admiral, who seemed to be asking questions and issuing instructions. Then, rising to his feet, he dismissed the little group and requested Frobisher to follow him.

"Before we leave, sir," exclaimed the Englishman, suddenly remembering, "I should like to ask a favour. When I was captured by the Korean troops I had in my possession a pair of rather valuable revolvers, which I prize very much, apart from their intrinsic value, from the fact that they were given me by a very dear friend. I feel convinced that the officer who seized them has not allowed them to pa.s.s out of his hands; and, if he happens to be in the fort, I shall be very much obliged if you will request him to return them to me. Also, if the jacket that was taken from me has been preserved, I should like to have that as well. I may perhaps be permitted to mention, too, that I have not tasted food for fully twenty-four hours, and am feeling the need of a meal."

"My dear sir," exclaimed Wong-lih, in tones of genuine concern, "what can I have been thinking of not to have enquired if you were hungry! My only excuse is that I was so full of the matter we have just been discussing, that the first rules of hospitality escaped me for the moment. If you will remain here for a few minutes I will myself see that food is served to you. I will at the same time make enquiries about all your property; and if it is indeed here it shall most certainly be returned to you. I will be with you again very shortly."

With these words the kind-hearted admiral left the room, returning presently with Frobisher's pistols in one hand and the jacket in the other, bringing also the welcome information that a meal was being hastily prepared, and would be served with the utmost expedition.

Half an hour later Frobisher, feeling a new man and quite himself again, followed Wong-lih out of the fort and down to the beach, where the admiral's own boat was now waiting to take him on board. On the way thither it was necessary to pa.s.s over the scene of the day's battle, and although it was night and the only illumination came from the moon, and the lantern which the admiral's c.o.xswain was carrying, there was light enough to reveal many of the horrors of the past day's fight, and Frobisher was more than glad when that blood-stained field was left behind and they came to the margin of the clean, wholesome sea.

Here they found the officer in command of the troops who were to remain in Korea and to a.s.sist the Government in stamping out the rebellion.

They were, it afterward transpired, first of all to occupy the town of Asan, and operate against the insurgents, with Asan as their base, until further instructions were received or other developments arose; and the officer was then waiting to hold a short consultation with Wong-lih with reference to his future course of action, so that the admiral would be in a position to report fully to his Government upon his return to China. The transports, which had also been fitted up as store-ships, were to remain behind in Prince Jerome Bay, with one of the gunboats to protect them, while the two cruisers and the other gunboat were to proceed to sea immediately.

The general plan of campaign had evidently been already arranged, for a quarter of an hour later the officer and Wong-lih saluted each other in farewell, and the Army man returned to the fortress, where the troops were quartered for the remainder of the night, while the admiral entered his barge, and, with his latest recruit in the stern-sheets beside him, was pulled swiftly away to the _Hai-yen_.

Once on board, the admiral conducted Frobisher to a handsomely-furnished cabin, of which he was to have the exclusive use during the voyage, and also, with his characteristic kindness, presented him with a complete Chinese Naval captain's suit in perfectly new condition, which by a lucky chance proved to be a very pa.s.sable fit. Of course Frobisher was not as yet ent.i.tled to wear it, but Wong-lih was so certain that the proposed appointment would be promptly confirmed that he had no qualms in donning it.

It was by this time not very far off daylight. Frobisher therefore decided that, tired though he felt, he would not turn in just yet, but would wait for sunrise in order to watch the squadron get under way.

Wong-lih also had no intention of retiring during the short time that still remained before they were ready to leave, so he invited the young Englishman into his own s.p.a.cious and luxuriously-fitted quarters in the stern of the ship, where the two remained smoking, talking, and drinking coffee, until the sound of the morning gun from the fort, followed by the report of one of the twenty-four pounders on deck, announced that it was "official sunrise", and that the hour had arrived for them to take their departure.

With the admiral's permission Frobisher followed him on deck and up on to the bridge, where a yeoman of signals was already waiting to hoist the necessary flags as a signal to the other ships to weigh and proceed to sea. Thick, greasy columns of smoke were rising from the funnels of all three craft, proving, to the Englishman's experienced eye, that the coal they were using was quite unsuited to Naval requirements; while a white feather of steam rising from their steam-pipes showed that there was already full pressure in their boilers. After a comprehensive look round, the admiral spoke a few words to the signalman, and a moment later a string of parti-coloured flags soared aloft to the cruiser's yard-arm.

Instantly the shrill clamour of boatswains' whistles was heard from each ship, and next followed the measured "clank-clank-clank" of iron cable, as the steam-capstans got to work and began to haul the vessels up to their anchors. For a few seconds the clatter subsided as the strain of "breaking out" the anchors came upon the cables, then it started again with a rush; and presently the dripping, mud-bedaubed anchors made their appearance under the bows, and were catted and promptly stowed.

Then, slowly at first, but with gradually increasing speed, the _Hat-yen's_ screws revolved, the decks quivered, and the ship began to slide through the water, her bows turning toward the entrance of the bay as she did so. The other cruiser fell into line astern of the flagship, and, with the gunboat bringing up the rear, the squadron headed for the open sea in line-ahead formation, sped upon its way by the salutes of the fort and the remaining gunboat, to which the _Hai-yen's_ guns replied.

Wei-hai-wei is only a matter of some two hundred miles from Asan; and at midnight the squadron found itself entering the Chinese harbour, where a number of twinkling lights betrayed the presence of other ships belonging to the Navy. The anchors were let go just opposite the fort, and both Frobisher and the admiral went below to enjoy a well-earned rest and refresh themselves in readiness for the duties that awaited them on the following day.

CHAPTER NINE.

ON THE ROCKS.

Bright and early the next morning Frobisher met Wong-lih on the quarter-deck of the _Hai-yen_, and the admiral announced his plans with regard to both his own affairs and those of the Englishman. He mentioned that he would be detained for some days at Wei-hai-wei making arrangements for the repair of the ships--each of which had been more or less damaged by the rebel fire during the fight in Prince Jerome Bay-- and getting a new ten-inch gun mounted in the _Mai-yen's_ forward turret, to replace the one which had been dismounted on the same occasion. This, he estimated, would occupy about a week; and, when this work had been put in hand, there were several minor duties in the dockyard which he reckoned would occupy him for another week, making about a fortnight before he would be able to get away to Tien-tsin to make his report in person.

It would therefore be necessary for him to send a messenger with dispatches to the Council, giving an outline of what had taken place; and he gave Frobisher the choice of accompanying the flag-lieutenant who was to carry the dispatches to Tien-tsin--with a letter from himself to the Council recommending his appointment--or of remaining in Wei-hai-wei until he, the admiral, was ready to go to Tien-tsin and personally present his protege to the Council.

To this Frobisher made reply that, if it suited the admiral equally well, he would much prefer to accompany him to Tien-tsin; for he was extremely anxious to secure the appointment as captain of the cruiser, and knew--from what he had already learned of Chinese officialdom--that he would have a far better chance with Wong-lih by his side as sponsor, than he would as the mere bearer of a letter of recommendation from the admiral. It was accordingly so arranged; and he spent the intervening time in looking round the port, a.r.s.enal, and dockyard of Wei-hai-wei, picking up all the information he could with regard to Chinese Naval matters, and also managing incidentally to acquire a small--very small-- smattering of the Chinese language, which was afterwards of considerable use to him.

On a certain afternoon, Wong-lih drove up to the hotel where Frobisher was staying, and announced that his duties were now completed, and that he was ready to start for Tien-tsin. There was, luckily, a dispatch-boat in the harbour which had just arrived at Wei-hai-wei from Chemulpo, on her way to Tien-tsin; and the admiral had decided to take pa.s.sages in her for Frobisher and himself. The Englishman therefore had only to pack the few belongings which he had purchased in the town; and five minutes later the curiously-a.s.sorted pair were being conveyed in a rickshaw, drawn by a Chinese coolie, down to the dock, where the _San-chau_, dispatch-boat, was lying.

The voyage from Wei-hai-wei to Tien-tsin is only a short one, of some three hundred miles, but the course lies across the Gulf of Chi-lih, notorious for its dangerous fogs at this season of the year and the typhoons which, at all times, are liable to spring up with only the briefest warning; and about two hours after they had left port, and were pa.s.sing the bold headland beneath which stands the city of Chi-fu, it began to look as though they were in for one of the latter.

Wong-lih and the captain of the dispatch-boat held a short consultation as to the advisability of running into Chi-fu harbour for shelter; but as the roadstead was somewhat open, it was finally agreed to push on, at top speed, and endeavour to get clear of the Shan-tung peninsula and the Miao-tao islands before the storm broke. Otherwise, they might find themselves in rather an awkward situation.

Steam was therefore ordered for full speed--about seventeen knots--and the _San-chau_ began to move more rapidly through the water, at the same time altering her course so as to pa.s.s outside the islands instead of through the Chang-shan-tao channel, as had at first been intended.

The sun set luridly in the midst of a blaze of wild and threatening cloud, and the light breeze which they had so far carried with them suddenly died away to nothing, leaving the surface of the sea like a sheet of oil, through which the _San-chau_ drove her bows as through something solid. The air felt heavy and damp, and so devoid of life that Frobisher found it difficult to supply his lungs with sufficient air; and although the weather was intensely cold, the atmosphere still felt uncomfortably oppressive.

About two hours later, while the ship appeared to be steaming through a sheet of liquid fire, so brilliant was the phosph.o.r.escence of the water, there came, without the slightest warning, the most dazzling flash of lightning Frobisher had ever beheld, followed almost on the instant by a deafening peal of thunder, indicating that the centre of disturbance was almost immediately overhead. So dazzlingly bright was the flash that almost every man on deck instinctively covered his eyes with his hands, under the impression that he had been blinded; and several seconds elapsed before any of them were able to see again distinctly.

As though that first flash had been a signal, the air at once became full of vivid darting lightnings, so continuous that an almost uninterrupted view of the sea, from horizon to horizon, was possible, and the man on the look-out in the bows was therefore enabled to give timely warning of the approach of a white-capped wall of water of terrible aspect. So rapid was its rate of travel that the steamer's skipper had barely time to make a few hasty preparations to meet it, and to shout to the men on deck to "hold on for their lives", when, with an unearthly howl and roar, the storm was upon them. The wall of water crashed into and over the _San-chau_ with a power that made it appear as though she had struck something solid; and for a few moments Frobisher, clinging to the bridge rail beside the captain and Wong-lih, could see nothing of the deck of the ship, so deeply was she buried in the wave.

The wind, too, wrestled with and tore at ventilators, awning stanchions, and the boats slung from the davits, until he momentarily expected to see the latter torn from their lashings and blown overboard.

The canvas dodgers round the navigating bridge, which they had not had time to remove, were ripped from their seizings and blown away to leeward, where in the glare of the lightning they showed for a few moments like white birds swept away on the wings of the wind. The men themselves, thus exposed to the full fury of the blast, were obliged to cling to the bridge rails for their very lives, to avoid being torn from their hold and whirled overboard; and when the first lull came their muscles felt as though they had been stretched on the rack, so severe had been the strain.

Then, as though the wind had taken a breathing s.p.a.ce to recover fresh energy, the hurricane burst upon them again, almost more furiously, if that were possible, than at first; and Frobisher knew instinctively that, so far from making headway, the _San-chau_ was being driven back over the course she had just covered, at a rate of probably five knots an hour, in spite of the fact that her engines were going full speed ahead at their utmost capacity. Anxious glances were cast ahead and astern--ahead to ascertain whether there were any signs of the typhoon breaking, and astern in momentary dread of sighting the distant loom of the land toward which, as all knew, they were being slowly but inexorably driven.

Suddenly the skipper, who had been peering eagerly to windward under the broad of his hand, turned to Wong-lih and spoke a few rapid sentences in Chinese, at the same time pointing in the direction towards which he had been looking. The admiral's eyes followed the outstretched finger, and Frobisher also glanced in the same direction. The captain had apparently seen, or believed he had seen, something strange away to the westward.

A moment later Frobisher knew what it was. Far away, on the edge of the horizon, appeared a small spark of light which shot rapidly up into the sky, where it hung for a few seconds and then burst into a mushroom-shaped cl.u.s.ter of red stars that gradually floated downward again, fading from view as it did so.

"That," shouted Frobisher excitedly to Wong-lih, "is a rocket, sir.

There's a ship away there which has been less fortunate than ourselves; she's evidently in distress; and, from her position, I should say that she has probably been driven on to the Miao-tao rocks."

"Without doubt," returned Wong-lih, "that is the fact of the matter; and there are probably many poor fellows perishing away there, almost before our eyes, while we are utterly unable to help them. If a vessel has really gone ash.o.r.e on those rocks I fear that her crew is doomed; for no ship could long survive in this weather. Get my telescope," he added, in Chinese, to a quartermaster who happened to be on the bridge at the moment; and when the man reappeared with the gla.s.s, Wong-lih brought it to bear upon the spot where the rocket had appeared, which he was easily able to do with the a.s.sistance of the lightning, still blazing almost continuously.

"By Kin-fu-tzi!" exclaimed the admiral, a few seconds later, "that craft is very much nearer than I thought from the appearance of her rocket-- not more than seven miles away, at the utmost. She is a two-masted, one-funnelled steamer, and, I'm almost certain, is a man-o'-war. Now, what should she be doing just there? Have the j.a.panese sent a vessel over here for scouting purposes, or is she one of our ships? She looks very much like--and yet she cannot be, surely,--the ship I intend you to have, Mr Frobisher--the _Chih' Yuen_, the new cruiser which we have purchased from Great Britain, and which only arrived out here a few weeks ago. But I do not understand what she is doing there, if it is she; for, as I told you, we had no captain in our whole service to whom we cared to entrust her, which was one of my reasons for asking you to take service with us. I cannot understand it at all," and he began to gnaw his moustache perplexedly. "But perhaps," he continued, "I may be mistaken. I must be mistaken; it cannot possibly be the _Chih' Yuen_."

At this moment another rocket went soaring up into the night sky, followed by another and another; and then the distant boom of a signal-gun came to their ears, borne on the wings of the hurricane.

"May the spirits of their ancestors protect them!" exclaimed Wong-lih piously. "We, alas, can do nothing! She will be lying fathoms deep in the gulf by morning."

But, as though in answer to the admiral's prayer--so suddenly did the change take place--there came a lull in the furious wind, and the three men on the bridge were able to spare a hand to dash the spray from their eyes before the gale struck them again. This time, however, the wild outburst lasted only a few minutes, then ceased as suddenly as before; the thunder was less loud, and the lightning was far less vivid and terrifying. Then the black pall of sky above them began to break up into isolated patches, and a few minutes later the moon and stars showed intermittently between the rifts; the storm was dying away almost as quickly as it had sprung up. But, unfortunately, as soon as the wind dropped the sea began to rise, until within a very short time there was quite a heavy swell running.

The captain of the dispatch-boat lost not an instant in heading his ship direct for the spot from which the rockets had been seen to rise. The vessel's search-light was brought into action, and the skipper told off a man to sweep the sea ahead with its powerful beam, so that the exact position of the wreck might be located at the earliest possible moment; for during the last few minutes no rockets had been sent up, which was a very sinister sign.

With the cessation of the wind the heavy sea did not very greatly interfere with the _San-Chan's_ speed, and she raced through the water on her errand of mercy at the rate of fully eighteen knots, the bearings of her engines smoking as the oil from the cups dripped upon their heated surfaces; and it was not more than half an hour before the man at the search-light found his object and kept the beam playing on her. She was then only a few miles ahead, and stood out, a great ma.s.s of silver in the rays of the search-light, against the black background of the night, with the sea breaking over her. Through the telescope her people could be seen running about her decks, and steam was still blowing off through her waste-pipes, so, apparently, the water had not yet reached her engine-room. Frobisher noticed that no effort was being made to get the boats out; but this might be because of the heavy sea running.

At all events, the craft was still above water; and there was little doubt that her crew could be saved, even though they might not be able to save the ship.

In another quarter of an hour--speed having been meanwhile reduced so as to lessen the danger of their running aground--the _San-chau_ arrived abreast of the other craft, which proved indeed to be a cruiser, and laid off at a distance of about half a cable's length, her screw revolving slowly, so as to keep her from drifting down upon the wreck.

Then, seizing a megaphone, Wong-lih hailed, and asked the stranger's name.

A man in a drenched Naval uniform similar to that which Frobisher was wearing leant over the rail of her navigating bridge and gave a lengthy reply, which the Englishman, of course, could not understand; but from the expression on the admiral's face he could see that the news was not at all of a satisfactory character. When the other officer had finished speaking, Wong-lih ground out a few tense words that sounded suspiciously like a Chinese execration, and, turning to Frobisher, exclaimed in tones of the deepest annoyance:--

"This is most unfortunate indeed, Mr Frobisher. As I almost suspected the moment I discovered that yonder craft was a cruiser, she is the _Chih' Yuen_, the ship to which I intended you to be appointed. And now look where your future command lies! So surely as either Admiral Ting or I are out of the way, something of this sort inevitably happens.

It's those mandarins again, of course, who are at the bottom of the whole trouble. That fool aboard there who calls himself the captain tells me that, shortly after I sailed, Prince Hsi, who considers himself an authority on Naval matters, decided that the guns in the fore barbette of the _Chi' Yuen_ were of too small a calibre, and in my absence he managed to prevail upon the Council to send her to Wei-hai-wei to be docked and have her 9.4's replaced by 12-inch guns.

Twelve-inch guns in a ship of her size! The man is mad! But I know his game. His intention was to have sold the 9.4's, replacing them with a couple of old, out-of-date 12's which I happen to know are lying in the yard, and pocketing the difference.

"That is the sort of thing that goes on in my unhappy country all the time, Mr Frobisher--theft, bribery, corruption, all manner of petty chicanery, especially in matters connected with the Army and Navy; and then they expect us unfortunate officers to do our work with any old material that the high officials have not thought it worth while to pilfer! It is heart-breaking. There, in order to replenish the pockets of Prince Hsi, lies one of the finest cruisers in our Navy, wrecked, and likely to be lost entirely if it comes on to blow again. But," he went on, still more excitedly, "she shall not be lost. I will get her off, and she shall go to Wei-hai-wei to be repaired in dock--but not to have her guns exchanged. Those in her shall remain there; and his Highness can look elsewhere for something to fill his coffers."