A Chinese Command Part 22

As it was manifestly impossible for Frobisher to rejoin his own ship, owing to lack of boats, he took charge as captain of the _Ting Yuen_ in place of the traitor prince, confined below, and, in company with the other battleship, the _Chen Yuen_, endeavoured to beat off the j.a.panese craft that were manoeuvring to surround the two remaining Chinese cruisers. And so bold a front--or rather, rear--did the four ships present that the j.a.panese before long relinquished the pursuit, not caring, in view of the success already obtained, to risk losing any more of their already sadly-battered ships by exposing them to the now-concentrated fire of the big Chinese ships' eighty-ton guns, the projectiles from which had already done so much damage.

They accordingly drew off and gave up the half-hearted chase, employing the short time still remaining before darkness fell in effecting some very necessary repairs to their ships; while the broken remnant of China's northern squadron pursued its halting way toward Wei-hai-wei, the small torpedo-boat still remaining to them acting as scout in advance, on the look-out for the j.a.panese destroyer which, earlier in the day, had left the action in pursuit of a couple of damaged Chinese torpedo-boats.

In the late twilight they fell in with the destroyer on her return from her unsuccessful pursuit, the two small craft having succeeded in effecting their escape. She had evidently antic.i.p.ated a complete victory for her own side, and seeing lights in the distance, had made for them, thinking that, by this time, every ship would be in j.a.panese hands; and she did not discover her mistake until she was under the Chinese guns. Then she attempted to cut and run; but she was too late.

There was a rattle of machine-gun fire which drove her men from the deck torpedo-tubes, and a few seconds later one of the _Chen Yuen's_ big guns plumped a sh.e.l.l right into her, crumpling her up like cardboard and sending her to the bottom within a few seconds. Some--a very few--of her men were rescued and made prisoners by the Chinese torpedo-boat, but the majority, dead or disabled from the effects of the bursting sh.e.l.l, went to feed the sharks.

Early the following morning, just after daybreak, the four ships overtook the _San-chau_ and the transport fleet, which circ.u.mstance rejoiced Admiral Ting exceedingly, as he had been extremely anxious lest they might perhaps have fallen in with some prowling j.a.panese cruisers and been snapped up. Then the war-ships and the transports kept company until they reached Wei-hai-wei, where they found the little _Hat-yen_, but recently arrived in a sinking condition, so that it had been necessary to beach her immediately to save her from sinking at her anchors.

Admiral Ting lost no time in docking such of his ships as there was room for; the others were run alongside the wharves, to have their guns replaced and their upper-works repaired, after which they would, one by one, go into dock as their repaired sisters came out. The admiral then dispatched to Tien-tsin the _San-chau_, the only undamaged war-ship, with an account of the battle; while the torpedo-boat, after a few minor repairs, was dispatched south with a similar message to Admiral Wong-lih, suggesting that he should bring up the southern fleet, so that, together, the united squadrons might seek the j.a.panese fleet and once more give battle, in an attempt to recover the mastery of the sea, which was of paramount importance to China.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

ON SPECIAL SERVICE.

For the first few days after the return of the fleet to Wei-hai-wei everybody was very fully employed, including even the admiral himself, who, despite his deep and painful wound, insisted on being about the dockyard, his head tied up in a bandage, superintending the refitting of the shattered ships. Nothing was mentioned with regard to Prince Hsi.

That arch-villain had not even been seen; and Frobisher supposed it was Ting's intention to send him, as soon as he could spare an escort, to Tien-tsin to stand his trial--a procedure which the Englishman was inclined to think very likely to end in a farce, since, once among the circle of his rich and powerful relatives and acquaintance, the man was wily and cunning enough to be able to extricate himself even out of such a predicament as that in which he was now plunged.

Frobisher had, however, forgotten a certain promise which Ting had made at Wi-ju, at the mouth of the Yalu, when Prince Hsi had been so very nearly discovered in communication with one of the enemy's destroyers-- the promise that, if he actually caught the Prince red-handed, so that there could be no possible doubt about the matter, not all the influence or powerful relations in China should save him from the fate he would so richly deserve.

There could be little doubt that it was due to the signals sent that night by the Prince to the destroyer that the j.a.panese had learned the strength of the Chinese squadron and its destination, and had thus been enabled to come up in full force, as they had done, and practically annihilate the northern squadron. This was not the first nor the second time that Hsi had played the traitor, although until now there had been no actual proof of his treachery; he was strongly suspected, for instance, of having brought about the disaster to the transport _Kowshing_, when she had been sunk by the j.a.panese cruiser _Naniwa_, with over a thousand Chinese troops on board.

Admiral Ting had not allowed his oath to slip his memory, and the old fellow, gentle, kindly, and courteous though he was to his friends, could be very vindictive when it came to dealing with evil-doers, especially criminals of the hardened, remorseless type which Prince Hsi had proved himself to be. He was only biding his time, as events were very soon to prove.

One evening Frobisher received a polite message from the admiral that his presence would be required on board the flagship at ten o'clock on the following morning, and so did the other captains and first lieutenants. Consequently, at the hour named, Captains Foster, James, Frobisher, and Quen-lung, of the _Chen Yuen, Shan-si, Chih' Yuen_, and _Hat-yen_ respectively, together with their first officers, found themselves a.s.sembled in Admiral Ting's cabin on board the flagship, each of them attired in full-dress uniform and wearing their side-arms. The admiral himself was also present, dressed in the fullest of full dress, and wearing all his various Chinese orders and decorations; while the cabin door was guarded on each side by a Chinese sailor with drawn cutla.s.s.

The room had been cleared of most of its usual furnishings, and a plain, long and narrow oak table had been placed in the centre, with chairs sufficient to accommodate the little party of officers a.s.sembled. At a short distance from the table there was placed another chair, standing by itself, the use of which was to be discovered presently.

As soon as the last officer had arrived, Admiral Ting explained that they were met together to sit in judgment on the person of Prince Hsi, a member of the royal house of China, and lately captain of the battleship _Ting Yuen_, the said officer being accused of treachery to his country, mutiny, and desertion to the enemy during the time of battle. The accuser was, for official purposes, the first lieutenant of the _Ting Yuen_, an officer of high birth and proved integrity, who had also been struck down and confined below by Prince Hsi's mutinous sailors.

Admiral Ting himself intended to act as Judge Advocate; and the other captains and officers made up the court, their opinions as to the guilt or innocence of the accused to be taken after the hearing of the case, beginning with the man of lowest rank present, the idea of this being to prevent the younger and less experienced officers from being influenced by the decisions of their superiors.

On the table, with its point directed toward the Judge Advocate's seat, lay Prince Hsi's sword, which had been taken from him at the time of his arrest.

The officers having taken their seats in the order of seniority, Admiral Ting declared the court open, and directed the prisoner to be brought in. A few seconds later the door opened and Prince Hsi entered, guarded by two sailors with drawn swords, and himself wearing his full-dress uniform, with all his orders displayed across his breast. He looked, Frobisher thought, a trifle pale, but was otherwise cool and collected, and his face wore its usual expression of cold and haughty resentment.

With him entered another officer belonging to Admiral Ting's staff, whose duty it would be to act as the prisoner's "friend", a position something similar to that of counsel for the defence at a civilian trial.

Having bowed to the a.s.sembled court, the Prince, in view of his rank, was permitted to seat himself in the chair provided, and the trial commenced. From the first it was quite evident that Hsi believed his judges would never dare to proceed to extremities, for his replies were always careless, and often flippant; but Frobisher could see that the court was very much in earnest, and that the Prince was deceiving himself very badly.

It began to dawn on the prisoner, after a time, that his accusers were making out a very serious case against him--as, indeed, they could not help doing, in face of the evidence they possessed; and he made desperate efforts to justify his conduct and to excuse his actions, though, in face of the facts, he was attempting an utter impossibility.

At the expiration of an hour the accusation and defence had been heard, and the Prince was ordered to be removed. Admiral Ting then summed up, and asked the verdict of the court, commencing with the youngest lieutenant present, and working up until the last p.r.o.nouncement rested with the captain of the _Chen Yuen_.

Every officer gave it as his conscientious conviction that the Prince was guilty, and Hsi was then recalled. He started violently as he saw that his sword had been reversed and that its point was now toward, instead of away from, him; for he knew by that token that he had been found guilty, and that all that now remained for him was to hear his sentence, which even yet, it was clear, he did not believe would be at all severe.

It was, however, the most severe that could be pa.s.sed. The sentence ran that Prince Hsi, having been found guilty by a court composed of his fellow officers of the charges preferred against him, should be stripped of his decorations and have the insignia of his rank torn from his uniform in presence of the a.s.sembled officers and crews of the Chinese fleet, and that thereafter he should be shot upon the quarter-deck of the flagship _Ting Yuen_.

When this terrible sentence was p.r.o.nounced Prince Hsi was observed to stagger and turn deathly pale. Such ignominy as this he had never dreamed of; and to lose his life into the bargain--

With a lightning-like movement, and before his guards could prevent him, Hsi placed the back of his hand to his mouth, held it there a second, and then, with a groan of deepest agony, reeled backward and fell upon the cabin floor.

When they picked him up he was quite dead, and the cause of his death was revealed by the large ring which he wore on the third finger of his left hand. It had been made hollow, with a tiny hinged cover, and concealed in the hollow there had evidently been a minute dose of an extremely powerful poison which, from the odour of almonds that filled the cabin directly afterward, Frobisher recognised as being prussic acid, one of the quickest and most deadly poisons known to science.

With a solemn, courteous gesture Ting dismissed his officers, and they trooped silently out of the cabin, leaving the admiral alone with the dead. A little later in the day the body was enclosed in a coffin and placed on board a ship bound for Tien-tsin, with directions that it should be delivered to the Prince's relations.

Thus perished a man who bad used his high position to attain his own base ends at the expense of his country and the lives of his countrymen.

Nemesis had overtaken him at last, as it sometimes does evil-doers; and the high-born Prince Hsi died miserably, a condemned criminal.

Frobisher returned to his own ship from the court of justice saddened and disheartened. True, the Prince had richly deserved his fate, and China could never have known safety while he remained alive; but it seemed a dreadful thing that a young man like Prince Hsi, with all life's infinite possibilities to one of his standing before him, should deliberately imperil and finally forfeit those possibilities for the equivalent of a few thousand English pounds, in order to be able to practise vices which had originated in the first place simply through the possession of so much money that he felt he had to get rid of it somehow, and so adopted the quickest means available.

But the young English captain had very little time in which to moralise over Hsi's miserable end; for shortly after his return to the _Chih'

Yuen_, while he was changing into his undress uniform, a messenger came aboard with a request that he would wait upon the admiral again immediately.

Wondering what was now in the wind, Frobisher went across to the _Ting Yuen_, to find the admiral anxiously pacing the deck awaiting him; and he soon learnt what it was that his superior required him for.

It appeared that a ship had come in but a short time previously, bringing important news, which her captain had just communicated to Ting, to the effect that the j.a.panese had resolved upon the seizure of the Chinese island of Taiwan, or Formosa, and that they intended to dispatch an expedition thither under General Oki, in two transports, each conveying twelve hundred men; and as the intended invasion of the island was believed by the j.a.panese to be a dead secret, it was proposed to send only one gunboat or small cruiser to convoy the transports.

They evidently considered that, the Chinese northern fleet being still under repair at Wei-hai-wei, and the southern fleet away in southern Chinese waters, they had little or nothing to fear, and that a very small measure of protection, or even none at all, would suffice. How the man had obtained his information he declined to say; but he solemnly declared that the news was genuine, and spoke so convincingly that he quite satisfied the admiral of the need for taking immediate action.

Ting therefore asked Frobisher whether it was true that the repairs to his ship were all but completed; and on being informed that another day's work would suffice to render the _Chih' Yuen_ ready for sea, if her services were urgently required, he ordered the young Englishman to expedite matters as much as possible, get his stores and ammunition on board, and sail at the earliest moment for Kilung, at the north end of the island of Formosa, at which spot it was reported that the j.a.panese intended to disembark their troops. This disembarkation, said Ting, must be prevented, if possible, and the gunboat and transports were to be destroyed, or captured, as circ.u.mstances should decide. This ought, he added, to be an easy task for the _Chih' Yuen_; and it would prove a very adequate reprisal for the sinking of the transport _Kowshing_ and some of her attendant ships by the j.a.panese squadron some weeks previously.

This was just the kind of commission that appealed to Frobisher, who had still a great deal of the boy left in him; there was nothing that he liked better than to be able to get away on special service. He therefore a.s.sured Ting that he would return on board, hurry his preparations forward, and get away at the very earliest moment.

The morning but one following, therefore, found him steaming out of the harbour of Wei-hai-wei, with Drake, almost as eager as himself, standing on the bridge beside him. There had been very little prospect of active service for either of them until Wong-lih could join forces with the northern fleet, and that might possibly not be for some time; therefore both men were in the highest spirits at the thought of getting to hand-grips with the enemy again so quickly, and it was with a light heart indeed that the young captain ordered the admiral's salute to be fired as the _Chih' Yuen_ swept seaward out of the harbour.

The distance from Wei-hai-wei to Kilung, at the north end of Formosa, is close upon a thousand miles, and Frobisher reckoned that it would take him some seventy hours to do the trip. On the other hand, the distance from the nearest j.a.panese port, Nagasaki, to the same spot was only about seven hundred miles; therefore if the proposed invading expedition sailed at the time when the _Chih' Yuen_ left Wei-hai-wei, the probability was that the j.a.panese would be there first, in which case his task would be exceedingly difficult, if not impossible. Once let the soldiers get ash.o.r.e, and he, with his small force, would be quite unable to turn them out. It was only by meeting the transports and gunboats at sea that he could hope for success; and he did not spare coal, or his engineers' and stokers' feelings, in his eagerness to reach the scene first. Of course, there was always the possibility that, believing their plan a secret, the enemy would not greatly hurry to get to Kilung; but Frobisher was not taking any chances, and he drove his ship through the short, choppy seas at the full power of her engines.

He had an additional incentive to haste in the aspect of the sea and sky; for there seemed to be another typhoon threatening, and he was keenly anxious to run out of the storm area before the hurricane should break. When twilight fell that evening, the sun was already enveloped in a peculiar, dun-coloured mist that resembled an enormous pall of distant smoke, in the midst of which the orb appeared like a dimly-seen, red-hot iron disk, as it sank toward the western horizon. The darkening sky overhead and away to the eastward glowed with a dull incandescence, like the reflected glare of an enormous furnace; while the short, choppy waves of the forenoon had given place to a long, oily, sluggish swell, without a single ripple to disturb its surface, through which the _Chih'

Yuen's_ stem clove its way like a knife shearing through b.u.t.ter. The ship was rolling heavily; and in the queer, eerie stillness that fell with the disappearance of the sun, the usual ship-board sounds, the clank of machinery far below, and even the voices of the men, a.s.sumed so weird and unnatural a character that Frobisher felt himself gradually being overcome by a most unpleasant, dismal sense of foreboding.

The sea, reflecting the ruddy glow from overhead, looked ghastly in the extreme, recalling to the Englishman's disturbed fancy the old sailor's legend of the appearance of the "Hand of Satan in the Sea of Darkness".

This was precisely the kind of sea out of which such a terrible apparition might be expected to appear; and so strongly did the feeling of menace take hold of him, that he actually caught himself at times glancing apprehensively over his shoulder, in spite of his resolve to the contrary.

About an hour after sunset, puffs of hot wind came moaning about the ship from all directions, oppressive, and almost as noxious as the fumes from an open furnace door. Indeed, there was a distinctly sulphurous smell in the atmosphere; and the air was so full of electricity that a quite perceptible shock was to be felt if the bare hand were placed on metal, especially upon the copper fittings of the binnacle. A feeling of vague uneasiness seemed to have taken possession of every man on board; and tempers were short almost to the point of acerbity. The petty officers could be heard snarling at the men, the officers grumbled at their subordinates, and even Frobisher and Drake had something of a pa.s.sage of arms up on the bridge, until they realised that their fretted nerves were due to the extraordinary weather conditions, and laughed the little unpleasantness off accordingly.

Frobisher now gave orders that all the guns were to be doubly secured, so that they might not break adrift in the event of the ship being overtaken by the typhoon, the approach of which now appeared most probable; and everything that might possibly strike adrift was fastened and double fastened, in view of what was almost certainly coming. The canvas dodgers round the bridge were taken down and put away, and the quarter-deck and forecastle awnings were removed, and the stanchions taken out of their sockets and placed below. The lashings of the boat covers were again looked to, and the boats themselves secured more firmly in their chocks, until finally there remained nothing more possible to be done for security, and the outbreak of the storm could be awaited with reasonable confidence.

About eight o'clock in the evening the swell became even more p.r.o.nounced, and the ship commenced to roll so heavily that it was necessary to run hand-lines fore and aft the deck to enable the seamen to go about their duties, otherwise there was great danger of the men being hurled right across the decks and sustaining serious injuries.

The gloomy, lowering, red light which had suffused the sky at the going down of the sun had given place to a dull, copper-coloured glow, mingled with a kind of bra.s.sy glare, all the more ominous from the fact that there was no visible source of its origin; for in the ordinary course of events it should have been quite dark, except for such light as was given by the moon, the sun having disappeared more than an hour and a half previously. So strong was this unearthly light that the horizon was plainly visible in all directions, save away to the northward, and there the blackness was intense. Not the faintest glimmer of a star was observable through the inky curtain which covered about ten degrees of the horizon in that direction, but now and again a sudden dazzle of wicked-looking forked lightning shot across the face of the bank. As yet, however, there was no sound of thunder, and the same unearthly stillness prevailed, save when a moaning sound could be plainly heard as the puffs of hot wind more and more frequently scurried through the ship's wire rigging, or sobbed weirdly in the hoods of the ventilators.

"There is certainly something pretty bad coming, sir," Drake presently volunteered, unable any longer to endure the strained silence. "I have sailed these seas before; and although I have never seen the sky looking quite so threatening as it does now, there were much the same premonitions before the great hurricane of 1889, when more than twenty thousand Chinamen were drowned, and hundreds of junks, sailing ships, and steamers were destroyed, and their wreckage strewn up and down the coast. I was in the old _Barracouta_ at the time; and although she was as well-found a craft as ever I sailed in, I never expected her to live through it. It would be a queer state of affairs if we were to drop across the enemy now, sir, wouldn't it? The men would have a pretty job serving the guns, and no mistake!"

"An action, with a swell such as this running, would be an utter impossibility," was Frobisher's reply. "Before long we shall be having all our work cut out to take care of ourselves, without troubling to attempt the destruction of the other fellow. And by Jove, Drake! I believe it's coming now."

Drake glanced apprehensively behind him, and there, _sure_ enough, just below the inky curtain of blackness on the northern horizon, which was now being rent in every direction by continuous lightning flashes, could be seen a long line of whitish colour, which, there could be no doubt, was approaching the ship with more than the speed of an express train.

Frobisher had scarcely uttered the words before the darkness was rent by the most terrifically vivid flash of lightning that he had ever seen, while simultaneously the air was shattered by a clap of thunder of such frightful volume that the cruiser jarred and shivered from stem to stern, as though she had taken the ground at full speed; indeed, for some seconds Frobisher was not at all sure that they had not happened upon some uncharted shoal. And while all hands were still cringing involuntarily from the shock, there came another dazzling flash of lightning, apparently within a few yards of the vessel, followed immediately by peal on peal of thunder, which rolled and reverberated over the sea as though all the great guns in existence were being fired at the same time within a few miles of them.

Then the rain came down as it only can in those lat.i.tudes--as though the bottom of an enormous tank had been suddenly knocked out; the roar of that colossal volume of water beating on the deck being such that, although Frobisher put his mouth to Drake's ear and shouted with all the power of his lungs, the latter could not distinguish a syllable.