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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Under the Dragon Flag, by James Allan
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Under the Dragon Flag
+       My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War
+
+
+Author: James Allan
+
+
+
+Release Date: August 1, 2005  [eBook #16407]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK UNDER THE DRAGON FLAG***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Justin Kerk, Sankar Viswanathan, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+UNDER THE DRAGON FLAG
+
+My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War
+
+by
+
+JAMES ALLAN
+
+New York
+Frederick A. Stokes Company
+Publishers
+
+1898
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+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 £80,000. 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 £75 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+We reached Tientsin without further mishap, and turned over our cargo
+to Mr. H----'s agent, who disposed of it at a handsome profit, though
+hardly sufficient, I thought, to warrant the risking of so valuable a
+ship as the _Columbia_. We lay in the port about a week, to effect
+the repairs rendered necessary by the Japanese gun practice.
+
+At Tientsin a war council was sitting, and one morning Mr. Mac----, the
+agent, came on board and informed us that he had received a
+proposal for the _Columbia_ to be chartered as a transport to convey
+troops to the Corea. It was only, he said, for an immediate special
+service, and the terms being exceedingly advantageous he had resolved
+on his own responsibility to accept the offer, as the work would not
+occupy us more than a few days. We were to be one of a convoy of
+transports which, sailing at different times from different ports,
+were to rendezvous in Talienwan Bay on the east coast of the Liaotung
+Peninsula, where the troops were to be embarked under protection of
+an armed squadron. There was no time to be lost, and we were to weigh
+anchor and make for the bay as soon as possible.
+
+On the afternoon of the same day two Chinese emissaries came to make a
+visit of inspection, and in the evening we steamed out of the port,
+flying the American colours, with nothing of course to fear at the
+moment. On arriving at Talienwan we found the bay full of shipping.
+Four large transports were already engaged in the work of embarkation,
+and another arrived after we did. The warships presented a gallant
+array, twelve in all, belonging, with two or three exceptions, to the
+North Coast Squadron. There were four torpedo-boats in addition. The
+most powerful vessels were the _Chen-Yuen_ and the _Ting-Yuen_,
+barbette ships, English-built, I think, of 7280 tons. The _King-Yuen_
+and _Lai-Yuen_ were two barbette ships of smaller tonnage--2850. Then
+came the _Ping-Yuen_, of 2850 tons, a coast-defence armour-clad; a
+turret-ship, the _Tsi-Yuen_, of 2320 tons; the _Chih-Yuen_,
+_Ching-Yuen_, _Kwang-Kai_ and _Kwang-Ting_, all of 2300
+tons, deck-protected cruisers; and the _Chao-Yung_ and
+_Yang-Wei_, each of 1400 tons, unprotected cruisers.
+
+I have forgotten to say that we took a Chinese agent on board at
+Tientsin for the trip. He was alleged to be able to speak English,
+but rarely indeed was his jargon intelligible. I asked him to
+translate the names of the Chinese warships, but this was a task far
+beyond the linguistic capacity of my friend Lin Wong. I understood him
+to say that it would require "too muchee words" to render in our
+prosaic tongue the amount of poetic imagery concentrated in the
+expressions "Chih-Yuen," or "Kwang-Kai." Of what the names mean I am
+in ignorance still.
+
+We were speedily boarded by a boat from the flagship, to the officer
+of which Lin Wong gave an account of his stewardship, and we received
+directions to draw up to the landing-stage in turn and receive our
+human freight. The troops were still arriving from the roads to Talien
+and Kinchou. They seemed for the most part an undisciplined lot, and
+came streaming on board in no particular order; here and there a
+mounted officer directing with shouts, gestures, and blows too, the
+movements of the surging masses that crowded along the water-side. The
+number embarked I reckoned at about 18,000. There was also a large
+quantity of military stores to be shipped, and busy enough we were. In
+the evening I had a glimpse of Admiral Ting, who had been ashore and
+was returning to his ship. His barge passed close alongside the
+_Columbia_. I saw a young-looking man, very pleasant in expression
+and manner; altogether what we should call highly gentlemanly in
+appearance. It is well known that he expiated his failures by suicide
+after the final ruin of Wei-hai-wei.
+
+All was complete on the second day after our arrival, and shortly
+before noon the flagship signalled us to weigh anchor. I may remark
+that the Chinese Navy is English trained, and the duty is carried on
+in English, owing to the intractable character of the Chinese
+language, the fact that officers and men have thus practically to
+learn a foreign tongue in order to work their ships being an obvious
+disadvantage. The transports were grouped together and the warships
+disposed in sections abreast and ahead, with the active torpedo-boats
+in the rear. Our destination was the estuary of the Yalu, the large
+river which divides China from the Corea. We left Talienwan on
+September 14, and reached the river on the afternoon of the 16th. The
+work of disembarkation commenced immediately, although rumours reached
+us from Wi-ju of the disastrous defeat of the first Chinese army at
+Ping-Yang in the Corea the day before. It illustrates the ridiculous
+inefficiency of the Chinese measures from first to last, that troops
+should thus have been landed at hap-hazard far from any point of
+communication with the interior of the Peninsula, the very day after
+an action which extinguished their prospect of maintaining their
+ground in the Corea.
+
+The warships anchored across the mouth of the river, whilst the
+transports proceeded some distance up the stream. Wi-ju is the only
+settlement of any size in this little-known region, though there are
+numerous fishing-hamlets scattered about. The soldiers improvised
+their camps along the bank. A wild scene was presented when night fell
+on the 16th--the glare of the bivouac, extending far along the
+desolate water-side; the concourse of savage figures in the lurid
+gloom, with here and there in the distance the gigantic shape of an
+illuminated warship. We worked well into the night, and were at it
+again when the sun rose--a glorious sunrise, pouring over everything
+floods of crimson splendour.
+
+The first accounts which reached England of the action miscalled the
+battle of Yalu, categorically stated that it was fought off the mouth
+of the river whilst the work of landing the soldiers was proceeding.
+This story I fancy to have been invented by the Chinese as a sort of
+excuse for their defeat, by representing themselves as fighting at a
+great disadvantage in covering the disembarkation. However this may
+be, the fact is that the work was completed by about seven o'clock on
+the morning of the 17th, when no enemy was in sight. When the
+_Columbia_ weighed and stood out of the river, after breakfast, about
+nine o'clock, we found that the main body of the fleet had departed,
+though three or four cruisers and the torpedo-boats still remained in
+the bay. We and the other transport masters had received an intimation
+that we were at liberty to return to our respective ports upon the
+conclusion of the work of disembarkation. As to the _Columbia_, Chubb
+had had instructions from Mr. H----'s agent to make straight from the
+Yalu to San Francisco, report to our owner, and take his further
+orders. We had, however, to deal with the Chinese supercargo, if I may
+so term him, Lin Wong, who still remained on board, and wanted to be
+re-conveyed to the Gulf of Pechili. We proposed to put him on board
+one of the warships, but as they were already under weigh when we
+steamed down, there was no immediate opportunity of doing so. They
+were following in the wake of the main squadron towards Port Arthur,
+steering south by west from the mouth of the river. We held on with
+them, only one other transport ship doing the same.
+
+For three hours we steamed on thus, at about twelve knots. Towards
+noon we saw dense smoke all along the horizon ahead, and a heavy,
+dull, rumbling sound reached us which soon made itself unmistakable
+as the roar of artillery. We immediately guessed that the squadron
+preceding us had been attacked by the enemy. Our escort, if I may so
+term it, drew inshore, and I at first thought from their demeanour
+that they were going to shirk entering the engagement. If such was
+their intention, however, they changed it, and stood boldly on with
+the torpedo-boats. We came to a stop, undecided how to proceed. The
+other transport which had accompanied us was already in full retreat,
+and Lin Wong, in whom discretion seemed very unduly proportioned to
+valour, advised a similar course on our part. Chubb and I, however,
+felt a strong desire to see the fight, and as we were not now under
+the Chinese flag, there seemed no reason why we should not stay to
+witness it, particularly as there was no need to let the _Columbia_
+be seen.
+
+We therefore, in spite of the unintelligible protests of Lin Wong,
+cast anchor, having hoisted American colours, in one of the numerous
+bays that indent the rocky coast of the Liaotung. Then Chubb and
+myself, leaving Webster in charge, pulled off in a small boat towards
+the scene of action. We kept close to the shore, and had about a mile
+and a half to pull before we came abreast of the conflict. With its
+deepening thunders bellowing in our deafened ears, we landed where the
+ground was high, and ascending the most elevated point we could
+perceive, had, with the aid of powerful glasses, a good view of the
+scene. Terrific indeed it was--a wide, dense pall of smoke, which
+there was little wind to carry off; through the haze the huge reeling
+shapes of the fighting vessels, looming indistinctly, vomiting flame
+like so many angry dragons, and several of them burning in addition,
+having been set on fire by shells; and above all the appalling
+concussion of the great guns, like the bursting of incessant
+thunder-bolts.
+
+By this time it was half-past two p.m., and the battle had been in
+progress nearly three hours. Not having seen the commencement of the
+affair, we were for some time unable to make head or tail of it. The
+ships were mixed up and scattered, and we could perceive little sign
+of plan or combination on either side. The first thing that began to
+make itself evident as we watched was that the struggle was nearing
+the coast. At first the nearest ships had been fully a league and a
+half seaward; before we had occupied our position three-quarters of an
+hour, many were well within two miles of the coast. So evident was
+this that Chubb remarked that half of them would be ashore before the
+fighting was over. This of course enabled us to distinguish the
+vessels better, and we began to make out evident signs that John
+Chinaman was getting much the worst of it. The Japanese vessels,
+working in concert and keeping together, as we began to perceive,
+seemed to sail round and round the enemy, pouring on them an incessant
+cannonade, and excelling them in rapidity of fire and manoeuvring.
+Some of the Chinese vessels appeared to me to present an appearance of
+helplessness, and there was no indication of combination as amongst
+their opponents. Not but what they blazed away valiantly enough, and
+some of them had evidently given as good as they got, for more than
+one Japanese vessel was in flames. Of course we could not identify
+these ships, but we could make out that in numbers and armament they
+were a fair match for the Chinese squadron. They appeared to pay
+special attention to the two great Chinese ironclads, the _Chen-Yuen_
+and _Ting-Yuen_, one of which at least had had her big guns, 37-ton
+Krupps, silenced, though still contributing to the entertainment with
+the quick-firing armament. Shortly after three, the _King-Yuen_, fired
+by shells, began to burn fiercely; she showed through the smoke like a
+mass of flame, and was evidently sinking, settling down on an even
+keel. Three or four of the enemy circled round, plying her with shot
+and shell. Finally, with a plunge she disappeared, and the immediate
+darkening, as the smoke-clouds rolled in where the fierce blaze of
+the burning wreck had been, was like the sudden drawing of a veil
+over the spot where hundreds of men had met their simultaneous doom.
+The cannonade slackened, but soon broke out again fiercely as ever.
+About this time it seemed as if the Japanese flagship, _Matshushima_,
+was about to share the same fate. She looked all in a blaze forward.
+The fire, however, was got under, and later on she was taken out of
+the action.
+
+Meanwhile the Chinese ships had been forced still nearer to the land,
+and the _Chao-Yung_, an absolute ruin, drifted helplessly ashore,
+half a league from where we stood. By the aid of our glasses we could
+perceive her condition clearly--her upper works knocked to pieces; her
+decks, strewn with mutilated bodies, an indiscriminate mass of wreck
+and carnage. Her crew were abandoning her, struggling to land as best
+they could. Subsequently the _Yang-Wei_ went ashore similarly battered
+to pieces and burning. She was much further off, and we made her out
+less distinctly. On the Japanese side not one ship had sunk as far as
+we had seen, and though the flagship and some of the smaller craft
+were in an unenviable state, the attack was kept up with immense
+spirit, and prompt obedience was paid to signals, which were frequent,
+whereas we looked in vain for any sign of leadership on the part of
+the Celestials. Later in the action another of their best ships, the
+_Chih-Yuen_, came to grief. She had evidently been for long in
+difficulties, labouring heavily, with the steam-pumps constantly in
+requisition, as we could tell by the streams of water poured from her
+sides. Bravely she fought on unsupported, and her upper deck and top
+guns were served until she sank. At length her bows were completely
+engulfed; the stern rose high out of water, disclosing the whirling
+propellers, and bit by bit she disappeared. We could hear distinctly
+the yelling sounds of triumph that rose from the Japanese ships as she
+went down. The _Chen-Yuen_ and _Ting-Yuen_, which seemed to
+fight together during the action, tried when too late to assist her.
+
+At five o'clock, as darkness came on, the firing rapidly decreased,
+and the opposing squadrons began to separate. Some of the Chinese
+vessels were out of sight in the gloom to the southward, and the
+Japanese slowly drew off seaward. We thought it now high time to
+regain the _Columbia_, and took to our boat, discussing the fight and
+speculating on the probable renewal of it. We felt little surprise
+that the Chinese should have had the worst of it, for we had had good
+reason to suspect that their fleet had greatly fallen off from the
+state of unquestionable efficiency to which English tuition had
+brought it. Whilst ashore in Talienwan I had a conversation with Mr.
+Purvis, an English engineer on board the _Chih-Yuen_. I asked him what
+he thought would be the result of an encounter with an equal Japanese
+force. He said the Chinese would have a good chance if well handled,
+expressing on that head distinct doubts.
+
+"They are very brave," said he--and I can answer for it that there was
+no perceptible flinching on their part during the action--"and I
+believe Ting to be a good man, but he is under the thumb of Von
+Hannecken"--meaning Captain or Major Von Hannecken, a German _army_
+officer, one of the foreign volunteers in the fleet. The significance
+of the remark is apparent when we consider the statements made to the
+effect that it was he who was really in command on the day of the
+engagement, Admiral Ting deferring to his suggestions. I am in no
+position to affirm whether this is really the truth or not, but if it
+be indeed the fact, it cannot be held to be astonishing that disaster
+should have overtaken a fleet manoeuvred by a _soldier_! I recollect
+that Mr. Purvis also informed me that the boilers of two or three of
+the vessels (instancing the destroyed _Chao-Yung_) were worn-out and
+unfit for service. Laxity of discipline, too, seems to have resulted
+in disobedience or disregard of orders. As an instance of this, it is
+alleged that instructions telegraphed from the conning-tower of the
+flagship were varied or suppressed by the officer at the telegraph,
+and that a subsequent comparison of notes with the engineer afforded
+proof of this.
+
+I was forcibly struck by the comparatively unimportant part played in
+this action by that "dark horse" of modern naval warfare, the dreaded
+and much-discussed torpedo. Both squadrons had several torpedo-boats
+present, though, as I have shown, those on the Chinese side did not
+enter the action until it had been proceeding more than an hour. The
+Japanese allege that they did not use the torpedo at all during the
+action, and however this may be, there is nothing to show that the
+weapon made on either side a single effective hit. I drew the
+impression from what I saw, that it would be apt to be ineffectual as
+used by one ship against another, an antagonist in the evolutions of
+the combat, as the prospect of hitting, unless the ships were very
+close together, would be small. The specially-built boat, running
+close in, and making sure of the mark, would of course be dangerous,
+although the storm of shot from the quick-firing guns ought even in
+that case to be a tolerably adequate protection. The torpedo
+undoubtedly was not given a fair chance at the battle of Yalu, but the
+result seems to indicate that its terrors have been overrated, that
+artillery must still be reckoned the backbone of naval warfare.
+Probably the torpedo will turn out to be most effective in surprise
+attacks on ships and fleets at anchor. The experience of Wei-hai-wei
+seems to point to this.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+It was dark long before we got back to the bay where we had anchored
+the _Columbia_, and we might have found it impossible to make out her
+whereabouts if Webster had not hoisted lights to guide us. When again
+aboard we got up steam and stood out to sea. We should have run for
+the Yellow Sea at once but for the presence of the Chinese agent, whom
+we had had no opportunity of transferring from the _Columbia_. A
+motion to throw him overboard was negatived, and we resolved to hold
+on for Port Arthur, where we could get rid of him without going much
+out of our way. Besides, we felt curious to see if any further
+encounter would take place between the hostile squadrons. Such,
+however, was not fated to be the case. The Japanese allege that they
+intended to renew the attack in the morning, and tried with that view
+to hold a course parallel with that of the retreating Chinese, but
+lost them during the night.
+
+We reached Port Arthur on the 19th, and having obtained a pilot,
+entered the harbour. We found there only two of the vessels belonging
+to the defeated squadron, the _Ping Yuen_ and the _Kwang Ting_.
+The former did not seem much injured, but the latter had evidently
+suffered heavily, the port bow being partially stove, the upper works
+demolished, and the armouring tremendously battered and dinted.
+
+Shortly after casting anchor in the West Port, I lowered a boat to
+take Lin Wong ashore. In the dockyard he ascertained that a fast steam
+launch was to leave for Tientsin with despatches within two days, and
+he arranged to take advantage of her departure to regain that port,
+from which, it will be remembered, he had come on board the
+_Columbia_. As he seemed well acquainted with Port Arthur, I got him
+to take me round, and show me as much of the place as could be seen in
+the two or three hours of leisure at my disposal, for the _Columbia_
+was to trip her anchor again in the evening.
+
+The general features of Port Arthur, or, to give it its native name,
+Lu-Shun-Kou, must be tolerably familiar to all who have followed the
+course of the war. A glance at the map shows its position, at the
+southern extremity of the Liaotung Peninsula, commanding, with the
+formidable forts of Wei-hai-wei on the opposite tongue of land, near
+Chefoo, the entrance to the Gulf of Pechili. Although now the
+principal arsenal and naval depôt of the Chinese Empire, it is of
+quite recent creation, only having come into note since 1881, in which
+year it was decided to establish a naval dockyard. Up to then it had
+only been used as a harbour for junks employed in the timber trade and
+carrying cargoes from the Yalu to ports in the Pechili Gulf, or from
+the south to Niuchang and West Chin-chou. Native contractors having
+made an extensive bungle of the job, it was entrusted to a French
+company, and by them completed. Since then the place has increased,
+from an insignificant village of sixty or seventy mud houses and a few
+shops, to a town of over a thousand dwellings, as well as two large
+theatres, two temples, and a number of banks and inns. The population
+at the time of the Japanese incursion was about 5000 or 6000, in
+addition to a garrison of about 7000. The port is very spacious and
+commodious, and dredgers have worked assiduously for several years
+past to deepen the entrance to it. The bar has been deepened from
+twelve feet to about twenty-five feet to enable permanent moorings to
+be laid down for men-of-war. The dock basin, called the East Port,
+covering an area of thirty-two acres, has been constructed well behind
+the signal bluffs to the right of the entrance, the West Port, or
+natural harbour, opening just opposite round the long, narrow spit of
+land called the Tiger's Tail. The basin has a depth of twenty-five
+feet at low water. There are large and numerous wharves and quays,
+fitted with steam cranes, and connected by a railway with the
+workshops, which contain all the most modern machinery and engines.
+The dockyard, and in fact a considerable portion of the town, is
+supplied with fresh water conveyed by pipes from a spring about four
+miles to the north. There is a smaller dock for torpedo boats, and a
+torpedo depôt on shore where those weapons can be tested and
+regulated. The entrance to the port is defended by torpedoes and
+submarine mines, although, as I noticed, some of the latter had been
+so badly constructed and adjusted for depth as to show above water.
+
+For defensive purposes nature and art have combined to render the
+place exceedingly strong. Ranges of hills, varying from 300 feet to
+1500 feet, surround the port and town almost completely, offering
+scope for fortification of the most formidable character, advantages
+which, as far as construction goes, have been well utilized, massive
+and lofty stone forts occupying every point of advantage. I believe
+they are of German construction. They bristle with heavy Krupp and
+Nordenfeldt guns. The elevation on the coast varies from eighty feet
+to 410 feet. The land defences, though newer than those seaward, are
+less powerful; the heaviest guns, of 21 and 24 centimetre, are in the
+latter. Everywhere the forts are supplemented by trenches, rifle-pits,
+and open redoubts or walled camps.
+
+Such is, or was, Port Arthur, and when we remember how the Turks held
+Plevna, an open town until the earthworks were hastily thrown up round
+it, for months against all the force Russia could bring against it,
+one cannot but feel amazement that a place so powerful should so
+easily have fallen. Properly defended, it should be unreducible by
+anything but famine. The coast defences are impregnable, and those
+inland, though more susceptible of attack, should not fall before
+anything short of overwhelming superiority of force. I should like to
+have seen the 20,000 men whom the Japanese led against it take that
+fortress in forty-eight hours from Osman Pacha's army. The Mikado's
+generals, however, had formed a perfectly just estimate of their own
+powers as against those of the enemy. In fact, a third of their force
+could have taken Port Arthur from the ridiculous soldiers who held it.
+
+The garrison in ordinary times amounts to 7000 men, but before the
+Japanese attack it had been increased to nearly 20,000. This is
+inadequate; 30,000 men at least should occupy the fortress in time of
+war, and 40,000 would not in my opinion be too many.
+
+The chief man in the place when I was there was the Taotai, or
+governor, Kung, a brother, I have heard, of the Ambassador to England.
+His office, I believe, is civil; the military chiefs were Generals
+Tsung and Ju. The soldiers, who appeared to range about everywhere
+pretty much at their own discretion, were an uncouth, rough lot, with
+very little of the smartness of dress and bearing which we associate
+with the military character. Everywhere was a most portentous display
+of banners, as if the sacrilegious foot of a foeman could not be set
+on any spot rendered sacred by the dragon flag. The town presented a
+very neat and compact aspect, and struck me very favourably as
+compared with Tientsin, the only other Chinese town I had been in, and
+which seemed to me to be for the most part composed of narrow, dirty,
+stinking lanes with one or two good streets in the centre. Port
+Arthur, as might be expected of so recent a settlement, constructed to
+a large extent under European supervision, is very much better built,
+and altogether presents, or did present--for to a melancholy and
+deplorable condition was it soon to be reduced--a thriving and busy
+aspect.
+
+At dusk I quitted the streets, with their bazaar-like shops and
+strange illuminations, and made my way back to the port under escort
+of my Chinese friend, who with Oriental politeness insisted on seeing
+me safe back on board. A most unwelcome shock awaited me. No
+_Columbia_ was to be found, and Lin Wong's inquiries elicited that
+she had left nearly an hour before. We hunted up the pilot who had taken
+her out, and learned from him that she had steamed away south-east
+immediately; she could not, therefore, be awaiting me outside. What on
+earth could be the meaning of it? I could only conjecture that by some
+oversight the fact of my not being on board had been forgotten. She
+possibly might return on its being discovered that I had been left
+ashore, but in the meantime what was I to do? A suggestion by Lin
+solved the difficulty. If the _Columbia_ did not put back, I could
+obtain a passage to Tientsin on the vessel which was soon to convey
+him to that port, where I could arrange my future proceedings
+according to circumstances. This seeming the only feasible plan, I,
+with many internal maledictions upon the stupid mischance, accompanied
+the agent to an hotel or inn where he had already chartered quarters
+for his short stay in the place. There are some half-dozen of these
+establishments in Port Arthur. Three or four of them are wretched
+hovels, which existed in the squalid infancy of the town; the newer
+ones are larger and fairly commodious and comfortable. The one we
+occupied was near one of the gates of the approaches to the
+north-eastern forts. Mine host was a square, thick-set Celestial named
+Sen. Port Arthur being well accustomed to "foreign devils," some of
+the servants had been engaged for their knowledge of that curious
+dialect "pidgin English," which in the far East is pretty much what
+Lingua Franca is in the Levant. With a little practice it is easily
+comprehended, although, under the chaperonage of Lin, my difficulties
+were largely reduced. Fortunately I had a considerable sum of American
+money in my pockets, and with Lin's aid was able to negotiate it at
+one of the banks, at a pretty smart loss, I may say. Otherwise I was
+fairly content and comfortable, and had no human want but whisky.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Nothing of interest occurred during the day and a half that elapsed
+before the departure of the despatch-boat. Punctual enough as to time
+she steamed out of the harbour under cover of night, with the Chinese
+agent and myself on board. Misfortunes are well known never to come
+singly, and so it was in my case. The morning after our departure was
+very foggy, and towards noon we had to slow down to less than half
+speed. Suddenly, without a moment's warning, a Japanese gunboat loomed
+through the dun vapour close on the port bow. With their ridiculous
+fondness for showing it on all occasions, in season and out, the
+Celestials had their flag flaunting on a staff in the stern. The
+Japanese on the gunboat perceived it, for without troubling to hail
+she opened on us with the machine-guns in her tops. A storm of balls
+swept the deck, and half of those upon it fell dead or wounded. One of
+the bullets cut off the peak of my cap with mechanical neatness,
+leaving the rest of the article on my head, though turned quite
+round, back to front. Before anything could be done to increase our
+speed, a quick-firing gun plumped several heavy shot through us. The
+machinery was damaged, we swung round helplessly, and were evidently
+fast sinking. We had two boats of no great size; one of them was
+knocked to splinters by the shot; the other we lowered as fast as we
+could. As many as it would hold got into it, the others jumped into
+the water, and within half a minute afterwards our vessel went down,
+and the woe-begone survivors of the sudden catastrophe found
+themselves prisoners on the deck of her destroyer.
+
+She was the _Itsuku_ gunboat of about five hundred tons, on a cruise
+of observation in the Gulf, along with two or three consorts, whom she
+had lost in the fog. There was not a soul on board who could speak a
+word of English, but by a few Chinese was sufficiently understood, and
+a gunnery officer could speak tolerable French, a knowledge of which
+tongue I shall probably be recollected to have mentioned as being the
+major portion of the inadequate exchange for my eighty thousand
+pounds. They informed us that they had taken us for a torpedo boat,
+and seeing the Chinese flag had no hesitation in opening fire on so
+dangerous a neighbour, as they deemed us. They seemed very scantily
+pleased when told our real character, and learnt that their
+precipitancy had perhaps lost them a little promotion, or at least
+honourable mention, as capturers of important despatches, as I
+understand them to have been.
+
+I remained on board this vessel for more than a month. The Chinese, of
+course, were prisoners of war, but there was no ground for detaining
+me as such. I related how I had been left behind by the _Columbia_ at
+Port Arthur, without, of course, giving any hint that she had been
+engaged in supplying China with war material. I thought this would
+satisfy my captors, but I was not long in finding out that they
+entertained their own ideas as to my character, for one day I was
+plainly asked whether I was not a military or naval instructor of the
+Chinese. I was able to conscientiously deny that I was any such thing,
+but the query took me very much aback, as the naturalness of the
+suspicion was obvious, and I foresaw no end of trouble in clearing
+myself of it. The commander of the gunboat, a consequential and rather
+surly personage, shook his head, and said he would have to take time
+to consider the matter.
+
+Time he certainly did take, and plenty of it. We were, however, well
+treated, chiefly through the kindness of the French-speaking officer,
+Lieutenant Hishidi, with whom I struck up an acquaintance, he being
+in fact the only one of the gunboat's crew with whom I could converse.
+He caused a small separate cabin to be extemporized for myself and Lin
+Wong, and looked to our comfort in other ways. My friend Lin, I should
+say, had received a nasty graze on the ribs of the right side from one
+of the machine-gun bullets, but otherwise was all right, though in a
+very chop-fallen condition at being made prisoner. He and I were
+allowed more liberty than the other captives, and apart from the
+detention had little to complain of.
+
+I was naturally much interested at first in looking round me and
+taking stock of the Japanese sailors and their vessel. She was in
+superb fighting trim, beautifully clean and well found in every part,
+and the duty was carried on with thorough man-of-war smartness. It was
+impossible to watch these little active, clever, determined sailors
+without feeling that the men of the finest navy in the world, which I
+take to be that of her Britannic Majesty, would find in them foemen
+worthy of their steel. I remember that they were daily exercised at
+the guns, and the promptitude and precision with which they sank the
+_Kowtung_--such was the unlucky despatch-boat's name--was a handsome
+testimonial to the accuracy of their aim.
+
+Lieutenant Hishidi and I had many conversations, chiefly during his
+watches, and our talk generally turned on the war and nautical
+matters. Of the Chinese he spoke with unmeasured contempt, certainly
+not undeserved, and said that the Japanese fleets and armies had no
+misgiving as to the result of the struggle; they felt able, against
+such opponents, to do anything and go anywhere--"aussi loin que mer et
+terre puissent nous mener," was his emphatic expression.
+
+"We have been making this war for a long time," said he, "and we feel
+sure of what we can do."
+
+I remarked on the extraordinary rapidity with which a nation, closed
+like the Japanese, up to within thirty years since, to European trade
+and European ideas, had adopted and assimilated the system of Western
+civilization.
+
+"Yes," he replied, "we can learn, and we have learnt, because we saw
+that the knowledge would give us a great advantage in our own part of
+the world."
+
+He had been in France, and expressed great admiration of French
+ship-building and French seamanship, and seemed doubtful when I
+maintained that British seamen would in case of war assert their
+superiority over the French ones just as decisively now as they ever
+had done in the past--and of naval history in general Hishidi had a
+good idea.
+
+"You might," he said, "as your navy is so much larger than theirs."
+
+But I pointed out that our naval triumphs had seldom been gained by
+superior force--"although," I admitted, "we certainly have now double
+the force of any other European power, on which account none of them
+dare attack us singly, as they know that if they did, the majority of
+their knocked-out tubs would be towing up the Downs in a very brief
+space of time. But numbers apart, the British sailor of to-day can
+still do more with a ship than a Frenchman. The conditions are
+certainly completely changed, but the best seaman will make the most
+of the new order."
+
+He shook his head dubiously, and said he should like to see a war
+between England and France.
+
+"Well," said I, "you may live to see that and not be an old man. You
+may live to see a war between England and half the rest of the world,
+and see England get the best of it. It has happened once or twice
+before."
+
+On another occasion we were talking about Russia, when Hishidi
+remarked--
+
+"Russia wants China."
+
+"Russia wants everything," said I.
+
+"Ah, that is what they say of you," replied he.
+
+I once asked him what he thought of the torpedo.
+
+"Well," said he, "the torpedo is as yet far from being thoroughly
+understood. It is very uncertain in use, though when it takes effect
+invariably deadly. Gun-fire should be able to neutralize it, that is,
+to keep it at a distance, for once struck, no sort of construction
+could resist the explosion of two hundred pounds of gun-cotton against
+the hull under the water line; water-tight compartments would be of no
+avail against such devastation. Vessels of the cruiser type, fast, and
+with a heavy quick-firing armament, are best suited to cope with
+torpedo-boats, which would find it difficult to get to close quarters
+with such craft. Warships have lately been built with a considerable
+increase of length, which of course increases a torpedo's chance of
+striking by giving it a larger target. Moderate size, no overloading
+with armour, speed, good coal supply, and as many quick-firing guns as
+can be mounted--that is my idea of the best type of warship at
+present. The policy of building monstrous ships is doubtful, when they
+can be sunk by a torpedo-boat. Under such conditions, it seems to me
+that ease and rapidity of manoeuvring is of more advantage than
+gigantic weight of ordnance and armour, because after all the
+torpedo's attack is directed against a part which nothing can render
+invulnerable."
+
+Such is the substance of my conversation with the lieutenant, but
+despite the charms of intellectual intercourse, I soon began to get
+desperately weary of my detention. Day after day the _Itsuku_ cruised
+about, sometimes in company with other craft, sometimes alone. The
+enemy kept well out of sight, and few events occurred to chequer the
+monotony. Once we sighted two Chinese gunboats not far from Chefoo,
+and the Japanese varied the day's drill and gun exercise by shelling
+them into Wei-hai-wei. They ran ignominiously and never made the least
+show of fight. Had the _Itsuku_ been a faster vessel, she would
+undoubtedly have captured or destroyed one of them. Her maximum speed
+was under sixteen knots. On another occasion, off the western coast of
+the Liaotung, we came upon a fleet of junks, craft engaged in coast
+trade, I presume. Their crews ran them ashore and escaped, whilst the
+Japanese fired the stranded junks with shells, the officers amusing
+themselves by sighting the guns and betting on the shots. When a
+satisfactory bonfire had been created we steamed away.
+
+This sort of thing, I have said, went on for more than a month. The
+gunboat's cruising-ground was chiefly about the mouth of the Pechili
+Gulf, now under the frowning forts of Wei-hai-wei, and now opposite
+Port Arthur on the other side. There did not seem to be any regular
+blockade of the Gulf, though Japanese warships were constantly
+hovering about. The Chinese fleet, I believe, confined itself to the
+modest seclusion of Wei-hai-wei harbour, and was not to be tempted
+outside. Once I asked Hishidi when they meant to assail Wei-hai-wei
+and Port Arthur?
+
+"Oh," said he, "we are waiting our time; it has not come yet."
+
+British war-vessels were frequently in sight, but to my requests to be
+put on board one of them, or at least to be brought before a Japanese
+admiral, the commander of the _Itsuku_--I have completely forgotten
+his name--turned a deaf ear. October wore away, and any termination of
+my captivity seemed as distant as ever. I was obliged to put an end to
+it on my own initiative. One evening--the fourth or fifth of November
+it would be--we were outside Port Arthur. At dusk the gunboat
+anchored, and a boat was despatched on some errand of reconnaissance.
+A point of the coast was less than a mile distant, and as I leant over
+the bulwark in the fore-part of the vessel, it struck me that I might
+easily swim off to it, if I could get into the water unobserved. Under
+Webster's tuition I had become an excellent swimmer. I looked round; I
+was apparently not under notice, and there was no light near where I
+was. My mind was made up at once. I stole as far forward as I could,
+and watching my opportunity, and steadying myself by the cathead, I
+made a leap for the cable, intending to climb down it to the water. A
+leap in the dark is proverbially a dangerous thing; the vessel
+perversely veered away as I sprang, and instead of catching the cable
+I soused into the water with a loud splash. The sentry on the gangway
+heard it, ran forward, and emptied the magazine of his rifle at me as
+I swam away, but by diving and swimming under water out of the direct
+line of advance, I managed to evade the bullets. A boat was soon down
+and in hot pursuit, but I had had a good start, and they were at a
+loss for my true direction at first. I struck out vigorously and made
+good headway, but had the disadvantage of swimming in my clothes;
+moreover, the water was frightfully cold, and began to chill me to the
+bone. I could tell, however, that the tide was strongly in my favour,
+and I believe I should have escaped the boat's notice, but that the
+people on shore, hearing, I suppose, the rifle-shots, turned on an
+electric search-light to see what was going forward. I was still a
+good quarter of a mile from the shore, and the boat was nearly as
+close in--almost parallel with me, though several hundred yards away.
+There was no fort near, but I could see the dark mass of one on a
+towering height far to the left. The bright glare soon showed me to my
+pursuers, who turned the boat's head towards me and gave way with
+might and main. They closed fast, and I gave myself up for lost. A
+heavy rifle-fire began crackling along the shore, and the balls
+frequently skimmed along the water disagreeably near me. I struggled
+on, but would inevitably have been retaken if the event had depended
+on my own efforts. There was a small coast battery near containing two
+or three mortars, and a shell was thrown at the boat as it held its
+daring course for the shore. It was not a hundred yards from me at the
+moment. I heard the scream of the projectile, saw it describing its
+flaring parabola in my direction, and with my last energies dived to
+avoid it. The sound of its explosion rang in my ears as I went under.
+When I came up again, the boat was putting back in a hurry with three
+or four oars disabled. How near to them the bomb had pitched I cannot
+say, but they had evidently got a good allowance of the splinters,
+though chance probably had more to do with the matter than
+marksmanship. The gunboat was under steam and standing in, returning
+the fire. I strained every nerve, and struggled ashore at last in such
+a numbed and exhausted state that I could not stand upright without
+assistance. I found myself surrounded by Chinese soldiers, who plied
+me with questions, which I could not have answered even if I had
+understood Chinese. Perceiving my condition, they took me off to a
+small building like a guard-house, some way to the rear of a line of
+trenches. They made a blazing wood fire in the middle of the stone
+floor, and when I had stripped off my wet clothes and was partially
+thawed, they renewed their interrogatories. I absolutely knew not a
+word of Chinese, and could only endeavour by gestures to give them an
+idea of what had happened. This was not very satisfactory, but they at
+least could make out that I was no friend to the Japanese. They
+jabbered away for a while amongst themselves, apparently discussing
+me. At length one of them brought me some food in a large wooden
+bowl--a strange mess of I know not what mysterious compounds, amongst
+which, however, I could distinguish rice. It was palatable and I ate
+it gladly, and asked, too, for a supplementary supply, which was not
+denied. Overcome by exhaustion and the fierce heat of the fire, a
+drowsy stupor came upon me, and I made signs that I wished to sleep.
+They did not seem to have any clothing to offer me for my own which
+was drying in the blaze, but they brought in several long, coarse
+cloaks or mantles, and one of them enveloping himself in these,
+stretched himself before the fire on the ground, to intimate to me
+that in such a manner I must pass the night. Another offered me a pipe
+of opium, which I knew it would be a great discourtesy, according to
+their ideas, to decline, although I was quite unaccustomed to the
+drug. I therefore took it and affected to smoke, and as I lay down,
+they left the little room in which they had placed me, and I heard
+them barricade the door outside.
+
+I immediately fell into a profound slumber. The few whiffs of opium
+which, despite of myself, I had inhaled, had their effect, and
+produced a series of those magical dreams with which the drug tempts
+and deceives the novice. Through all of them the idea of flight and
+pursuit ran bewilderingly. I will give one as a specimen. I dreamt
+that I was on the shore of the sea; the waters suddenly began to rise,
+and threatened to overwhelm me. I turned and ran, but nearer and
+nearer the flood came after. Then there yawned across my path a
+precipice of which I could not see the bottom. Down I plunged. I
+seemed to fly like a bird, and once more stood on firm ground. The
+precipice seemed to reach to the sky behind me. I resumed my flight,
+and looking back, beheld the flood leaping down the gulf in a mighty
+volume, with the sun rising above it, and bathing the illimitable
+cataract with golden light. It would be impossible to describe or
+imagine the gorgeousness of the spectacle. With such visions as these
+does the treacherous narcotic lure its victims. I believe its use is
+forbidden by the Chinese military authorities, but the undisciplined
+soldiers seemed to use it extensively when they could get it, like
+tobacco.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+I slept till the middle of the following day, and would in all
+probability have slept longer but that I was awakened by my hosts, if
+so I may term them. My clothes were quite dry; I got into them, and
+was escorted outside at once. The first thing I saw was a detachment
+of cavalry, mounted on little shaggy Tartar ponies. One of these I was
+invited to bestride, and a moment afterwards, without the possibility
+of explanations being either asked or given, we were _en route_.
+
+I may as well say at once that the spot where I had come ashore was
+the land below the West Port, and I was being conveyed to the
+Man-tse-ying fort, one of the principal seaward fortifications. It has
+an elevation of 266 feet above the sea level, and the latter part of
+the ascent had to be made on foot. I was at once taken before the
+commandant, who with a few other officers and a secretary sat prepared
+to investigate the peculiar circumstances which had brought a Fan
+Quei, or foreign devil, amongst them. The secretary knew English very
+indifferently--so indifferently that I am doubtful if he understood my
+story rightly. He asked me if I was acquainted with German, and gave
+me to understand that he knew more of that language than of English;
+however, I did not know ten words of it. The examination was long,
+and, from the difficulty of understanding one another, confused
+enough. I gathered that I was, or had been, under suspicion of being a
+Japanese spy in the minds of those before whom I had been brought, and
+they rigorously questioned the men whom I had first seen as to the
+circumstances attending my landing. These, I consoled myself by
+reflecting, could not be deemed consistent with the supposition that I
+was an agent of the enemy. I was asked if there was any one in the
+town who could witness to my having been there previously under the
+circumstances I alleged. I replied that probably the people at the inn
+would remember me.
+
+Finally the Chinamen held a lengthened consultation amongst
+themselves, at the end of which I was told that I would be taken
+forthwith before the higher authorities on the other side of the port.
+I hinted to the secretary that I had had nothing to eat that day and
+felt decidedly hungry. I was accordingly served before my departure
+with a meal of fish and boiled bread, with a cup of rice wine, a
+decoction which tasted like thin, sour claret. This done, I was placed
+in charge of my former escort, who struck across country from the rear
+of the Man-tse-ying, passed two or three other forts and numerous
+entrenchments and redoubts, and finally reached the water on the inner
+side of the long arm of land enclosing the West Port. Here, close by a
+torpedo store, I was put on board a sampan, a long, narrow boat, sharp
+at both extremities, with an awning. In this I was conveyed to the
+East Port and taken through the dockyards to the military
+head-quarters near the great drill and parade ground at the entrance
+to the town. It was late in the evening when we arrived there, and I
+was not brought up for examination until the next day. Here, to my
+great satisfaction, I found I had to deal with somebody who knew
+English well--a military aide-de-camp, who spoke the language with
+both fluency and correctness. To him I told my story plainly and
+straightforwardly, and by the testimony of my former landlord, Sen,
+and an official at the bank where I had changed my money, established
+my identity as the person who had passed two days in the town with
+Wong, and accompanied him on board the despatch-boat. This was
+sufficient to procure my release. Everything I said was very carefully
+noted down. My interrogation was conducted before a couple of
+mandarins. The Taotai I believe to have been absent from the place at
+this time. He is alleged to have deserted his position and to have
+been ordered back again. This may or may not be so, but it is
+undoubtedly the fact that he fled from Port Arthur the night before
+the Japanese attacked it. He does not appear to have been open to the
+accusation of heroism.
+
+I was informed by the aide-de-camp that the port had been visited only
+a day or two before by the British warship _Crescent_, the officers
+of which had landed for a short while. Fate seemed resolved that I should
+have no chance of leaving the place without seeing in it something
+worth remembering, as I had no sooner returned to Sen's inn, which I
+did on my release, than I was seized with a kind of aguish fever, the
+effect, no doubt, of the exposure I had recently undergone. It was
+nothing serious, but caused a feeling of great lassitude and
+depression, and confined me indoors for some ten or twelve days. I had
+the place almost to myself, as the approach of the Japanese armies had
+not been favourable to custom, and the usual course of travel to and
+from the north had been suspended. Sen was anxious to learn from me
+whether I considered it advisable for residents and townspeople to
+leave the port. I replied, as I sincerely thought, that the Japanese,
+if they succeeded in taking the place, would do no harm to
+non-combatants. I was, however, fatally mistaken.
+
+The inn was a place of two storeys--few Chinese habitations have more.
+Most of the rooms opened round a partially covered courtyard. I had a
+good one in the upper storey, or the "top-side," as it is expressed in
+"pidgin." There were no fireplaces; the apartments were chiefly warmed
+by charcoal in braziers. Along one side of that which I occupied was a
+long low hollow bench, filled with hot air from a furnace. This
+contrivance usually served me for a bed, for although they use
+bedsteads, there is nothing on them but an immense wadded quilt, in
+which you roll yourself up. I transferred it to the hot-air holder,
+which made a far warmer and more comfortable couch. I was waited on
+mostly by a lad named Chung, one of the professors of "pidgin." He was
+a native of Canton, had been in Hong Kong, and was well accustomed to
+Englishmen and their ways. The fare was very tolerable--poultry, pork,
+and various kinds of fish, but no beef, as the Chinaman deems it wrong
+to kill the animal that helps to till the ground. Chung told me that
+in the south cats and dogs are fattened for food, which it occurred to
+me would be a distinct advantage in Port Arthur at that time, with a
+siege imminent, and a great abundance of those animals observable. For
+drink I naturally had plenty of tea, though it is very washy stuff as
+made by the Chinese, who usually content themselves with putting the
+leaves in a cup and pouring hot water over them, flavouring the
+infusion with tiny bits of lemon.
+
+As soon as I was sufficiently recovered to go out, I made an effort to
+find out whether there was any prospect of getting away from the place
+by sea, but soon found that this was hopeless to expect. No foreign
+vessels were in the port, and the native ones were chiefly junks, the
+proprietors of which, as interpreted by Chung, whom I took with me,
+refused to venture out unless for such a sum as I could by no
+possibility procure. There were no Chinese war-vessels in the harbour,
+and indeed they would have been of no use there.
+
+Knowing that the fortress was a very strong one, I made up my mind
+that there would be a protracted siege, and my spirits fell as I
+surveyed the prospect, for my pecuniary resources were limited, and it
+seemed very unlikely that I would again see the _Columbia_ in the
+port. However, my fears were groundless. Little did I think that
+within three days the place would be in the hands of the Japanese.
+
+It was on November 18 that I made the fruitless attempt to negotiate
+for a passage. The appearance of the place had considerably changed
+since first I was in it. The numbers of the soldiery had obviously
+been largely increased. Industry was completely suspended in the
+dockyard, the whole of which had been converted into barracks. In
+returning from the wharves with Chung, I witnessed a specimen of
+military punishment. Passing the open gate of an enclosure near the
+clearing-house, I perceived a group which at once riveted my
+attention. A number of soldiers were standing round one who, stripped
+to the waist, was kneeling with his forehead stooped almost to the
+ground, and his hands tied behind, the thongs that bound them being
+held by a man standing close in his rear. Thus disposed, he received a
+tremendous flogging from a whip with a fearful heavy leathern lash,
+which made me think of the Russian knout. The blows fell with a thud
+that made my nerves shiver, and the back of the sufferer was covered
+with blood, which was thrown here and there by the ensanguined
+instrument of torture as it whistled through the air. He took his
+punishment, however, to use the language of the P.R., like a man, and
+though his body seemed to bend like a reed with each stroke, he never
+uttered a sound that I could hear. I did not count the lashes, but
+there was no stint in the allowance. Minute after minute the
+castigator laboured away in his vocation, until finally the victim
+collapsed, and rolling over, lay like a log in a pool of blood, and
+was then carried off. I was rather surprised to see a whip used, as I
+had always supposed the bastinado to be the favourite method of
+flagellation in China. I asked Chung for an explanation, but he did
+not seem to understand my question, and replied that the "one piecee
+ting (soldier) no hab muchee hurtee," and that they might if they had
+liked have cut off his "one piecee head." True it is that decapitation
+is a very common punishment in the Chinese army.
+
+Strongly as the massacre by the Japanese troops in Port Arthur is to
+be condemned, there is not the slightest doubt in the world that the
+Chinese brought it on themselves by their own vindictive savagery
+towards their enemies. The attacking armies, advancing down the
+Peninsula in touch with the fleet, were now within a day or two's
+march of the inland forts. Bodies of Chinese troops harassed and
+resisted them, and brushes between the opposing forces frequently took
+place. The Chinese took some prisoners, whom they slew mercilessly,
+and one of the first things I saw on the morning of the 19th was a
+pair of corpses suspended by the feet from the branches of a huge
+camphor tree near the parade-ground. They were hideously mutilated.
+They had been disembowelled; the eyes were gouged out, the throat cut,
+and the right hand severed. They were perfectly naked, and groups of
+children were pelting them with mud and stones.
+
+Similar ghastly spectacles were to be seen in other parts, both inside
+the town and beyond it. Nor was this the worst; the walls exhibited
+placards, in the sacred imperial yellow, inciting to these atrocities.
+This I know by means of Chung, whom I usually took out with me. The
+tenor, as he translated, was this:--"To the soldiers and subjects of
+the Celestial Lord of the Dragon Throne. So much for every Japanese
+dog alive. So much for his head or hand. In the name of the Sacred Son
+of Heaven," etc. Then came the date and the signature of the Taotai.
+The exact amount of the rewards I forget. I think it was fifty taels
+for a live prisoner, and a less amount for heads or hands. The bodies
+of the Japanese soldiers killed in encounters with the enemy as they
+closed on the place, were often found minus the head or right hand,
+sometimes both, besides being ferociously gashed and slashed. Corpses
+were still hanging on the trees when the fortress fell, and it is not
+surprising that their former comrades should have been maddened by the
+sight, though of course the officers are greatly to blame for
+permitting the fearful retaliation which ensued to be carried to such
+lengths. The massacre seems to have been allowed to continue
+unchecked until no more victims could be found.
+
+This, however, is to anticipate. On the 19th the enemy were close upon
+the forts, and everything was bustle and commotion. Business was
+suspended nearly everywhere, and the movements of the troops were the
+chief attraction. Great crowds gathered in the vicinity of the
+general's pavilion overlooking the parade-ground, where a council was
+held in the afternoon. A strong armed force held back the mob. All the
+principal military officers arrived from their posts at the head of
+their staffs one by one. The Taotai was brought from his residence in
+a magnificent sedan-chair, carried by ten or twelve bearers. The
+pavilion itself is a splendid structure, adorned with the most gaudy
+and brilliant colours, and covered with Chinese characters beautifully
+worked in gold. The consultation lasted for at least three hours. I
+had only a distant view of Kung over the heads of the soldiers. The
+fighting outside continued, and on the next day more Japanese corpses
+had been brought in by the vengeful soldiery, and left for the rabble
+to amuse themselves with. I do not think that any Japanese was brought
+into the town alive.
+
+Towards noon the next day (20th) the first guns were heard. Cannon
+rumbled away in the distance all the afternoon, ceasing as night came
+on. A wild and anxious night it was. There was no certain news of the
+fighting, and the most contradictory rumours were prevalent. Excited
+crowds filled the streets, which blazed with great coloured paper
+lanterns, of which nearly every individual carried one; indeed, the
+person who is seen outside without a lantern after dark becomes an
+object of suspicion to the police watch.
+
+I determined to see, if possible, something of the fighting next day.
+All the ground around Port Arthur is, as I have before remarked, very
+hilly. Outside the town, and between it and the north-western forts,
+is a lofty elevation named White Boulders, for an obvious reason--the
+ground is full of chalk. This spot I determined upon as my point of
+observation. Most of the front face had been covered with trenches,
+but the rear was easy of attainment, and I was struggling up the steep
+ascent at day-break. The summit is very uneven, covered with huge
+crags and deep indentations, and there were any number of secure
+enough nooks to pick and choose from.
+
+The field of action seen from White Boulders is very simple and may be
+described in a few words. Behind me was the West Port; on my left the
+north-western fortifications, called the Table Mountain forts; on my
+right the East Port and the sea, and in front the greater part of the
+town, with the north-eastern forts beyond. Of these latter there are,
+I think, eight, all connected by a wall. I had only a partial view of
+them. Between the elevations on which stand the north-eastern and
+north-western forts, the ground sinks deeply, and there is a wide
+space comparatively level, part of it occupied by a village. This
+tract is defended by redoubts and earthworks, and can be swept by the
+fire of the higher fortifications, particularly by those of the
+north-east, but still it is a weak point in the defence, though
+capable, it seemed to me, of being greatly strengthened.
+
+The day broke with a frosty clearness, and though I had no glass, it
+was possible to see for miles on every hand. The dragon flag waved
+everywhere on the Chinese forts, but I could see at first no sign of
+the Japanese, and it was not until they began to fire that their
+positions were indicated. It was about half-past seven when, far to
+the north-west, their guns began to boom. All their preparations had
+apparently been made over-night, and they were only waiting for
+daylight to begin. The Chinese opened fire in reply on both sides;
+battery after battery joined in, and soon there was a thundering roar
+of artillery, and a dense volume of white smoke, through which glanced
+the flash of the cannon, all round the great semi-circle. The scream
+of shells, and the blaze and detonation with which they burst, were
+incessant. Away on the right the sea was covered with warships, which
+seemed to have nothing to do, and certainly were not assailing the
+coast defences. Some of the seaward forts were able to get their guns
+to bear on the positions of the Japanese armies, and were blazing
+away, though I don't think they could do much damage.
+
+Some minor outlying fortifications had been captured the previous
+afternoon, and the Japanese had divided into two bodies for the main
+assaults on the north-west and north-east. The Chinese in these two
+sections appeared to have no combination, and by a feint at the
+north-east the Japanese kept that part diverted until the west forts
+had been carried. It is a fact that they fell about an hour and a half
+after the cannonade commenced. The Japanese infantry advanced against
+them, and the valiant troops holding them ran away at the sight. The
+Chinese forts on the other side now began to fire away across the
+intervening valley, as if that could remedy the disaster. Upon them
+then became concentrated the whole Japanese fire. The Chinamen here
+made a far better show, and the fire was vigorous and sustained. About
+eleven o'clock, with a terrific blast of flame and thunder, which
+seemed to shake the ground far and near to the shores of the sea,
+their largest fort, the Shoju, or Pine Tree Hill, blew up; a shell
+must have alighted in the magazine. At noon the whole Japanese line
+advanced to the charge, and here, too, the Celestials never waited for
+the assault, but fled precipitately. There was no fighting at all at
+close quarters; not a solitary Chinaman stood for a bayonet thrust.
+Thus pusillanimously were abandoned these two great masses of
+fortifications, placed in the most commanding situations, on steep
+mountain heights where attacking forces could keep no sort of regular
+formation, and could have been mowed down in thousands by competent
+gunners as they struggled up the impregnable inclines. It was with a
+feeling of bewilderment that I beheld such powerful defences lost in
+such a manner, and realized that after three or four hours'
+bombardment on one side, without a shot fired against the tremendous
+coast defences, it was all up with Port Arthur.
+
+The victors next turned their attention to the redoubts and walled
+camps on the lower ground, with the calm method which distinguished
+all their operations. From the valleys between the hills began to
+emerge dark columns of infantry, which closed steadily upon the
+devoted town, rolling to their positions with the mechanical
+regularity of parade, the sheen of their bayonets glancing here and
+there through the volumes of smoke which had settled thickly in the
+hollows. Nearer, spread over the ground to which the forts their
+cowardice had lost should have afforded ample protection, were the
+disorganized masses of Chinese, preparing for their last scattered and
+fruitless efforts. Only one of the inland forts, that nearest to the
+town, and called, I think, Golden Hill, was still in their possession.
+The trenches below me on White Boulders' front face, which had been
+unoccupied during the early portion of the day, now began to swarm
+with riflemen, whose weapons kept up a continuous roll, swelled from
+many a rifle-pit and redoubt away forward from the base of the
+elevation. Steadily the enemy advanced, working their way round on
+both wings within the captured fortresses. They took skilful advantage
+of every protection the ground afforded, and the resistance in their
+front rapidly diminished as they pressed on irresistibly from position
+to position.
+
+It was now high time for me to evacuate my post, where I had had a
+solitary and secure vantage-place amidst the rugged inequalities of
+its summit, which probably I should not have been permitted to attain
+if I had not set about it so early. Past its front runs a shallow but
+broad stream, which coming through the Suishiyeh valley, rounds the
+parade-ground on the south towards White Boulders, whence it flows
+into a large and deep creek farther west. This stream the Japanese
+had to cross before they could attack the trenches below me. Two or
+three times they were beaten back by the hail of bullets poured on
+them at very close range, but covered by a heavy fire on their own
+side they were at length over, and then their opponents took to flight
+round the right-hand side of the hill. I stayed only to see this, and
+plunged down the rear. It was growing dusk, and I had numerous narrow
+escapes of breaking my neck in the deep and rugged hollows, some of
+them almost ravines, which seam that side of the elevation.
+
+The town was now at the mercy of the conquerors. The Chinese were
+running from the Golden Hill fort as I descended, without an effort at
+defending it, and the water beyond was covered with boats and small
+craft filled with fugitives, mostly the dastardly troops, who threw
+away arms and uniforms as they ran. For incompetence and cowardice
+commend me for the future to Chinese soldiers. The twenty thousand of
+them who occupied Port Arthur contrived to kill about sixty of their
+antagonists on November 21, with all the best modern weapons at their
+disposal. And these are the men who, according to Lord Wolseley and
+other critics, are some day to start out to conquer the earth! Let,
+says Lord Wolseley, a Napoleon arise amidst this vast people, and we
+shall see. But is an essentially unwarlike nation at all likely to
+breed a Napoleon, or to supply him with openings for a career? Who
+ever heard of a Chinese conqueror? Have they ever appeared otherwise
+than as the most self-centred and unenterprising people in the world,
+displaying the least possible aptitude for the career of arms? And
+from what source, after thousands of years of such characteristics,
+are they to bring forth the material for this sudden burst of
+conquering militarism?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+I directed my retreat towards the dockyards, with a view to getting
+round to the south part of the town, as far as possible from the
+quarter by which the Japanese were entering it. The idea of a general
+massacre never entered my mind, and I only thought of getting back to
+my inn, there to stay until things quieted down. My prevailing feeling
+was one of satisfaction that I should not after all have to face a
+long residence in a beleaguered town. I therefore paid little
+attention at first to the fact that people were flying on every hand,
+and I did not suppose that there could be any good reason for flight,
+beyond the desirability of getting out of the way of the conquering
+troops until the ardour of victory had cooled down. I was not long to
+be left undeceived. A deadly work of vengeance and slaughter had
+commenced Down the panic-crowded streets, louder and louder as I
+advanced, came ringing the volleys of the rifle-fire, the shouts of
+the infuriated soldiers, and the death-shrieks of their victims. I
+knew that all armed resistance had been broken, and as these sounds of
+terror increased, an idea of what might be imminent crossed my mind. I
+recollected what so often follows the fall of a place carried by
+storm; I remembered the atrocities committed on the Japanese
+prisoners; and I remembered, too, the general character of all
+Oriental soldiers. I paused to consider my situation. I had passed
+round by the water-side until outside the dock basin, and then turned
+into the streets, striking across in the direction of the inn, with
+the route from which to the East Port I was well enough acquainted.
+There was a rush and hurry of fugitives all around me, and now for the
+first time I saw the Japanese soldiers in pursuit, pressing on the
+fleeing throng, and using rifle and bayonet furiously on all and
+sundry, stabbing and hacking fiendishly at those who fell. I was
+knocked down in the rush and trampled upon, and it was some time
+before I could rise. A Japanese soldier was near me as I staggered to
+my feet, and took aim at me with his rifle. The barrel was within a
+foot of me, and I struck it aside just in time to escape getting a
+bullet through my body. I had no weapon but those of nature, but in
+their use I was, like most of the Anglo-Saxon breed, something of an
+artist, and before the Jap could recover his piece I gave him a good,
+straight, British right-hander between the eyes, which sent him down
+like a nine-pin. In all human probability it was the first sample of
+the article that had ever come under his notice; he was clearly unused
+to the method of attack, and lay quite flat as if to think it over,
+whilst I retreated as fast as my legs could carry me. I resolved to
+hold on for the inn, thinking that if I succeeded in reaching it, I
+should be comparatively safe, as perhaps the outbreak of fury might
+confine itself to the streets. I knew, too, that I had not much
+farther to go. I made little progress, nevertheless, being frequently
+turned out of the road by the necessity of avoiding the soldiers, who
+were spreading fast across the town, shooting down all whom they
+encountered. One began to stumble over corpses in nearly every street,
+and the risk of encountering parties of the murderers increased, every
+minute. Again and again I came into the midst of the work of butchery,
+and every now and then ran the gauntlet of a flight of bullets fired
+down the narrow avenues. At length I lost my way completely, and
+wandered about through the pandemonium around, thinking that each
+minute would be my last. At length, in emerging from a dark lane
+leading up an ascent, I came upon a sheet of water. I immediately
+recognized it as a large shallow fresh-water lake in the rear of the
+dock basin, and it thus appeared that I had strayed back nearly to the
+point where I had re-entered the town on descending from White
+Boulders.
+
+A frightful scene was before me. I have said that the land by which I
+had come out on the lake inclined steeply upwards, and the water was
+about fifteen feet below me when I arrived in sight of it. It was
+surrounded by crowds of Japanese soldiers, who had driven large
+numbers of the fugitives into the water, and were firing on them from
+every side, and driving back with the bayonet those who attempted to
+struggle out. The dead floated on the water, which was reddened with
+blood. The soldiers, yelling and laughing with vengeful glee, seemed
+to gloat over the agonies of their victims. It was fearful to see
+those gory forms struggling in the agitated water, those who still
+lived endeavouring to extricate themselves from the mass of corpses,
+falling fast, but often rising again with their last energies,
+streaming with water and blood, and uttering piteous cries and appeals
+for mercy, which were mocked by the fiends around them. Many women
+were amongst them; one I noticed carrying a little child, which,
+struggling forward, she held up to the soldiers as if in appeal. As
+she reached the bank, one of the wretches struck her through with his
+bayonet, and with a second stroke as she fell transfixed the child,
+which might have been two years old, and held its little body aloft.
+The woman rose and made a wild effort to regain the child, but
+evidently exhausted and dying, fell back again into the water. Her
+body--and in fact it was done with everybody that came within
+reach--was hacked in pieces. Fresh batches of victims were being
+driven in, until there threatened soon to be no room in the water for
+any more. I could bear the spectacle no longer, but turned and fled
+from the ghastly spot.
+
+I now knew my whereabouts, and once more set out for the inn, along
+the line from which I had strayed. Heaps of dead and spectacles of
+murder were continually presenting themselves. In one place I saw some
+ten or twelve soldiers with a number of unfortunates whom they had
+tied back to back in a batch. With volley after volley they despatched
+them, and proceeded to mutilate their bodies in the usual horrible
+fashion. Nobody was spared, man, woman, or child, that I could see.
+The Chinese appeared to offer no resistance. Many of them prostrated
+themselves on the ground before the butchers with abject submission,
+and were shot or stabbed in that posture.
+
+I was now to have a close shave. I came suddenly and unawares upon a
+party engaged in slaughtering some shrieking wretches--women and
+children amongst them--and being perceived was shot at by one of the
+soldiers. I rapidly retreated, but he detached himself in pursuit. I
+entered a house; he followed, but I had the start of him, and for a
+while evaded him. I got into what looked like a kitchen or scullery,
+and amongst some other utensils I came upon a curiously shaped
+hatchet, very heavy and sharp. I waited for about a quarter of an
+hour, and then, judging that the Jap must have left when unable to
+find me, I prepared to sally forth again, as it was rather more
+dangerous to be in the houses than in the streets, the soldiers
+entering and pillaging them one by one, and of course slaughtering
+anybody they found within. No sooner, however, had I got to the front,
+than I unexpectedly encountered the very man who had driven me in,
+retiring laden with booty. He dropped his plunder at once upon seeing
+me, and handled his bayonet to run me through. We were in a little low
+room, with a door in a corner opening on the street. He made a furious
+thrust at me; by a quick movement I evaded it. The steel grazed my
+left side, and crashed through the wall behind me, to which I was
+pinned by the clothes, and as he tried to withdraw his weapon, I had a
+fair stroke at him in return. The axe was very sharp; rage and
+despair seemed to have doubled my strength, and I split his skull
+half-way down to the jaw. Brains and blood were scattered over me, as
+he sank dead at my feet.
+
+I felt no inclination to stay any longer, and was about to take my
+departure, when it struck me that I might as well arm myself with my
+defunct antagonist's rifle and cartridge-pouch. This led immediately
+to a better idea. The Jap was a man of nearly my own stature; why not
+put on his clothes? It was fast darkening, and aided in the deception
+by the obscurity, my chance of escape would be greatly increased,
+though I began to have an uneasy feeling that it would be a miracle if
+I escaped destruction anyhow. I immediately acted on the inspiration.
+The soldier, I have said, was nearly of my own height (5 ft. 6 in.),
+but I was a good deal broader across the shoulders, and I made an
+extensive split up the back of his tunic in struggling into it. That,
+however, was no great matter, and I was soon equipped in all his outer
+casement, except his cap, which had been bisected along with his head.
+There was a little keen dagger in his belt, and with it I cut off my
+moustache as close as I could, as the Japanese seldom have much hair
+on their faces. Then, not forgetting his rifle, a beautiful
+Lee-Metford, I sallied forth, carrying my discarded clothes over my
+arm, a circumstance not at all likely to attract attention, as they
+were all loading themselves with booty.
+
+I was undecided enough how to proceed. I might pass out into the open
+country north of the town, but if I did so I should probably either
+die of starvation or get killed as a Japanese straggler. I began to
+think my best course would be to return to the port, and take my
+chance of getting away in some small vessel. First of all, however, I
+resolved to complete my intention of seeing what was going on at the
+inn, to which I was now quite close. I kept boldly on, and my disguise
+answered admirably, not one of the soldiers seeming to suspect that I
+was anything but a comrade. Now and then I would be greeted by wild
+cries in their high, shrill voices, or one, waving his rifle, would
+shout something as he passed. I returned the greetings in dumb show,
+and hurried on. I do not know how it would have fared with me in broad
+daylight; probably not nearly so well; but it was now nearly dark.
+Most of the soldiers had provided themselves, to light the work of
+slaughter and pillage, with one of those coloured lanterns which are
+to be found in such profusion in Chinese towns, and their demoniac
+aspect was greatly heightened by the illuminations they carried as
+they flitted to and fro. The butchery was proceeding without the
+least sign of abatement; shots, shouts, shrieks, and groans resounded
+on every side; the streets presented a fearful spectacle; the ground
+was saturated with blood, and everywhere strewn with horribly
+mutilated corpses; some of the narrower avenues were positively choked
+with carnage. The dead were mostly the townspeople; their valiant
+defenders seemed to have been able to make themselves scarce; where
+they all got to is a mystery to me; perhaps owing to the fact that
+they got rid of their uniforms early in the proceedings in order not
+to be identified as combatants, a dodge that must have served them
+very little, as the conquerors killed everyone they came across.
+
+At length I reached Sen's house, only to find that the destroyer had
+been there. The place was in darkness; I took down the lantern from
+over the outer gate, with the name of the inn and its proprietor's
+written on it in the Chinese character, lit it, and began an
+inspection. The first thing I saw was the corpse of my landlord
+himself, lying in the covered court. His head was almost severed, and
+he had been disembowelled. Most of the lower storey rooms had doors
+opening into this court; across the threshold of one lay the corpse of
+a female servant, mutilated in an unspeakable manner. The household
+establishment consisted in all of some ten or twelve persons, and
+eight of them I found lying murdered in different parts of the
+premises. There was no sign of living presence anywhere. The place had
+been thoroughly ransacked, and everything worth having carried off. My
+blood boiled as I surveyed the scene of desolation and massacre, where
+lately I had witnessed happiness and cheerful industry, and I felt
+that I could willingly have died myself on the spot to obtain
+vengeance on the murderers.
+
+In one of the upper rooms there was a bamboo ladder and trap leading
+on the roof, which was flat, and it occurred to me to ascend and look
+round. It was quite dark, and there was little to be seen beyond the
+limits of the street. Distant illuminations marked the positions of
+the forts on the surrounding heights. The seaward ones were still in
+possession of the Chinese. They fell easily on the following day, and
+had been practically abandoned. I noticed that the sounds of violence
+in the town were rapidly decreasing. As I walked slowly round, the dim
+light of my lantern fell on two figures skulking in the shadow. They
+retreated as I advanced, until they could back no further, and then
+one of them fell on his knees before me, bowing his forehead on the
+roof with abject cries. I held the lantern towards him, and to my
+astonishment recognized Chung. He evidently did not know me, and no
+wonder, considering the manner in which I had rigged myself out. He
+seemed half out of his wits with fear, and I had some difficulty in
+forcing the fact of my identity upon his conviction. Then his delight
+was as great as his previous terror. His companion was a stranger to
+him--a man of exceedingly gentlemanly and prepossessing appearance,
+and clearly a person of condition, being, in fact, as I afterwards
+found, a mandarin. His own residence had been sacked and his family
+murdered. He and a brother had escaped into the street, were pursued,
+and his relative shot in running away. Though with his left arm broken
+by a bullet, he had run into the inn. When the soldiers entered it he
+and Chung got on to the roof, where none of the Japanese thought of
+looking for victims. His broken arm was causing him considerable
+suffering, and having acquired during my knock-about life some rude
+knowledge of surgery, I put the fracture together, and made a sling
+with my neck-tie.
+
+I explained my situation to Chung as well as I was able; he translated
+to his countryman, who knew no English, and we held a council as to
+future proceedings. The work of slaughter had apparently been
+suspended; either the soldiers were tired of it or had been recalled.
+The Japanese forces exceeded 20,000, and of these I do not think that
+more than one half, perhaps not one third, were engaged in this first
+evening's work, which was only the opening scene of the massacre.
+Masses of the troops had been placed to occupy the forts, and
+otherwise secure the conquest. We thought it likely, as indeed was the
+case, that they would all withdraw to the camps outside as the night
+advanced, and we resolved to attempt to gain the water-side, and seek
+a last chance of escape, under cover of darkness. We searched the
+place for food, but all we could find was a little bread, and a few
+prepared sweetmeat cakes.
+
+An awful stillness, broken at times by ominous sounds, came over the
+town. Lights flitted at times through its dark labyrinths, by whom
+borne it was impossible to perceive. The presence of death, in its
+most fearful shapes, seemed palpable to the senses, and we, crouching
+in the gloom on the roof, to which as the safest place we had
+returned, had before our mental vision the mutilated bodies in the
+rooms close below us, with the ghastly probability, almost the
+certainty, that another hour or two would join us in their horrid
+fate. To myself, the reckless, wasted past presented itself, in that
+situation of appalling terrors, in all its enormity. There was I,
+after throwing away the high advantages of fortune and prosperity, a
+ruined and degraded man, about to meet an appropriate ending to such
+a career by a bloody death at the hands of some brutal soldier, in an
+unknown land, at the ends of the earth, where scarcely a human being
+knew a word of my native tongue. If these pages should be read by any
+young man embarking without a thought of the future, in the flush of
+high spirits and inexperience, upon courses similar to mine, I hope he
+will take warning, and stop in time.
+
+It was, I should judge, about ten o'clock when at last we descended to
+the street. There had been no firing for about two hours. The lantern
+was re-lit, and Chung, who knew the way best, took it and went ahead.
+I still wore the soldier's dress; if met and challenged, I proposed to
+make it appear, as best I could, that I was making the Chinamen
+conduct me to one of the camps, or if I failed in this to sell my life
+dearly with the rifle.
+
+Our path lay right across the town, and the dead lay thickly in nearly
+every street in the quarters we traversed, where, of every age, sex,
+and condition, they had been promiscuously butchered by the hundred.
+Here and there the miserable survivors--survivors only for the
+present--were searching, with low wailings and lamentations, for those
+they had lost, with the aid of their coloured lanterns, which gave a
+look of indescribable ghastliness to the mutilated forms they bent
+over to examine. To my last day I shall remember, with unfading
+horror, the aspect of those remnants of mortality, in all the
+hideousness stamped upon them by the unnamable atrocities practised
+during that diabolical orgy of murder and mutilation, rape, lust, and
+rapine. This is war! Away, in the splendid pavilion of the vanquished,
+the conquering marshal, surrounded by his generals and officers, was
+installed in triumph, secure of his country's applause and his
+emperor's favour; but here, amid these desolated homes, these
+mutilated heaps of death, was the night side, the shadow, of their
+glory. And this was but the first day of _four_! It must be admitted
+that the Chinese drew it upon themselves, that everywhere else the
+Japanese behaved with admirable clemency and moderation; but after
+making every allowance, their conduct in this instance, and
+particularly that of the high commanding chiefs in never seeking to
+put a stop to the devilish excesses perpetrated before their eyes on
+unoffending non-combatants, is richly deserving of everlasting infamy.
+
+Many of the poor wretches thus cowering about ran away upon
+perceiving, as they thought, an armed Japanese soldier, but in one
+instance I had reason to be thankful that I was not alone. A
+middle-aged man and two younger ones were carrying away, in one of the
+streets we traversed, the half-naked body of a woman, which had been
+split open from the abdomen to the chest. The elder man glared upon
+me, in the dim light, with the expression of a tiger, and drawing a
+long curved knife from his breast, and pointing at me, shouted
+something to his companions, who perhaps were his sons. Chung at once
+interposed, and talked with them rapidly for a few moments, and
+naturally his explanation sufficed and we proceeded. I asked Chung
+what the man had said:--"There is one of the Japanese devils; let us
+rip him up."
+
+But it would only be needlessly harrowing to dwell on the sights of
+horror we encountered at every turn. We pressed on, rapidly yet
+cautiously, our feet dabbling in blood wherever we trod. As we
+proceeded down a street about ten feet broad, we heard in front sounds
+as of voices shouting and singing. The avenue we were in took a turn
+about fifteen yards in advance of us, and as we hesitated and finally
+stopped, there appeared round it a body of men in whom we at once
+recognized the Japanese soldiers. There was a low but wide doorway on
+our right, and into it we at once slipped with no trifling celerity.
+It was intensely dark and offered a good concealment. We could not
+afford to extinguish our lantern, and I placed it behind an angle of
+the inner wall where it was impossible that its glimmer could be seen
+from the street. Crouching in the deep shadow, we anxiously awaited
+the passing of the soldiers, whose voices we heard momentarily
+approaching, shouting at their full pitch a discordant song,
+accompanied by a loud ringing sound which at first I mistook for that
+of some instrument. They were soon abreast of us, some twenty or
+thirty in number. I scarcely breathed as the ferocious band went
+trooping past. Their appearance was ghastly and terrible beyond
+conception. They were literally reeking from the shambles of inhuman
+butchery; their clothes and weapons were smeared and clotted with
+blood; some held human heads aloft on their bayonets; the lanterns
+which most of them carried, and swung to and fro as they marched,
+threw on their repulsive figures and savage Oriental faces, their
+white teeth, oblique eyes, and sallow countenances, a weird, wavering
+light, appropriate to their infernal aspect; they looked more like
+demons than like men. The foremost, who appeared to be dismounted
+dragoons, were clashing their sabres together in a kind of
+accompaniment to the yelling chant in which they all joined. On they
+went, trampling the dead with whom their bestial ferocity had strewn
+the devoted town, the sound of their high shrill voices and the ring
+of the clashing steel being audible for some time after they had
+passed out of sight. At length it died away and all was still again,
+so silent that I seemed to hear the quick and heavy throbbing of my
+heart.
+
+After waiting two or three minutes I told Chung to take the lantern so
+that we might set out again. He did so, but as he was about to step
+from the doorway he tripped over some object concealed by the darkness
+and fell: it was a dead body. I examined it by the lantern-light.
+There were several deep bayonet wounds and a terrific sabre-slash
+across the face which had completely destroyed the left eye. The
+abdomen was abominably mutilated. A knife was clenched in the right
+hand of the victim, showing that he had not died without an effort to
+defend himself. I swung the lantern about the recess, and perceived
+further back three or four steps, ascending to a door slightly open.
+These steps were covered with blood which seemed to flow from behind
+the door. I pushed it open, and entered the place to which it gave
+access. It seemed to be a kind of public office--a wide, low, bare
+apartment, divided on one side by a massive wooden counter, surmounted
+by a partition pierced at intervals with pigeon-holes, as if for
+communication between persons on opposite sides of the division. It
+may have been a bank or money-changer's office. It is not, however, on
+account of the place itself, but of its contents, that I describe it.
+The floor was covered with the corpses of men, women, and children,
+mingled indiscriminately together, fugitives who had there taken
+refuge and been relentlessly butchered. The bodies had been
+decapitated, and the bloody heads stuck up on a long row of spikes
+which surmounted the wooden partition over the counter. Both Chung and
+the mandarin uttered a cry of terror as we caught sight of those
+distorted countenances, grinning upon us with the livid stare of
+violent death through the dim medium of the coloured lamplight. My
+blood seemed to freeze as my eyes encountered that ghastly gaze of the
+dead, to which the upright position of the heads gave a sort of
+semblance or mockery of life. An infant a few months old was pinned to
+the counter below by a sharp piece of iron run through its little
+body. The floor was two or three inches deep in thickening blood and
+the entrails of the mutilated bodies. The arms and legs as well as
+heads had been hacked off some of them and flung about the place.
+Altogether a more hideous and revolting spectacle than this chamber of
+horrors can never have been presented to mortal gaze. Such a scene,
+and the sickening smell of blood, drove us out again almost
+immediately. At that moment another party of the Japanese passed our
+hiding-place. An infantry soldier in advance carried a large uncovered
+flambeau, which threw a broad, red, steady glare over all surrounding
+objects. I at once saw that these were all officers, excepting two or
+three; smart, well-got-up, gentlemanly-looking little men in the
+extreme; returning, perhaps, from calling off the last of their bloody
+war-dogs, or making sure that all resistance had ceased. They were
+laughing and chatting gaily, as if the massacre were rather a pleasant
+affair than otherwise. When they had gone by, we issued into the
+street, but had proceeded only a few paces when we saw a man carrying
+a lantern appear round the abrupt bend before mentioned. He looked
+like another Japanese hurrying after his companions who had just
+passed. We returned with all haste to the doorway; and as we judged
+that he had probably seen us, we re-entered the inner slaughter-house
+and closed the door. We were right in thinking we had been seen, and
+in about a minute we heard steps outside the door, which was presently
+thrust violently open and the soldier entered, a low, sinister figure,
+holding a drawn sword in what seemed to me a curiously white hand. He
+peered into the obscurity, perceived me, and doubtless taking me, in
+the uncertain light, for a Japanese, from the clothes I wore, lowered
+his weapon and addressed me in a harsh authoritative tone. The sound
+of the language was singularly like that of Italian. He pointed to the
+Chinamen, probably asking what they were. I took advantage of his
+unguarded pause to plunge my bayonet in his body, with a thrust so
+rapid that he had not time to make the least movement to avoid it. He
+fell at once where he stood, but attempted to rise again, when I gave
+him another prick which settled his business. He fell back heavily
+against the counter with a groan. One of the heads above was shaken
+off its spike by the concussion and struck him on the shoulder as he
+lay. His eyes, opening and shutting convulsively, seemed to gaze upon
+the ghastly object. He groaned again, and in a few moments was dead. I
+bent over him with the lantern, and soon perceived from the richness
+of his uniform and accoutrements, as well as from the look of caste
+about the head and face, that I had killed an officer of high rank. He
+wore white gloves, which accounted for the odd look of his hands when
+he appeared on the threshold. I felt sorry when I realized that he was
+a man of consequence and authority, for had I perceived it at first I
+would certainly have endeavoured to obtain his protection for myself
+and my companions; but Chung had slunk behind me with the lantern, the
+officer's own was a very dim one, so that in the obscurity I could
+only make out that he was a Japanese soldier, and expecting to be
+attacked judged it prudent to get my blow in first. Having given him
+what his countrymen called the "happy despatch," he could be of no
+further use to us. Before again leaving the place, I took possession
+of his sword, which was a very beautiful and valuable weapon, the hilt
+ornamented by a quantity of massive and richly-chased gold, and a
+great number of tiny diamonds and rubies,--infinitesimal gems, set in
+pretty, quaint devices, with a larger stone here and there. This
+trophy I brought away with me from Port Arthur, but when in Liverpool
+at the beginning of the year of grace 1896, the pressure of financial
+exigency compelled me to entrust it to the temporary care of the
+universal uncle of mankind, who said it was worth £600 or £700. I
+could by no means persuade him to believe my account of how it came
+into my possession. He laughed and said I was making fun of him. His
+obstinate incredulity was amusing. "You're a sailor, sir, I see," he
+said, "and we know what sailors' yarns are in this town. I've heard a
+few of them."
+
+Again stealing outside, we resumed our perilous way through this city
+of dreadful night. We lost no time in turning out of the street where
+had occurred the incidents just described, and which seemed in the
+track of stragglers moving towards the adjacent Golden Hill fort. We
+left it by a very narrow lane abutting at right angles. The other end
+of this was blocked by a heap of corpses which we had to climb over.
+As I was doing so a hideous groan struck my ear, and the body under my
+foot seemed to heave. I started back, and simultaneously the apparent
+corpse rose up, a tall, blood-besmeared figure, which stared horribly
+upon me for a moment and then, with another loud and horrid groan,
+fell prone on his back, his arms widely extended. I lost no time in
+scrambling past him after my companions, who had run away, and small
+blame to them, for it was like the rising of a corpse suddenly endowed
+with volition. Both were by this time in what has been forcibly and
+picturesquely described as a "blue funk"; they trembled ceaselessly;
+their teeth chattered, and their eyes roved here and there with a
+wild, hunted look; every now and then they stopped convulsively,
+imagining that they saw or heard something to indicate the proximity
+of the ferocious murderers. As for myself, if my outward man were less
+open to reproach, my inward condition was nothing much to boast of,
+and truly the horrors which continually presented themselves, joined
+to the oppressive midnight shadow and stillness which hung over the
+place of doom, would have damaged the nerve of a football referee.
+
+We reached the basin through a series of open brick-works, used as
+timber stores, on its north side. Everything was darkness and
+desertion. The moon was rising far beyond the West Port away in our
+front, but it was in the last quarter and afforded little light. There
+were very few stars visible. The night had turned piercingly cold, but
+so great was my mental anxiety and excitement that I seemed unaffected
+in body by the severity of the weather. With the lantern we began to
+search about for a boat, at first without success. In a square-shaped
+inlet or creek a little above the dockyard we presently came upon
+another horrifying spectacle. A junk lay stranded in the shallows. It
+was literally full of dead bodies, and many lay on the adjacent shore.
+The unfortunates had evidently been pursued down to where the junk
+lay, and slaughtered before they could get it off. It struck me that
+what we were looking for, a boat, might in all probability be found on
+board the fatal vessel. It lay heeled over broadside to the beach, and
+I waded out to it through the shallow water. I gained the upper deck
+with some difficulty and stood amidst the mass of carnage. Rifle-balls
+had done the work of death. Many of the bodies were in army uniforms.
+I could find only two boats. One, a mere cockle-shell, had been
+perforated by bullets and rendered useless. Another lay inboard on the
+quarter-deck, but it was so filled and covered with corpses that at
+first I did not notice it. It seemed in fair condition, but the task
+of ridding it of its horrible freight was so repugnant that I
+returned on shore to resume the search for one elsewhere. It was in
+vain, however; all we could find in the vicinity was an old sampan,
+which besides being very leaky, was more than three men could manage,
+only one of them, moreover, having any knowledge of sailoring. There
+was nothing for it but to return to the death-ship. We all went on
+board this time, and applied ourselves to the work. The pile of dead
+were dragged away, and with considerable labour, and aided by the
+careened condition of the junk, we managed to launch the boat, which
+had been secured inside the bulwark. It was in a horrid state with
+blood, but we were not in a situation to be particular. We found a
+quantity of provisions and fresh water--or rather water which had once
+been fresh--in the cook-house of the junk.
+
+It must have been after midnight when we shoved off and got afloat.
+Neither of my companions were experts with an oar, and could render me
+very little aid; moreover, Chinese oars, like Chinese belongings
+altogether, are very unlike anything else in the world and need some
+practice to use. We were, however, close to the entrance of the port,
+which being defended by torpedoes and mines, we ran little risk of
+encountering Japanese vessels, although the submarine dangers
+threatened us as well, if we strayed from the deep-water channel in
+the dark. We got on in safety, though very slowly, and another two
+hours had been consumed before we were through.
+
+What to do next I had no fixed idea. One thing, however, was assured,
+that it was certain death to stay in Port Arthur, and that our only
+chance, slender as it seemed at best, consisted in getting as far away
+as possible. I resolved, after some consideration, to hold on south
+round the extremity of the Peninsula.
+
+In the seaward forts above us we could discern no signs of activity,
+and only a light here and there, far out on the misty expanse of
+waters, showed the position of the Japanese war-vessels, which had an
+easy job of it as far as Port Arthur was concerned. The weather,
+though so bitterly cold, was far from stormy, yet the difficulty of
+rowing was increased naturally when we got out into the heavier waters
+of the sea. So unpromising in fact did our situation look, that I
+began to reflect whether it would not be better to stay about the
+mouth of the harbour, and allow ourselves to be taken by some Japanese
+ship, than wander off I knew not where, probably in the end to perish
+of starvation. Luck decided the point. We had painfully made a couple
+of miles from the estuary of the harbour, when we came upon a large
+junk stranded on a sand-bank. There were no lights showing on board
+her; in the obscurity we could see nobody; yet she did not look like a
+wreck, and at first we did not know what to make of it. After a
+consultation, it was decided to fire a shot from the rifle and see
+what it would lead to. No sooner had the report rung out, than there
+was a bustle and stir on the vessel's decks, which appeared suddenly
+to swarm with men, and became illuminated by lanterns. I told Chung to
+hail. He did so, and a voice replied in Chinese. We drew close
+abreast, and my companions held a parley with those on board. Our
+situation explained we were permitted to ascend. The junk was full of
+men. She had got into her present predicament in escaping, and they
+were waiting for the morning flood tide to float her off. Two or three
+junks, we were told, had struck torpedoes in leaving the harbour and
+been blown in pieces, and many others had fallen into the clutches of
+the enemy. Those on board, besides her usual crew, were chiefly
+soldiers. With the profound deference paid to rank by the Orientals,
+the chief cabin was at once given up to the mandarin, who insisted on
+my sharing it with him. He and Chung gave a most glowing account of me
+to those on board, to whom, in my remarkable accoutrement, I was an
+object of legitimate curiosity.
+
+Exhausted by exertion and anxiety, I was fast asleep within
+half-an-hour after stepping up the junk's side. I slept far into the
+day, and when I emerged found that she had been successfully floated
+off the bank, and got out to sea without so far attracting the notice
+of the Japanese ships.
+
+
+
+
+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-fourchée_. 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
+antennæ 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.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK UNDER THE DRAGON FLAG***
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