Chapter Nineteen.

Chapter Nineteen.Caught at Last.TheYen-fuand theTung-yenwere mere motionless hulks, lying inert upon the bosom of the sunlit, shot-torn sea, the one with her rudder and propeller blown away by a torpedo that had all but sent her to the bottom, the other with her engines badly broken down, the result of Chinese officials having stolen and disposed of many parts, which had had to be roughly replaced at the last moment. They were both fighting fiercely, however, like tough old wolves at bay, and, although hemmed in by several Japanese cruisers, were as yet giving back almost as good as they got. The game was up for them, though, as they were quite unable to manoeuvre, and only the thickness of their armour and the light calibre of the guns of the ships opposed to them had prevented them from going down long before. Frequently, too, Frobisher noticed, there were long pauses between the discharges of theYen-fu’sand theTung-yen’sgreat guns, as well as those of others of the Chinese ships; and he made a shrewd guess that these were the occasions when the faulty, charcoal-filled cartridges failed to explode. TheShan-si, with Captain James in command, was practically the only entirely undamaged ship still possessed by the Chinese—not because she had not been in the thickest of the fight, for she had, but just through one of those curious chances of warfare which are constantly occurring. She was doing sovereign service, rushing here, there, and everywhere, planting her shells coolly and accurately, and sweeping the Japanese decks with rifle and machine-gun fire; and many were the attempts made by the enemy’s destroyers to torpedo her and put her safely out of harm’s way. But, thanks to her captain’s skill and his personal care of everything pertaining to his ship, neither was she badly hit, nor did her machinery break down at a critical moment; and she went her relentless way, dealing death and destruction about her unchecked.TheYung-chauandKau-lingwere being engaged by theHiroshima, Naniwa(a ship afterwards celebrated in the Russo-Japanese war), and theOkinoshima—each of which was much larger than either of the Chinese ships—and were getting a terrible punishing. Although still moving, and more or less under control, they were leaking steam and smoke from every crevice and opening, and ominous spirals of smoke were filtering up through theYung-chau’sdecks. She had been set on fire close to her bunkers by a Japanese shell, and, almost in less time than it takes to write it, was a mass of roaring, spouting flame, for she was old, and blazed like a volcano. Her men—such of them as could reach the decks—jumped overboard, and were hauled by ropes up the sides of whichever ships happened to be nearest; for the Japanese, like their opponents, had discarded all their boats and pontoons before going into action.TheChen YuenandTing Yuenwere busily engaged in hammering away at the biggest of the enemy, theYoshino, theShikishima, Fuji, andNiitaka, and it was to relieve the two battleships, which were being somewhat severely handled, that Frobisher determined to charge theYoshinowith his ship.Signalling once more for full steam, and firing as he went, according to his former tactics, he drove theChih’ Yuenat her utmost speed toward the Japanese flagship, which by this time had lost one of her military masts and her forward funnel, from whose torn base smoke and flame were pouring voluminously, wrapping the conning-tower round as though with a black mantle, and utterly preventing her skipper from seeing what was going on. He, poor man, was obliged to rely entirely upon the discretion of the gunnery-lieutenant in her forward turret; and that this individual was doing his duty well was proved by the frequency with which his guns boomed out, sending shell and solid shot spattering against the heavily-armoured sides of the Chinese battleships, where they splintered and burst, cracking and starring the thick steel, but very seldom penetrating to their vitals, close though the range was.As theChih’ Yuenclove her way through the water, one of the Japanese destroyers discharged a torpedo at her, which missed her by inches only. It was not wasted, however, for it struck the disabledYen-fu, which heeled over as though pressed by some gigantic hand, and a few minutes later went down, taking her crew with her.TheHiroshimaalso tried to ram in her turn, leaving the strickenKau-lingfor that purpose; but she also was too late. TheNaniwaand theShikishimasaw theChih’ Yuenapproaching, like the messenger of death she was, and backed away from their opponents; theFujiturned her guns on the approaching vessel; but theYoshino’scaptain, blinded by smoke from the wrecked funnel, did not see what was coming until it was too late, and a moment later the Chinese ship crashed into his stern, unfortunately striking a glancing blow instead of a direct one, as Frobisher had intended.It was severe enough, however, to make theYoshinoshiver from stem to stern, from truck to keelson; and as theChih’ Yuendrove past, Frobisher saw that he had sliced a great gash in her port quarter nearly down to the water-line, and dismounted both the guns in her after turret. The attempt had not entirely succeeded, but it had done a great deal of damage, and with that he had to be content.Then, as Frobisher circled his ship round to come into action again, he saw something that made him gasp with astonishment and apprehension. There was a fight of some sort going on upon the deck of the Chinese flagship herself! What on earth could it mean? She had not been close enough to any of the enemy’s ships to enable them to board her, and, moreover, they were Chinese sailors, not Japanese, who were fighting. What could possibly have happened? The seamen on board were entirely devoted to their admiral, and if any mutiny had arisen it must be through the machinations of some other person, some traitor who had seized this opportunity to—By Jove, he had it! All his old suspicions came thronging into his mind in an instant, and in that same instant he believed he could make a very good guess at what had occurred. Of course it was that scoundrel, Prince Hsi, who was at the bottom of the mischief; Frobisher seemed to know it instinctively. He also recollected the numerous occasions on which his Highness had acted in an extremely suspicious manner, to say the least; and it did not take him long to guess that he was now beholding the consummation of a plot up to which Hsi had been leading for some considerable time past. But what had happened to Admiral Ting, he wondered, that Prince Hsi should have matters all in his own hands? Frobisher knew that so long as the gallant admiral was alive, or conscious, he would never permit his command to be taken from him thus; and his heart fell, for he feared that the traitor, to attain his detestable ends, must first have killed the brave old man.Well, Frobisher vowed to himself, the traitor should not succeed in his scheme, whatever it might be, even though he had to board theTing Yuenhimself, and slay Prince Hsi with his own hands, to avenge the death of the admiral.And then he saw what it was that the traitor prince intended. The commotion on the deck of the flagship had ceased, the mutineers having either slain or driven overboard all those who opposed them, and, while Frobisher’s ship was still some distance away, he saw the Chinese flag flutter down from theTing Yuen’speak, to be immediately replaced by the Japanese naval ensign; and the ship herself swung round in the direction of the enemy’s squadron and began to forge ahead toward it, Prince Hsi having evidently determined to turn his guns against his own countrymen.As the Japanese ensign fluttered aloft there fell a sudden silence over both fleets. As though by mutual consent every gun was hushed for a few moments, and hoarse, stern, and menacing above the strange stillness rose a roar of execration from the throats of the Chinese, as they at last realised the meaning of the extraordinary scene that had just taken place aboard the flagship.Defiantly her captain trained his guns on the nearest Chinese ships and fired; but whether his gunners could not bring themselves to the actual point of firing on their country’s flag, or whether it was due to the excitement of the moment, every shot missed, and a shout of derision went up from the Chinese squadron.But Captain Frobisher knew that curses and shouts of execration would not bring back theTing Yuen. If she was to be saved to the Chinese Navy she must not be allowed to gain the shelter of the Japanese main body. If she reached that, she would be lost for ever, and the day would be lost beyond hope of redemption for the Chinese. To lose one powerful battleship, and to find another suddenly arrayed against them—for that is what it would of course amount to—would so weaken the already enfeebled Chinese strength that success would be out of the question; and the Englishman determined that, come what might, he would prevent the traitor prince from carrying out his foul intentions.He shouted a few brief commands to Drake, who vanished like a puff of smoke from the conning-tower; issued an order to the quartermaster at the wheel; and rang to the engine-room the two short calls that signified that he required all the power the engines could develop, for a sudden emergency. Then he looked to see that his sword was loose in its scabbard and his revolver fully charged, and waited for Drake to reappear, while theChih’ Yuen, bounding forward under the full power of her engines, turned her nose toward the stern of theTing Yuenand kept it fixed there, relentless as fate.By this time the cannonade had again become general throughout the fleet, but ringing high above the crashing roar of the guns could be heard the wild cheering of the Chinamen as they realised the gallant exploit that the English captain was about to attempt.Prince Hsi realised it also, and put on full steam to escape, but he was a few minutes too late. Before theunwieldy battleship could get into her stride the more nimble cruiser would be upon her, and, knowing that he could not hope to reach safety before he was overtaken, the Prince determined to wait and fight the matter out with the Englishman whom he had already learnt to hate so intensely. He therefore reversed his engines, trained every available gun upon the advancingChih’ Yuen, and opened fire.The cruiser reeled and quivered as the hurricane of shot and shell struck her, but she received no injury to her vital parts, and was checked not a moment in her headlong course. Frobisher had given orders that his fire was to be reserved until he himself gave the word, and he now watched for that moment as a tiger watches its prey.A few seconds later the time arrived. Frobisher pressed the button that let loose the storm of death upon the flagship, rang off his engines, handed over the command to Drake, who had just reappeared, and then left the conning-tower.On the port side of the deck, behind the steel citadel, he found that Drake had already drawn up the fifty volunteers he had called for, fully armed, and ready to follow their captain wherever he might choose to lead.A second later there arose from theTing Yuena chorus of yells of astonishment and fury as theChih’ Yuen, instead of lying off and fighting with her guns, as Prince Hsi had expected, ground her sides against those of the flagship, and came to a standstill right alongside.Frobisher shouted a word of command to the expectant sailors, and led them round the citadel, across the cruiser’s decks, and up on to those of the battleship, before theTing Yuen’smen realised what was happening. Most of the latter had thrown off their cutlasses, the better to handle their guns, and it was on their unpreparedness that Frobisher relied when he led his fifty boarders to the attack.Like a whirlwind he swept down upon the rebel seamen, who stood petrified with alarm and astonishment beside the now useless guns, and the broad-bladed cutlasses rose and fell for a few seconds to the accompaniment of shrieks and yells for mercy. But Frobisher, with his small force, could not afford to give quarter until it was certain that there would be no more resistance; and, much as he detested the butchery, he simply dared not stay his hand. Forward and upward he and his men cut their way; they encountered more and more opposition every minute, as the mutineers found time to recover their wits and secure their weapons, but his men would take no denial. Their blades, now dyed a deep red, swept through the smoky air, and their revolvers crackled and blazed merrily, as the Englishman led them forward; and presently, after a stern and stubborn five minutes’ fighting, the rebels broke and fled below—overboard—anywhere to escape the avenging swords of their outraged countrymen.So far, Frobisher had seen nothing of Prince Hsi; but the moment the mutineers were broken and he had released the remnant of the loyal Chinese sailors, he went in search of the arch-traitor himself, having first headed both ships back toward the Chinese squadron.The Prince was not in the conning-tower, as Frobisher discovered when he went there with one of his own helmsmen to send the necessary orders to the engine-room, nor was he in his own cabin, which was the next most likely place to look for him; and diligently as Frobisher searched, the man was not to be found. He appeared to have vanished completely. Perhaps, Frobisher decided, the traitor had seen that his shameful plot had failed, and had thrown himself overboard to avoid the consequences of his act. That, however, did not seem quite like Hsi; he was more likely to be up to some deeper villainy still; and as this thought occurred to theChih’ Yuen’scaptain his blood ran cold, for some sixth sense or instinct seemed to warn him what Hsi was about.With every nerve tingling, Frobisher darted below and began to search for the magazine, for it was thither he guessed the traitor had betaken himself; and it was indeed fortunate that he found it just where he had expected it to be.The door of the magazine was open, and a man was to be seen inside, with his back to the entrance, engaged upon his diabolical work by the aid of a carefully-shaded lantern. Another few seconds and Frobisher would have been too late, and the ship would have been blown into the air with all her crew; for the Prince was even then applying a light to the end of the fuse which he had already cut, the other extremity of which was concealed from view.Frobisher repressed a shiver of horror, and with one bound flung himself upon the traitor, dropping sword and revolver as he did so. This was a case for the use of bare hands alone, man to man; the discharge of a pistol might only complete Hsi’s work for him, and Frobisher did not feel that he could cut the man down from behind, in cold blood, richly as he deserved it, and as the man himself would undoubtedly have done, had the positions been reversed. He gripped the sacred person of the Prince round the body, and endeavoured to hurl him to the floor and so stun him; but Hsi was a powerful man, and although taken at a disadvantage, managed to twisthimself so that Frobisher’s superior strength expended itself in vain.Then, with a mighty effort, he wrenched one arm free and seized the Englishman by the throat, sinking in his fingers with a fury that testified all too plainly to the intensity of his hatred.Do what he might, Frobisher could not wrench the traitor’s fingers away; and although with his left hand he managed to prevent Hsi from drawing the knife suspended from his belt, he knew that unless he could release himself from that bulldog grip, he must very soon lose consciousness, for already his eyes were beginning to protrude, the dim light of the magazine seemed full of flashing stars and blazing fireworks, and the blood drummed horribly in his ears. Besides, good heavens! there was that deadly spark hissing and sputtering its way along the fuse, and unless it was quenched within a minute, theTing Yuenand her crew would be flying skyward, a cloud of splintered steel and dismembered human bodies.This last thought gave Frobisher back his strength for a moment, and with a herculean effort he wrenched his throat from Hsi’s grip; then, recovering himself quickly, before the Chinaman had his knife more than half-way out of its sheath, he drew back his arm and struck Hsi a mighty blow full on the point of the chin.The Prince’s neck clicked like a breaking stick, and he was dashed senseless against the steel walls of the magazine, falling in a tumbled heap upon the floor. Without looking to see whether the man was unconscious or not, Frobisher dashed at the fuse and trampled it fiercely underfoot until the smouldering spark was entirely extinguished; then, with a sob of relief, he withdrew its other end from a pile of explosives and tossed it out of the door.Then he lifted Hsi on his shoulders, carried him out of the magazine, closing the door after him, and took him to his own cabin, where he deposited the senseless body in its bunk, afterwards securing the Prince’s wrists and ankles firmly with some lengths of rope which he procured from one of the men. This done, he locked the door, put the key in his pocket, and went in search of the admiral, whom he fully expected to find dead. At the same moment he heard theTing Yuen’sguns again opening overhead, as her temporary commander brought her into action once more, and he smiled grimly as he thought that, if Hsi had had his way, the shells from those very weapons would at this minute have been crashing their way through Chinese hulls, instead of being directed, as they were, against the Japanese ships.Frobisher found Admiral Ting lying on the floor of his cabin, his hands lashed behind him, and senseless from a severe cutlass or sword cut across the forehead. He had evidently been cut down while in the conning-tower, and had been brought to the cabin and there secured and flung down; for the Englishman had noticed a trail of bloodstains on the deck on his way to Ting’s quarters.In a very short time he had cut the old gentleman adrift, and after a few drops of brandy had been forced down his throat, Ting quickly revived, and gave Frobisher an account of what had occurred.It was short, but to the point. Hsi had entered the conning-tower with a drawn sword in his hand, and before the admiral could open his mouth the Prince had ruthlessly cut him down. After that the admiral knew no more until he awoke to find Frobisher pouring spirit and water down his throat.He was profuse in his thanks to the young Englishman, and, when he had learned from the latter all that had happened, promised that he would never forget the brave deed by which he had been rescued from eternal shame and dishonour. Then, despite his wound, which Frobisher roughly bandaged, the plucky old fellow insisted upon going on deck again and taking charge.But when the two men regained the open, what a sight met their horrified eyes! TheKau-ling, which, although dismantled, had been fighting bravely when Frobisher led his boarders away, had disappeared, and theTung-yen, the engines of which had broken down, had been surrounded by five Japanese ships, and was even then sinking. TheYung-chau, which had taken fire early in the fight, was now but an abandoned, charred wreck; and even the gallantShan-siandChen Yuen, which had done great deeds ever since the beginning, were now terribly damaged. Frobisher’s own ship, a short distance away, under Drake’s able seamanship was still giving a splendid account of herself, but even she, Frobisher’s experienced eye could tell, was very badly mauled.In short, of the ten ships which China had possessed that morning four were destroyed, one had crept away too seriously damaged to remain in action, one had gone as convoy to the transports, and the remaining four were all badly damaged. As for the torpedo-boats, the Japanese destroyers and smaller cruisers had made short work of them. Of the seven, three were sunk, one had been captured, two had fled toward Wei-hai-wei hotly pursued by a big Japanese destroyer, and only one remained with the remnant of the Chinese fleet.The Japanese had lost only three small cruisers and a destroyer, so that their fleet was even now almost as numerous as China’s had been at the beginning of the battle. True, theYoshinoand theFujiwere little better than wrecks, and the other ships had one and all received a very severe drubbing; but they were still afloat and more or less under control, while their undamaged guns now outnumbered those of the Chinese by about six to one.The odds were too heavy. To keep on fighting with the four remaining ships against the still powerful Japanese fleet would be simply throwing those four ships away to no purpose, and shedding China’s best blood without avail. If those two battleships and two cruisers could still be retained for China, they would live to fight another day, for with the addition of the southern squadron, still intact and undamaged, they would once more make up a powerful fleet; but if they were lost or captured now, that would be the end of them, and possibly the end of China also.Ting realised all this at a glance, and with a bitter groan ordered the signal to retire to be hoisted—the enemy to be held at bay, if possible, while the evolution was being carried out.As it was manifestly impossible for Frobisher to rejoin his own ship, owing to lack of boats, he took charge as captain of theTing Yuenin place of the traitor prince, confined below, and, in company with the other battleship, theChen Yuen, endeavoured to beat off the Japanese craft that were manoeuvring to surround the two remaining Chinese cruisers. And so bold a front—or rather, rear—did the four ships present that the Japanese before long relinquished the pursuit, not caring, in view of the success already obtained, to risk losing any more of their already sadly-battered ships by exposing them to the now-concentrated fire of the big Chinese ships’ eighty-ton guns, the projectiles from which had already done so much damage.They accordingly drew off and gave up the half-hearted chase, employing the short time still remaining before darkness fell in effecting some very necessary repairs to their ships; while the broken remnant of China’s northern squadron pursued its halting way toward Wei-hai-wei, the small torpedo-boat still remaining to them acting as scout in advance, on the look-out for the Japanese destroyer which, earlier in the day, had left the action in pursuit of a couple of damaged Chinese torpedo-boats.In the late twilight they fell in with the destroyer on her return from her unsuccessful pursuit, the two small craft having succeeded in effecting their escape. She had evidently anticipated a complete victory for her own side, and seeing lights in the distance, had made for them, thinking that, by this time, every ship would be in Japanese hands; and she did not discover her mistake until she was under the Chinese guns. Then she attempted to cut and run; but she was too late. There was a rattle of machine-gun fire which drove her men from the deck torpedo-tubes, and a few seconds later one of theChen Yuen’sbig guns plumped a shell right into her, crumpling her up like cardboard and sending her to the bottom within a few seconds. Some—a very few—of her men were rescued and made prisoners by the Chinese torpedo-boat, but the majority, dead or disabled from the effects of the bursting shell, went to feed the sharks.Early the following morning, just after daybreak, the four ships overtook theSan-chauand the transport fleet, which circumstance rejoiced Admiral Ting exceedingly, as he had been extremely anxious lest they might perhaps have fallen in with some prowling Japanese cruisers and been snapped up. Then the war-ships and the transports kept company until they reached Wei-hai-wei, where they found the littleHat-yen, but recently arrived in a sinking condition, so that it had been necessary to beach her immediately to save her from sinking at her anchors.Admiral Ting lost no time in docking such of his ships as there was room for; the others were run alongside the wharves, to have their guns replaced and their upper-works repaired, after which they would, one by one, go into dock as their repaired sisters came out. The admiral then dispatched to Tien-tsin theSan-chau, the only undamaged war-ship, with an account of the battle; while the torpedo-boat, after a few minor repairs, was dispatched south with a similar message to Admiral Wong-lih, suggesting that he should bring up the southern fleet, so that, together, the united squadrons might seek the Japanese fleet and once more give battle, in an attempt to recover the mastery of the sea, which was of paramount importance to China.

TheYen-fuand theTung-yenwere mere motionless hulks, lying inert upon the bosom of the sunlit, shot-torn sea, the one with her rudder and propeller blown away by a torpedo that had all but sent her to the bottom, the other with her engines badly broken down, the result of Chinese officials having stolen and disposed of many parts, which had had to be roughly replaced at the last moment. They were both fighting fiercely, however, like tough old wolves at bay, and, although hemmed in by several Japanese cruisers, were as yet giving back almost as good as they got. The game was up for them, though, as they were quite unable to manoeuvre, and only the thickness of their armour and the light calibre of the guns of the ships opposed to them had prevented them from going down long before. Frequently, too, Frobisher noticed, there were long pauses between the discharges of theYen-fu’sand theTung-yen’sgreat guns, as well as those of others of the Chinese ships; and he made a shrewd guess that these were the occasions when the faulty, charcoal-filled cartridges failed to explode. TheShan-si, with Captain James in command, was practically the only entirely undamaged ship still possessed by the Chinese—not because she had not been in the thickest of the fight, for she had, but just through one of those curious chances of warfare which are constantly occurring. She was doing sovereign service, rushing here, there, and everywhere, planting her shells coolly and accurately, and sweeping the Japanese decks with rifle and machine-gun fire; and many were the attempts made by the enemy’s destroyers to torpedo her and put her safely out of harm’s way. But, thanks to her captain’s skill and his personal care of everything pertaining to his ship, neither was she badly hit, nor did her machinery break down at a critical moment; and she went her relentless way, dealing death and destruction about her unchecked.

TheYung-chauandKau-lingwere being engaged by theHiroshima, Naniwa(a ship afterwards celebrated in the Russo-Japanese war), and theOkinoshima—each of which was much larger than either of the Chinese ships—and were getting a terrible punishing. Although still moving, and more or less under control, they were leaking steam and smoke from every crevice and opening, and ominous spirals of smoke were filtering up through theYung-chau’sdecks. She had been set on fire close to her bunkers by a Japanese shell, and, almost in less time than it takes to write it, was a mass of roaring, spouting flame, for she was old, and blazed like a volcano. Her men—such of them as could reach the decks—jumped overboard, and were hauled by ropes up the sides of whichever ships happened to be nearest; for the Japanese, like their opponents, had discarded all their boats and pontoons before going into action.

TheChen YuenandTing Yuenwere busily engaged in hammering away at the biggest of the enemy, theYoshino, theShikishima, Fuji, andNiitaka, and it was to relieve the two battleships, which were being somewhat severely handled, that Frobisher determined to charge theYoshinowith his ship.

Signalling once more for full steam, and firing as he went, according to his former tactics, he drove theChih’ Yuenat her utmost speed toward the Japanese flagship, which by this time had lost one of her military masts and her forward funnel, from whose torn base smoke and flame were pouring voluminously, wrapping the conning-tower round as though with a black mantle, and utterly preventing her skipper from seeing what was going on. He, poor man, was obliged to rely entirely upon the discretion of the gunnery-lieutenant in her forward turret; and that this individual was doing his duty well was proved by the frequency with which his guns boomed out, sending shell and solid shot spattering against the heavily-armoured sides of the Chinese battleships, where they splintered and burst, cracking and starring the thick steel, but very seldom penetrating to their vitals, close though the range was.

As theChih’ Yuenclove her way through the water, one of the Japanese destroyers discharged a torpedo at her, which missed her by inches only. It was not wasted, however, for it struck the disabledYen-fu, which heeled over as though pressed by some gigantic hand, and a few minutes later went down, taking her crew with her.

TheHiroshimaalso tried to ram in her turn, leaving the strickenKau-lingfor that purpose; but she also was too late. TheNaniwaand theShikishimasaw theChih’ Yuenapproaching, like the messenger of death she was, and backed away from their opponents; theFujiturned her guns on the approaching vessel; but theYoshino’scaptain, blinded by smoke from the wrecked funnel, did not see what was coming until it was too late, and a moment later the Chinese ship crashed into his stern, unfortunately striking a glancing blow instead of a direct one, as Frobisher had intended.

It was severe enough, however, to make theYoshinoshiver from stem to stern, from truck to keelson; and as theChih’ Yuendrove past, Frobisher saw that he had sliced a great gash in her port quarter nearly down to the water-line, and dismounted both the guns in her after turret. The attempt had not entirely succeeded, but it had done a great deal of damage, and with that he had to be content.

Then, as Frobisher circled his ship round to come into action again, he saw something that made him gasp with astonishment and apprehension. There was a fight of some sort going on upon the deck of the Chinese flagship herself! What on earth could it mean? She had not been close enough to any of the enemy’s ships to enable them to board her, and, moreover, they were Chinese sailors, not Japanese, who were fighting. What could possibly have happened? The seamen on board were entirely devoted to their admiral, and if any mutiny had arisen it must be through the machinations of some other person, some traitor who had seized this opportunity to—

By Jove, he had it! All his old suspicions came thronging into his mind in an instant, and in that same instant he believed he could make a very good guess at what had occurred. Of course it was that scoundrel, Prince Hsi, who was at the bottom of the mischief; Frobisher seemed to know it instinctively. He also recollected the numerous occasions on which his Highness had acted in an extremely suspicious manner, to say the least; and it did not take him long to guess that he was now beholding the consummation of a plot up to which Hsi had been leading for some considerable time past. But what had happened to Admiral Ting, he wondered, that Prince Hsi should have matters all in his own hands? Frobisher knew that so long as the gallant admiral was alive, or conscious, he would never permit his command to be taken from him thus; and his heart fell, for he feared that the traitor, to attain his detestable ends, must first have killed the brave old man.

Well, Frobisher vowed to himself, the traitor should not succeed in his scheme, whatever it might be, even though he had to board theTing Yuenhimself, and slay Prince Hsi with his own hands, to avenge the death of the admiral.

And then he saw what it was that the traitor prince intended. The commotion on the deck of the flagship had ceased, the mutineers having either slain or driven overboard all those who opposed them, and, while Frobisher’s ship was still some distance away, he saw the Chinese flag flutter down from theTing Yuen’speak, to be immediately replaced by the Japanese naval ensign; and the ship herself swung round in the direction of the enemy’s squadron and began to forge ahead toward it, Prince Hsi having evidently determined to turn his guns against his own countrymen.

As the Japanese ensign fluttered aloft there fell a sudden silence over both fleets. As though by mutual consent every gun was hushed for a few moments, and hoarse, stern, and menacing above the strange stillness rose a roar of execration from the throats of the Chinese, as they at last realised the meaning of the extraordinary scene that had just taken place aboard the flagship.

Defiantly her captain trained his guns on the nearest Chinese ships and fired; but whether his gunners could not bring themselves to the actual point of firing on their country’s flag, or whether it was due to the excitement of the moment, every shot missed, and a shout of derision went up from the Chinese squadron.

But Captain Frobisher knew that curses and shouts of execration would not bring back theTing Yuen. If she was to be saved to the Chinese Navy she must not be allowed to gain the shelter of the Japanese main body. If she reached that, she would be lost for ever, and the day would be lost beyond hope of redemption for the Chinese. To lose one powerful battleship, and to find another suddenly arrayed against them—for that is what it would of course amount to—would so weaken the already enfeebled Chinese strength that success would be out of the question; and the Englishman determined that, come what might, he would prevent the traitor prince from carrying out his foul intentions.

He shouted a few brief commands to Drake, who vanished like a puff of smoke from the conning-tower; issued an order to the quartermaster at the wheel; and rang to the engine-room the two short calls that signified that he required all the power the engines could develop, for a sudden emergency. Then he looked to see that his sword was loose in its scabbard and his revolver fully charged, and waited for Drake to reappear, while theChih’ Yuen, bounding forward under the full power of her engines, turned her nose toward the stern of theTing Yuenand kept it fixed there, relentless as fate.

By this time the cannonade had again become general throughout the fleet, but ringing high above the crashing roar of the guns could be heard the wild cheering of the Chinamen as they realised the gallant exploit that the English captain was about to attempt.

Prince Hsi realised it also, and put on full steam to escape, but he was a few minutes too late. Before theunwieldy battleship could get into her stride the more nimble cruiser would be upon her, and, knowing that he could not hope to reach safety before he was overtaken, the Prince determined to wait and fight the matter out with the Englishman whom he had already learnt to hate so intensely. He therefore reversed his engines, trained every available gun upon the advancingChih’ Yuen, and opened fire.

The cruiser reeled and quivered as the hurricane of shot and shell struck her, but she received no injury to her vital parts, and was checked not a moment in her headlong course. Frobisher had given orders that his fire was to be reserved until he himself gave the word, and he now watched for that moment as a tiger watches its prey.

A few seconds later the time arrived. Frobisher pressed the button that let loose the storm of death upon the flagship, rang off his engines, handed over the command to Drake, who had just reappeared, and then left the conning-tower.

On the port side of the deck, behind the steel citadel, he found that Drake had already drawn up the fifty volunteers he had called for, fully armed, and ready to follow their captain wherever he might choose to lead.

A second later there arose from theTing Yuena chorus of yells of astonishment and fury as theChih’ Yuen, instead of lying off and fighting with her guns, as Prince Hsi had expected, ground her sides against those of the flagship, and came to a standstill right alongside.

Frobisher shouted a word of command to the expectant sailors, and led them round the citadel, across the cruiser’s decks, and up on to those of the battleship, before theTing Yuen’smen realised what was happening. Most of the latter had thrown off their cutlasses, the better to handle their guns, and it was on their unpreparedness that Frobisher relied when he led his fifty boarders to the attack.

Like a whirlwind he swept down upon the rebel seamen, who stood petrified with alarm and astonishment beside the now useless guns, and the broad-bladed cutlasses rose and fell for a few seconds to the accompaniment of shrieks and yells for mercy. But Frobisher, with his small force, could not afford to give quarter until it was certain that there would be no more resistance; and, much as he detested the butchery, he simply dared not stay his hand. Forward and upward he and his men cut their way; they encountered more and more opposition every minute, as the mutineers found time to recover their wits and secure their weapons, but his men would take no denial. Their blades, now dyed a deep red, swept through the smoky air, and their revolvers crackled and blazed merrily, as the Englishman led them forward; and presently, after a stern and stubborn five minutes’ fighting, the rebels broke and fled below—overboard—anywhere to escape the avenging swords of their outraged countrymen.

So far, Frobisher had seen nothing of Prince Hsi; but the moment the mutineers were broken and he had released the remnant of the loyal Chinese sailors, he went in search of the arch-traitor himself, having first headed both ships back toward the Chinese squadron.

The Prince was not in the conning-tower, as Frobisher discovered when he went there with one of his own helmsmen to send the necessary orders to the engine-room, nor was he in his own cabin, which was the next most likely place to look for him; and diligently as Frobisher searched, the man was not to be found. He appeared to have vanished completely. Perhaps, Frobisher decided, the traitor had seen that his shameful plot had failed, and had thrown himself overboard to avoid the consequences of his act. That, however, did not seem quite like Hsi; he was more likely to be up to some deeper villainy still; and as this thought occurred to theChih’ Yuen’scaptain his blood ran cold, for some sixth sense or instinct seemed to warn him what Hsi was about.

With every nerve tingling, Frobisher darted below and began to search for the magazine, for it was thither he guessed the traitor had betaken himself; and it was indeed fortunate that he found it just where he had expected it to be.

The door of the magazine was open, and a man was to be seen inside, with his back to the entrance, engaged upon his diabolical work by the aid of a carefully-shaded lantern. Another few seconds and Frobisher would have been too late, and the ship would have been blown into the air with all her crew; for the Prince was even then applying a light to the end of the fuse which he had already cut, the other extremity of which was concealed from view.

Frobisher repressed a shiver of horror, and with one bound flung himself upon the traitor, dropping sword and revolver as he did so. This was a case for the use of bare hands alone, man to man; the discharge of a pistol might only complete Hsi’s work for him, and Frobisher did not feel that he could cut the man down from behind, in cold blood, richly as he deserved it, and as the man himself would undoubtedly have done, had the positions been reversed. He gripped the sacred person of the Prince round the body, and endeavoured to hurl him to the floor and so stun him; but Hsi was a powerful man, and although taken at a disadvantage, managed to twisthimself so that Frobisher’s superior strength expended itself in vain.

Then, with a mighty effort, he wrenched one arm free and seized the Englishman by the throat, sinking in his fingers with a fury that testified all too plainly to the intensity of his hatred.

Do what he might, Frobisher could not wrench the traitor’s fingers away; and although with his left hand he managed to prevent Hsi from drawing the knife suspended from his belt, he knew that unless he could release himself from that bulldog grip, he must very soon lose consciousness, for already his eyes were beginning to protrude, the dim light of the magazine seemed full of flashing stars and blazing fireworks, and the blood drummed horribly in his ears. Besides, good heavens! there was that deadly spark hissing and sputtering its way along the fuse, and unless it was quenched within a minute, theTing Yuenand her crew would be flying skyward, a cloud of splintered steel and dismembered human bodies.

This last thought gave Frobisher back his strength for a moment, and with a herculean effort he wrenched his throat from Hsi’s grip; then, recovering himself quickly, before the Chinaman had his knife more than half-way out of its sheath, he drew back his arm and struck Hsi a mighty blow full on the point of the chin.

The Prince’s neck clicked like a breaking stick, and he was dashed senseless against the steel walls of the magazine, falling in a tumbled heap upon the floor. Without looking to see whether the man was unconscious or not, Frobisher dashed at the fuse and trampled it fiercely underfoot until the smouldering spark was entirely extinguished; then, with a sob of relief, he withdrew its other end from a pile of explosives and tossed it out of the door.

Then he lifted Hsi on his shoulders, carried him out of the magazine, closing the door after him, and took him to his own cabin, where he deposited the senseless body in its bunk, afterwards securing the Prince’s wrists and ankles firmly with some lengths of rope which he procured from one of the men. This done, he locked the door, put the key in his pocket, and went in search of the admiral, whom he fully expected to find dead. At the same moment he heard theTing Yuen’sguns again opening overhead, as her temporary commander brought her into action once more, and he smiled grimly as he thought that, if Hsi had had his way, the shells from those very weapons would at this minute have been crashing their way through Chinese hulls, instead of being directed, as they were, against the Japanese ships.

Frobisher found Admiral Ting lying on the floor of his cabin, his hands lashed behind him, and senseless from a severe cutlass or sword cut across the forehead. He had evidently been cut down while in the conning-tower, and had been brought to the cabin and there secured and flung down; for the Englishman had noticed a trail of bloodstains on the deck on his way to Ting’s quarters.

In a very short time he had cut the old gentleman adrift, and after a few drops of brandy had been forced down his throat, Ting quickly revived, and gave Frobisher an account of what had occurred.

It was short, but to the point. Hsi had entered the conning-tower with a drawn sword in his hand, and before the admiral could open his mouth the Prince had ruthlessly cut him down. After that the admiral knew no more until he awoke to find Frobisher pouring spirit and water down his throat.

He was profuse in his thanks to the young Englishman, and, when he had learned from the latter all that had happened, promised that he would never forget the brave deed by which he had been rescued from eternal shame and dishonour. Then, despite his wound, which Frobisher roughly bandaged, the plucky old fellow insisted upon going on deck again and taking charge.

But when the two men regained the open, what a sight met their horrified eyes! TheKau-ling, which, although dismantled, had been fighting bravely when Frobisher led his boarders away, had disappeared, and theTung-yen, the engines of which had broken down, had been surrounded by five Japanese ships, and was even then sinking. TheYung-chau, which had taken fire early in the fight, was now but an abandoned, charred wreck; and even the gallantShan-siandChen Yuen, which had done great deeds ever since the beginning, were now terribly damaged. Frobisher’s own ship, a short distance away, under Drake’s able seamanship was still giving a splendid account of herself, but even she, Frobisher’s experienced eye could tell, was very badly mauled.

In short, of the ten ships which China had possessed that morning four were destroyed, one had crept away too seriously damaged to remain in action, one had gone as convoy to the transports, and the remaining four were all badly damaged. As for the torpedo-boats, the Japanese destroyers and smaller cruisers had made short work of them. Of the seven, three were sunk, one had been captured, two had fled toward Wei-hai-wei hotly pursued by a big Japanese destroyer, and only one remained with the remnant of the Chinese fleet.

The Japanese had lost only three small cruisers and a destroyer, so that their fleet was even now almost as numerous as China’s had been at the beginning of the battle. True, theYoshinoand theFujiwere little better than wrecks, and the other ships had one and all received a very severe drubbing; but they were still afloat and more or less under control, while their undamaged guns now outnumbered those of the Chinese by about six to one.

The odds were too heavy. To keep on fighting with the four remaining ships against the still powerful Japanese fleet would be simply throwing those four ships away to no purpose, and shedding China’s best blood without avail. If those two battleships and two cruisers could still be retained for China, they would live to fight another day, for with the addition of the southern squadron, still intact and undamaged, they would once more make up a powerful fleet; but if they were lost or captured now, that would be the end of them, and possibly the end of China also.

Ting realised all this at a glance, and with a bitter groan ordered the signal to retire to be hoisted—the enemy to be held at bay, if possible, while the evolution was being carried out.

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

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

In the late twilight they fell in with the destroyer on her return from her unsuccessful pursuit, the two small craft having succeeded in effecting their escape. She had evidently anticipated a complete victory for her own side, and seeing lights in the distance, had made for them, thinking that, by this time, every ship would be in Japanese hands; and she did not discover her mistake until she was under the Chinese guns. Then she attempted to cut and run; but she was too late. There was a rattle of machine-gun fire which drove her men from the deck torpedo-tubes, and a few seconds later one of theChen Yuen’sbig guns plumped a shell right into her, crumpling her up like cardboard and sending her to the bottom within a few seconds. Some—a very few—of her men were rescued and made prisoners by the Chinese torpedo-boat, but the majority, dead or disabled from the effects of the bursting shell, went to feed the sharks.

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

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

Chapter Twenty.On Special Service.For the first few days after the return of the fleet to Wei-hai-wei everybody was very fully employed, including even the admiral himself, who, despite his deep and painful wound, insisted on being about the dockyard, his head tied up in a bandage, superintending the refitting of the shattered ships. Nothing was mentioned with regard to Prince Hsi. That arch-villain had not even been seen; and Frobisher supposed it was Ting’s intention to send him, as soon as he could spare an escort, to Tien-tsin to stand his trial—a procedure which the Englishman was inclined to think very likely to end in a farce, since, once among the circle of his rich and powerful relatives and acquaintance, the man was wily and cunning enough to be able to extricate himself even out of such a predicament as that in which he was now plunged.Frobisher had, however, forgotten a certain promise which Ting had made at Wi-ju, at the mouth of the Yalu, when Prince Hsi had been so very nearly discovered in communication with one of the enemy’s destroyers—the promise that, if he actually caught the Prince red-handed, so that there could be no possible doubt about the matter, not all the influence or powerful relations in China should save him from the fate he would so richly deserve.There could be little doubt that it was due to the signals sent that night by the Prince to the destroyer that the Japanese had learned the strength of the Chinese squadron and its destination, and had thus been enabled to come up in full force, as they had done, and practically annihilate the northern squadron. This was not the first nor the second time that Hsi had played the traitor, although until now there had been no actual proof of his treachery; he was strongly suspected, for instance, of having brought about the disaster to the transportKowshing, when she had been sunk by the Japanese cruiserNaniwa, with over a thousand Chinese troops on board.Admiral Ting had not allowed his oath to slip his memory, and the old fellow, gentle, kindly, and courteous though he was to his friends, could be very vindictive when it came to dealing with evil-doers, especially criminals of the hardened, remorseless type which Prince Hsi had proved himself to be. He was only biding his time, as events were very soon to prove.One evening Frobisher received a polite message from the admiral that his presence would be required on board the flagship at ten o’clock on the following morning, and so did the other captains and first lieutenants. Consequently, at the hour named, Captains Foster, James, Frobisher, and Quen-lung, of theChen Yuen, Shan-si, Chih’ Yuen, andHat-yenrespectively, together with their first officers, found themselves assembled in Admiral Ting’s cabin on board the flagship, each of them attired in full-dress uniform and wearing their side-arms. The admiral himself was also present, dressed in the fullest of full dress, and wearing all his various Chinese orders and decorations; while the cabin door was guarded on each side by a Chinese sailor with drawn cutlass.The room had been cleared of most of its usual furnishings, and a plain, long and narrow oak table had been placed in the centre, with chairs sufficient to accommodate the little party of officers assembled. At a short distance from the table there was placed another chair, standing by itself, the use of which was to be discovered presently.As soon as the last officer had arrived, Admiral Ting explained that they were met together to sit in judgment on the person of Prince Hsi, a member of the royal house of China, and lately captain of the battleshipTing Yuen, the said officer being accused of treachery to his country, mutiny, and desertion to the enemy during the time of battle. The accuser was, for official purposes, the first lieutenant of theTing Yuen, an officer of high birth and proved integrity, who had also been struck down and confined below by Prince Hsi’s mutinous sailors. Admiral Ting himself intended to act as Judge Advocate; and the other captains and officers made up the court, their opinions as to the guilt or innocence of the accused to be taken after the hearing of the case, beginning with the man of lowest rank present, the idea of this being to prevent the younger and less experienced officers from being influenced by the decisions of their superiors.On the table, with its point directed toward the Judge Advocate’s seat, lay Prince Hsi’s sword, which had been taken from him at the time of his arrest.The officers having taken their seats in the order of seniority, Admiral Ting declared the court open, and directed the prisoner to be brought in. A few seconds later the door opened and Prince Hsi entered, guarded by two sailors with drawn swords, and himself wearing his full-dress uniform, with all his orders displayed across his breast. He looked, Frobisher thought, a trifle pale, but was otherwise cool and collected, and his face wore its usual expression of cold and haughty resentment. With him entered another officer belonging to Admiral Ting’s staff, whose duty it would be to act as the prisoner’s “friend”, a position something similar to that of counsel for the defence at a civilian trial.Having bowed to the assembled court, the Prince, in view of his rank, was permitted to seat himself in the chair provided, and the trial commenced. From the first it was quite evident that Hsi believed his judges would never dare to proceed to extremities, for his replies were always careless, and often flippant; but Frobisher could see that the court was very much in earnest, and that the Prince was deceiving himself very badly.It began to dawn on the prisoner, after a time, that his accusers were making out a very serious case against him—as, indeed, they could not help doing, in face of the evidence they possessed; and he made desperate efforts to justify his conduct and to excuse his actions, though, in face of the facts, he was attempting an utter impossibility.At the expiration of an hour the accusation and defence had been heard, and the Prince was ordered to be removed. Admiral Ting then summed up, and asked the verdict of the court, commencing with the youngest lieutenant present, and working up until the last pronouncement rested with the captain of theChen Yuen.Every officer gave it as his conscientious conviction that the Prince was guilty, and Hsi was then recalled. He started violently as he saw that his sword had been reversed and that its point was now toward, instead of away from, him; for he knew by that token that he had been found guilty, and that all that now remained for him was to hear his sentence, which even yet, it was clear, he did not believe would be at all severe.It was, however, the most severe that could be passed. The sentence ran that Prince Hsi, having been found guilty by a court composed of his fellow officers of the charges preferred against him, should be stripped of his decorations and have the insignia of his rank torn from his uniform in presence of the assembled officers and crews of the Chinese fleet, and that thereafter he should be shot upon the quarter-deck of the flagshipTing Yuen.When this terrible sentence was pronounced Prince Hsi was observed to stagger and turn deathly pale. Such ignominy as this he had never dreamed of; and to lose his life into the bargain—With a lightning-like movement, and before his guards could prevent him, Hsi placed the back of his hand to his mouth, held it there a second, and then, with a groan of deepest agony, reeled backward and fell upon the cabin floor.When they picked him up he was quite dead, and the cause of his death was revealed by the large ring which he wore on the third finger of his left hand. It had been made hollow, with a tiny hinged cover, and concealed in the hollow there had evidently been a minute dose of an extremely powerful poison which, from the odour of almonds that filled the cabin directly afterward, Frobisher recognised as being prussic acid, one of the quickest and most deadly poisons known to science.With a solemn, courteous gesture Ting dismissed his officers, and they trooped silently out of the cabin, leaving the admiral alone with the dead. A little later in the day the body was enclosed in a coffin and placed on board a ship bound for Tien-tsin, with directions that it should be delivered to the Prince’s relations.Thus perished a man who bad used his high position to attain his own base ends at the expense of his country and the lives of his countrymen. Nemesis had overtaken him at last, as it sometimes does evil-doers; and the high-born Prince Hsi died miserably, a condemned criminal.Frobisher returned to his own ship from the court of justice saddened and disheartened. True, the Prince had richly deserved his fate, and China could never have known safety while he remained alive; but it seemed a dreadful thing that a young man like Prince Hsi, with all life’s infinite possibilities to one of his standing before him, should deliberately imperil and finally forfeit those possibilities for the equivalent of a few thousand English pounds, in order to be able to practise vices which had originated in the first place simply through the possession of so much money that he felt he had to get rid of it somehow, and so adopted the quickest means available.But the young English captain had very little time in which to moralise over Hsi’s miserable end; for shortly after his return to theChih’ Yuen, while he was changing into his undress uniform, a messenger came aboard with a request that he would wait upon the admiral again immediately.Wondering what was now in the wind, Frobisher went across to theTing Yuen, to find the admiral anxiously pacing the deck awaiting him; and he soon learnt what it was that his superior required him for.It appeared that a ship had come in but a short time previously, bringing important news, which her captain had just communicated to Ting, to the effect that the Japanese had resolved upon the seizure of the Chinese island of Taiwan, or Formosa, and that they intended to dispatch an expedition thither under General Oki, in two transports, each conveying twelve hundred men; and as the intended invasion of the island was believed by the Japanese to be a dead secret, it was proposed to send only one gunboat or small cruiser to convoy the transports. They evidently considered that, the Chinese northern fleet being still under repair at Wei-hai-wei, and the southern fleet away in southern Chinese waters, they had little or nothing to fear, and that a very small measure of protection, or even none at all, would suffice. How the man had obtained his information he declined to say; but he solemnly declared that the news was genuine, and spoke so convincingly that he quite satisfied the admiral of the need for taking immediate action.Ting therefore asked Frobisher whether it was true that the repairs to his ship were all but completed; and on being informed that another day’s work would suffice to render theChih’ Yuenready for sea, if her services were urgently required, he ordered the young Englishman to expedite matters as much as possible, get his stores and ammunition on board, and sail at the earliest moment for Kilung, at the north end of the island of Formosa, at which spot it was reported that the Japanese intended to disembark their troops. This disembarkation, said Ting, must be prevented, if possible, and the gunboat and transports were to be destroyed, or captured, as circumstances should decide. This ought, he added, to be an easy task for theChih’ Yuen; and it would prove a very adequate reprisal for the sinking of the transportKowshingand some of her attendant ships by the Japanese squadron some weeks previously.This was just the kind of commission that appealed to Frobisher, who had still a great deal of the boy left in him; there was nothing that he liked better than to be able to get away on special service. He therefore assured Ting that he would return on board, hurry his preparations forward, and get away at the very earliest moment.The morning but one following, therefore, found him steaming out of the harbour of Wei-hai-wei, with Drake, almost as eager as himself, standing on the bridge beside him. There had been very little prospect of active service for either of them until Wong-lih could join forces with the northern fleet, and that might possibly not be for some time; therefore both men were in the highest spirits at the thought of getting to hand-grips with the enemy again so quickly, and it was with a light heart indeed that the young captain ordered the admiral’s salute to be fired as theChih’ Yuenswept seaward out of the harbour.The distance from Wei-hai-wei to Kilung, at the north end of Formosa, is close upon a thousand miles, and Frobisher reckoned that it would take him some seventy hours to do the trip. On the other hand, the distance from the nearest Japanese port, Nagasaki, to the same spot was only about seven hundred miles; therefore if the proposed invading expedition sailed at the time when theChih’ Yuenleft Wei-hai-wei, the probability was that the Japanese would be there first, in which case his task would be exceedingly difficult, if not impossible. Once let the soldiers get ashore, and he, with his small force, would be quite unable to turn them out. It was only by meeting the transports and gunboats at sea that he could hope for success; and he did not spare coal, or his engineers’ and stokers’ feelings, in his eagerness to reach the scene first. Of course, there was always the possibility that, believing their plan a secret, the enemy would not greatly hurry to get to Kilung; but Frobisher was not taking any chances, and he drove his ship through the short, choppy seas at the full power of her engines.He had an additional incentive to haste in the aspect of the sea and sky; for there seemed to be another typhoon threatening, and he was keenly anxious to run out of the storm area before the hurricane should break. When twilight fell that evening, the sun was already enveloped in a peculiar, dun-coloured mist that resembled an enormous pall of distant smoke, in the midst of which the orb appeared like a dimly-seen, red-hot iron disk, as it sank toward the western horizon. The darkening sky overhead and away to the eastward glowed with a dull incandescence, like the reflected glare of an enormous furnace; while the short, choppy waves of the forenoon had given place to a long, oily, sluggish swell, without a single ripple to disturb its surface, through which theChih’ Yuen’sstem clove its way like a knife shearing through butter. The ship was rolling heavily; and in the queer, eerie stillness that fell with the disappearance of the sun, the usual ship-board sounds, the clank of machinery far below, and even the voices of the men, assumed so weird and unnatural a character that Frobisher felt himself gradually being overcome by a most unpleasant, dismal sense of foreboding.The sea, reflecting the ruddy glow from overhead, looked ghastly in the extreme, recalling to the Englishman’s disturbed fancy the old sailor’s legend of the appearance of the “Hand of Satan in the Sea of Darkness”. This was precisely the kind of sea out of which such a terrible apparition might be expected to appear; and so strongly did the feeling of menace take hold of him, that he actually caught himself at times glancing apprehensively over his shoulder, in spite of his resolve to the contrary.About an hour after sunset, puffs of hot wind came moaning about the ship from all directions, oppressive, and almost as noxious as the fumes from an open furnace door. Indeed, there was a distinctly sulphurous smell in the atmosphere; and the air was so full of electricity that a quite perceptible shock was to be felt if the bare hand were placed on metal, especially upon the copper fittings of the binnacle. A feeling of vague uneasiness seemed to have taken possession of every man on board; and tempers were short almost to the point of acerbity. The petty officers could be heard snarling at the men, the officers grumbled at their subordinates, and even Frobisher and Drake had something of a passage of arms up on the bridge, until they realised that their fretted nerves were due to the extraordinary weather conditions, and laughed the little unpleasantness off accordingly.Frobisher now gave orders that all the guns were to be doubly secured, so that they might not break adrift in the event of the ship being overtaken by the typhoon, the approach of which now appeared most probable; and everything that might possibly strike adrift was fastened and double fastened, in view of what was almost certainly coming. The canvas dodgers round the bridge were taken down and put away, and the quarter-deck and forecastle awnings were removed, and the stanchions taken out of their sockets and placed below. The lashings of the boat covers were again looked to, and the boats themselves secured more firmly in their chocks, until finally there remained nothing more possible to be done for security, and the outbreak of the storm could be awaited with reasonable confidence.About eight o’clock in the evening the swell became even more pronounced, and the ship commenced to roll so heavily that it was necessary to run hand-lines fore and aft the deck to enable the seamen to go about their duties, otherwise there was great danger of the men being hurled right across the decks and sustaining serious injuries. The gloomy, lowering, red light which had suffused the sky at the going down of the sun had given place to a dull, copper-coloured glow, mingled with a kind of brassy glare, all the more ominous from the fact that there was no visible source of its origin; for in the ordinary course of events it should have been quite dark, except for such light as was given by the moon, the sun having disappeared more than an hour and a half previously. So strong was this unearthly light that the horizon was plainly visible in all directions, save away to the northward, and there the blackness was intense. Not the faintest glimmer of a star was observable through the inky curtain which covered about ten degrees of the horizon in that direction, but now and again a sudden dazzle of wicked-looking forked lightning shot across the face of the bank. As yet, however, there was no sound of thunder, and the same unearthly stillness prevailed, save when a moaning sound could be plainly heard as the puffs of hot wind more and more frequently scurried through the ship’s wire rigging, or sobbed weirdly in the hoods of the ventilators.“There is certainly something pretty bad coming, sir,” Drake presently volunteered, unable any longer to endure the strained silence. “I have sailed these seas before; and although I have never seen the sky looking quite so threatening as it does now, there were much the same premonitions before the great hurricane of 1889, when more than twenty thousand Chinamen were drowned, and hundreds of junks, sailing ships, and steamers were destroyed, and their wreckage strewn up and down the coast. I was in the oldBarracoutaat the time; and although she was as well-found a craft as ever I sailed in, I never expected her to live through it. It would be a queer state of affairs if we were to drop across the enemy now, sir, wouldn’t it? The men would have a pretty job serving the guns, and no mistake!”“An action, with a swell such as this running, would be an utter impossibility,” was Frobisher’s reply. “Before long we shall be having all our work cut out to take care of ourselves, without troubling to attempt the destruction of the other fellow. And by Jove, Drake! I believe it’s coming now.”Drake glanced apprehensively behind him, and there,sureenough, just below the inky curtain of blackness on the northern horizon, which was now being rent in every direction by continuous lightning flashes, could be seen a long line of whitish colour, which, there could be no doubt, was approaching the ship with more than the speed of an express train.Frobisher had scarcely uttered the words before the darkness was rent by the most terrifically vivid flash of lightning that he had ever seen, while simultaneously the air was shattered by a clap of thunder of such frightful volume that the cruiser jarred and shivered from stem to stern, as though she had taken the ground at full speed; indeed, for some seconds Frobisher was not at all sure that they had not happened upon some uncharted shoal. And while all hands were still cringing involuntarily from the shock, there came another dazzling flash of lightning, apparently within a few yards of the vessel, followed immediately by peal on peal of thunder, which rolled and reverberated over the sea as though all the great guns in existence were being fired at the same time within a few miles of them.Then the rain came down as it only can in those latitudes—as though the bottom of an enormous tank had been suddenly knocked out; the roar of that colossal volume of water beating on the deck being such that, although Frobisher put his mouth to Drake’s ear and shouted with all the power of his lungs, the latter could not distinguish a syllable.For only a few brief seconds did this last; then it ceased as suddenly as though a tap had been turned off. An instant later the line of white water appeared, scarcely a hundred yards distant from theChih’ Yuen’sstern. Frobisher had barely time to yell an order to the men on deck to “hold on for their lives” before the oncoming wave and the attendant hurricane broke upon the cruiser.The wave, black, gleaming, and sinister in the sheen of the lancing lightning flashes, and capped with a ridge of phosphorescent foam, swept over the cruiser’s stern, down upon the quarter-deck, and then forward, burying the ship in an instant from stern to stem, so that her captain, up on the navigating bridge, was unable for a few seconds to see anything of his vessel’s decks, the bridge on which he and Drake were standing—or endeavouring to stand—and the tops of the ventilators being all of the upper-works that showed above the racing turmoil of foam-covered water. At the same time Frobisher and Drake were literally jammed against the quivering rails of the bridge and held there, powerless to move, by the amazing force of the wind.A perceptible quiver thrilled through the hull of the sturdy vessel as, like a live thing, she endeavoured to free herself from that enormous weight of water, and a few moments later she emerged from the swirl, which poured off her decks in cataracts. Then, rolling herself free of the rest of her burden, she was carried irresistibly forward on the back of the wave, like a chip in the current of a mill-race.Frobisher gave a big sigh of relief as he saw his ship shake herself free. “A little longer, Drake, and she would have foundered under our feet,” he managed to gasp; “if she had not been the sturdy craft that she is, she would not have come up again.”“You’re right, sir,” replied Drake, wiping the spray out of his eyes; “that was a narrow squeak, if ever there was one. But hark to the wind! It must be blowing at ninety miles an hour, at least. I pray that nothing may get in our way, for we could not possibly avoid it. A hair’s-breadth out of our course, and the ship would broach to and capsize with us.”Drake spoke truth. Although the sea was absolutely smooth—every wave-crest being shorn off by the terrific force of the wind almost before it had time to form—the extremely heavy swell that had arisen earlier in the evening was still running. Even the hurricane could not flatten that, and theChih’ Yuen, driven forward by her own steam and the power of the wind behind her, rushed down one steep slope and up the next with a speed that made even the most experienced seaman gasp. A very slight alteration of the helm, at the speed at which the ship was then travelling, would certainly suffice to send her reeling over upon her beam-ends, aided by the “send” of the sea.Looking round him, after the storm’s first wild outburst, Frobisher was horrified to observe the terrible damage and loss of life that had been caused by that first great rush of water. Of the men who had been on deck at the time, only some half a dozen poor, draggled, half-drowned creatures, clinging limply to the nearest support, could be seen; while every movable object had been swept overboard into the sea, as well as a number that are not usually considered easy of removal. Several ventilators had been shorn off level with the deck, and the water had poured in tons down the openings thus formed; the two quarterboats had disappeared altogether, and of another boat only the stem and stern posts remained, hanging to the davit tackles by their ring-bolts. Stanchions were either missing altogether, or bent into a variety of curious and extraordinary shapes; and even some of the lighter machine-guns mounted on deck had been torn from their tripods, and were by this time at the bottom of the sea. The havoc was simply indescribable, and Frobisher’s heart was full of bitterness as he surveyed the shocking wreck of what had, a few minutes previously, been the smartest and finest cruiser in the whole Chinese Navy, and thought of the poor souls who were perhaps, even now, struggling feebly as they gradually sank to their watery graves.All that night both Drake and Frobisher remained on the bridge, not daring to leave the ship to herself for an instant; and many and many a time during those hours of darkness did each of them think that his last moment was come. Yet time after time the cruiser recovered from the staggering blows inflicted by wind and sea, and rushed from crest to crest of the swell like a flying-fish pursued by dolphin.Several times during the night and the following morning her skipper tried to gauge the speed at which his ship was travelling, and ultimately he estimated that she must be doing fully twenty knots over the ground. As the cruiser was travelling at this high speed Frobisher became particularly anxious to obtain a sight of the sun at midday, in order to ascertain his position; for he was of opinion that he must be very near, if not actually among, those islands forming the Chu-san Archipelago; and he feared, every moment, that theChih’ Yuenmight crash headlong upon some submerged rock. But, unfortunately, the atmosphere was far too thick to render any observation possible; indeed, what with the black, low-hanging clouds, and the dense spindrift with which the air was filled, it was as dark at midday as it would have been, under ordinary circumstances, half an hour after sunset; and he was perforce obliged to content himself with the very unsatisfactory result obtained by dead reckoning.Late in the afternoon the typhoon eased up a little, and Frobisher sent Drake below to secure some rest—for both men were completely worn out—promising to call him and take his own turn after the first lieutenant had refreshed himself with three hours’ slumber.At the expiration of that time the wind had dropped so much that he felt quite justified in leaving the bridge; and he therefore had Drake called to take his place. With the easing of the wind, however, a very steep and heavy sea naturally began to rise, and Frobisher therefore instructed Drake to call him immediately should any danger arise to the ship. He then went below and turned in “all standing”, excepting that he discarded his boots and his water-soaked oilskins; and he was asleep almost before his head had touched the pillow.It seemed to him that he had been sleeping but a few minutes when he felt himself violently shaken by the shoulder, and awoke to find Drake, still haggard and worn for want of proper sleep, standing over him in his dripping oilskins.“Hillo! Anything wrong, Drake?” was his immediate enquiry, followed by a request to be told the time, since his own watch appeared to have run down.“Nothing absolutely wrong, sir,” was the reply, “but what you can feel for yourself. The sea has risen very badly; and the ship is not behaving as well as I should like. The chief engineer, also, has just sent up word that the engines are working a bit loose, and that some of the bearings are almost red-hot. He thinks that some parts of the machinery must have been strained when that first wave swept over us; so I thought it just as well to let you know. As for the time, sir, it is nearly three o’clock in the morning.”“Three in the morning!” ejaculated the captain. “Surely not, Drake! I must have slept nearly ten hours, in that case. All right! I will be on deck in a few seconds.”Hardly were the words out of his mouth when there arose on deck a fearful outcry, as of men in the extremity of fear and dismay; and before Frobisher and Drake had planted their feet on the first steps of the companion-ladder, the ship struck heavily, plunged forward, and then struck again. At the same moment the electric lights went out, and everything was in darkness.

For the first few days after the return of the fleet to Wei-hai-wei everybody was very fully employed, including even the admiral himself, who, despite his deep and painful wound, insisted on being about the dockyard, his head tied up in a bandage, superintending the refitting of the shattered ships. Nothing was mentioned with regard to Prince Hsi. That arch-villain had not even been seen; and Frobisher supposed it was Ting’s intention to send him, as soon as he could spare an escort, to Tien-tsin to stand his trial—a procedure which the Englishman was inclined to think very likely to end in a farce, since, once among the circle of his rich and powerful relatives and acquaintance, the man was wily and cunning enough to be able to extricate himself even out of such a predicament as that in which he was now plunged.

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

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

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

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

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

As soon as the last officer had arrived, Admiral Ting explained that they were met together to sit in judgment on the person of Prince Hsi, a member of the royal house of China, and lately captain of the battleshipTing Yuen, the said officer being accused of treachery to his country, mutiny, and desertion to the enemy during the time of battle. The accuser was, for official purposes, the first lieutenant of theTing Yuen, an officer of high birth and proved integrity, who had also been struck down and confined below by Prince Hsi’s mutinous sailors. Admiral Ting himself intended to act as Judge Advocate; and the other captains and officers made up the court, their opinions as to the guilt or innocence of the accused to be taken after the hearing of the case, beginning with the man of lowest rank present, the idea of this being to prevent the younger and less experienced officers from being influenced by the decisions of their superiors.

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

The officers having taken their seats in the order of seniority, Admiral Ting declared the court open, and directed the prisoner to be brought in. A few seconds later the door opened and Prince Hsi entered, guarded by two sailors with drawn swords, and himself wearing his full-dress uniform, with all his orders displayed across his breast. He looked, Frobisher thought, a trifle pale, but was otherwise cool and collected, and his face wore its usual expression of cold and haughty resentment. With him entered another officer belonging to Admiral Ting’s staff, whose duty it would be to act as the prisoner’s “friend”, a position something similar to that of counsel for the defence at a civilian trial.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thus perished a man who bad used his high position to attain his own base ends at the expense of his country and the lives of his countrymen. Nemesis had overtaken him at last, as it sometimes does evil-doers; and the high-born Prince Hsi died miserably, a condemned criminal.

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

But the young English captain had very little time in which to moralise over Hsi’s miserable end; for shortly after his return to theChih’ Yuen, while he was changing into his undress uniform, a messenger came aboard with a request that he would wait upon the admiral again immediately.

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

It appeared that a ship had come in but a short time previously, bringing important news, which her captain had just communicated to Ting, to the effect that the Japanese had resolved upon the seizure of the Chinese island of Taiwan, or Formosa, and that they intended to dispatch an expedition thither under General Oki, in two transports, each conveying twelve hundred men; and as the intended invasion of the island was believed by the Japanese to be a dead secret, it was proposed to send only one gunboat or small cruiser to convoy the transports. They evidently considered that, the Chinese northern fleet being still under repair at Wei-hai-wei, and the southern fleet away in southern Chinese waters, they had little or nothing to fear, and that a very small measure of protection, or even none at all, would suffice. How the man had obtained his information he declined to say; but he solemnly declared that the news was genuine, and spoke so convincingly that he quite satisfied the admiral of the need for taking immediate action.

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

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

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

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

He had an additional incentive to haste in the aspect of the sea and sky; for there seemed to be another typhoon threatening, and he was keenly anxious to run out of the storm area before the hurricane should break. When twilight fell that evening, the sun was already enveloped in a peculiar, dun-coloured mist that resembled an enormous pall of distant smoke, in the midst of which the orb appeared like a dimly-seen, red-hot iron disk, as it sank toward the western horizon. The darkening sky overhead and away to the eastward glowed with a dull incandescence, like the reflected glare of an enormous furnace; while the short, choppy waves of the forenoon had given place to a long, oily, sluggish swell, without a single ripple to disturb its surface, through which theChih’ Yuen’sstem clove its way like a knife shearing through butter. The ship was rolling heavily; and in the queer, eerie stillness that fell with the disappearance of the sun, the usual ship-board sounds, the clank of machinery far below, and even the voices of the men, assumed so weird and unnatural a character that Frobisher felt himself gradually being overcome by a most unpleasant, dismal sense of foreboding.

The sea, reflecting the ruddy glow from overhead, looked ghastly in the extreme, recalling to the Englishman’s disturbed fancy the old sailor’s legend of the appearance of the “Hand of Satan in the Sea of Darkness”. This was precisely the kind of sea out of which such a terrible apparition might be expected to appear; and so strongly did the feeling of menace take hold of him, that he actually caught himself at times glancing apprehensively over his shoulder, in spite of his resolve to the contrary.

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

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

About eight o’clock in the evening the swell became even more pronounced, and the ship commenced to roll so heavily that it was necessary to run hand-lines fore and aft the deck to enable the seamen to go about their duties, otherwise there was great danger of the men being hurled right across the decks and sustaining serious injuries. The gloomy, lowering, red light which had suffused the sky at the going down of the sun had given place to a dull, copper-coloured glow, mingled with a kind of brassy glare, all the more ominous from the fact that there was no visible source of its origin; for in the ordinary course of events it should have been quite dark, except for such light as was given by the moon, the sun having disappeared more than an hour and a half previously. So strong was this unearthly light that the horizon was plainly visible in all directions, save away to the northward, and there the blackness was intense. Not the faintest glimmer of a star was observable through the inky curtain which covered about ten degrees of the horizon in that direction, but now and again a sudden dazzle of wicked-looking forked lightning shot across the face of the bank. As yet, however, there was no sound of thunder, and the same unearthly stillness prevailed, save when a moaning sound could be plainly heard as the puffs of hot wind more and more frequently scurried through the ship’s wire rigging, or sobbed weirdly in the hoods of the ventilators.

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

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

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

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

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

For only a few brief seconds did this last; then it ceased as suddenly as though a tap had been turned off. An instant later the line of white water appeared, scarcely a hundred yards distant from theChih’ Yuen’sstern. Frobisher had barely time to yell an order to the men on deck to “hold on for their lives” before the oncoming wave and the attendant hurricane broke upon the cruiser.

The wave, black, gleaming, and sinister in the sheen of the lancing lightning flashes, and capped with a ridge of phosphorescent foam, swept over the cruiser’s stern, down upon the quarter-deck, and then forward, burying the ship in an instant from stern to stem, so that her captain, up on the navigating bridge, was unable for a few seconds to see anything of his vessel’s decks, the bridge on which he and Drake were standing—or endeavouring to stand—and the tops of the ventilators being all of the upper-works that showed above the racing turmoil of foam-covered water. At the same time Frobisher and Drake were literally jammed against the quivering rails of the bridge and held there, powerless to move, by the amazing force of the wind.

A perceptible quiver thrilled through the hull of the sturdy vessel as, like a live thing, she endeavoured to free herself from that enormous weight of water, and a few moments later she emerged from the swirl, which poured off her decks in cataracts. Then, rolling herself free of the rest of her burden, she was carried irresistibly forward on the back of the wave, like a chip in the current of a mill-race.

Frobisher gave a big sigh of relief as he saw his ship shake herself free. “A little longer, Drake, and she would have foundered under our feet,” he managed to gasp; “if she had not been the sturdy craft that she is, she would not have come up again.”

“You’re right, sir,” replied Drake, wiping the spray out of his eyes; “that was a narrow squeak, if ever there was one. But hark to the wind! It must be blowing at ninety miles an hour, at least. I pray that nothing may get in our way, for we could not possibly avoid it. A hair’s-breadth out of our course, and the ship would broach to and capsize with us.”

Drake spoke truth. Although the sea was absolutely smooth—every wave-crest being shorn off by the terrific force of the wind almost before it had time to form—the extremely heavy swell that had arisen earlier in the evening was still running. Even the hurricane could not flatten that, and theChih’ Yuen, driven forward by her own steam and the power of the wind behind her, rushed down one steep slope and up the next with a speed that made even the most experienced seaman gasp. A very slight alteration of the helm, at the speed at which the ship was then travelling, would certainly suffice to send her reeling over upon her beam-ends, aided by the “send” of the sea.

Looking round him, after the storm’s first wild outburst, Frobisher was horrified to observe the terrible damage and loss of life that had been caused by that first great rush of water. Of the men who had been on deck at the time, only some half a dozen poor, draggled, half-drowned creatures, clinging limply to the nearest support, could be seen; while every movable object had been swept overboard into the sea, as well as a number that are not usually considered easy of removal. Several ventilators had been shorn off level with the deck, and the water had poured in tons down the openings thus formed; the two quarterboats had disappeared altogether, and of another boat only the stem and stern posts remained, hanging to the davit tackles by their ring-bolts. Stanchions were either missing altogether, or bent into a variety of curious and extraordinary shapes; and even some of the lighter machine-guns mounted on deck had been torn from their tripods, and were by this time at the bottom of the sea. The havoc was simply indescribable, and Frobisher’s heart was full of bitterness as he surveyed the shocking wreck of what had, a few minutes previously, been the smartest and finest cruiser in the whole Chinese Navy, and thought of the poor souls who were perhaps, even now, struggling feebly as they gradually sank to their watery graves.

All that night both Drake and Frobisher remained on the bridge, not daring to leave the ship to herself for an instant; and many and many a time during those hours of darkness did each of them think that his last moment was come. Yet time after time the cruiser recovered from the staggering blows inflicted by wind and sea, and rushed from crest to crest of the swell like a flying-fish pursued by dolphin.

Several times during the night and the following morning her skipper tried to gauge the speed at which his ship was travelling, and ultimately he estimated that she must be doing fully twenty knots over the ground. As the cruiser was travelling at this high speed Frobisher became particularly anxious to obtain a sight of the sun at midday, in order to ascertain his position; for he was of opinion that he must be very near, if not actually among, those islands forming the Chu-san Archipelago; and he feared, every moment, that theChih’ Yuenmight crash headlong upon some submerged rock. But, unfortunately, the atmosphere was far too thick to render any observation possible; indeed, what with the black, low-hanging clouds, and the dense spindrift with which the air was filled, it was as dark at midday as it would have been, under ordinary circumstances, half an hour after sunset; and he was perforce obliged to content himself with the very unsatisfactory result obtained by dead reckoning.

Late in the afternoon the typhoon eased up a little, and Frobisher sent Drake below to secure some rest—for both men were completely worn out—promising to call him and take his own turn after the first lieutenant had refreshed himself with three hours’ slumber.

At the expiration of that time the wind had dropped so much that he felt quite justified in leaving the bridge; and he therefore had Drake called to take his place. With the easing of the wind, however, a very steep and heavy sea naturally began to rise, and Frobisher therefore instructed Drake to call him immediately should any danger arise to the ship. He then went below and turned in “all standing”, excepting that he discarded his boots and his water-soaked oilskins; and he was asleep almost before his head had touched the pillow.

It seemed to him that he had been sleeping but a few minutes when he felt himself violently shaken by the shoulder, and awoke to find Drake, still haggard and worn for want of proper sleep, standing over him in his dripping oilskins.

“Hillo! Anything wrong, Drake?” was his immediate enquiry, followed by a request to be told the time, since his own watch appeared to have run down.

“Nothing absolutely wrong, sir,” was the reply, “but what you can feel for yourself. The sea has risen very badly; and the ship is not behaving as well as I should like. The chief engineer, also, has just sent up word that the engines are working a bit loose, and that some of the bearings are almost red-hot. He thinks that some parts of the machinery must have been strained when that first wave swept over us; so I thought it just as well to let you know. As for the time, sir, it is nearly three o’clock in the morning.”

“Three in the morning!” ejaculated the captain. “Surely not, Drake! I must have slept nearly ten hours, in that case. All right! I will be on deck in a few seconds.”

Hardly were the words out of his mouth when there arose on deck a fearful outcry, as of men in the extremity of fear and dismay; and before Frobisher and Drake had planted their feet on the first steps of the companion-ladder, the ship struck heavily, plunged forward, and then struck again. At the same moment the electric lights went out, and everything was in darkness.

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