第17章 CHAPTER VII(1)
THE next winter we lay for a couple of months off Chinhai, which we had stormed, blockading the mouth of the Ningpo river. Here, I regret to think, I committed an act which has often haunted my conscience as a crime; although I had frequently promised the captain of a gun a glass of grog to let me have a shot, and was mightily pleased if death and destruction rewarded my aim.
Off Chinhai, lorchers and fast sailing junks laden with merchandise would try to run the blockade before daylight.
And it sometimes happened that we youngsters had a long chase in a cutter to overhaul them. This meant getting back to a nine or ten o'clock breakfast at the end of the morning's watch; equivalent to five or six hours' duty on an empty stomach.
One cold morning I had a hard job to stop a small junk. The men were sweating at their oars like galley slaves, and muttering curses at the apparent futility of their labour. I had fired a couple of shots from a 'brown Bess' - the musket of the day - through the fugitive's sails; and fearing punishment if I let her escape, I next aimed at the boat herself. Down came the mainsail in a crack. When I boarded our capture, I found I had put a bullet through the thigh of the man at the tiller. Boys are not much troubled with scruples about bloodguiltiness, and not unfrequently are very cruel, for cruelty as a rule (with exceptions) mostly proceeds from thoughtlessness. But when I realised what I had done, and heard the wretched man groan, I was seized with remorse for what, at a more hardened stage, I should have excused on the score of duty.
It was during this blockade that the accident, which I have already alluded to, befell my dear protector, Jack Johnson.
One night, during his and my middle watch, the forecastle sentries hailed a large sampan, like a Thames barge, drifting down stream and threatening to foul us. Sir Frederick Nicholson, the officer of the watch, ordered Johnson to take the cutter and tow her clear.
I begged leave to go with him. Sir Frederick refused, for he at once suspected mischief. The sampan was reached and diverted just before she swung athwart our bows. But scarcely was this achieved, when an explosion took place. My friend was knocked over, and one or two of the men fell back into the cutter. This is what had happened: Johnson finding no one in the sampan, cautiously raised one of the deck hatches with a boat-hook before he left the cutter. The mine (for such it proved) was so arranged that examination of this kind drew a lighted match on to the magazine, which instantly exploded.
Poor Jack! what was my horror when we got him on board!
Every trace of his handsome features was gone. He was alive, and that seemed to be all. In a few minutes his head and face swelled so that all was a round black charred ball. One could hardly see where the eyes were, buried beneath the powder-ingrained and incrusted flesh.
For weeks, at night, I used to sit on a chest near his hammock, listening for his slightest movement, too happy if he called me for something I could get him. In time he recovered, and was invalided home, and I lost my dear companion and protector. A couple of years afterwards I had the happiness to dine with him on board another ship in Portsmouth, no longer in the midshipman's berth, but in the wardroom.
Twice during this war, the 'Blonde' was caught in a typhoon.
The first time was in waters now famous, but then unknown, the Gulf of Liau-tung, in full sight of China's great wall.
We were twenty-four hours battened down, and under storm staysails. The 'Blenheim,' with Captain Elliott our plenipotentiary on board, was with us, and the one circumstance left in my memory is the sight of a line-of-battle ship rolling and pitching so that one caught sight of the whole of her keel from stem to stern as if she had been a fishing smack. We had been wintering in the Yellow Sea, and at the time I speak of were on a foraging expedition round the Liau-tung peninsula. Those who have followed the events of the Japanese war will have noticed on the map, not far north of Ta-lien-wan in the Korean Bay, three groups of islands. So little was the geography of these parts then known, that they had no place on our charts. On this very occasion, one group was named after Captain Elliott, one was called the Bouchier Islands, and the other the Blonde Islands. The first surveying of the two latter groups, and the placing of them upon the map, was done by our naval instructor, and he always took me with him as his assistant.
Our second typhoon was while we were at anchor in Hong Kong harbour. Those who have knowledge only of the gales, however violent, of our latitudes, have no conception of what wind-force can mount to. To be the toy of it is enough to fill the stoutest heart with awe. The harbour was full of transports, merchant ships, opium clippers, besides four or five men-of-war, and a steamer belonging to the East India Company - the first steamship I had ever seen.
The coming of a typhoon is well known to the natives at least twenty-four hours beforehand, and every preparation is made for it. Boats are dragged far up the beach; buildings even are fortified for resistance. Every ship had laid out its anchors, lowered its yards, and housed its topmasts. We had both bowers down, with cables paid out to extreme length.
The danger was either in drifting on shore or, what was more imminent, collision. When once the tornado struck us there was nothing more to be done; no men could have worked on deck. The seas broke by tons over all; boats beached as described were lifted from the ground, and hurled, in some instances, over the houses. The air was darkened by the spray.