A Chinese Command | Page 2

the young commander was sent for in hot haste by his admiral,
hurriedly given his instructions, and told to raise steam and make for
Portsmouth with the news in "something less than a pig's whisper."

Delighted at receiving this important commission, Murray Frobisher
had hurried back to his little ship, helped the astonished stokers with
his own hands to raise steam, and at midnight on a dark, blustering
night, with half a gale blowing from the south-east, the sea running
steeply, and a heavy driving rain lashing right in their faces, he and his
little crew cleared from Portland Roads, dashed across Weymouth Bay
at a reckless speed--considering the height of the sea--and doubled
Saint Alban's Head.
Murray found that the storm in the bay was a mere trifle compared with
that which he was now facing; so, for safety's sake, and to avoid being
blown ashore, he was compelled to stand off the coast a good deal
farther than he had originally intended. He knew that he was in a
position of some danger, and, besides being himself additionally on the
alert, he posted an extra look-out, with orders to keep his eyes wide
open for the first signs of light or loom of moving ship upon that black,
rushing waste of water.
T.B. 42 was behaving splendidly, and Murray was just congratulating
himself that, in spite of the violence of the wind, his little craft was
fighting her way to her destination at a good honest twelve knots an
hour, when, with a shriek like that of a thousand warlocks, the wind
and sleet whirled down in a burst of vicious fury that struck the boat
like a solid wall, rendering it a matter of physical impossibility for any
human being to face it until after its first violence was exhausted.
It was during those few fateful moments that the catastrophe occurred.
As the gust veered away astern, and the breathless, half-frozen seamen
on deck were again able to direct their eyes ahead, there came a wild
cry from the look-out forward of: "Port your helm, sir; port your helm!"
followed, before Murray could spring to the assistance of the
quartermaster at the wheel, by a splintering crash, the rending sound of
steel rasping through steel. Then the little craft heeled over to starboard,
until Murray felt himself sliding bodily down the steeply inclined deck
towards the sea; while above, right over his head, as it seemed, he
could dimly perceive the outline of a great, towering metal stem that
still surged and sawed onward and over Number 42, relentless as fate

itself.
A second later, and the catastrophe was complete. The colliding
steamer lifted with the 'scend of the waves and crashed down yet again
upon the hapless torpedo-boat, and young Frobisher found himself in
the raging sea, clinging instinctively to something--he knew not
what--that had come away in his hands as he flung them out wildly to
prevent himself from sliding off the deck. As his head appeared above
the brine after the plunge, he heard certain dreadful cries which he
never forgot as long as he lived. They were the death shrieks of his
unhappy crew, imprisoned below among the bursting steam-pipes and
boilers, the cascade of white-hot coals from the furnaces, and the
crumpling wreckage of machinery and torn plates; and he knew that his
trim little ship and his gallant comrades were gone from him for ever.
As it happened, those on the look-out on board the liner, with the storm
behind them and their eyes consequently clear, had seen the boat at the
instant when the collision had become inevitable; and the captain had
promptly rung his engines astern, brought his ship to a standstill, and
lowered his boats in an endeavour to rescue the survivors. But the only
person rescued was the unfortunate Murray himself, and even he was
hauled on board more dead than alive, grieving that it had not been his
lot to share the fate of his crew.
Upon his recovery he was called upon to face a court martial for the
loss of his ship; and--strange were the ways of the
Judge-Advocate--was dismissed that Service which, confronted by a
less-harsh officer, he might have remained to honour. And since that
miserable moment the unhappy man had been living upon his slender
savings, endeavouring meanwhile to obtain employment of any sort
that would keep the wolf from the door.
At the moment when this story opens, Murray Frobisher was down to
his last few sovereigns, and had therefore been unfeignedly glad to
accept the invitation of kind-hearted Dick Penryn, his former
comrade-in-arms, to share the cottage at Kingston where, having no ties
of any kind, that young gentleman was staying during his spell of shore
leave. And it was Murray