The Devils Admiral

The Devil's Admiral

Project Gutenberg's The Devil's Admiral, by Frederick Ferdinand
Moore This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and
with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: The Devil's Admiral
Author: Frederick Ferdinand Moore
Release Date: February 8, 2004 [EBook #10988]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
DEVIL'S ADMIRAL ***

Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team.

THE DEVIL'S ADMIRAL
An Adventure Story
BY FREDERICK FERDINAND MOORE

1913

CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I.
Missionary and Red-Headed Beggar II. Red-Headed Beggar and
Missionary III. The Spy and the Dead Boatswain IV. I Go Aboard the
Kut Sang V. The Dead Man in the Passage VI. The Red-Headed Man
Makes an Accusation VII. I Turn Spy Myself VIII. Mr. Harris Has a
Few Ideas IX. A Fight in the Dark X. The Devil's Admiral XI. A
Council of War XII. The Battle on the Bridge XIII. We Plan an
Expedition XIV. The Pursuit Ashore XV. Two Thieves and a Fight
XVI. The Gold and the Pirates XVII. The Art of Thirkle XVIII. Big
Stakes in a Big Game XIX. "One Man Less in the Forecastle Mess" XX.
The Last
CHAPTER I
MISSIONARY AND RED-HEADED BEGGAR
Captain Riggs had a trunk full of old logbooks, and he said any of them
would make a better story than the Kut Sang. The truth of it was, he
didn't want me to write this story. There were things he didn't wish to
see in type, perhaps because he feared to read about himself and what
had happened in the old steamer in the China Sea.
"Folks don't care nothing about cargo-boats," he would say, taking his
pipe out of his mouth and shaking his head gravely, whenever I hinted
that I would like to tell of our adventure of the Kut Sang. "They want
yarns of them floating hotels called liners, with palm-gardens in 'em
and bands playing at their meals and games and so on going from eight
bells to the bos'n's watch.

"It was mostly fighting in the Kut Sang, and the mess you and me and
poor Harris and the black boy there got into wouldn't be just the quiet
sort of reading folks want these days. It was all over in a night and a
day, anyway--look at them Northern Spy apples, Mr. Trenholm!"
He wanted to forget the Kut Sang and the awful night we had in her. He
imagined he didn't figure to advantage in the story, and he winced
when I mentioned certain events, although I always insisted that he was
the bravest man among us, having a better realization of the odds
against us. Those who have faced danger know it takes a brave man to
admit that he is beaten, and still keep up the fight.
We all have better memories for our brave moments than for the fear
which threatened for a time to prove us cowards. The man who has
faced death and says he was not afraid is either a fool or a liar; and, if
only a liar, still a fool for telling himself that which he knows to be a lie.
The bravery of the seaman is that he fears the sea and knows its
ruthlessness and its ultimate victory, and accepts it as a part of his day's
work. This is a sea-story.
Captain Riggs had log-book stories that were good, and they might
have served him for a volume of marine memoirs. But I was with him
when we freighted the Kut Sang with adventure and sailed out of
Manila, so his musty records of rescues and wrecks lacked life for me.
In the old logbooks I found no men to compare with the Rev. Luther
Meeker; or Petrak, the little red-headed beggar; or Long Jim or
Buckrow or Thirkle. I never found in their pages a cabin-boy like Rajah
the Malay, strutting about with a long kris stuck in the folds of his
scarlet sarong, or a mate whose truculence equalled the chronic
ill-humour of Harris, who learned his seamanship as a fisherman on the
Newfoundland Banks. And in all his log-books I never found another
Devil's Admiral!
Riggs is dead, and I can tell the story in my own way; for tell it I must,
and the manuscript will be a comfort to me when I am old and my
memory and imagination begin to fail. Not that I ever expect to forget,
because that would be a calamity; but I want to put down the events of
the day and night in the