Under the Dragon Flag | Page 4

a system for supplying those
munitions of war of which the Celestials were stated to be in want,
some large orders being alleged to have been lodged with American
firms on their behalf. Chubb was to command the vessel, and he
offered to Webster and myself the posts of first and second hands. The
remuneration was very handsome, and we, not adverse to the prospect
of a little adventure, had little hesitation in closing with the proposal,
much to Chubb's satisfaction, who said we were "just the sort he

wanted." His employer, Mr. H----, I no sooner heard named, than I
remembered to have heard described as a very keen hand, and not
over-scrupulous.
The vessel which he placed at our disposal was a screw steamer of
about 2000 tons, long, low, and sharp; an exceedingly fast boat,
capable of doing her twenty knots an hour even when heavily laden, as,
in a desperate emergency, we were soon to find out. Articles signed,
our cargo was procured and shipped--cannon, rifles, revolvers,
cartridges, fuses, medicines, etc., etc. We cleared without difficulty,
weighed, stood out, and laid our course straight across the North
Pacific.
Our ship, the Columbia, proved a beauty, in every way fit for the risky
business we were engaged upon. Needless to say she had not only been
selected for speed, but was rendered in appearance as unobtrusive as
possible. Besides lying low in the water, she was painted a dead grey,
funnels and all. The sort of coal we used, anthracite, burned with very
little smoke, and even that little was obviated, as we approached the
seat of war, by a hood on the smoke-stack. She slipped through the
water silently and noiselessly as one of its natural denizens, and on a
dark night, with all lights out, could hardly have been perceived, even
at a short distance, from the deck of another vessel.
Without the ship's log to refer to, I cannot be certain of dates and
distances, but it was in the latter days of August that we were steaming
up the Yellow Sea, where, by the way, the water is bluer than I have
ever seen it elsewhere. In some places it presents, on a moonlit night,
the appearance of liquefied ultramarine, though it certainly is muddy
enough about the coasts. Our destination was Tientsin, one of the most
northern of the treaty ports, and of course we kept in with the Chinese
mainland as closely as possible to avoid the Japanese cruisers. All had
gone well, and we were fast approaching the entrance to the Gulf of
Pechili, when we encountered one of those tempests which are only to
be met with in the Eastern seas--pitch-black darkness, rain in one
sheeted flood, like a second Deluge, blinding flashes of forked
lightning more terrific than the gloom, and an almost uninterrupted

crash of thunder amidst which the uproar of a pitched field would be
inaudible. With our enormous steam-power we held our own for a
while although unable to make much headway; but at last a tremendous
sea took us right abeam on the port side; the main hatch had been left
open, a small Niagara poured down it, and doused our fires. No canvas
would have stood the hurricane that was blowing, and for some time
we were in a serious way. Before our engines, which fortunately held
firm, were working again, we had drifted helplessly over to the Corean
coast, and it was all we could do to claw off-shore until the tempest
abated, which it did very suddenly, as it had risen.
As the wind fell, we ran under the lee of an island, oblong, high, and
thickly wooded, not far from a heavy promontory of the coast. Here we
lay for two or three hours repairing damages. Of course we had no
accurate idea whereabouts we had got to, but we reckoned that we
could not be far from Chemulpo, a very undesirable neighbourhood
from our point of view, as the port was in the hands of the Japanese,
who were engaged in landing troops there, and whose armed ships
would of course be in the vicinity. It was, therefore, necessary for us to
spend as little time thereabout as possible. As soon as things were
ship-shape once more--and luckily for ourselves we had sustained no
real injury--steam was got up to regain our former course. It was
already quite dark as we passed out from beneath the land; two bells in
the first night-watch, or nine o'clock, had just struck. Truly that was a
case of out of the frying-pan into the fire, for no sooner had we rounded
the extremity of the island than we found ourselves in most unpleasant
proximity to a ship of war. I was alone on the