keenness, and the
nature of our lading soon stood revealed.
"I shall be obliged to detain this ship, gentlemen," said the lieutenant
politely, to Webster and myself. "Where has your captain gone?"
I looked round for Chubb; he was not visible.
"I suppose he must have gone on deck," said I.
The lieutenant and his men hurried up, Webster and I following. Chubb
was conferring with a group of the sailors. The search-light was still
flaring away, and I was horrified to see that our formidable neighbour
had crept up to within two or three hundred yards. The lieutenant
walked sharply to the side, and shouted some directions to the boat's
crew. The words were scarcely out of his mouth when I heard Chubb
say, "Now." The men with whom he had been speaking rushed upon
the Japanese, seized them, and in the twinkling of an eye hove them
overboard into their boat, or as near it as they could be aimed in the
hurry of the moment. Simultaneously "Full speed ahead" was rung
from the bridge, and the steamer sprang forward as the hare springs
from the jaws of the hound. For a moment there was no sound except
the rush of the water foaming at the bows. Then the warship opened
fire on us. Gun after gun resounded, and we held our breath as the
ponderous shot hurtled past us. The first few were wide of the mark,
but we were not long to go scatheless. One of the terrible projectiles
struck the water by the starboard quarter, rose over the side with a
tremendous ricochet, bowled over one of the men, and smashed the top
of the opposite bulwark. Immediately after another tore transversely
across the decks, playing, as Chubb afterwards said, "all-fired smash"
with everything it encountered, and killing another of the men, who
was cut literally in two, the upper portion of his body being carried
overboard, the lower half remaining on the deck.
"He's mad," roared Webster, meaning Chubb; "we ain't going to be
sunk to please him," and he rushed on the bridge to put a stop to our
flight.
Chubb interposed to prevent him; they closed, grappled together, and
finally fell off the bridge, still struggling.
The cruiser had to stop to pick up her boat, and the delay probably
saved us; we must, moreover, have been a very uncertain mark in the
unnatural light, which doubtless would be no aid to gunnery practice.
On we tore, with the steam-gauge uncomfortably near danger point; the
warship in hot pursuit, looking, wreathed as she was in the smoke and
flame of her fiercely worked guns, and the electric glare of the vivid
shaft which still turned night into day, more like some fabulous
sea-monster than a fabric contrived by man. She plied us with both shot
and shell; one of the latter burst in the air over our bows; two men were
killed and several injured by the fragments. We were struck nine or ten
times in all, but they were glancing blows, which never fairly hulled us.
Chubb held on resolutely; we increased our distance fast, and at length
ran out of range. Never before had I felt so thankful as when those
fearful projectiles began to fall short. From that point we were safe. We
were five knots better than our pursuer, and the only danger lay in the
chance that some other cruiser, attracted by the firing, might be brought
across the line of our flight. None, however, appeared, and our great
speed dropped the enemy long before daylight.
The damage to the ship was confined to the upper works, and could
soon be put to rights, but five of the crew had been killed and twice that
number wounded, and unused to such work as I was, I felt strongly
inclined to blame Chubb for incurring this sacrifice of life for what
appeared to me an inadequate object. He laughed it away.
"They take the risk," said he, "they know it, and they are well paid for it.
We've saved ship and cargo; that's all old H---- will think about, and all
we need care for."
It was far, however, from being all I cared for as I looked upon the
mangled corpses lately filled with life and vigour. I had embarked on
the enterprise in a spirit of levity and carelessness, reflecting little on
what it might entail, and there was something shocking in thus
suddenly coming face to face with the dread reality of war. But
whatever may have been the source of the feeling, it soon passed away,
and when the dead had been sewed up in their hammocks and laid to
their last rest in the deep--a ceremony we performed the day after our
escape--Richard was himself
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