A Chinese Command: A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas

by Harry Collingwood

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

  IN THE HANDS OF FORMOSAN CANNIBALS.

  "Heavens above!" shouted Frobisher, as he and Drake picked themselves upfrom the floor, to which they had been hurled at the first shock; "theship is ashore!"

  As if to emphasise the statement, just as the two men succeeded inreaching the top of the steeply-inclined ladder a deluge of watercrashed thunderously down on the cruiser's poop, driving in a solid massalong her decks from end to end, and causing her to bump again heavily.Then came a terrific shock, accompanied by the heart-stopping sounds ofrending and tearing iron, shearing rivets, jangling machinery, and,worse than all, the despairing screams of men who had been caught by thegiant comber and swept overboard to death among the rocks which weregrinding and tearing their way into the unfortunate _Chih' Yuen's_vitals.

  When Frobisher and his lieutenant gained the wave-swept deck, the firstfaint glimmerings of coming dawn were just appearing away to theeastward, and objects close at hand were beginning to take onrecognisable form in the ghostly, grey dawn light; so that, although allthe lamps in the ship had gone out with the stoppage of the dynamo,which had been jolted from its bedplate at the first shock, it was tosome slight extent possible to see what was happening, and to dodge themasses of wreckage which were being hurled hither and thither about thedecks.

  Frobisher's first instructions were to the engine-room staff, to stopthe engines, which the engineers had omitted to do, doubtless waitingfor orders; and the next was to the carpenter, to sound the well andascertain how much water the ship had inside her. True, she seemed tobe firmly enough fixed on the rocks at the moment, but there was noknowing when she might slide off and, if she had taken in much water,carry them all to the bottom.

  Then, without waiting to receive the man's report, he ordered such boatsas still remained in a condition to swim to be stocked with provisionsand water, and to be hoisted off the chocks ready for lowering in ahurry, should necessity arise. These, it was soon discovered, amountedonly to three, not counting the steam-pinnace, which, Frobisher feared,it would be impossible to get into the water under the circumstances;and it was at once apparent that, notwithstanding the large number ofmen who had been already swept overboard and drowned, there would not besufficient accommodation for half the remaining crew.

  Meanwhile the seas, although they still continued to break heavily overthe ship's stern, were not nearly so violent as the great waves that hadswept the decks when she first struck; and the men were able to moveabout in comparative safety by watching their opportunity. After thefirst few moments of alarm and confusion, too, Frobisher's strongpersonality and cool confidence soon restored the men's courage, anddiscipline once more prevailed.

  The carpenter returned after about five minutes' absence, and reportedthat already there was more than ten feet of water in the fore end ofthe ship, while in the engine-room it was almost up to the bedplates,and that consequently the stokers were drawing the furnaces as quicklyas they could in order to avert an explosion. He also added that,during the brief period while he had been sounding the well, the waterhad risen almost a foot, and that therefore the vessel could not beexpected to float much longer. Indeed it was now evident that, althoughthe bows of the _Chih' Yuen_ were supported on a ridge or pinnacle ofrock, the after portion of the ship was in deep water, in which it wasquickly sinking lower and lower, so that it was almost a question ofminutes before she must either break in two or else slide backward offthe rock and founder.

  By this time the light had become so much stronger that it was possibleto make out, in some small degree, the position in which they weresituated. The ship had apparently driven upon an outlying ridge ofrock, stretching a mile or more into the sea in a north-easterlydirection, from an array of black-looking, rugged cliffs, which toweredupward to a height of several hundred feet above the sea. The cliffsthemselves shut out the view to the south-westward, but toward the souththe shore line could be seen running away until it became lost in thedistance, thus proving--although the light was still too poor to enablethe men to see very far--that it was not some isolated, uncharted reefupon which the ship had run, but an island of considerable size.Although it seemed to Frobisher almost impossible that the land could beactually the island of Formosa itself, yet it was still believable whenhe came to consider the great speed at which the _Chih' Yuen_ had beentravelling during the storm, urged forward both by her engines and bythe terrific force of the wind. In fact, a few minutes' considerationsufficed to convince him that this must indeed be Formosa, since therewas no other island of such extent as this, anywhere in the vicinity,upon which the cruiser could possibly have struck.

  Seeing, then, that there was no time to be lost, Frobisher gave ordersfor the boats to be hoisted out, as many men as they could safely holdbeing told off to each, with instructions that, upon their cargoes beinglanded, they were to be brought back to the ship by a crew selectedamong themselves, for the remainder of the _men_. In the meantime,while the boats were transferring some of the men to the shore, theremainder were to set to work to construct rafts as quickly as possibleout of the raffle of wreckage washing about the deck and alongside, sothat, in the event of the boats not having time to make more than theone trip, those left behind should have some means of saving their livesother than by swimming.

  Very fortunately, the now fast-increasing light disclosed a strip ofsandy beach, on the west side of, and very largely sheltered by, theridge of rocks on which the _Chih' Yuen_ had struck; and it was for thisspot that Frobisher directed the boats to make, as offering the mostsuitable landing-place in sight.

  These orders given, the men rushed to execute them, and in a few minutesthe first boat was ready for lowering into the water. The crew got in,while others stood by the tackles, prepared to lower away at the word ofcommand. Drake, carefully watching the seas sweeping up behind theship, waited until an especially heavy wave dashed past, and then, whenthe ensuing "smooth" arrived, gave the word to let run. The boatdropped down the cruiser's steep side like a rocket, hit the water witha resounding splash, the bow and stern men unhooked the tackles, theoars pushed the little craft away from the ship's side, and the perilousjourney toward the beach was commenced.

  Time after time it appeared as though the boat must be overrun by thesea and swamped; but the coxswain in charge of her was an oldman-o'-war's-man, and each time he avoided disaster by a hairbreadth,until, at the expiration of a breathless five minutes, Frobisher saw herliving cargo leap safely out on the beach, and heaved a sigh of relief.By this time, too, the second and third boats had been got into thewater without mishap, and were also on their way shoreward, leavingabout a hundred and fifty men still remaining aboard the cruiser,working like madmen to complete their raft; for it now appeared almostcertain that the _Chih' Yuen_ could not live long enough to allow allhands to be taken off by the boats.

  The engine-room staff had been driven on deck some time previously bythe inrush of water, and were also making a raft for themselves up inthe bows of the ship. Others were busily engaged in getting up suchunspoiled provisions as they could lay their hands on; and yet anotherparty, headed by Frobisher himself, was collecting a little armoury ofweapons on deck, ready to be taken ashore, for the Englishman had heardsome ugly yarns of the savage character of the natives of the island,and their methods of treatment of such shipwrecked crews as wereunfortunate enough to fall into their hands. Among these yarns were oneor two to the effect that they were also strongly addicted tocannibalism; and neither he nor Drake, nor indeed any of the rest, wereat all desirous of ending their careers as part of the ingredients of acannibal banquet on the desolate and forbidding shores of Formosa.

  Unfortunately, the magazine was flooded, so that it was impossible toprocure any ammunition for the fire-arms, but all the rifles in thearm-belts happened to be loaded in readiness for the expected encounterwith the Japanese gunboat and transports; these were therefore unloadedand the cartridges placed in a box for safe transit. The officers'r
evolvers were also all fully charged, while Frobisher, Drake, and thesecond lieutenant had a small quantity of revolver cartridge loose intheir cabins. This was added to the general store, and it was thenfound that the entire supply of ammunition available amounted to threehundred rounds of rifle ammunition and a little over a hundred rounds ofrevolver cartridge.

  This, together with a supply of rifles, revolvers, and cutlasses, formedpart of the second cargo of the first boat, which had by this timereturned to the wreck; and she was soon on her way back to the shore,with a small party of seamen as well as the weapons.

  Frobisher was on the point of going below again, to endeavour to rescuea few more articles likely to be of use to people in their position,when Drake suddenly shouted:

  "Look out, sir; look out, men! Jump for your lives; the ship is sinkingunder us!"

  And indeed, even as the words left Drake's lips, with a terriblegrinding sound of rending iron and timber the _Chih' Yuen_ began toslide backward off the sharp pinnacle of rock that supported her bows.

  Some of the men followed Drake's advice and leaped overboard, othersseized anything handy that would serve to support them, while one smallbody of seamen made herculean efforts to launch the half-completed raft.But these last were too late; the structure had been made of largedimensions on purpose to sustain the weight of a considerable number ofmen, and it was too heavy to be moved unless all hands had appliedthemselves to the task. It refused to budge, and while the men werestill struggling with it, the cruiser slid clear of the last ridge ofrock into the sea in a terrific swirl of foaming water, rolledsluggishly once or twice, with the water up to the level of her guncasemates, and then slowly capsized and sank, throwing all the men whowere fortunate enough to have been above-deck into the water, where aterrible scene of struggling among the drowning at once ensued.

  Quite a large proportion of the Chinese were unable to swim, and thoseof them who possessed no spar or piece of plank to cling to eitherstrove to save themselves by clutching at the nearest swimmer, or foughtto tear their more fortunate companions from their supports and seizethem for themselves. There were many exhibitions of mad brutality,selfishness, and cowardice, as there too frequently are on suchoccasions; but these were redeemed by the heroic deeds of others whoretained their senses and their manhood.

  The raft had, of course, floated clear when the ship sank; and Frobisherand Drake, after being submerged so long by the suction of the sinkingcraft as to be almost suffocated, were lucky enough to come to thesurface close alongside it. Having gained the raft, they at once set towork to haul on board everybody within reach, and then, with theassistance of a few oars which had floated free of the broken boatsremaining on the cruiser, the occupants managed to propel the raft,despite the heavy sea still running, to a large grating, to which half adozen men were clinging, submerged to their chins.

  By this time, however, the raft was as heavily weighted as it couldsafely be--the water, indeed, was sweeping over it at times in suchvolume as to bury the men almost to their waists; and it was fortunatefor its occupants that the other two boats now returned and, gettingalongside, proceeded to relieve it of some of its living burden,otherwise a great number would inevitably have soon been swept away todeath.

  There were still a few men either swimming or clinging to pieces ofwreckage, and when these had been taken on board the boats, the mournfulharvest was completed. Save for spars, gratings, and fragments ofwreckage, the sea was clear of every trace of the once-proud cruiser.All the survivors of the catastrophe were either ashore, on the raft, ordivided between the two boats; and after another careful scrutiny inevery direction, Frobisher recognised that there were no more to besaved, and ordered the boats to pass lines aboard the raft and tow it tothe shore.

  The landing was effected in safety, except for the loss of one man, whowas snapped up by a shark as he sprang out of one of the boats to helpto run her up the beach. The great fish swooped up with a rush, turnedon its side in the shallow water, and dragged the man away before a handcould be lifted to rescue him. His despairing shriek rang in the earsof everybody for many a day afterwards; yet his fate was a lucky onecompared to that in store for some of those who stood shivering and wetupon that sandy beach in the chill air of early morning.

  Once safely ashore, Frobisher proceeded to count the survivors; and outof the crew of three hundred and thirty men who were on board the _Chih'Yuen_ when she left Wei-hai-wei, he found only a hundred and fortyremaining. Of the others, some had been washed overboard during thetyphoon, more had been swept away when the ship first struck, and therest had gone down when she sank, either between her decks or suckeddown and drowned in the vortex caused by the sinking hull.

  This was no time for repining, however; they were not yet by any meansout of the wood, and there was a good deal of work to be done at once.First of all, the provisions and water-casks were left on the beachunder a guard, while two parties, headed by Frobisher and Drakerespectively, armed themselves from the stock of weapons brought ashore,and went off in different directions, in search, first, of a watersupply, and secondly, of a spot in its immediate neighbourhood wherethey might construct some sort of a defence to protect themselves fromany attack until rescued.

  That there was urgent need for such a structure was very soondemonstrated, for scarcely had Frobisher and his party penetrated aquarter of a mile into the jungle, when they were saluted by a shower ofspears and arrows that stretched no less than thirteen of their numberdead on the ground, and wounded several others. Frobisher immediatelythrew his men roughly into a square formation, and fired a volley intothe surrounding bush, in the midst of which naked brown forms could beseen flitting hither and thither; and by the volume of shrieks, groans,and cries that arose immediately after the discharge, it seemed that hehad taught the savage natives a sharp and wholesome lesson. At anyrate, they retreated in confusion; and soon afterward Frobisher wasfortunate enough to discover a spot that would serve admirably as a sitefor a sort of blockhouse or fort. There was a spring of good watersufficient in quantity to supply the needs of his whole force, an openspace of ground on which the structure could be built, and an abundanceof small timber that could easily be worked up into palisading with theassistance of the tools from the carpenter's chest--one of the firstthings that Frobisher had thought of sending ashore, after the arms andammunition.

  The party was therefore divided, one half remaining to defend the chosensite, if necessary, while the other half was dispatched to inform Drakeof their success, and to bring up the beach party with the provisionsand water-casks, arms, and boxes of cartridge. The boats, Frobisherordered, were to be hauled as far up the beach as possible, togetherwith the raft, and all of them were to be well secured. It was notconsidered very likely that the savages would attempt to seize theboats, for they would not know how to handle them; but if they did,Frobisher was determined that the task should be made as difficult forthem as possible. That they might break them up for the sake of thenails was a contingency that would have to be faced, as he dared notleave a small guard to protect them, and had not men enough to be ableto leave a large one.

  When Drake arrived with his exploring party, he informed Frobisher thathe, too, had been attacked by a party of the natives, although there hadapparently not been so many of them in his case as in that of thecaptain, and a few shots fired into the jungle had been sufficient toclear the road for them. These two incidents served to convinceFrobisher that there had been no exaggeration in the tales concerningthe dangerous character of the Formosan savages; and he realised thatthe sooner a stockade and fort of some description could be erected, thebetter it would be for all of them.

  The carpenter's chest was therefore at once opened, and the availabletools divided among as many as the supply would allow; and while fourmen with axes started to cut down small trees of a size suitable to makeposts for the stockade, others set to work with their cutlasses--forwant of better instruments--to mow down and root up the scrub with whichthe
site of the proposed fort was covered, putting it on one side foruse afterward as a protective hedge. Others, again, using the saws,proceeded to cut the trees into suitable lengths as soon as they werefelled by the axemen; a fourth party, using their cutlasses as spades,undertook to dig holes for the reception of the finished posts; and theremainder were employed in the task of guarding the labourers, withrifle and drawn cutlass, from the chance of attack by the savages.

  By midday, when all hands sat down to a hasty meal, the actual erectionof the stockade had been commenced, and by the time that darkness hadfallen the first line of posts was completed, in the form of a squaresome thirty feet by thirty, all but a length of about twelve feet, whichperforce had to be left open for that night, since the men could notwork in the dark--a guard being posted there to prevent any unauthorisedpersons from entering.

  Fires were lighted all round the outside of the stockade, so that nosavages could approach without being seen; while light of everydescription in the interior of the enclosure was strictly forbidden byFrobisher, in order that the advantage should be all on the side of thedefenders, in the event of attack.

  Half a dozen men were told off to take the first spell at guarding thetwelve-foot gap in the palisading, and two more were stationed atloopholes which had been formed in each of the other three sides, toprevent a surprise from either of those directions. Then, rifles andrevolvers having been reloaded and piled in different parts of theenclosure, ready to hand, and cutlasses resharpened on the grindstonebelonging to the tool-chest and placed close to their owners' hands, theremainder of the little company stretched themselves out on beds ofbracken, which had been cut during the day, and in a few minutes werefast asleep, completely worn out by the fatigue and excitement of a verylong and arduous day.

  Frobisher, however, though extremely tired, would not permit himself tosleep, feeling to the full the responsibility resting on his shouldersfor the safety of his men; but he insisted that Drake should do so, forhe had been awake most of the previous night while Frobisher wasresting. To keep himself awake, the captain periodically perambulatedround the stockade, constantly replenishing the watch fires, which hadbeen placed at a considerable distance from the fort, and seeing thatthe men told off for sentry duty were keeping awake and on the alert.

  But strive as he might against the temptation to close his eyes, if onlyfor a moment, he found himself continually nodding, even as he walked;and once or twice he awakened to the realisation that he had, for a fewseconds, actually been walking in his sleep. The unfortunate watchmen,too, were constantly needing to be roused; and before long Frobisherfound that, each time he made the rounds, it was necessary to reawakenthem, all of them being found sleeping, leaning on their rifles oragainst the stockade.

  All the while he, too, was becoming more and more drowsy; and at last,shortly after midnight, he determined to rouse the second lieutenant anda dozen of the sleepers to take the place of those who had been doingthe first spell. Accordingly he reeled in through the opening in thestockade, scarcely noticing that the men who were supposed to beguarding the gap were all so nearly asleep that they were quite uselessas sentries.

  It took him some little time, in the darkness, to find the spot wherethe second lieutenant was lying; and he was just shaking the man gentlyby the shoulder to rouse him when the still night air was rent by a mostheart-shaking yell, instantly followed by several shrill screams ofagony in quick succession. As Frobisher started to his feet in horrorhe saw the somnolent sentries at the gap in the very act of fallingunder the flashing blades of a horde of yelling, shouting, ferocioussavages who, at the first wild rush, had broken into the fort, and werenow spearing the hapless Chinese seamen, who, scarcely half-awake, wereblindly searching for their rifles and cutlasses.

  Himself armed, Frobisher desperately strove to break through and get tothe front, so that he might in some degree stem the rush until his mencould recover their wits; but it could not be done. The Chinese werebeing driven backward and jammed together by sheer weight of numbers,until they could move neither hand nor foot, and were being slaughteredlike sheep. The last thing that Frobisher was conscious of was that hewas shouting frenziedly for Drake; then something flashed before hiseyes, a thousand sparks danced through his brain, and he knew no more.