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Page 24
Exhausted by exertion and anxiety, I was fast asleep within
half-an-hour after stepping up the junk's side. I slept far into the
day, and when I emerged found that she had been successfully floated
off the bank, and got out to sea without so far attracting the notice
of the Japanese ships.
CHAPTER VII
A very queer craft is a Chinese junk. Few Europeans have any defined
idea what they are like. They are of different sizes, most of them
suited to the numerous rivers and canals which intersect the country
in every part. The largest are of about one thousand tons burden. The
whole mode of building is most peculiar. Instead of the timbers being
first raised as with us, they are the last in their places, and the
vessel is put together with immense spiked nails. The next process is
doubling and clamping above and below decks. Two immense beams or
string pieces are then ranged below, fore and aft, and keep the other
beams in their places. The deck-frames are an arch, and a platform
erected on it protects it from the sun, and from other injuries
otherwise inevitable. The seams are caulked either with old
fishing-net or bamboo shavings, and then paid with a cement called
chinam, consisting of oyster-shells burnt to lime, with a mixture of
fine bamboo shavings, pounded together with a vegetable oil extracted
from a ground nut. When dried it becomes excessively hard; it never
starts, and the seams thus secured are perfectly safe and water-tight.
All the work about her is of the roughest kind. The trees when found
of a suitable size are cut down, stripped of their bark, and sawn into
convenient lengths; the sides are not squared, but left just as they
grew. No artificial means are resorted to for any bends; a tree or
branch of a tree is found with the requisite natural curvature. There
is not in the building, rigging, or fitting-up of a Chinese junk one
single thing which is similar to what we see on board a European
vessel. Everything is different; the mode of construction; the absence
of keel, bowsprit, and shrouds; the materials employed; the mast, the
sails, the yard, the rudder, the compass, the anchor--all are
dissimilar.
The vessel in which I now found myself, the _King-Shing_, was of
about seven hundred tons. She was built entirely of teak, and her skipper,
or Ty Kong, as he is called, alleged that she was more than a hundred
years old, and said that one of her crew who had recently died, had
served in her for fifty years. Her extreme length was one hundred and
sixty feet; breadth of beam, twenty-five feet and a half; depth of
hold, twelve feet; height of poop from the water, thirty-eight feet;
height of bow, thirty feet. Her most attractive portion was the
saloon, or state cabin, the beauty of whose furniture and decorations
formed a curious contrast to the rude and rough workmanship of the
cabin itself. Its carved and gilded entrance was protected by a sort
of skylight, the sides of which were formed of the prepared
oyster-shells so commonly used in China instead of glass, the latter
being too expensive for general purposes. The enclosure was thirty
feet long, twenty-five broad, and eleven in height. From the beams
overhead were suspended numbers of the different kinds of lanterns
used in China. They were of every imaginable form, size, and variety
of material. The sides and deck-roof were of a yellow ground, and
covered with paintings of flowers, leaves, fruit, insects, birds,
monkeys, dogs, and cats; some of those latter animals were what in
heraldic language would be called _queue-fourch�e_. The place was
filled with a vast assortment of curious and beautiful articles,
gathered together during the long existence of the vessel. To give a
list of them would require pages; brought to Europe they would have
made the reputations of a dozen museums.
At the end of the saloon was the Joss-house, or idol-house, containing
the idol Chin-Tee, having eighteen arms, with her attendants, Tung-Sam
and Tung-See. The richly-gilt idol was made of one solid piece of
camphor-wood, and had a red scarf thrown round it. An altar-table,
also of camphor-wood, and painted red, stood in front of the
Joss-house, with an incense burner placed upon it. The red ground of
the table had gilt carvings of flowers and insects, and the imperial
dragons with the ball of flame between them. On each side of the front
was a square place painted green, with words in Chinese inviting
worshippers to bring gold and agate stones as offerings.
The sleeping berths of the crew were all _aft_, on a lower deck.
Close by these was the most astonishing part of the vessel, the colossal
rudder, not hung with pintles and gudgeons, the vessel having no
stern-post, but suspended to two windlasses by three large ropes made
of cane and hemp; one round a windlass on the next deck, and two round
a windlass on the upper deck of all, so that it could be raised or
lowered according to the depth of water. When lowered to its full
extent it drew about twenty-four feet, being twelve feet more than the
draught of the vessel. It was steered on this berth-deck when fully
lowered. It was also drawn close into the stern, into a kind of
socket, by means of two immense bamboo ropes attached to the bottom of
the rudder, passing beneath the bottom of the vessel, and coming over
the bow on the upper deck, and there hove in taut and fastened. When
let down to its greatest depth it required occasionally the strength
of fifteen men to move the large tiller.
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