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Page 3
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 bridge at
the time, and at once caused the engines to be reversed, in the hope
of slipping back behind the land from the cover of which we had just
emerged. Too late; we were perceived, and the cruiser's search-light
blazed forth, illuminating the dark waters, sky, and coastline with a
vivid glare. Simultaneously we were hailed loudly, although the
distance was too great to permit of the words being distinguished,
keenly as I strained my ears to catch them.
Seeing that we were detected, and knowing that the appearance of
flight would increase suspicion, I stopped the steamer, devoutly
hoping that our unwelcome neighbour might be a detached vessel of some
European squadron. That she could be Chinese there was little hope, as
we were aware that the Celestial fleet was in the Gulf of Pechili.
Almost before our engines were stopped, one of the cruiser's boats was
in the water and dancing towards us. Chubb and Webster ran up from
below, and as we awaited the boat, we uneasily speculated as to the
character of the craft that had despatched it, as she lay within a
quarter of a mile of us, the white muzzles of the guns in her tops and
turret seeming, as she rolled with the swell, to dip in the wave.
Formidable indeed she looked, and there was an evident stir of
offensive preparation on board her; yet in spite of our danger, I
could not resist a feeling of surprised and wondering admiration of
the wild picturesqueness of the scene--the majestic warship, the
glittering, rolling expanse of the sea, and the black lines of the
shores, under that intense and vivid radiance, which might fitly have
emanated from one of those phantom-craft with which maritime
superstition peoples the deep. Everything it touched took a ghostly
and unreal look.
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