Indecision

Illustrations

He wildly tore at everything and hurled it down on his pursuers . . . Frontispiece

I struck at him with my heavy malacca stick

The sinking of the Pirate Torpedo-Boat

The Commander and Jones overpower the Two Sentries

Map Illustrating the Operations Against the Pirates

MAP ILLUSTRATING THE OPERATIONS AGAINST THE PIRATES

CHAPTER I

The Luck of Midshipman Glover

Ordered Abroad. Hurrah!

Midshipman Glover explains how Luck came to him

It all started absolutely unexpectedly whilst we were on leave and staying with Mellins in the country.

When I say "we", I mean Tommy Toddles and myself. His real name was Foote, but nobody ever called him anything but "Toddles", and I do believe that he would almost have forgotten what his real name actually was if it had not been engraved on the brass plate on the lid of his sea chest, and if he had not been obliged to have it marked very plainly on his washing.

We had passed out of the Britannia a fortnight before—passed out as full-blown midshipmen, too, which was all due to luck—and were both staying with Christie at his pater's place in Somerset.

It was Christie whom we called Mellins, because he was so tremendously fat; and though he did not mind us doing so in the least, it was rather awkward whilst we were staying in his house, for we could hardly help calling his pater "Colonel Mellins".

You see, he was even fatter than Mellins himself, and the very first night we were there—we were both just a little nervous—Toddles did call him Colonel Mellins when we wished him "Good-night", and he glared at us so fiercely, that we slunk up to our room and really thought we'd better run away.

We even opened the window and looked out, feeling very miserable, to see if it was possible to scramble down the ivy or the rusty old water-spout without waking everybody, when Mellins suddenly burst in with a pillow he had screwed up jolly hard, and nearly banged us out of the window. By the time we had driven him back to his room at the other end of the corridor, and flattened him out, we had forgotten all about it, and we crept back like mice, and went to sleep.

It was just at this time that the papers came out with those extraordinary yarns about the increase of piracy on the Chinese coast, and how some Chinese merchants had clubbed together to buy ships in England and fit out an expedition to clear the sea again.

You can imagine how interested we three were, especially as fifty years ago Toddles's father had taken part in a great number of scraps with the Cantonese pirates, and Toddles rattled off the most exciting yarns which his father had told him.

We saw in the papers that the Admiralty was about to lend naval officers to take command, but it never struck us that we might possibly get a look in, till one morning a letter came for me from Cousin Milly, whose father is an old admiral and lives at Fareham, and isn't particularly pleasant when I go to see him.

My aunt! weren't we excited! Why, she actually wrote that if I wanted to go she thought she could get me appointed to the squadron, as the captain who was going in charge was a great friend of hers.

You can imagine what I wrote, and how I buttered her up and called her a brick, and said she was a "perfect ripper". I ended up by saying that "Mr. Arthur Bouchier