beat or drifted through the narrow channels, burning joss-sticks on their high poops, to implore the protection of one of their sea gods, and scuttling down below in abject fear when a pirate junk swooped down on them like a hawk, showing no mercy and giving no quarter, if any resistance was offered.

It was then, in this plight, that the Taotai had implored Captain Lester to give him assistance, and you can imagine that he was only too eager to take the matter up, especially as the capture of the Sally Hobbs under our flag gave him the excuse and opportunity he needed.

But he could do nothing till he had communicated with the Admiral and asked for more gunboats. This is what he did immediately, sending despatches up to Shanghai by the Ringdove.

After that we had to be content to await events, and we had to wait for nearly three weeks, as something went wrong with the mails.

During this time the Tyne storeship arrived with a lot of gear for us, as well as three youngsters. Only one of them—Ford—had originally been appointed to this ship, and I was much annoyed at two more being sent, because our gunroom was already overcrowded, and I'm always having trouble there, Langham, the Sub, having peculiar ideas of running the "show" with which I don't always agree. Hobbs and his daughter seemed to have taken up their quarters permanently at the Mission House, and one day, before we eventually sailed, came off to tea with me—they'd asked themselves, and I could not well refuse—and brought with them a German named Hoffman, one of the finest specimens of a man I have ever seen. He caught the Skipper's eye immediately, and the two were soon engaged in trying various feats of strength, at which, as far as I can remember, the German generally won, very much to the Captain's annoyance. Little Miss Hobbs bothered me till I let her go down into the gunroom to have all the "dear little midshipmen", as she called them, introduced to her. She made herself so popular there, that they sang "For she's a jolly good fellow", which made her fly back, in double-quick time, with tears in her eyes, to my cabin, where her father was smoking my cigars, and spitting, most accurately (and frequently), into my fireplace.

Hobbs told me that Hoffman was the original owner of the Sally Hobbs, had heard of her capture from some of the Ringdove fellows at the Shanghai Club, and had come across country to Ningpo, and from there to Tinghai in a junk. Mighty keen, too, he was to get hold of her, because her rascally skipper, who had pretended to be his agent, had naturally never paid over the purchase money.

He rather foolishly asked Captain Lester whether he could be of any assistance to him in his search for her; but this made the Skipper flare up and say that he hadn't orders to do anything, and "if he did get them", he growled, "it was time enough when 'Old Lest'", as he always called himself, "had proved himself a blooming fool". I softened the Skipper's fierceness as much as I could, for Hoffman was evidently hard "hit" by his money loss, and, as he had lived all his life in China, I thought that he very possibly would be of some assistance when we really did come to business.

Well, at last, after we'd almost thought the Admiral had forgotten us, the Ringdove did arrive, and little Rashleigh, her Lieutenant Commander, came on board, purple in the face because he would wear his sword belt too tight, waved some official letters at me, and went down aft.

It was not many minutes before I was sent for, heard the Skipper roaring to Rashleigh to "throw away that cabbage stalk he was smoking", and to Willum, "bring those eighteen-penny Havanas of mine", so knew, before I saw him, that the news was good, and found him rubbing his hands together and grunting with pleasure. "We've got to go for 'em, Truscott, got to go for 'em. The Admiral's sending me a couple more gunboats, as well as the Ringdove, and I'm to have a free hand. We've got to get back that yacht, and Old Lest will give 'em a lesson not to meddle with the British flag. Umph!"

As he went over his correspondence I saw him read a telegram and turn round furiously. "Dash my wig, Truscott, look here, here's impertinence! What the dickens is the Service coming to?" and he handed it to me.

I couldn't help laughing. It read, "Midshipman Rawlings chum mine wants come Vigilant—Ford Midshipman," and was sent from Singapore.

"Well, he's managed to get here somehow or other, sir."

"Both of 'em, drat 'em! and brought that useless rubbish Morton with 'em too! Umph!"

The Skipper was really angry, but I managed to smooth things down.

"Pretty plucky thing to do, sir, and both Ford and Rawlings are not half-bad boys. They don't know much, of course, but will do well."

"Umph!" he grunted. "Plucky, do you call it? I don't. I'll see them both presently."

It was lucky for them that the Admiral's letters had brought such good news. As a matter of fact, we fully expected that they would, and in the meantime the Skipper had obtained a vast amount of information from the Taotai ashore, and had already roughly drawn out his scheme for dealing with the pirates.

"If you want a good day's rabbiting," he said, "stop the holes, stop 'em up, Truscott."

His main idea was that the pirates must have, somewhere in the archipelago, a base from which they operated, where they repaired and revictualled their ships, and where they warehoused their captured goods before selling them. The authorities on the mainland had assured him that no such dépôt existed on the mainland, so he only had the archipelago to trouble about, and now he determined, first of all, to examine every island. The archipelago is roughly divided into five great groups, and his scheme was to examine each group, one at a time. The three gunboats and the Huan Min, which had been placed under his orders by the Viceroy, were to do the exploring work, and he was going to steam slowly, backwards and forwards to leeward, in order to catch anything that tried to escape. You must understand that junks can hardly beat to wind'ard, and would fly "down" wind.

His orders to Rashleigh and to the skippers of the other two gunboats, the Sparrow and Goldfinch, which arrived a day or two later, were—"You fellows, go in and turn out the game, umph! and Old Lest'll bag it when it comes down to him;" and his orders were the same, though not in those words, to the Captain of the Huan Min.

Once the last gunboat had arrived, he did not lose any time, but weighed anchor the very next morning, and with the clumsy old black corvette and the three little white gunboats puffing after him, steered for the north.

He chose to examine the northerly group first, because the winds, at that season of the year, always had a good deal of "northerly" in them, and, as I said before, junks beat to wind'ard so slowly that they would never think of trying to escape in that way.