"Those are the corvettes missing from the Yangtze Squadron," the Commander explained, excitedly for him, and his enthusiasm made one feel quite cheerful and frightfully excited too. Still farther along to the left were twelve merchant steamers of all sizes and in no regular order—some mere hulks with no masts or boats, one without a funnel. Others, some four or five, had swarms of people on board, and from the clattering and hammering that came from them they seemed to be under repair. I told the Commander what I thought. "Yes," he said, "they are altering them so that they can sell them without their old owners being able to recognize them." Inshore I could see quite a busy little town, with large sheds and wooden warehouses, and hundreds of primitive bamboo-matting huts,—the pirate town, I knew, and you can guess that I forgot all about being hungry. A rough pier jutted out from it, with a big steamer tied up to the end of it, and even as I looked they were lowering a mast into her with the aid of some tall sheer-legs. Higher up behind the town were some bungalows—one of them was probably Hopkins’s house, I thought—and the whole side of the hill was green with cultivation, the steep slopes terraced out in squares like a chess-board. Above these the hill was too steep for even Chinese to cultivate, and finished off in a flat peak much higher than any other point in the island. We all had noticed this hill from the sea. Still farther towards the left, and under rather high land, were four cruisers moored head and stern. One I thought was very like the cruiser that had driven off "No. 2" and "No. 3" when we sank the destroyer outside the island. "That is the _Hong Lu_," the Commander told me when I asked him. "What guns can you make out?" It was difficult to see accurately, for she was lying bows on towards us, but she seemed to have a gun about the size of a 6-inch on her fo’c’stle, and three on each side in small sponsons. "Those other three are the _Yao Yuen_, _Mao Yuen_, and the _Tu Ping_," said the Commander, "and they seem to have all their guns aboard. But what do you make of the funny-looking craft moored right inshore?" "Why, she’s an ironclad, sir," I whispered, "with two turrets!" "Yes; but has she any guns?" I looked very carefully but could not see any. From a port in one turret something projected, but only a little way, and it looked ragged at the end. "No, I don’t think so, sir." "That ship is the old _Ting Yuen_, Glover. They must have raised her from the bottom of Wei-hai-wei harbour, though why on earth they brought her down here if she had no guns fairly beats me." Close to her were two old friends—the remaining two of the three Patagonians which had caused us so much bother all the way out from Malta, and near them three more torpedo-boats. Huge stacks of coal lined the shore behind them, several more warehouses, and another little pier.