You bet your life I was dead keen to go with Tommy and see the fun, for there was evidently something in the wind; so I asked Mr. Pattison to take me too. You see I had rather a pull over him, for he was very sweet on my cousin Milly; so he asked the Commander and off I went. We steamed out through the West Channel, and Tommy and I thought we were bound to Macao again, but we were wrong, and it turned out that our destination was a small island about sixty miles away, at least I should think it was that distance, for we were doing about fifteen knots, and it took us four hours before we ran into a narrow little harbour between high cliffs, anchoring some ten cables from shore. There wasn’t a sign of a living thing, and we waited and waited, whilst Mr. Pattison kept on looking at his watch. He told us then that we were going to exchange Hopkins for the old Chinese gentleman who had been kidnapped. "Why! is Hopkins one of the pirates?" we both asked, somewhat disappointedly, for he was hardly our idea of a pirate, and we rather liked him, he was so amusing. "I only knew it myself this morning," Mr. Pattison told us. Well, presently a _sampan_ came wriggling out from behind a small headland, and when it arrived alongside there was a fat little man sitting in it gorgeously dressed. I didn’t tell you that we had brought a man named A Tsi with us; but this man recognized him immediately as Ping Sang. The fat old chap climbed nimbly over the side and shook hands all round, so pleased was he to be safe again. Hopkins was brought on deck, and apparently he and Ping Sang knew each other, though they only glared like two cats, and he climbed down into the _sampan_, Mr. Pattison taking no notice of him whatever. However, Tommy and I stepped forward and shook him by the hand. I don’t quite know why, but expect it was because we wanted to say that we had shaken hands with a real pirate. He seemed quite pleased. His bags and boxes were so numerous that the _sampan_ had to make two trips, and this delayed us nearly an hour, Mr. Pattison fuming with impatience, and steam blowing off from the escape pipes. Directly the _sampan_ had shoved off with its last load, we weighed and secured the anchor and were off back to Hong-Kong. We thought our work was over for the day, but were mightily mistaken, for as we came to the mouth of the harbour, there, to our dismay, steaming gently towards us, were the three Patagonian destroyers, and behind them a cruiser painted dark green from mast-head to water-line, very much like the _Strong Arm_, only not so big. And they were, all of them, between us and Hong-Kong. I never felt so scared in my life. Tommy went as white as a sheet, and even Mr. Pattison turned a bit yellow. He swore terribly and cursed them for treacherous hounds—it was just about the neatest trap you ever saw in your life—and ordered the helm hard a-port.