"Take some fire-bars to moor them with, and leave them as close in as you can," he told the Sub. "Light the lanterns, and come back as fast as you can." My! wasn’t that a pretty little game? and weren’t those torpedo-boats a-going to get a sur-prise? It took pretty near a ’alf-’our to do this, and every now and agin we could ’ear shots—sometimes closer and sometimes seemingly farther off; but at last the lamps shone out, and though they did look a trifle unsteady in the swell, still they was good enough to deceive them Chinese. When the Sub had got back we went off to where we’d heard the firing. It was getting less dark now, and a few stars were coming out, and in a few minutes a long dark thing, with flames sputtering from the funnels, went flying past us—one of the Chinamen a-going ’ome—and another followed her, and we just laid low and let them go, chuckling to ourselves and thinking of the trap we’d laid for ’em. "No. 2" had got hold of something now with a vengeance, for she was firing pretty fast, and, as we hurried over to her, we could see the flames of her guns and sometimes the flash of a busting shell; coming towards us too, she was. We got our search-light cleared away, and when we were quite close we found "No. 2" a-hanging on to a poor unfortunate torpedo-boat and banging away at it; so we just slewed round her stern and turned our light on the wretched thing—an old torpedo-boat just struggling along at about twelve knots—to make it a respectable target. That just did the trick, for she got hit by one of "No. 2’s" 12-pounders, in the boiler most likely, and seemed just to double up, open out amidships, and go slithering under. [Illustration: THE SINKING OF THE PIRATE TORPEDO-BOAT.] Poor wretches! an’ we ’adn’t the ’eart to cheer; ’twas so one-sided a show. We stopped and tried to pick up some of her men, and did save a couple of Chinamen, more dead than alive with fright. They turned out jolly useful, as you shall ’ear afterwards. "No. 2" hadn’t seen the fourth boat, so we pushed on back to the entrance to look for her in case she tried to get in. The two lights we had left were still burning, but we couldn’t see what had become of the two torpedo-boats which had passed us. The people on shore must a ’eard that torpedo-boat blow up, for now a couple of search-lights shot out from somewhere high up on the cliff near the entrance, and began hunting round to see what all the fuss was about. It just happened that where we’d moored the boats was a bit round the corner and out of sight of them searchlights, so we stayed abreast of them and watched the two beams a-travelling from side to side, and presently saw the missing torpedo-boat coming sneaking in. She must have gone right around the island.