Adventure stories; Short stories, English -- Scottish authors; Soldiers -- Fiction
At last, just as day began to break, a great commotion seemed
suddenly to take place on board. Cries and shouts floated towards us
on the freshening breeze, and we could see Macaomen, Chinamen, and
Caffres rushing wildly to and fro, looking evidently for their
vanished boat; and then their united yells rent the sky, as the
lorcha gave a great lurch to port and anon went down with every man
on board of her. Many swam about for a time, but all sank in
succession, for the land was far distant, and we were standing off
north and by east before a pleasant breeze.
Next morning we fell in with a native fishing-boat with a crew of
three men, who agreed, for the sum of five British sovereigns, to
pilot us into Hong Kong, where we duly arrived, and came safely to
anchor in the famous 'Red Harbour,' after a voyage that none of us
are likely to forget.
We had some strange adventures on the way home, and with these I
shall close my story.
Of our crew, after the encounter with Long Kiang, only seven, with
the boatswain, Joe Rudderford, and myself, remained with the ship.
We got a new captain, and made up our number again to thirty-eight
hands, all told, from the company of a bark that had been cast away
in the East Lamma Channel, and after they were shipped an interesting
event occurred.
Among them was a miserable-looking young fellow who had been wrecked
years before on the coast of China, and been kept as a kind of slave
in a village near Tonquin. Joe Rudderford, observing the assiduity
with which this young seaman--in gratitude for finding himself once
more under the Union Jack--did his work, asked him what was his
native place.
'Stonehaven,' said he; 'I am a Scotsman.'
'Stonehaven! I am from there myself. What is your name?'
'William Rudderford.'
'Had you ever a brother?' asked the boatswain, with sudden agitation.
'Yes,' replied the other; 'but it is many a year since he last saw
me, in our mother's cottage beside the Cowie water. Poor Joe! I
wonder if he is alive now!'
'I am Joe--your brother Joe, Willie!' exclaimed the boatswain; and
now for several minutes their feelings so overpowered them that they
could neither of them speak till relief was given by tears; and each
had to tell the other a long story, which lies apart from mine.
We left Hong Kong for New Zealand, with a mixed cargo, and dropped
down the Lamma Channel into the China Sea, and after leaving the port
for which we were destined, gladly trimmed our course for London,
thinking by this time we had seen a good deal of the world of waters;
but after leaving the harbour of Otago, and working to windward of a
headland named the Nuggets, we stood away for the Southern Pacific.
From that time the people in Dunedin, which we had left, and in
London, for which we were bound, heard of us no more.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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