any further use of our guns, they managed to launch a couple of boats and all who could get into them pulled for the nearest island. When we threw our grappling irons and hauled in on them the few survivors who had strength enough left to get to the rail threw themselves overboard and swam for it. The first man aboard of the junk had one of his legs almost severed by the wicked sword of a badly wounded Chinaman, and after that bit of fiendishness our men lost no time in making sure that the rest of them were really dead. We took out of the junk fully one hundred thousand dollars’ worth of specie, silk, tea, porcelain, and drugs and then set fire to her, leaving her to bury her own dead. After that easily won victory we trapped and sank half a dozen proas and feluccas in the same way, though with more spirited resistance in some cases, for we were so anxious to get things to going that we threw off our mask before we had them at such close quarters as we got the junk. We had two men killed in these engagements and a dozen more or less seriously injured. Norton sustained an ugly cut on the leg that sent him to the hospital and I got a slash on the arm that gave me considerable trouble for a few days. In only one instance did a ship get away from us and that was when two proas attacked us on either side in a dead calm that settled before we could get steam up. We could not change our position, while they manœuvred with their long oars and one of them escaped, though she took a lot of dead with her. We got nothing from them to speak of but there was excitement _in extenso_ and we gloried in it. Norton had not overdrawn the picture of the adventurous China Sea. We had turned our cargo over to the “Florence,” along with a number of wounded men, and were back among the islands, though outside of the regular course of sailing ships, when early one evening a full-rigged ship hove in sight. She passed us but was not more than six miles away when we saw flashes that told us she had been attacked. We had our fires banked, for it was just at the break of the monsoon when the weather is variable and the winds uncertain, so we lost no time in going to her assistance. As we closed in we saw a Malay felucca on each side of her and the pirates swarming on her decks, with the crew putting up a brave fight. Running the “Leckwith” up on her starboard quarter, we threw our men aboard of her and they went at the pirates savagely from the rear. I led the boarding party for it looked as though it would be one of the kind of fights that I never would miss. In those days I was young, athletic, and vigorous and I had rather have a fight with death at one end of it than anything else. No matter where I went, or what the odds against us, I knew the men of the “Leckwith” would be at my heels, for a braver set of dare-devils never lived.