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This is a common mode of defense in various parts of China, and is effectual enough when the enemy has only similar weapons to bring against them; but on the coast of Fokien, where we were now, all the pirate junks carried guns; and, consequently, a whole deck-load of stones could be of little use against them.
All the morning we have seen boats picking up her deck-load, which was scattered over the sea, and along the shores of the islands. The skipper and his three men got into Smutty Nose in the boat; and the sloop was afterwards boarded by the Smutty Noses and brought into that island. We saw her lying at the pier, a black, ugly, rotten old thing, with the water half-way over her decks.
Evidently the hold had not been able to take in all the household goods of the passengers, for there was a deck-load of these things, covered with tarpaulins. I was sitting on the deck of our boat, wondering when I should join the western movement.
The owners of the brig must have calculated largely on favorable weather during the passage; for had we experienced a gale on the coast, or fallen in with the tail-end of a hurricane in the tropics, the whole deck-load would have been swept away, and the lives of the ship's company placed in imminent peril.
They put a deck-load of lumber on her; at least it was an apparent deck-load. It was really a mask for a broadside of 3-pounder guns, different sections of the deck-load swinging open to admit of free play of the guns, as levers were pulled. The schooner, commanded by a Maine skipper and his crew, was turned loose in the North Sea. Astern towed a dingy; from the taffrail flew the American flag.
When ready, the brig sailed for New York, We encountered a heavy gale, about a week out, which swept away our deck-load, bulwarks, &c. At this time, the master, supercargo, mate, cook, and three of the crew, were down with the fever; leaving Mallet, Barnet and myself, to take care of the brig.
He could not see anything aft but the walls of cotton bales, with a narrow passage between them and the bulwarks. He moved aft with his eyes wide open; but he had not gone ten feet before a man dropped down upon him from the top of the deck-load with so much force as to carry him down to the planks.
Our little craft was rendered somewhat unmanageable by a deck-load of coal and a heavy cargo of freight, and there were periods when I would have thought myself fortunate in being once more off Cape Horn in the good ship Pacific. The amtman and his young bride spent this portion of their honey-moon performing a kind of duet that reminded me of my friend Ross Wallace's lines in "Perdita:"
It was midsummer, and the sleeping on some bags of wool which formed the better part of the deck-load gave me no inconvenience, and the want of provisions of any sort was remedied as well as might be by a pile of salt codfish which was the other part of the deck-load, and which was the only food we had until our arrival at Albany, which we reached at night after a voyage of twenty-four hours.
On this enormous deck-load were constructed, on each side, a row of sheep-pens, sufficiently spacious to furnish with comfortable quarters some sixty or seventy sheep; and on the pens, ranged along in beautiful confusion, was an imposing display of hen-coops and turkey-coops, the interstices being ingeniously filled with bundles of hay and chunks of firewood.
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