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Updated: May 18, 2025
With the admiral's permission Frobisher followed him on deck and up on to the bridge, where a yeoman of signals was already waiting to hoist the necessary flags as a signal to the other ships to weigh and proceed to sea.
This was just the kind of commission that appealed to Frobisher, who had still a great deal of the boy left in him; there was nothing that he liked better than to be able to get away on special service. He therefore assured Ting that he would return on board, hurry his preparations forward, and get away at the very earliest moment.
In any case, the rebels were quickly overhauling them; and before another hour had passed, Frobisher, continuing to watch the race with absorbed interest, saw a streak of flame cut the rearward darkness, and almost immediately he heard a vicious hum close above his head, followed shortly afterwards by the whiplike crack of a distant report.
It was just two months after leaving London when, late one afternoon, Drake pointed ahead, to the north, indicating what at first sight appeared to be a belt of cloud right down upon the horizon. "Ah!" remarked Frobisher, following the direction of the skipper's outstretched finger; "we are nearly at our destination. That's Quelpart Island, I take it.
Frobisher knew that so long as the gallant admiral was alive, or conscious, he would never permit his command to be taken from him thus; and his heart fell, for he feared that the traitor, to attain his detestable ends, must first have killed the brave old man.
Once free, it would be strange indeed if they could not reach the protection of the Japanese troops, who would by this time surely be disembarking, possibly only a short mile away, if they should have elected to land at the spot where the Chih' Yuen's boats had been left. "Phew! the boats!" thought Frobisher to himself.
The Kau-ling, which, although dismantled, had been fighting bravely when Frobisher led his boarders away, had disappeared, and the Tung-yen, the engines of which had broken down, had been surrounded by five Japanese ships, and was even then sinking.
Comparing the two fleets, Frobisher came to the conclusion that, despite the preponderance possessed by China in her two powerful battleships, Japan's was the stronger, since she possessed more ships, while several of her smaller cruisers were larger than China's largest.
By Jove, he had it! All his old suspicions came thronging into his mind in an instant, and in that same instant he believed he could make a very good guess at what had occurred. Of course it was that scoundrel, Prince Hsi, who was at the bottom of the mischief; Frobisher seemed to know it instinctively.
It was known that between these two coasts the sea swept in a powerful current out of the north. Of what lay beyond nothing was known. There seemed no reason why Frobisher, or Davis, or Henry Hudson might not find the land trend away to the south again and thus offer, after a brief transit of the dangerous waters of the north, a smooth and easy passage over the Pacific.
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