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Updated: June 22, 2025
Then the junk's mizzen-mast began to bend ominously, and before long, amidst more shrieks and yells, it snapped off short and collapsed on the poop, knocking one elderly Chinaman and two children into the water as it fell. It was followed almost immediately afterwards by the Puffin's flying jib-boom.
Exhausted by exertion and anxiety, I was fast asleep within half-an-hour after stepping up the junk's side. I slept far into the day, and when I emerged found that she had been successfully floated off the bank, and got out to sea without so far attracting the notice of the Japanese ships. A very queer craft is a Chinese junk. Few Europeans have any defined idea what they are like.
His ears were sharper than mine; for, as I dropped down at full length in the sand upon my chest, I saw him drag a good-sized stone in front of his face to screen it, while I, in imitation, rapidly scooped up some of the sand and spread it before me, so as to make a little mound of a few inches high, just as a couple of the junk's crew came into sight about a hundred and fifty yards on our left, and as close down to the sea as the billows would allow.
A large pig, suspended, according to the pleasant habit of the Chinese, in a wicker-work basket over the junk's quarter, also two similar baskets filled with fowls, became detached from their moorings and fell overboard.
As soon as the unwieldy craft, which was progressing solely by the force of the current, approached to within a quarter of a mile of the Sit-chen, Frobisher rang his engines to half-speed, so that the gunboat barely made headway against the current, and thus awaited the junk's arrival.
I was unarmed, but the Chinese have learned to be fastidiously careful of American hip pockets, and it was upon this that I depended to keep him and his savage crew at a distance. I ordered him to drop the anchor at the junk's bow, to which he replied, "No sabbe." The crew responded in like fashion, and though I made my meaning plain by signs, they refused to understand.
The build of a junk's stern is somewhat peculiar, for there is a great hollow which, apparently, penetrates the body of the vessel; a mode of construction said to be due to an edict of one of the tycoons, to prevent his subjects from leaving the country; for though it seems incredible, these junks have been known to voyage to India. The sampan has a similar faulty arrangement of stern.
At this juncture I heard the gruff voices of Russians overhead, on the transport's deck, and, thinking discretion the better part of valour under the circumstances, dropped off the junk's short fore deck into her shallow hold and there concealed myself, lest any inquisitive Russian should peer over the bulwarks, catch sight of me, and order me up on deck again.
It was, of course, out of the question to hold any oral direct conversation, but a Chinese member of the junk's crew, by tracing ideographs upon the sand, explained the circumstances of the case. Ultimately, the junk was piloted to a convenient port, and very soon the armourers of the local feudatory were busily engaged manufacturing arquebuses.
At the same time I seized my musket, which thus far I had not fired, and, kneeling down, with one of the poop hencoops as a rest, aimed straight at the body of the junk's helmsman, just as he was thrusting the tiller hard down.
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