Thompson could scarcely credit his senses when he heard that flogging had been abolished on board the Stinger.

"What!" he observed to the boatswain, "are we free, then?"

"I\'m surprised at you, Thompson; as if you was not free afore!"

"Well, Mr. Shever, you don\'t mean to tell me that you really believes that a man thinks hisself free, when at any moment he may find the cat-o\'-nine-tails flying across his back, do you?"

"You don\'t look at it in a proper light, Jerry. A commander on one of her Majesty\'s ships-of-war has got to be a big man, or no one thinks anything of him. Now, all the while he has power to flake his men they fears him, and he can cow the biggest roughs among them; but take it away, and see what a lame-entable prelude would follow."

"Gammon! You ain\'t a-going to persuade me to that, sir. Why, look at us now. Don\'t all of the fellers like the captain and first lieutenant? and they doesn\'t hold with flogging. Formerly the cussing on board was strong enough to curl an iron rod, and now we gets on very nicely, and lots of our men are learning to read and write in Lieutenant Russell\'s evening school. It takes more than articles of war to keep blue jackets in order, and I knows I shouldn\'t like to be flaked, and don\'t believe you would, sir."

"Nonsense, Thompson! I\'m surprised you can\'t look at this in its proper light! Ain\'t all a captain does right? Why, they knows more than any one else; and if any one offends them, ain\'t it proper for \'em to take it out of their backs? I say so! The men is inferiors, and the officers is born to rule over them, therefore if dissatisfied demagogues and age-itators choose to think they is as good as their officers, let \'em do it; but as your friend, let me advise you to steer clear of all such fools."

"I don\'t believe one man is born a bit better than another, sir; and as to your idea that God made some men to rule others, it\'s all my eye. I think that the captain in his sittyvation is just as much bound to do what is right as we who are under him, and I know the cat-o-nine-tails ain\'t any use in keeping discipline, and that it\'s played the deuce with many a good feller."

"Chut, chut. Why, I know lots of really good men who would leave the service when their time expired, if flogging were abolished."

"Then all I can say, Mr. Shever, is, that you knows a lot of fools; and if any of them was to up and say such a lie in my company, I\'ll tell them just what I do you. I\'ve heered a slave in the Brazils say as how he wouldn\'t be free if they gev him the chance, and that slavery was a thundering good thing for everybody wot hadn\'t got no money."

"Well, he was right. It is a fine thing for poor people. What are all the poor people at home but slaves? only they ain\'t called so. He was a sensible man, and spoke the truth."

"Hold hard, sir! Hear me out. Well, I kept my eye on that feller, and thought what a precious mean thing a man was when he gave up all ideas of trying to assert[Pg 153] his rights, but the slave would every day have some chat about how comfortable it was to think he would be provided for in his old age by his indulgent master, until we got a little sick of it, particular as his old man hoisted him up one morning, and gave him a lot of lashes with a cowhide."

"Well, I suppose he deserved it?"

"Hold hard! let me finish my yarn, sir. He was flaked upon the wharf, and all of us chaps—we was in a merchant ship where the skipper daren\'t flog us—looked on and swore we\'d pound his master if we only caught him alone. Well, would you believe it? when he was cast off, the feller actually walked to his master, knelt down, and, afore everybody, begged he would forgive him for having given him so much trouble."

"He was a sensible man."

"Werry sensible. We sailed that night; and just as I was castin\' off the gangway plank down rushes the slave, and as he spoke English very well, he hails me. \'What do you want?\' sez I. But afore I had hardly got the words out of my mouth he jumps aboard, and saying, \'Hide me. I\'ve killed my master,\' dived below and hid hisself."

"Do you call that sensible behaviour?"

"Rather, Mr. Shever. I held my tongue, and when we was out to sea hunted him out, and giv him some grub, when he told me that as he couldn\'t put up with the lash no longer, he had killed his owner, and chanced escaping in our ship, and that all his fine talk about liking to be flogged was only done to blind his master."

"Do you think that a small affair like a flogging justified him in killing his superior?"

"I don\'t know anything about superiors in that way, sir, but I knows one thing, that if any man was to flake me for his own amusement, I\'d not hesitate to do as he did, as I don\'t think I belong to the dog speecee, if you does, Mr. Shever."

With a look meant to express contempt blended with pity for one so utterly lost to reason, Mr. Shever stopped further discussion by replying, "Silence, you ungrateful young man! Never speak to me again unless on duty. I wash my hands of you and all as holds such revolutionary opinions. I\'m sorry Captain Puffeigh is not in command:" saying which he turned away with an oath, and went below.

Jerry eyed his form as it vanished down the hatchway, and then remarked to the men who had gathered round him during the conversation, "Sorry the old skipper ain\'t in the ship. Ugh! you blood-thirsty brute! Sorry you can\'t cut us up with the lash, as you did under bully Crushe. Cut my acquaintance! I cuts yours, as I\'d scorn to be upon speaking terms with a warrant-officer as holds such opinions as you does. I wish your wife could hear you talk like that; she\'d put you to rights, I know."

Thompson heard the news of the attack upon Canton; and, with the rest of his shipmates burned to be present at the bombardment of that city. The sailors seemed to think that they would prefer to be where they could give hard knocks, and it produced no little amount of growling when mail after mail arrived, and still no orders to move. At length, however, when the spring had well advanced, a P. and O. steamer calling at Chin-hae, sent up dispatches directing Captain Paul Woodward to start for Hong-Kong with all possible dispatch; whereupon he proceeded to get ready for sea, and within twenty-four hours they dropped down to Chin-hae, and getting up steam, left for the south. The steamer carrying the dispatches had also brought their mailbags, and Clare had several letters from his wife, parts of which he read to his friend; while, strange to say, the latter received one from his mother, of whom he had not heard for years; and as it will serve to show how forgetful some sailors are of those for whom they really entertain great affection, we give her letter.

[Pg 154]

    "Nonnington, Kent.
    "2 January, ——

    "My Dear Boy,

    "I am rejoiced to hear you\'re alive and well,[3] and you will be pleased to know I am, considering my age, quite hearty. I suppose you don\'t think I\'m alive, or would have written to me. Now I hope, if these few lines reach you, to receive a letter in return from my youngest born, who I love, although I have not seen or heard from him for eleven years. You will be wondering how I came to hear of you. Well, to make a long story short I were a sitting by the fire one snowy night about a month ago, when some one knocked at the door and begged shelter for pity\'s sake, as he were near frozen. Your Cousin Ellen, who lives with me—I live now in \'Trotman\'s Charity.\' You know the row of almshouses. Very comfortable they are, too, and good of the founder, who has been dead two hundred years. Well, Ellen, who writes this for me, went to the door and saw a man covered with snow, and nearly starved from cold. I asked him to come in and draw up to the fire, seeing he were a sailor; and after he got a little thawed, he told me his name was Harry Tomlin, and that he\'d run away from a man-of-war at the Cape of Good Hope, then entered a ship bound for Australia, where he landed without a shilling; and he gave us a long account of his adventures, how he\'d made some money, and had arrived in England a few days ago, and were bound to Eythorne that night, but had been overtaken by the snow, and nearly frozen to death. Me and Ellen heard his story with tears in our eyes; and when he had finished I asked him if ever he had been in a merchant ship, as I had a dear boy who were a sailor, and who were, I feared no more. Upon which he says, \'But why not in a man-of-war, marm?\' \'Because,\' I said, \'my Jerry were too good-tempered as a lad to spill people\'s blood, and I know he wouldn\'t enter a man-of-war; Heaven forbid,\' said I. \'Jerry, marm,\' he said. \'Why, you never mean to say Jerry Thompson, do you?\' Upon hearing of which I fainted away, and were some time before I could hear all about your being so good and clever; and, in fact, you ought to be a captain but for the regulations not allowing. He left the next day after giving me your direction, and I have sent this letter to the place he said. Now, my dear boy, write me as soon as you can, and believe I love you as much as ever. With love, in which Ellen joins, I am your affectionate mother,

    "Fanny Thompson."

    "P. S. The old lady gets about wonderfully, and with your aunt, Mary Golder; is living in the alms-house where Miss Hoodruff used to live. They both talk a great deal about you, and it will be a dutiful act for you to write to her now and then. Probably you have forgotten me, as I was but a child when you left, but I remember you gave me a kiss when you bade me good-bye.

    "Your loving cousin,
    "Ellen."

Thompson read the foregoing very carefully, and before they arrived in port wrote a long letter in reply, which he sent home by the first mail, and never afterwards missed an opportunity of letting his mother know about his welfare.

Upon their arrival in Hong-Kong, where a large fleet was assembled. Captain Woodward received orders to proceed to the Bocca Tigris Forts in the Canton river; and without an hour\'s delay, after getting in provisions, water, and ammunition, they steamed out of the harbour, and in a short time anchored off the Wantung Forts,[Pg 155] where they landed their marines and as many blue-jackets as they could spare, to form a garrison.

One morning, as the bugle was going for parade, a steamer hove in sight, and in a short time Captain Woodward received instructions to embark on board his boats with his spare seamen and the whole of his marines, who were each to carry at least sixty rounds of ammunition, and when the gun-boats came up, to go on board them, and proceed to the attack of the Imperial junks then assembled in Chow-chan Creek. When the boats were manned and armed, the commander directed them to pull out towards the flotilla, which had not been long in making its appearance. As the gun-boats came up, it was noticed that each was towing a long string of boats, cutters, pinnaces, and gigs, and upon seeing the Stingers, one of them stopped to receive them on board; then, having made fast her boats, gave a shrill whistle, and started after her companions, Beauman, who was left in charge, dipping the ensign by way of salute as they passed the ship.

The gun-boats steamed away at full speed up the Canton river—now between high banks, which completely shut them in, and prevented their seeing anything of the surrounding country; now in places where the stream wound through a flat district, entirely given up to rice cultivation; while their appearance, instead of intimidating the Chinese who worked in the fields, seemed to give them a great deal of amusement, as in some places the labourers would gather upon the banks and shout derisively to the Fanquis, who were going up to be eaten by the Imperial tigers at Chow-chan. Here and there on either side of the banks they passed the ruins of forts destroyed by the ships the year before, but no attempt was made to molest them until they arrived within about three miles of the barrier, where a drunken bannerman stood upon the bank with a "brave\'s" matchlock, and after shouting and gesticulating, brought the whole flotilla to a standstill.

"What do you want?" hailed the interpreter.

"Go back, you red-headed, unshaven barbarians, you pink-eyed, man-eating fiends—go back! go back!"

"What does he say?" demanded the commander of H.M.S. Squelcher, which was the leading boat.

"He says we\'re to go back."

"Tell him to—Go on ahead, full speed," testily replied the latter, as he noticed through his glass that the bannerman was intoxicated.

"Signal flying from the Jolter. What have you stopped for?"

"Reply, All right, and go on ahead."

Seeing the audacious red-haired demons did not comply with his modest order, the bannerman levelled his matchlock and managed to plump a ball aboard the Squelcher, upon which her commander directed a sentry to fire. The marine coolly raised his rifle—took a careful sight—then crack went the piece, and the daring bannerman, placing his hands upon his waistband, as though suddenly seized with cholera, doubled himself up and rolled down into the river, where he was drowned like a kitten.

After passing through the barriers, which were formed of thick piles driven across the river, the flotilla came to anchor a little below the entrance of Chow-chan creek, and just astern of H.M. ships Blowfly and Porpoise, on board of which the men who could not find accommodation in the gun-boats passed the night.

About an hour before the first streaks of light, dawned in the sky the men were turned out, the boats manned, and made fast to the gun-boats. The latter got up anchor, and steamed slowly towards the enemy. A thick mist hung about the fleet[Pg 156] of junks anchored up the creek, and it was not until the gun-boats opened fire with their heavy rockets that the Chinese seemed fully awake, although they had been beating gongs and letting off crackers all night; however, when they found the rockets flying about them, they returned the compliment to the best of their ability, and a small fort situated upon an eminence to the left opened a deadly fire, but it was at once assaulted and carried by the officer who commanded the expedition. This done, the guns of the fort were directed upon the junks ranged upon two sides of a delta formed by the junction of Chow-chan with another creek, then the gun-boats crossed the front of the low island, and, under a murderous fire, proceeded up the right channel.

Boats were sunk,—oars cut off short at the loom,—and men killed and thrown overboard during the terrible moments they were exposed to a perfect hail of shot from the war junks; but in spite of the shower of missiles, which included copper nails, cash, and links of chain, the gun-boats steadily advanced, and threw shot, shell, and rockets into the enemy with great precision; and although several of them got aground, they managed to get off again, and renewed the fight with gre............