“Well, orderly, what is it?” Captain Dunham, commander of the Manhattan, looked up from his desk in his handsomely furnished quarters. A smart-looking orderly had just been bidden to enter the cabin.
“The master-at-arms states that eight men are ashore, sir. Overstayed their leave, sir,” responded the orderly, saluting.
The captain thought a minute. Then he gave a sharp order.
“Send Gunner’s Mate Strong to me.”
The orderly saluted, clicked his heels and vanished on his errand. Five minutes later Ned Strong stood before his captain. As we know, Captain Dunham had a strong feeling of regard for Ned and Herc, and had watched their careers[23] with interest. He raised his eyebrows as he saw Ned’s bruised face. Although the boy had shipped a new uniform, rating badge and all, the dark marks of his encounter of the previous day with the park runaway still showed.
“What is the matter with your face, Strong?” asked the captain. His voice was rather stern. Perhaps he thought his favorite among the crew had been mixed up in some brawl ashore.
“Why, I,—that is, we—sir, I mean Herc—Coxswain Hercules Taylor and myself stopped a runaway horse in Golden Gate Park yesterday afternoon, and I guess I got a little battered up.”
“Good gracious, you boys are always having adventures. Whose horse was it you stopped?”
“I’ve no idea, sir. We hurried away after we saw the young lady was all right.”
A smile flitted across the captain’s face.
“Upon my word, Strong, are you qualifying for a hero of romance?” he inquired. “Stopping a horse with a young lady on board it! Really,[24] you are plunging into adventure with a vengeance! But I sent for you to assign you to an important piece of duty. Eight of our men are ashore,—in some vile den in Chinatown, I suppose. You will take ten men ashore in Number One Steamer. They will be armed with loaded service revolvers.”
Ned’s eyes flashed. This was an important detail, he knew. Usually such work was assigned to the marines; and that he was to be intrusted with the command of such a squad made him square his shoulders even more than usual and feel a thrill of satisfaction at the confidence reposed in him by his captain.
“Aye, aye, sir,” he said, striving not to betray his delight.
“Report to the master-at-arms with my orders. He will do the rest. Use no unnecessary violence. Simply bring the men on board the ship.”
“Aye, aye, sir. Is that all?”
“That’s all, my lad. Carry on and waste no time.”
[25]
Ned saluted and retired. He proceeded straight to the master-at-arms, who handed him a typewritten list of names.
“These are the fellows you are to bring in, Strong,” he said. “You have your other orders?”
“Yes, sir. I am to take ten men in Steamer Number One. And—and can Taylor be one of them, sir?”
“What, that red-headed firebrand?” exclaimed the master-at-arms smilingly. “There! Very well, then, Strong,” seeing Ned’s look of disappointment, “but, for goodness sake, keep him out of trouble.”
“Oh, I’ll be careful of him, sir. Thank you.”
“And now you are all ready? I’ll summon the patrol and pass word for’ard for Taylor.”
“You have no idea where I am to look for the men, sir?” asked Ned, while the patrol was being summoned.
“No; it will be up to you to find them. But I understand that some of them were last seen in Chinatown.”
[26]
The patrol was lined up.
Ned took command as smartly as any commissioned officer. He gave his orders and the patrol, including Herc Taylor, marched to the Jacob’s ladder on the port side of the ship, for the starboard is sacred to officers. They clambered into the drab-colored, hooded steam launch. The engineer tooted the whistle, the craft was cast off and then she cut swiftly over the choppy harbor for the landing stage.
“There they go, looking for the fellows that are playing hooky!” exclaimed a man loudly, as Ned and his detachment marched off toward Chinatown, eyed by a curious throng.
“And they’re going to bring them in, too,” thought Ned, with that outward thrust of a square chin that, with Ned Strong, betokened, to use a popular and expressive phrase, that he “meant business.”
He fully realized that he had a hard task ahead of him. Sailors are notoriously the prey of all[27] sorts of harpies ashore, and not infrequently are persuaded to resist forcibly being returned to their ships. It was but a small force that Ned had under him in case of serious trouble; but, as he looked at the clear-skinned, bright-eyed young Jackies, he felt that he would be willing to face a regiment.
With Ned occasionally giving an order, the patrol marched through the water-front district, visiting many places of resort for sailors,—and abominable dens most of them were,—without getting any trace of the delinquents. Ned, in addition, questioned several pedestrians, policemen and loafers of the district, but he could get no clew to the men there.
“We’ll have to look for them in Chinatown,” he decided, and gave orders for his men to march thither.
Through the straggly streets the little company proceeded until they arrived in the purlieus of what, next to the Oriental settlement in Melbourne,[28] Australia, is the biggest Chinese colony in the world. It was for all the world like a city of the poppy-land and not a part of the western metropolis.
Slitty, malignant eyes peered out of yellow faces as the smartly marching company from the dreadnought swung by. Most of the cunning Orientals knew full well on what errand the Jackies were bound, and resented it. Although Ned did not know it, the secret telegraphy of Chinatown was put into full operation as they advanced.
A butcher chopping meat on his stall would produce a peculiar kind of rhythmic tapping of his axe. This was in turn picked up by a cobbler mending shoes with antique Chinese tools. And so the news of the coming of the patrol preceded them by this subtle method of signaling, and long before they reached the street they were aiming for the proprietors of the places they meant to search knew of their coming.
[29]
“Halt!” ordered Ned, as they entered the street he had determined to search first. It was a narrow passageway between high, moldering walls. The walls flared with red prayer papers and other Mongolian notices inscribed on vermilion papers. From small barred windows evil-looking faces peered at them curiously.
From some remote place high up in one of the sinister-looking rookeries came the monotonous beating of a Chinese tom-tom, and the sharp screeching of a fife in uncanny cadences. Ned looked about him as the file came to a standstill. To his left a steep flight of steps led into an underground basement where he thought he might find some of the missing men.
Up the basement steps came an enormously fat Chinaman, with a round, greasy moon-face and an ingratiating chin.
“Hullo, sailor-man, what you wantee?” he inquired blandly, squinting at Ned’s command through his slanted black eyes.
[30]
“We come from fleet,” responded Ned, who knew something of the wily Oriental’s ways. “You catchum any sailors here?”
The Chinaman slowly shook his pigtailed head. Details of armed sailors had halted in front of his place often before and he knew what this one meant.
“Me no savee sailors. We no catchum ’Melicans. Nothing but Johns (Chinamen),” he declared with a bland smile.
But Ned was not satisfied. Ordering his men to remain above, he pushed past the protesting Mongolian and down the slippery, foul steps.
“What you do?” demanded the Chinaman angrily.
“See how much truth there is under that yellow skin of yours,” responded Ned, as he shoved open a door at the foot of the steps and was met by a blast of foul, heated air from the den within.