end of the broken screw shaft; rudder there was none, the funnel was
gone, spar deck and bridge were in wrack and ruin, whilst the cowl of a
bent ventilator turned seaward seemed contemplating with a languid air
the beauty of the morning and the view of the far distant San Lucas
Islands.

The _Heart of Ireland_ picked up a berth inside the junk, and as the
rasp and rattle of the anchor chain came back in faint echoes from the
cliff, a gong on the junk woke to life and began to snarl and roar its
warning to the fellows on the wreck.

"Down with the boat," cried Ginnell. With the "linth of lead pipe," a
most formidable weapon, sticking from his pocket, he ran to help with
the falls; the whaleboat smacked the water, the crew tumbled in, and,
with Ginnell in the bow, it started for the shore.

The gong had done its work. The fellows who had been crawling like
ants over the dead body of the _Yan-Shan_ came slithering down on
ropes, appeared running and stumbling over the rocks abaft the stern,
some hauling along sacks of loot, others brandishing sticks or bits of
timber, and all shouting and clamouring with a noise like gulls whose
nests are being raided.

There was a small scrap of shingly beach off which the Chinamen's scow
was lying anchored with a stone and with a China boy for anchor watch.
The whale-boat passed the scow, dashed nose end up the shelving beach,
and the next moment Ginnell and his linth of lead pipe was amongst the
Chinamen, whilst Blood, following him, was firing his revolver over
their heads. Harman, with a crowbar carried at the level, was aiming
straight at the belly of the biggest of the foe, when they parted right
and left, dropping everything, beaten before they were touched, and
making for the water over the rocks.

Swimming like rats, they made for the scow, scrambled on board her,
howked up the anchor stone and shot out the oars.

"They're off for the junk," cried Ginnell. "Faith, that was a clane
bit of work; look at thim rowin' as if the divil was after thim."

They were, literally, and now on board the junk they were hauling the
boat in, shaking out the lateen sail and dragging up the anchor as
though a hundred pair of hands were at work instead of twenty.

Then, as the huge sail bellied gently to the wind and the junk broke
the violet breeze shadow beyond the calm of the sheltered water, a
voice came over the sea, a voice like the clamour of a hundred gulls,
thin, rending, fie