ers attached to the
kedge-anchors was taken up, the skippers stood by their respective
engine-room telegraphs, and, at a signal from Wong-lih, the _San-chau_
went slowly ahead until the towing hawser was taut. Steam was then
given to the after-winches aboard the cruiser, to which the
kedge-hawsers were led, the screws of the _Chih' Yuen_ were sent astern
at full speed, while the _San-chau_ went ahead with every ounce of steam
her boilers could supply to the engines.

The great steel cable vibrated until it fairly hummed with the strain,
the _Chih' Yuen's_ winches bucked and kicked until Wong-lih, on the
cruiser's bridge, momentarily expected them to break away altogether,
and the white water foamed and roared under both vessels' quarters as
the screws whirred round. For several minutes it seemed as though the
attempt was doomed to failure, and that all the cables would part
without the cruiser budging an inch; but quite suddenly, as Frobisher
watched, keeping the cruiser's mast in line with a pinnacle of rock
about a quarter of a mile behind her, he detected a slight movement.
The vessel's mast appeared to vibrate, as though the cruiser herself
were pulsing with life, and then it slowly, very slowly, moved backward,
until mast and pinnacle were a little out of line.

"She moves! she moves!" he shouted, waving his cap in his excitement;
and then, like a vessel gradually sliding off the stocks when being
launched, the _Chih' Yuen_ gathered way, and a few moments later she
slid bodily off the rock with a plunge that caused the _San-chau_ to
roll as though in a heavy sea, overrunning her kedge-anchors before her
_momentum_ could be checked.

She was afloat again, however, and Frobisher breathed a sigh of
thanksgiving. He had set his heart on commanding her, and he would have
been bitterly disappointed if so fine a ship had been lost to him and
the Navy through the despicable cupidity of a mandarin and the
incompetence of a Chinese so-called sailor.

Wong-lih remained aboard the cruiser for another hour or more, until he
had satisfied himself that the leaks resulting from her strained and
buckled plates were not so serious but that they could easily be kept
under by the pumps; and then, having signalled for the first lieutenant
of the _San-chau_ to come aboard and take charge of the cruiser, in
place of the incompetent captain, he ordered the latter to accompany him
back to the dispatch-boat under arrest, as a prelimi