so, taking Quen-lung with him, he made his way to the magazines, taking
his requisition book with him in his pocket.

It was then that he obtained his first insight into the subtle ways of
Chinese Naval officialdom. He knew perfectly well what kind of
ammunition he required, and how much of it, but he seemed utterly unable
to find anybody who possessed the necessary authority to issue it. He
was sent from one official to another, all of them gorgeously dressed
and very eager to give every assistance; yet when the moment arrived for
the stores to be actually given into his hands--well, they were
heart-broken to give the honourable captain so much trouble, but would
he be pleased to obtain the approval of his Excellency the honourable
Somebody Else, whose signature was also needed before the ammunition
could be removed.

At last, so disgusted did Frobisher become at all this delay and
prevarication that he went back to the _Su-chen_, selected some twenty
of the strongest members of his crew, and himself took them up to the
magazine with a number of hand-wagons which he had collected, under much
voluble protest, _en route_. Then, having found the required pattern of
cartridge, he ordered his men to load the cases on to the wagons, and,
amid the intensely-shocked expostulations of the outraged officials of
the Ordnance Department, who were quite unaccustomed to fill a
requisition in less than a month, the several indents were wheeled down
to the gunboat by the Chinese sailors, who already began to show the
respect they felt for a man who knew what he wanted, and got it.

The task was finished at last, and that afternoon the _Su-chen_ dipped
her ensign to the _San-chau_, on board of which Admiral Wong-lih had his
quarters, steamed down the river Pei-ho, past the Taku forts at its
mouth, and out into the open sea on her way to the mouth of the
Hoang-ho, some three hundred miles up which lay the village of
Tchen-voun-hien, at or near which the pirates' lair was said to be
situated. During the hundred-mile run across the gulf of Chi-lih,
Frobisher set his men to clean ship thoroughly, overhaul and polish the
guns, and make things in general a little more shipshape than they had
been since the time when the _Su-chen_ left her builders' hands on the
Thames.

Frobisher was fortunate in the moment when the gunboat arrived off the
mouth of the Hoang-ho, for the sea was smooth, and the usually dangerous
bar at the mouth of