pon the top of a knoll
of rising ground.

"That," he announced, "is the pirates' head-quarters. There is a little
bight just at the junction of the old and the new channels, and it is
there that they lie in ambush with their junks. Now, sir, you can
perhaps see their masts standing up behind that low bank yonder?"

Frobisher looked, and counted, indeed, five masts. They were, then,
evidently those belonging to the pirate junks which had attacked the
Chinese merchantman on the preceding day; and the fort on the hill,
yonder, was the pirates' lair which he had been specially dispatched
from Tien-tsin to destroy. He rubbed his hands gleefully and gave
orders to clear for action; then, with his telescope fixed unwaveringly
on the fort, he leant over the bridge rail, watching, while the
_Su-chen_, her engines working at full pressure, stemmed the muddy tide
on her errand of retribution.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

TCHEN-VOUN-HIEN.

The _Su-chen_ was about five miles away when the fort first came into
view, and for about a quarter of an hour she steamed ahead without any
sign of life or of alarm becoming perceptible in the vicinity of the
pirates' head-quarters. Frobisher was beginning to hope that fortune
was so far favouring him that perhaps the freebooters might have set out
on some buccaneering expedition inland upon this particular morning, and
that he might thus be able to land, seize and destroy the junks, and
occupy the fort during their absence; at the same time preparing an
unpleasant little surprise for the pirates when they returned.

But his hope was doomed to disappointment. Still keeping his eye glued
to the telescope, he suddenly observed a flash and a puff of white smoke
leap out from a corner tower of the fort, and a few moments later the
dull "boom" of a fairly-heavy gun made itself heard. At the same moment
a tiny ball soared aloft to the head of the flagstaff on the
battlements, which ball presently broke abroad and revealed itself as a
large yellow flag of triangular shape, the apex of the triangle, or fly,
being circular instead of ending in a point. There was also a design of
some description embroidered on the flag in the favourite Chinese blue,
but what the design represented Frobisher could not imagine. He had
never beheld anything like it in his life, so he turned to Quen-lung,
who was, as usual, standing alongside him, and, handing him the
telescope, told him to take a look at the piece