y. The unwounded men appeared to be quite
indifferent, however, both to their own comrades' sufferings and their
own chances of death or mutilation, and went on serving the guns as
calmly as though they were at target practice. Frobisher realised then,
as numbers of white men have realised since, that the Chinese soldier
and sailor, properly trained and properly led, constitutes some of the
finest fighting material in the world; and that, if a leader ever
arises, capable of drilling and controlling the vast mass of material
which China contains, it will be a very bad thing indeed for the white
races. A properly-drilled, well-trained, well-armed, and capably-led
army of perhaps fifty million fighting men would be invincible; an
invasion of Europe by such a force could not possibly be withstood.
That dreadful day is, however, far in the future, let us hope.

Frobisher now turned his attention to the third junk, still carrying out
his plan of sinking them one at a time, and determined to lay and fire
the four-inch gun again himself, in the hope of repeating his former
successful shot. The shell and cartridge were rammed home and the
breech closed and screwed up, and having trained the gun, he pressed his
finger to the firing key, springing back directly afterward to avoid the
recoil. But to his astonishment there was no report: the weapon did not
discharge. He therefore set and pressed the key again, but once more
there was no result. It was evidently a miss-fire. The young man knew,
of course, that sometimes a cartridge will "hang fire", and that many a
gun's crew have been blown to pieces by prematurely opening the breech,
but he forgot all about that now in his anxiety, and unscrewed and
opened the breech-piece immediately. Nothing happened. There were the
marks of the percussion-pin upon the primer of the cartridge, but the
ammunition had failed to explode.

Hastily calling for another cartridge, he withdrew the faulty one and
thrust in a fresh one, closing the breech and repeating his first
operation; but again the cartridge failed to explode. Something was
seriously wrong somewhere--but what? Was it the powder that was faulty
or damp, or the primer that was ineffective? It was impossible to say
without examination. Another cartridge and still another were tried,
and every time the result was the same, until Frobisher began to feel
seriously alarmed.

Encouraged by the cessation of fire from the _Su-ch