Night fell, but Sandgrub was still in her ignominious position. If anything the river was still falling. It was the dry season, and there was a chance of the gunboat being left almost high and dry for weeks.
The circumstances made it imperative for Sandgrub to wireless the senior naval officer at Shanghai reporting the stranding. It would not have been necessary had she run aground for only a few hours. Such incidents were of common occurrence in the Yang-tse-Kiang; but the prospect of being high and dry indefinitely rendered a wireless report necessary, and with it the disquieting probability that Sanddigger would be sent up-river to take over Sandgrub’s task of dealing with the bandits.
At sunset colours were lowered, armed look-outs posted and regulation lights hoisted to signify that the ship was aground near the fairway. The crews of the six-inch quick-firers slept at their guns, while the men detailed to run the searchlights were told to get what rest they could beside the projectors.
Raxworthy, under a mosquito curtain, dozed fitfully. With the fall of night his lacerated feet began to throb painfully. Mosquitoes pinged and fireflies darted to and fro. From the nearby paddy-fields bull-frogs croaked incessantly. Frequently sampans drifted down stream, their crews, which chiefly consisted of whole families, greeting the “foreign devils” with sarcastic though generally unintelligible remarks concerning their plight.
About four in the morning, Raxworthy was aroused by a peculiar grinding noise, followed by shouts from the look-out that the ship was on the move.
She was. Owing to a heavy thunderstorm, its centre perhaps a hundred miles or more up stream, the level had risen three feet and was still rising.
Sandgrub, waterborne, was swinging almost broadside on, her keel-plates rasping over the shingle.
Then as the strain on the anchor was taken up, she swung round through eight points, and snubbed heavily at her cable.
“Holding?” shouted Poundall, who was the officer-of-the-watch.
“No, sir; she’s dragging!” replied a voice from the fo’c’sle.
“Then pay out another shackle.”
The additional cable roared through the hawsepipe. The compressor was applied, and again the gunboat brought up with a jerk.
“Holding now?”
One of the hands prodded the ground with a boathook.
“Steady now, sir!”
There was no need for Poundall to send a messenger to inform the captain that they were afloat once more. Wilverley, awakened by the noise, was on the bridge wearing pyjamas plus his badge of authority, namely, his gilt oak-leaved cap.
“Current’s running hard, sir,” reported the officer-of-the-watch.
“Yes, send the quartermaster to the wheel and warn the look-outs to keep a sharp look-out for drifting sampans and wreckage.”
This precaution was necessary. Throughout the night the steam steering gear was frequently clanking as the man at the wheel gave the anchored gunboat a sheer to avoid various large objects that came down upon the now swirling stream.
A wireless message was sent off announcing that the gunboat was again afloat, and then conditions became quieter until dawn.
By this time the river had risen to such an extent that Sandgrub could heave short her cable without the risk of running aground again.
“Good old Excelsior!” exclaimed Viner. “Here we are in the same benighted spot that we were twelve hours ago.”
“Up and down, sir!” announced the petty officer, superintending the weighing operations.
The lieutenant gave order for half-speed ahead, and gradually gathering way, the gunboat resumed her cautious progress.
Three days later Sandgrub anchored for the night within ten miles of the site of Blakeborough’s factory, which, although the ship’s company did not know of it, was now a heap of smoking ruins.
Greatly against his inclinations, Lieutenant-commander Wilverley had decided against covering the last lap during the hours of darkness. It was reputed to be a particularly tricky stretch of the river, and it would be unlucky for the gunboat if she ran hard aground within range of the bandit Fu-so-li’s guns.
Raxworthy was still on the sick list, and reclining on a mattress on the quarter-deck. The doctor had promised to return him to duty on the morrow, when serious work might be expected.
His servant brought him his dinner.
“Soup, sir? Mock Turtle?”
The midshipman looked at the greasy liquid and shook his head.
“Take it away, Saunderson,” he exclaimed.
“You’re losing your appetite, sir,” observed the man. “Ti-so’s put some good stuff into it, so he says.”
“Away with it,” decided Raxworthy firmly.
He turned down the fish, but managed to eat a little quail. Somehow he felt off colour.
At eight bells the relieved officer-of-the-watch went below to a belated dinner. Soon afterwards Raxworthy dozed.
He was awakened by someone touching his shoulder.
“What is it?” he asked drowsily.
“Queer goings on, sir,” replied the chief petty officer. “Mr. Viner’s fallen asleep outside the chartroom, and three officers below are blind to the world!”
“What! three sheets in the wind?”
“No, sir; sort of in a trance. Even the surgeon-lieutenant. We’ve been trying to rouse them, but it’s no good.”
Raxworthy sat bolt upright.
“Officer-of-the-watch too!” he exclaimed. “All right, I’ll come along.”
He made his way to the bridge. The leading signalman and the quartermaster of the watch had carried Viner into the chartroom and laid him on the settee. His eyes were closed, and he was breathing stertorously.
His breath did not smell of spirits. The midshipman raised the unconscious officer’s arm and let it drop. It fell as if it were as heavy as lead.
“Drugged!” decided Raxworthy.
“And the rest of the officers are in the same boat, sir!” declared the chief petty officer.
“How about the ratings; are any of them affected?” asked the midshipman.
“They’ve their own cooks—not a galley run by a crowd of Chinks, sir,” rejoined the C.P.O. darkly.
“So that’s what you think? Good; pass the word for Ming and Ti-so.”
Quickly the captain’s steward appeared with his characteristic bland expression.
Ti-so was nowhere to be found. It was afterwards discovered that the look-out had seen a sampan pass just before midnight. They had also heard a splash, but paid no particular attention to it, thinking that it was caused by a fish.
“Where’s Ti-so, Ming?” demanded Raxworthy.
“Honourable sir, I know not,” replied the head messman. “P’laps he in his bunk.”
“He ain’t,” declared the chief petty officer.
“Who served the officers’ dinner, Ming?” pursued the midshipman.
“Ti-so, honourable sir. I say to captain, ‘Me no well; no can do’. He say, ‘Velly good, lay off’, so I lay off till you send for me.”
“Jolly fortunate for me I didn’t have that confounded soup,” thought Raxworthy. “Well, I’m taking no chances. I’ll put Ming under arrest.”
The Chinaman was taken for’ard and placed behind the screen under the charge of an armed seaman.
Raxworthy then went below to the wardroom, where he found that Poundall and the doctor had been lifted upon the settees. On the deck cards lay scattered. Obviously the effect of the drug had a delayed action, since it was after dinner, and the two officers were playing cards, when unconsciousness suddenly overtook them.
Wilverley, too, had gone to his cabin, and was writing a letter before he, too, collapsed. He hadn’t even a chance to ring the bell for assistance.