The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1904-09-25

was rugged as a brig this time and at
every yardarm the corpse of Chi
nese pirate was dangling. Thirty-five
others were in irons in the hold. They
were tried later by the Adj
miralty Court and sentenced to be
hanged.
This British skipper told us that he
disguised his vessel to look like a,
merchantmen, and sighted the three
junks after he had cruised about for
five days. They crept upon him, and
he allowed them to come within few
cables length before he opened fire.
He left them have all his guns at
! once and the mariners poured in
murderous fire with their muskets.
Two of the junks, struck below the
water line, sunk almost Immediate
ly The other was captured, after
more than half of her crew had been
killed"
From Macao to Havana.
This yarn reminded an old skipper
who had made many voyage in the
Blackball packets of his experience
away back in the ''sixties" on a run
from the Portuguese port of Macao,
China, to Havana.
He was mate of clipper ship en-
gagged in the coole trade. On this
particular run she was taking a ship
ment of Chinese coolies to work on
the Cuban sugar plantations. I'm
known to the captain these coolies
were all criminals of the deepest dye
who had been handed over to the
Macao authorities by the Chinese
mandarins to be sold into practical
slavery.
Many of them were pirates, others
were convicted murderers and BAN
dits. They would all have died the
terrible death of the thousand cuts"
If the mandarins had not seen
chance to make some money out of
them.
When the ship was two days out of
Macao, the coolies mutinied. The
pirates among them had Matched a
plot by which they hoped to seize the
vessel and use her to enable them to
resume their old trade. Fortunately,
the coolie ships were always prepared
for such grim happenings. Shotted
guns pointed to the matches beneath
which the living freight was confined,
and the officers were invariably armed
to the teeth.
1--WE were bowling along before
fine breeze" said the old skipper.
Everything was as quiet and orderly
as possible, when suddenly a batch of
coolies who had been allowed on deck
for air turned on the crew. Some of
them attacked us with knives, mar
lin spikes and any weapons they could
snatch up; while the others frantically
tried to open the matches and let their
companions on deck to join in the
fight
1.-The skipper shot down three Chi
namen in less time than it takes to
tell the story. l laid out another, but
four of them rushed at me, and next
moment / saw stars and knew moth
ing more until l recovered conscious
ness twenty minutes later.
when 1 o ned my eyes the deck
was a perfect shambles. The skipper
had fired two small carronades load
ed with musket balls just as the rest
of the coolies began to swarm up
through the main hatch. About thirty
of them had been killed and many
others wounded, while we had lost
three of our crew.
1.-THE mutiny was put down, and our
skipper threatened to hang one Chi
naman in every ten drawn by lot I'M
less they gave up their ringleaders.
They surrendered eight of them, who
were soundly logged and then kept
in irons for the rest Nof the voyage.
You may be sure we kept a strong
guard over the Cinnamon, and a sharp
watch on them. until we landed them
in Havana.
But even when we reached the
Cuban port, our troubles were by no
means over There was a bad cpl
demic of yellow fever at Havana at
that time. and we had not lain there
three days before half a dozen of our
crew were down with it. They died
off like flies. l sickened of the fever.
and was taken ashore to the hos al
and put In long ward with a lot of
little cots so close to one another that
you could touch your neighbor. All
the patients had Yellow Jack in its
most malignant form.
81 had not been there a quarter of
an hour before the man on one side
of me died. His body was taken away.
and another man brought in who also
died during the night. l lay there
nearly two weeks, and there was not
a dav that a man did not die-gener-
ally more than one. BY wonderful
good luck / pulled through: but few
men who entered that pest house of a
hospital left it except in a coffin"
Another old skipper told of cruis-
ing off the coast of Sumatra and Java
when Krakatoa blew up in 1883. He
was seven hundred miles from the
volcano at the time. but the deck of
his vessel was covered with volcanic
dust and ashes. and she was nearly
submerged by a terrific tidal wave.
ut seemed as If all the water in the
ocean was standing up on end and
balancing us on the top" he said.
The Cheese That Won n Battle.
A forgotten naval war-quite pos
sibly a hypothetical one - between
Argentina and Uruguay formed the
theme of a tough old mariner who
boosted that he had seen service in
half a dozen South American navies.
Il was serving on the Buenos Ayres
frigate," he said. land the Monte
Video captain had only a small brig.
We didn't talk of Argentina and
Uruguay in those days; It was Buenos
| Ayres and Monte Video. We thought
our frigate had an easy Job finishing
off their little brig. and for a time we
hammered 'em good and plenty at
short range.
After a time, their fire slackened.
and then their gunnery lootenant goes
up to their skipper and he says:
=" Cap'en. there amt no more am
munition-not cannon ball in the
| ship.
Any POWDER asks the skipper.
Plenty says the mate.
''The skipper thinks a minute. and
| then remembers a lot Of Dutch