Man’s impotence to resist the forces of nature, and their terrible ability to injure him, would inspire a sense of terror; which in turn would give rise to the twofold notion of omnipotence and malignity. The savage of the present day lives in perpetual fear of evil spirits; and the superstitious dread, which I and most others have suffered, is inherited from our savage ancestry. How much further back we must seek it may be left to the sage philosophers of the future.
THE next winter we lay for a couple of months off Chinhai, which we had stormed, blockading the mouth of the Ningpo river. Here, I regret to think, I committed an act which has often haunted my conscience as a crime; although I had frequently promised the captain of a gun a glass of grog to let me have a shot, and was mightily pleased if death and destruction rewarded my aim.
Off Chinhai, lorchers and fast sailing junks laden with merchandise would try to run the blockade before daylight. And it sometimes happened that we youngsters had a long chase in a cutter to overhaul them. This meant getting back to a nine or ten o’clock breakfast at the end of the morning’s watch; equivalent to five or six hours’ duty on an empty stomach.
One cold morning I had a hard job to stop a small junk. The men were sweating at their oars like galley slaves, and muttering curses at the apparent futility of their labour. I had fired a couple of shots from a ‘brown Bess’—the musket of the day—through the fugitive’s sails; and fearing punishment if I let her escape, I next aimed at the boat herself. Down came the mainsail in a crack. When I boarded our capture, I found I had put a bullet through the thigh of the man at the tiller. Boys are not much troubled with scruples about bloodguiltiness, and not unfrequently are very cruel, for cruelty as a rule (with exceptions) mostly proceeds from thoughtlessness. But when I realised what I had done, and heard the wretched man groan, I was seized with remorse for what, at a more hardened stage, I should have excused on the score of duty.
It was during this blockade that the accident, which I have already alluded to, befell my dear protector, Jack Johnson.
One night, during his and my middle watch, the forecastle sentries hailed a large sampan, like a Thames barge, drifting down stream and threatening to foul us. Sir Frederick Nicholson, the officer of the watch, ordered Johnson to take the cutter and tow her clear.