Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 November 1887 — CHASED BY MALAY PROAS. [ARTICLE]

CHASED BY MALAY PROAS.

BY GEORGE H. COOMER.

Our ship was the Luzon, from New York for Canton, and we were now in the China Sea. The voyage thus far had proved a singular one, and though the Luzon was a fast sailing ship, her passage had been long. First, before striking the northeast trade wind in the Atlantic, we had encountered a succession of southerly gales, and at the end of these a tedious calm of twenty-two days. Next, off the Cape de Verd Islands, we had lost our fore yard in a squall. The weather was threatening, and we were under double-reefed topsails and foresail, when this squall, a sort of whirlwind, caught us aback, snapping the yard short off in the slings. Then off the Cape of Good Hope, nearly every man on deck was struck down by a bolt of lightning which enveloped the ship in a blinding glare, and was accompanied with a crash of thunder that no language can describe. Luckily, however, the man at the wheel was less stunned than most of the others, or we would certainly have gone to destruction. Finally, off the Isle of France, we had met with a hurricane which carried away our mizzenmast, fore and main topmasts, main yard and jibboom, besides making a clean sweep of our bulwarks, staving our two boats, and taking the galley overboard. We had rigged a jury mizzenmast, got up a new main yard and a couple of spare topmasts, and so kept on our way. The cook’s stove had gone over with his galley, but among the hardware of our freight we had an invoice of a dozen stoves, and hence we were able to replace the lost one. As to a galley, we improvised that the best way we could. In the Strait of Sunda we fell in with the ship Cashmere, from Canton to New York, which reported having fallen in, off the Island of Borneo, with an American or European vessel that had just been captured by Malay pirates. t The Malays had set the ship on fire, and upon discovering the Cashmere they gave chase to her. The weather, however, getting verv rough, their proas could not carry sail, and hence she was able to escape" “I thought so!” exclaimed Bill Dean, one of our fellows, as soon as the Cashmere had passed us; “we have had all other sorts of bad luck, and now we are to be cut into mince meat by a parcel of Malay pirates' This will be in keeping with our kind of good fortune, so I suppose it must be all right 1” Bill was never disposed to look upon the bright side of things. He believed in lucky and unlucky ships, days, and men. He had already, as he supposed, had ample proof that the Luzon did not come under the lucky head, and, indeed, the facts in the case seemed to sustain him in his position. These things had passed, bringing us to the one hundred and seventy-hrst day of our voyage; and now here we were, in a dead calm, in the China Sea —the Luzon lying “As idle as a painted ship. Upon a painted ocean. ” “We are in for it again!” said Bill Dean. “We shall be about two months making the next ten degrees of latitude !” “That’s encouraging!” said Dick Mayhew. “I guess there must be a white stone among the ballast!” remarked Jack Lee. “I don’t know about that,” replied Tom Welch, “but I know there are black beans in the soup!” They spoke jestingly, for at this day even sailors have come to make light of some of the more absurd superstitions of former times, when a white stone in the ballast, or a black bean in the soup foretold some dreadful misfortune. ‘ Well, there’s just this about it,” said Jack Lee; “we shan’t be troubled by pirates as long as this weather lasts.”

“That’s true enough," replied Dick Mayhew; "but who wants to be tied up here to broil to death in the sun, pirates or no pirates?” “I don’t know about it’s being true enough, either,” said Bill Lean. “What do they care for a breeze? They’ve more sweeps than a cockroach has legs. If they should get a sight of us, it would put us in a fine fix, heading all around the compass as we are!" Meanwhile we were kept at work as usual, for sailors always have enough to do, and are fust as busy in calm as storm, though not at the same kind of task. Presently a man engaged in the main top reported a strange-looking object at a considerable distance off the ship’s beam. He said it appeared like a wreck or a raft. It could not be a whale, he thought, as it seemed too long for one. “Sometimes it looks as if it had a mast,” he said, “with some sort of a signal on it, and then it is all flat again and hardly shows out of water.” The Captain went into the top with his glass, but as he brought the telescope to bear upon the spot, the object disappeared. He caughtglimpse of it, however, sufficint to assure him that it was some living creature, and that it bore no resemblance to a whale.

There was much speculation among the crew as to what the animal could be. The Captain said that it seemed to be as long as the ship, and that as it went down a portion of it appeared to rise above the water like a coil of an immense rope. His view, however, had been very hurried and imperfect. M e thought of the tales we had read concerning sea serpents, and the most of us believed in the existence of such creatures, though it was our opinion that the accounts given of them were exaggerations. That night a sailor named Ben Thomas thought he saw something black on the water, as if a boat were approaching us. He called our attention to it, but the mate was the only one beside himself who got a sight of it, though the rest of us heard and saw a disturbance in the water at the place where the thing had shown itself. Ben said it looked like a very long boat, with a tall man standing up in it But then in the darkness it had been barely perceptible even to him. The China Sea abounds in snakes, and they were around us constantly, either making their way through the water or coiled up asleep on the surface. They were all colors, too, but their length was not more than five or six feet. We had rigged a temporary jibboom to replace the one lost in the hurricane, and on the morning succeeding Ben’s incident Bill Dean went out on the spar to secure a gasket, or small line, which was dangling loose. Before this could be accomplished he suddenly changed his mind, and he came in over the ship’s head like a cat. “Look here, mates!” he cried, “come quick! quick!” We ran forward and looked over the head.

The slowly moving swell, hardly perceptible, was smooth as oil, and beneath it, more and more distinctly, as looked, we made out an object that gave us a thrill of terror. It was some monster of the deep, apparently a huge serpent, a few feet under water, bent in the form of a horseshoe, as if it had just come out from beneath the vessel on one side of the bow and had curved its immense body for a return on the other side. We could at first see neither its head nor its tail, but only its middle, where it seemed to be at least three feet in diameter. In half a minute it was out of sight, its tail coming up and cutting the water as it vanished. We felt horrified at the thought that such a monster might be directly under our keel, either swimming about there or lying at rest. The faces of the crew had a startled look, and more than one face grew decidedly pale. We feared that the calm might confine us to our position for a number of days. When, therefore, an hour later there appeared indications of a coming breeze, the signs were most heartily welcomed. Here and there could be seen “cat’spaws” upon the water, and the burning sky began to show a few light clouds. Looking oft' toward the horizon, in the direction from which we had reason to ex; ect the wind, we presently discovered what had the appearance of a fleet of small vessels. Again the Captain mounted to the main top with his glass, and after a minute’s survey, he reported the sails in sight to be four Malay proas, apparently heading for us" with a good breeze. Here were enemies more dangerous than serpents! The case was one of life and death, for those fellows were undoubtedly pirates, and no mercy was to be hoped" from them should they get possession of the ship. On they came very fast, while we were still becalmed; but well we knew that even should the light breeze reach us, it could do us no good, as nothing less than a strong gale can afford a heavy ship any chance of escape when chased by a Malay proa. Lach of the four large boats appeared to contain about fifty men, so that the aggregate was two hundred, while we mustered but twenty, all told. The breeze at length reached ns, and we bore away, but they gained on us rapidly. As they came within fair range we opened upon them with a dozen muskets which we had on board, and they returned the fire, also with muskets, neither they nor ourselves having any cannon. They were soon close under our stern, and it was evidently their intention to board us on both sides at the

same time; for while two of the proaa seemed to be heading for our lee quarter, the other two hauled very sharp on the wind in order to drop aboard of us on the side opposite. The headmost proa was less than a hundred yards from us, and the firing on both sides had become very sharp, when suddenly there was a swashing sound in the water just astern of the ship, and a long, hideous head, supported by a frightful serpentine neck, shot up to a height of some twenty feet above the surface. It had eyes as large as saucers, and a mouth which would have put that .of an alligator to shame. Behind the neck lay the scaly body, and scaly it was, indeed! Why, as 1 now recollect it, it seemed as if covered with plates of iron. The shifting and glancing of that strange, unearthly head was a sight to chill one’s blood. And when the huge tail, uplifted for a moment, came whipping down upon the water, the blow could have been heard for a mile. Perhaps it was the firing of the guns which had caused the creature to start to the surface in such an attitude. It remained in this position but a few moments, when it commenced swimming rapidly to and fro close to the Malay boats, so that the commotion it made in the water sent waves like “stea nboat swells” against their bows. Ihe pirates were evidently horrified. Instantly they put about tlieir vessels, and, in addition to their sails, used their long sweeps with a kind of desperation. Although well armed with muskets, they seemed afraid to use them against this gigantic foe. But the curiosity of their weird visitant was excited, and he continued to follow them, making prodigiously rapid circles around their fleet of proas, and often lashing the water with his tail. How those villains worked at their sweeps! Nor could we wonder at them; for we, too, would have worked under like circumstances. This state of things continued until they were five or six miles from us, when one of the proas seemed all at once to be crushed under a great weight, the mast and sail disappearing in an instant. Another close to her, in a minute or two, shared the same fate. The remaining two, however, being some little distance from the others, were not attacked. They kept on their course, and were finally lost to us below the horizon. All the pirates who were in the two demolished proa’s must have perished. As long as we remained within sight of the wrecks the monster continued near them, as we could see with our glasses aloft. (Sometimes he would plunge under water, but he would soon reappear, acting as if greatly excited. It must have been by mere chance, of course, that he followed the pirates instead of ourselves; but his coming up at the moment he did was our salvation from certain death. Several times during that year the same huge monster, or one like him, was seen in the China Sea by American or European sailors, but I have not been able to learn that he has ever been met with since that period. Why such huge reptiles, or fish, or animals, as the reader may choose to call them, should sometimes appear at brief intervals to successive witnesses, and then utterly vanish for an entire generation, is a problem which natural history has pot solved.