He had provided himself with a bucket of rice and bottles of water, evidently with the intention of preparing for a siege.  Spent cartridges at the head of the stoke-hole ladder told of a desperate fight there, probably before the attack on the bridge by the engineer and his men.

But we wasted no time over these signs of what had happened during the night, simply observing them as we went over the vessel to see if any of the crew were in hiding, and seeking such things as might be of use in building the raft.

All the tools were carried forward, and I helped the captain get off the hatch-covers of the forehold, and he nailed them together with planks from the top of the cargo.  In this way we made a rude catamaran some twenty feet long and five feet wide.  A plank was put on its edge all around, making a low freeboard to hold our provisions and to serve as a protection against bullets in case the pirates should fire upon us while running ashore.

Life-lines were fastened to the sides, so we could take to the water in an emergency, and, with our bodies partially submerged, use our pistols to good advantage and offer poor targets.  Captain Riggs seemed to foresee every possible danger, and went about his preparations to meet the pirates as calmly and methodically as if he were fitting out to go on a picnic.

Thirkle had taken every precaution to make the Kut Sang another mystery of the sea, without so much as a life-buoy being found with her name on it.  We found the ring-buoys hacked to bits, especially that section of them which had the steamer’s name painted on the side.  The name painted on the two smashed boats had been ripped from their sterns, and everything that would float was locked securely in cabins or made fast.

Captain Riggs fashioned a sail out of a tarpaulin, and stepped a mast well forward, and with other things we took signal-pennants and a British ensign, and from the foremast of the Kut Sang he flew a signal of distress and a message in the international code about pirates or some such thing, so that, in case Thirkle should get away in the boat and be picked up, he would have a great deal of difficulty in explaining about himself if the same vessel should sight our coloured flags.

“Take a look and see that the boy ain’t busy up there at a nap,” said Riggs, and I mounted to the bridge, keeping well covered and to the seaward side of the chart-house.  Rajah was wide awake, lying just inside the coaming of the chart-room door, chewing contentedly at his betel, and holding the spy-glass over the brass doorplate directed toward the island.  He grinned at me as I entered through the door on the port side.

I took the glass and searched the horizon of the sea, but there was no sign of a sail or a smear of smoke; neither could I find any trace of the pirates on the island, which had a pile of volcanic rock rising out of its northern end.  I sought for some sign of human habitation on the brown, bare hills of Luzon, baking in the sun, but that part of the coast was a wilderness, desolate and forbidding.