one day I was plainly asked whether I was not a military or naval instructor of the Chinese.  I was able to conscientiously deny that I was any such thing, but the query took me very much aback, as the naturalness of the suspicion was obvious, and I foresaw no end of trouble in clearing myself of it.  The commander of the gunboat, a consequential and rather surly personage, shook his head, and said he would have to take time to consider the matter.

Time he certainly did take, and plenty of it.  We were, however, well treated, chiefly through the kindness of the French-speaking officer, Lieutenant Hishidi, with whom I struck up an acquaintance, he being in fact the only one of the gunboat’s crew with whom I could converse.  He caused a small separate cabin to be extemporized for myself and Lin Wong, and looked to our comfort in other ways.  My friend Lin, I should say, had received a nasty graze on the ribs of the right side from one of the machine-gun bullets, but otherwise was all right, though in a very chop-fallen condition at being made prisoner.  He and I were allowed more liberty than the other captives, and apart from the detention had little to complain of.

I was naturally much interested at first in looking round me and taking stock of the Japanese sailors and their vessel.  She was in superb fighting trim, beautifully clean and well found in every part, and the duty was carried on with thorough man-of-war smartness.  It was impossible to watch these little active, clever, determined sailors without feeling that the men of the finest navy in the world, which I take to be that of her Britannic Majesty, would find in them foemen worthy of their steel.  I remember that they were daily exercised at the guns, and the promptitude and precision with which they sank the Kowtung—­such was the unlucky despatch-boat’s name—­was a handsome testimonial to the accuracy of their aim.

Lieutenant Hishidi and I had many conversations, chiefly during his watches, and our talk generally turned on the war and nautical matters.  Of the Chinese he spoke with unmeasured contempt, certainly not undeserved, and said that the Japanese fleets and armies had no misgiving as to the result of the struggle; they felt able, against such opponents, to do anything and go anywhere—­“aussi loin que mer et terre puissent nous mener,” was his emphatic expression.

“We have been making this war for a long time,” said he, “and we feel sure of what we can do.”

I remarked on the extraordinary rapidity with which a nation, closed like the Japanese, up to within thirty years since, to European trade and European ideas, had adopted and assimilated the system of Western civilization.

“Yes,” he replied, “we can learn, and we have learnt, because we saw that the knowledge would give us a great advantage in our own part of the world.”

He had been in France, and expressed great admiration of French ship-building and French seamanship, and seemed doubtful when I maintained that British seamen would in case of war assert their superiority over the French ones just as decisively now as they ever had done in the past—­and of naval history in general Hishidi had a good idea.