the heavens were
bathed in blood; the arrival of hundreds of junks from seaward seeking
shelter: all these signs summed up were considered satisfactory reasons
for preparing for a typhoon--than which, I suppose, no wind is more
violent and destructive. It is said that persons who have never
witnessed the sublime and terrible spectacle can scarcely realize, even
from the most graphic descriptions of eye witnesses, what a typhoon
really means. A Chinaman informed me that the last typhoon destroyed not
less than 18,000 persons in this neighbourhood alone--not a large number
when we bear in mind the enormous floating populations in Chinese towns.
All the day the air was ominous of a coming something. At noon I asked a
Chinaman when it might be expected. His answer shewed me how even this
mighty destroyer is guided by a far mightier hand--"Suppose he no' com
now, he com by'm by, nine clock." Well, "he" did not come now; but at 9
p.m.--and almost simultaneous with the firing of the gun--it came on to
blow; but, mercifully, not a typhoon, only the spent violence of one.
Even this necessitated the letting go a second anchor and the steaming
head on to it, for upwards of five hours.

With the morning the gale had considerably abated, and as the barometer
was on the rise, and the captain impatient to clear out, we put to sea.
But clearly the weather was in a very unsettled state, and outside Amoy
the glass again went down with a rising head sea. That we might put into
Amoy for shelter, all the furnaces were called into requisition; so we
lashed into and almost buried ourselves in seas rearing themselves up
a-head of us like walls of solid glass. We brought up in the outer
harbour just as the shades of night and the roar of the coming storm
gathered around us. That night the wind and sea played fast and furious
with our ship; again we had escaped a typhoon--it was subsequently
ascertained that one did actually visit the adjacent coasts and sea;
but, as this wind travels in a circle of many miles diameter, with its
greatest force distributed near its circumference, its centre only
passed over Amoy. On steaming seaward the next morning desolation,
destruction, and wreck were everywhere manifest.

In due course we reached Nagasaki. In the bay was the Russian iron-clad,
"Minin," a ship--if all we hear about her be true--capable of blowing
the "Iron Duke" sky-high. She is, however, inferior to us in many
desirable qualities, particul