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Show in the steerage, attack the crew at a given signal from the leader. One group attacks the bridge and seizes the captain, another the engine room, while n third covers the passengers at pistol's point nnd keeps them from interfering. After the ship has heon captured, the pilot is ordered to steer forfij point of land where comrades of t hdr pirates art- waiting. In the mean-l time, the passengers are robbed of their valuables, those to be taken captive lined up on the deck and' hound, while the ship's stores are relieved re-lieved of all articles that can be conveniently handled. The chief reason that piracy is al-j lowed to continue in South China is) that the British authorities are more) or less powerless to conduct an ex-i pedition on a big scale without infringing in-fringing on Chinese sovereign rights.; Although the Chinese authorities themselves have admitted their in-! ability to deal with the buccaneers,! they have refused many times to co-j perate with the British in any effort to punish the freebooters. CHINESE PIRATES OPENLY DEFY LAW "Trade" a Flourishing One in Eastern Waters The fine art of buccaneering as practiced by the sea wolves of south China may lack much of the romance and glamor of the days of the Spanish Span-ish Main, but the principle is axactly the same. Blood is spilled, ships are captured by the dozens and hundreds of captives carried oft' for ransom. In many respects, the Chinese buccaneer buc-caneer is a more crafty, more coldblooded cold-blooded individual than the Captain Kidds.of yore. Afraid of nothing except ex-cept possibly a bath, he pursues bis calling with methodical boldness and today, as centuries ago, spreads terror ter-ror and death among the ships plying the South China seas. Bias bay, about G5 miles from Hongkong, almost within the range of British guns, Is the stronghold of the pirate gangs. Almost continual warfare has been conducted against them for five decades, but they still carry on. Braving battleships nnd submarines, even nirplanes, they sally forth in their little junks, seize a merchantman, kidnap a few Chinese and return to their base where they appear to live the lives of simple and harmless fishermen. In the last ten years, an average of three foreign ships a year have been pirated in Bias bay territory. How many Chinese ships and junks have been seized is not known, but it is safe to presume that the total runs into three figures annually. Until recently little resistance was offered by the ship's officers and piracy was considered by the Chinese a fairly safe trade to follow. In the case of foreign vessels all piracies are committed by men posing pos-ing as passengers. The danger would be too great to risk staging an attack by the sea, although that method proved effective in the days of sailing sail-ing ships. With supplies of arms and ammunition ammu-nition smuggled aboard and the ship well out at sea, the pirates, usually |