The guards were taken by surprise when the pirates opened fire, and were having a game of cards when the first bullets pierced the door to the room in which they were playing and which lies on the port side of the ship. They immediately dashed to strategically important points on deck and fired at the junk.
When the smoke of battle had cleared, it was found that two guards, Boris Konovaloss and Audrey Sharapoff, were lying on deck with serious shot-wounds.
Konovaloss, who was also in charge of the Russian guards, had been seriously injured in the chest whilst his commode had bullet wounds in the right leg. Both men are expected to survive.
HMS. Scarab, which was on patrol duty near the scene, immediately rushed to the rescue of the Tseangtah but arrived after the pirates had departed. The warship remained near by and patrolled that part of the river throughout the night, using powerful searchlights.
The Tseangtah, which is under charter to a local firm, left Shanghai on her usual trip up river yes-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.