DANGER ZONES: Boarding Party

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The coastal ferryboat Takshing, flying the British flag, put out from Hong Kong one night last week on her regular three-hour run to Portuguese Macao. In the China Sea, a Red Chinese gunboat came up, signaled the ship to stop. But her captain ignored the order until the Communist craft sent a burst of machine-gun fire across the Takshing's bow.

As a Red boarding party, more than 30 strong, clambered to the Takshing's deck, her 300 Chinese passengers were seized by panic. One old woman knelt and chanted prayers to the Goddess of Mercy.

Others destroyed letters and notes, dumped anti-Communist magazines over board. A Red officer yelled, "Don't move!

Don't talk!" Then the Reds lined up the passengers, singled out two men whom they prepared to take off the boat. One protested that he should not be seized without evidence. Said the Red officer:

"We don't need to give evidence."

When the man resisted, he was beaten, gagged and bound with rope. But the Red officer politely asked the Takshing's master the cost of the rope, which belonged to his ship. "The People's Army and Navy," declaimed one of the Reds, "do not take a thread or a needle away from anybody." He promised to send $5 next day, then announced: "We are arresting special agents who sabotage our country's economy. The men we want are guilty of forging 50 billion J.M.P. [Red Chinese currency]."

The Red gunboat was gone by the time a British frigate and destroyer arrived on the scene. To add insult to injury, Chinese Communist shore batteries on a near by island opened fire on Her Majesty's vessels. The best they could do was return the fire, for five minutes.