"What a grand chap the old man is!" Marshall said. "No wonder the men
would do anything for him. Hasn’t he a grand ’few words’?"
The rain had ceased, and the night showed signs of being clear though
cold, and the breeze was not strong enough to make boat work difficult.
I tried to make Ford and Rawlings turn in directly after dinner, but
they—like the two young fools they were—were much too excited to do any
such thing. I turned in myself, but that drawing which Hoffman had made
seemed to haunt me. Directly I turned my light out and shut my eyes, I
saw it, and even now, when I am much worried, it comes before me as
clearly as it did that night.
I couldn’t sleep a blessed wink, and at one o’clock my servant called
me, bringing some cocoa and biscuits.
I had no appetite for anything, and it was so cold that I shivered as I
dressed.
*CHAPTER XI*
*The Landing Party*
Left Behind—"You’ll Do—Some Day"—"Dicky"—Preparation to
Land—"Good Luck, Men!"—In the Boats—Scrambling Ashore—Rushing
the Battery—Setting Fire to the Huts—A Hot Corner
_Written by Midshipman Ford_
I have so very much to tell you, that I hardly know where to start; but
I think that I had better begin where we met the old _Vigilant_ steaming
away from Tinghai. It was simply grand to take Mr. Travers back to her,
and to go alongside her in the dark with everybody looking over the side
and cheering. There was a very nasty sea running, and they were a long
time getting the wounded across; but no one was hurt, and it was
splendid to know that Dicky would now be a jolly lot more comfortable
than he could be in the _Ringdove_.
They gave Jim and me a splendid "blow out" in the gunroom, and we simply
had a grand time. There was only one thing which made us miserable—the
Captain didn’t seem at all pleased. I had been so longing for him to be
pleased—everything I had done I had done for him—and had been looking
forward to what he would say when I saw him, and when he knew that I had
rescued Mr. Travers.
It wasn’t till after Mr. Rashleigh had gone away that he spotted me. I
had been hanging about and getting in his way on purpose, and when he
growled out in a surly manner, "Umph! Lost my junk, have you, and four
good men—Umph!—and haven’t got anything to show for ’em either?" and
turned away, I almost felt inclined to blub, and Jim was just as
miserable.
Mr. Trevelyan had been snubbed nearly as much, and he was furious, and
said, "That fat little beast Rashleigh has been spinning yarns, that’s
what it is." The Captain was certainly rather nicer when he came down
into the gunroom after dinner and made a speech; but no one ever says
nasty things in a speech at that time of night, so it didn’t nearly
"make up".
Still, everything else was so jolly, and it was so glorious to know that
Mr. Hoffman had escaped from the fire after all, and that we had found
out where Sally and her father were, and that we were actually on our
way to rescue them, that we couldn’t feel miserable for long.
Next morning Mr. Trevelyan sent for Jim and myself in his cabin.
"I told you what it was," he burst out, red with rage. "It was that
overfed, bloated hog! Look at his report! The Commander has just given
it to me to read. I’m going off to tell him our side of the show," and
he rushed off, but came back again redder than ever. "I’m to wait till
I’m cooler, as if I wasn’t as cool as a cucumber in an ice chest;" and
he stamped about his cabin.
Later on, however, we were all sent for, one after the other, and told
the Commander our own accounts of what happened, and some time
afterwards were ordered to send in our own reports in writing.
Neither Jim nor I went ashore with the Captain that first night when he
blew a hole in the tramp steamer, and we knew that it was because he was
still angry with us. We would have given our skins to go; but we both
pretended that we didn’t mind, and that as the night was so cold and
awfully wet, it was jolly lucky that we hadn’t gone. We determined to
have a jolly good feed, and then turn in early and get a jolly good
night’s rest, and we yarned with Dicky and tried to pretend that we were
having a good time. It wasn’t much of a success, however, and we soon
found ourselves on the fore bridge in the rain, looking at the flashes
and then waiting for the "booms" from the guns with a beastly feeling
inside, because we weren’t there ourselves. We got just as wet and cold
as they did, almost.
I was more lucky than Jim, because I did have something to do, and went
with Mr. Trevelyan very early in the morning to bring off Mr. Hoffman’s
Chinaman. We had to hang about near a big rock at the back of the
island, and directly it was light "stand by" for a piece of red bunting
to be waved from shore. We must have been there for more than an hour,
and thought that he had either gone back to Mr. Whitmore in the steam
cutter, or perhaps been collared by the pirates. When we did see it
wave, we fetched him off pretty quickly, and shoved along back to the
_Vig_ just as hard as we could go. You see, we were certain that he had
good news, because Mr. Trevelyan drew pictures of a thin little man and
a girl and showed them to him, and he seemed to understand, and nodded
his head and pointed to the island. He kept on saying "Vely good" all
the way off to the ship. I don’t think he knew any more English words.
On our way back we watched the six-inch gun firing, and dropping her
shells or shot all over the place. Some of them fell very close to the
_Vigilant_, and we wondered why Captain Lester didn’t reply.
"How would you like to be there?" Mr. Trevelyan asked.
"Ra—ther!" I told him, and he smiled. "It’s all right if you’re doing
something yourself, but it’s a jolly different thing when you’re simply
waiting for them," and that made me think of my horrible funk when those
two shore guns had fired point blank at the _Sally_, and I was rather
sorry I had spoken.
Mr. Trevelyan laughed when he saw them all falling in for "Divisions" on
board the _Vig_. "That’s ’Old Lest’ all over," he said. "I bet he’s in
a towering passion."
Jim told me afterwards that he didn’t like the shooting a little bit,
and if they all hadn’t been so afraid of the Captain, they would have
hated it all the more. That was the day we wrote our reports—the
_Ringdove_ coming made the Commander remember about them—and I put it
all down very clearly, how I had done my best to escape from the four
junks, and why I had been obliged to run down through the middle of
them. I told exactly how I and all those who were left of the _Sally’s_
crew had brought Mr. Travers off in the _Ringdove’s_ cutter, and put in
a lot about Scroggs and Sharpe and all of them. You see, I wanted
Captain Lester to get Scroggs’s wife as big a pension as possible,
because of all the children.
I didn’t want to say much about Dicky, because—well, you know what I
mean—I was only a very few places senior to him, although he was only a
cadet, and it seemed so cocky.
But Mr. Trevelyan made me do it, and I explained it all to Dicky.
Afterwards Mr. Trevelyan wrote some pretty hot stuff too. This was part
of it: "With regard to the alleged disobedience of the orders of
Lieutenant and Commander Rashleigh to proceed to the given rendezvous, I
considered that the information obtained from Midshipman Ford of the
_Sally_ made it imperative that further and more definite information
should be obtained. Your" (that was Captain Lester’s) "original orders
to me were to obtain such information at all costs, and I considered
this the opportunity to act upon them. As a direct result, I discovered
the whereabouts of one of the headquarters of the pirates, and
indirectly was the means of the rescue of Mr. Travers."
We took them to the Commander, who made us rewrite them and "tone down"
many things; but they were pretty good "snorters" for Mr. Rashleigh,
even after that.
The Captain must have thought that he had been a little unjust, because
later on in the day he saw me on the quarterdeck and stopped me. He
glared at me for a moment, and with his legs wide apart, growled out:
"Seem to have shown more sense than I thought. Umph! You’ll do—some
day," and left me feeling jolly happy.
Of course when the _Goldfinch_ and _Sparrow_ arrived, Mr. Langham and
Mr. Forbes and the midshipmen of the other junks came back to the
_Vigilant_. They hadn’t any experience worth telling, compared to ours,
except Webster, who had managed to run his junk ashore, and the
_Goldfinch_ had spent all her time getting her off again.
Jim and I nudged each other; we didn’t like Webster.
Dicky didn’t come off badly either. You know that we all called him
"Dear Little Dicky", all except Jim, who flatly refused to obey the
Sub’s order, and had been caned twice by him for not doing so. He was
let alone afterwards.
Dicky hated it; it had made his life absolutely miserable; and now Mr.
Langham, as soon as he got back, held a Court of Enquiry down in the
gunroom about our losing the junks. I didn’t care a snap what he
thought or said about it, nor did Jim. The whole thing was only got up
for his amusement—his and Hamilton’s (the big Engineer Sub) and
Webster’s; but one of their "findings" was this. I copied the "rot" off
the notice board in the gunroom:
COURT OF ENQUIRY,
Held in the Gunroom, H.M.S. _Vigilant_,
At Sea, _April_ 7th.
As a result of the Court of Enquiry held last night to enquire into the
loss of H.M.S. _Sally_ and H.M.S. _Ferret_, Mr. Ford commanding the one
and Mr. Rawlings the second in command of the other, these officers have
been adjudged to have borne themselves with credit to the gunroom, but
are cautioned not to do so again. It has also been decided, affirmed,
and we do hereby solemnly declare, that Mr. Morton, hitherto known as
Mr. Dear Little Dicky, worked a Maxim gun so accurately, and polished
off so many niggers before he was knocked over, stunned, incapacitated,
and otherwise by flow of his blood rendered _hors de combat_, that he is
entitled to some signal reward.
We do therefore proclaim, announce, and order that from henceforth,
evermore, and hereafter he shall be known as "Dicky".