The others all wanted to be very civil to him now, but Jim and I boomed
them off. He belonged more or less to us, and we weren’t going to have
them shoving their oars in too quickly.
Jim and I were very excited when we heard that the Commander was going
to land with the marines and try and blow up the six-inch gun. We hung
about outside his cabin, and shoved ourselves under his nose up on deck
all the afternoon, so that he shouldn’t possibly forget us. We expected
that he would take one, if not two midshipmen with him, and we didn’t
see why we should not go, and you can imagine how badly we wanted to go.
Everyone wanted to land with him especially, for he was such a "ripper",
and so jolly pleasant, and was always "smoothing over" things when
everyone was cross and bad-tempered, and felt he wanted to bite everyone
else’s nose off. He was very strict "service", but he never did small
irritating things, and treated us Mids and Cadets as though we were
human beings; several of the ward-room officers didn’t seem to think so,
quite. He had a great leathery face like the Captain’s, and was
tremendously popular with the men. We heard that he had nothing but his
pay to live on, and had a wife and family to keep. That was quite
enough, the A.P. used to say, to make any man solemn at times. He did
very often look worried, but when anything was "doing", he was always as
"buckish" as any of us.
Nobody had ever seen him in a bad temper, so no one ever minded having
to report things to him. If we had to report anything, a light or a
change of course, or anything like that, we had often to screw up our
courage before we tapped at the Captain’s door, for often he would
nearly bite our heads off. It was jolly different with the Commander,
for time after time I have had to wake him, at night or during his
afternoon sleep, and he would say, "Right you are, boy", as cheerfully
as anything. I remember once he said, "No trouble to wake me, Ford,
eh?" and I couldn’t help smiling, and he asked me what the joke was, and
I told him that I had just called the Captain, and—well—he hadn’t
enquired very civilly whether I had had trouble in waking him.
He knew all the Captain’s family. He used to go down there to shoot,
and had met my father and mother there too, so that was probably the
thing that just made the difference when he had to choose a midshipman,
because he did choose me.
Wasn’t that absolutely splendid? And Jim was to go with Mr. Whitmore;
so we were both simply wild with delight, and rushed down to tell
everyone. He had sent for us in his cabin, and he looked very grim and
sad when we went there, but he didn’t look quite so serious when we
left. He was so amused at our being so jolly excited, I expect; but we
couldn’t help that.
He had shown us the map thing which Mr. Hoffman had drawn, and explained
exactly what he was going to do; and told us to take revolvers, not
dirks or cutlasses, as they would only get in the way, and to wear the
boots with the broadest soles, as we should have to wade through mud;
and as they would be slippery afterwards, to get big nails put in them,
because we should probably have to do a lot of scrambling.
We were the only two midshipmen who were going to actually land; but
Withers was going inshore in the barge, Jones in the first cutter, and
Webster in the steam pinnace.
Webster was to tow us in as far as he could go, and the cutter and the
barge were to wait for us after we had landed, and in case they should
be wanted to cover our getting aboard again, a Maxim gun was mounted in
the bows of the barge, and another in the bows of the cutter. The others
were rather jealous of Jim and myself, because, of course, we had only
just joined the ship. We didn’t care a tuppenny "rap" about that,
however.
We sent for our bandsman servant, and he took our boots away to one of
the bluejackets who mended boots. He hadn’t the proper kind of
nails—none left, at any rate—but the ones he did put in were a jolly
sight better than none at all.
As it got dark, and the rain stopped and some stars came out, and
everything seemed to be promising well, we were too excited to eat our
dinner, and as to sleeping, we couldn’t possibly get a wink, and were
out of our hammocks directly it struck one bell (half-past twelve), long
before the sentry came round to wake us. We had two bits of candle all
ready, and we dressed by their light, very quietly, not to wake anybody,
and then slipped on deck. But of course we were much too early, and had
to wait a very long time. However, it made us hungry, and we ate a
whole tin of gingerbread biscuits between us; and when the rest of the
people began turning out, and they brought round hot cocoa, we had a
jolly big whack of that.
Then they began "falling in", and the Commander came up with a sword and
revolver and haversack, yawning and looking tired, and Captain Marshall,
with his eyeglass just showing in the lantern light, pulled on his
gloves and looked jolly much a soldier all over. He had his long sword
hitched up to his waist, and his cap beautifully on the side of his
head, and his moustache all carefully trained, and he winked at us with
the eye that wasn’t holding the eyeglass.
We heard him start a yarn to Mr. Whitmore and Dr. Barclay, who was
coming with us as well, "When I was the handsomest subaltern in the
British army, my dear chaps——" and they both laughed and "hee-hawed"
till the Sergeant-major came up, jerked his arm stiffly to the salute,
and reported the marines ready for inspection. This was the time we
often waited to see, because he used to change from being a funny man to
a soldier, and we always watched to see him snap his teeth together,
shove out his under jaw, look very fierce, and walk round his men,
looking as though he’d never had a funny thought all his life, and was
simply thinking of nothing but soldiering.
The Commander’s grimness was gradually wearing off, and when Captain
Marshall had told him one or two funny stories, and he had laughed
several times, he became quite cheerful. The Captain came up, too, when
everything was ready, and he nodded at me, "Getting more experience,
Ford?" and stood under the quarterdeck lantern, where everybody could
see him, and growled out, "Good luck, men! Hope to see you all back by
daylight." The boats had dropped alongside by this time, and we all
began to file down into them. Jim gave me a parting pinch, and went
down the port side into the cutter, and I went down the starboard side
into the barge, with the Commander and Dr. Barclay and the marines. The
steam boat took us in tow, we picked up the cutter, and began to move
away from the ship. I had just thought how jolly it would be to have a
send-off "cheer", when we heard the Captain’s voice roar, "Three cheers
for the Commander and the ’landing party’," and to judge by the noise, I
should imagine that everyone on board had turned out and come on deck.
Without waiting for orders, we started cheering in the boats, and as we
passed the _Sparrow_ her people cheered us too. It made my heart go
thumping like mad, and just did the right thing for the Commander. You
knew, by the way he cheered, that he had forgotten all his worries.
The _Goldfinch_ was on the other side of the _Vigilant_, and I don’t
know whether they cheered us or not. She still had those two dead men
on board, so probably didn’t.
"They won’t hear us ashore, I suppose, sir?" I asked the Commander.
"Too far for that, Ford," he said, and sang out for the men to carry on
smoking. The steam pinnace seemed to make a tremendous noise ahead of
us, but I expect that that was only "fancy". At any rate, we seemed to
bubble along jolly fast in the dark. The stoker in her, like the ass he
was, must have been keeping up a very big head of steam, because once or
twice flames came out of the funnel. The Commander shouted for them to
ease down, and we had some difficulty in making them hear. I thought
that they never would, and the funnel was like a big torch, and could
have been seen many miles away; but at last they heard and eased down.
The Commander ordered them to disconnect her fan, and after that no more
flames showed. You see, the air is forced through the fires by means of
a little fan, worked by an endless belt from the main engines, and when
they are going fast it blows the flames up the funnel.
If it had been the Captain, I know that he would have been frightfully
angry, and punished the stoker later on; but the Commander only said,
"The poor idiot was doing his best", and was quite calm, although, of
course, it might have given the whole "show" away directly.
Although we went along much more slowly, the few lights on shore were
getting bigger and bigger. Presently the steam boat steamed very
slowly, indeed, and then stopped, and we ran alongside. It was low
tide, and we had begun to get into the narrow channel, running up the
creek into the town.
Mr. Lawrence was in the steam boat—I had not seen him before—and had
been navigating us. Then we heard Mr. Hoffman’s voice.
"Good heavens! what are you doing here?" the Commander asked.
"I’m coming with you," he said. "I will show Whitmore the way up to
that gun."
The Commander told him that he was not well enough, and tried to
persuade him to go back, but he absolutely refused, and crawled across
us into the cutter. "I’ve taken half a bottle of quinine, and shall be
all right. You could never find that gun by yourselves."
We could see, even in the dark, how "shaky" he was.
Then Lawrence shoved off back again to wait for us, the steam boat
giving a few swirls with her screws, and slipping away out of sight in a
moment.
It was simply pitch dark, and when I tell you that though Withers was
sitting behind me, and had his knees in my back, and yet I couldn’t see
his face when I turned round, you will understand how dark it was.
We then started to pull inshore. The oars had been muffled by having
strips of fearnought (thick flannel, almost like felt, which the stokers
make into trousers for stokehold work) bound round them where they
rubbed in the rowlocks, and the rowlocks themselves had more fearnought
nailed all over them, so that they only made a soft noise, with a squeak
now and again.
We were quite close to the shore on our port side, and one or two little
streaks of light—I suppose they came from the fishermen’s huts—didn’t
look more than a hundred yards away.
I was very nervous and excited, and when a dog suddenly began to bark,
and we could actually hear him rushing down a loose stone beach close to
us, my heart seemed to stop beating with a jerk for a little time.
We lay on our oars, he gave one or two angry barks—they seemed to be
just outside the boat—and then we heard him give a whine as though he
was tired and yawning, he scampered up the beach, gave a low growl, and
was quiet.
We went on again, but it was so dark that the Commander crept for’ard
into the bows, and we felt our way very slowly along the edge of the
mud, shoving her off with boat hooks whenever we got too close.
We had passed some of those lights—they were right behind us now—so that
I knew we were well up the creek. We couldn’t see where the water ended,
but farther away it was blacker still, and I knew that this was the
steep beach and the shore behind it. I tried to remember that drawing,
and hung over the side and tried to make out those fishing stakes. We
seemed to go on like this for a very long time—we were pulling very
slowly against the last of the ebb tide—and then the blackness on our
left seemed to get nearer and more upright, and I knew that we must be
almost abreast of the battery. I couldn’t see Mr. Whitmore’s cutter,
and could very seldom hear it, although we knew that it was very close
behind us. A few dogs were barking somewhere inland. There was one,
away on our right, howling every minute or two, a most creepy kind of
howl, and there were two who answered him on our side of the town.
Sometimes others would join in, and you would almost recognize the
different barks. I longed for them to leave off. That was the only
noise, except the slight splash as the oars dug into the water, and the
soft thump against the sides of the row-locks as they dragged them out;
but now that we were listening so hard, and were so excited, even this
seemed to be very great.
Then something scraped against our bows and knocked the low oars, and
the noise seemed awfully loud and startling. A lot of the men let out
"Oh!" under their breath; they were so excited and jumpy. I don’t
wonder either, because the marines were simply sitting on the thwarts,
with their rifles between their knees, and they had nothing to do except
to prevent them rattling against anything.
We hauled ourselves up, and the Commander came aft, leant over the side
and felt it, and the coxswain, who had been there before with the
Captain, felt it too, and he whispered to the Commander that it was one
of the fishing stakes.
We pulled to the side and came across some more, so felt sure.
The dark mass of the cutter came quite close to us.
"I’ve found the first line, the second is fifty yards farther on; you go
back about thirty yards," the Commander whispered across to Mr.
Whitmore. There were a few click, clicks, and the cutter disappeared
again. We started to pull out round that first line of stakes, but we
had made more noise with our oars, knocking against them—the men
couldn’t help that—and suddenly, right over our heads, it seemed,
someone yelled out.
I clutched hold of Captain Marshall’s arm—it was the first thing my
fingers touched—and I heard him give a gulp; but the Commander "hissed",
and we lay on our oars and held our breath. It must have been a sentry
or a watchman, and he sang out again, and I felt as if I was throbbing
all over. Then we heard him muttering to himself. The tide had taken
us clear of the stakes, and the Commander whispered "to give way", and
we pulled round the end one without hitting it; but the sentry could
hear the oars, and sang out again. The men began to pull faster, and
the oars made an awful noise. More Chinamen began shouting—one quite a
long way in front, and then several more.
"Starboard!" I heard the Commander say; "starboard, hard!" and then knew
that in another half-minute we should be scrambling ashore. I crept
along to the bows with the Commander, to be ready to follow him. We had
hardly got there when the bows ran into the mud with a jerk, and I had
to hang on to the gun mounting to prevent being knocked over. "Keep on
’giving way’, Withers!" the Commander sang out, and slipped down into
the water without the least hesitation. It was up to his waist, and he
held out a hand for me. I fell in after him up to my armpits, with my
feet sinking in the beastly mud at the bottom. I was so excited, that I
didn’t notice how cold it was; but it just flashed through me how
Captain Marshall could do it, with all his beautiful uniform on, and
then I found myself wading after the Commander, and pulling my feet out
of the mud. There was enough noise now to wake anybody. No one could
help the rifles and everything else knocking against the side of the
boat, and the splashing, and the men cursing under their breath. There
were some frightened cries above us, and a rifle was let off (it sounded
like a six-pounder), and all the dogs in the town seemed to start
barking; but we were all too excited and busy getting through the water
and mud to notice much. In half a dozen steps the water was only up to
my knees, and in two or three more I dragged my feet out on to firm mud,
and started to break into a kind of "splodgy" trot to keep up with the
Commander—I could only just see his dark figure, and had to keep close
for fear of losing him.
Then the beach began to slope up, and was quite hard, and we ran over a
lot of shells and loose stones, the water running off me and squelching
inside my boots. I was out of breath and panting, and my clothes had
all stuck to me, especially my trousers over my knees, and the Commander
wouldn’t stop, and never once looked back to find out how many men were
following. He seemed to disappear in a very black shadow; but it was
only a bank about four feet high, with stiff grass on the top, and he
helped me, and someone shoved me, and I got a lot of sand or earth in my
mouth, and spat it out. The Commander stopped for a moment, and I was
only too glad to get back my breath. We could see some lights moving
backwards and forwards, and appearing and disappearing at regular
intervals, and knew at once that men were running about inside the
battery, and that they shone out when they passed one of the gun
embrasures. There was any amount of calling and shrieking going on.
The Commander drew his sword, I saw Captain Marshall close to me with
his sword drawn, any number of dark figures kept scrambling over the
bank; the Commander yelled, and we all yelled and rushed straight ahead.
Several people behind me fell—I heard them—and I heard Captain Marshall
cursing, and asking "Where the blooming buttercups his eyeglass was?"
and then there shot out from the dark wall a most tremendous flame, with
an awful roar—they had fired one of the guns. It seemed as if it was
almost in our faces, and I turned my head half round, and the flame
lighted up the men’s faces just for a moment. It showed us all the
outline of the battery as well, and, what was better, a little path, and
we raced along it, cheering like mad. I think that they must have been
firing at us with rifles as well, but I don’t know, and the next thing I
remember was clambering up a stone parapet, with someone’s feet in my
face, which I hardly noticed at the time, digging my nails into some
cracks, and then getting my arms round something hard and round. I
"muscled" up, and found it was one of the little guns, and knew I was in
one of the embrasures. "Get along, curse you," someone yelled; "give me
a hand with this rifle," and scrambled up after me. I couldn’t get down
for a second, because there were so many in front, and the man simply
took a flying leap past me. He didn’t know who I was in the dark.
I got down somehow or other, and then hunted for the Commander, heard
him shouting away to the left, and got close to him again. We were
right inside the battery, and we followed the wall—inside—all round, and
not a Chinaman was there. We were all cheering like mad, or panting for
breath, and then we saw some lights from huts fifty yards away, and
crowds of Chinamen running backwards and forwards in front of them, and
heard more yelling. Without waiting for any orders, everybody rushed
towards them and carried me along too, doing my best to keep with the
Commander.
There weren’t any Chinamen there when we got to the huts, and the men
were for rushing on, but the Commander managed to halt them, and we
could hear the mob running away and making a squealing, frightened
noise, but couldn’t see them. Three yards away from the lighted huts
everything was simply pitchy black.
"Get back to the battery, boys!" the Commander shouted; "they’ll be
coming back soon." The men had to fall "in" just inside the battery
wall, behind the little guns, and we found that no one was missing.
I don’t think that the Commander knew quite what to do then. I heard
him telling Captain Marshall and Dr. Barclay that he wished the Chinamen
had made a fight of it instead of running away, because he feared that
they would simply bolt back to the six-inch gun, and that Mr. Whitmore’s
party would never get to it.
Whilst we were waiting like this, I had time to notice all the noises.
Talk about dogs! I should have thought that all the dogs in the world
wouldn’t have made so much noise. There must have been simply thousands
of them barking away all over the town; and some came running out of the
darkness into the light from those huts, and we could see their eyes.
It was something for me to do to throw stones at them, and the bugler
boy—Wilkins—helped me; they would howl if a stone went near them, and
rush away yelping. It was jolly good fun doing this. All of a sudden
there was a dull crash behind us, as if a heavy weight was rolling down
outside the battery.
"What was that?" I heard the Commander shout, rather nervously, and he
went across, and I followed him.
"Very sorry, sir," the Sergeant-major said. "Some of the men chucked a
gun over the wall, sir. I’ve taken their names, sir."
"Let ’em chuck them all over, sir," Captain Marshall suggested; and we
did. We had them all—five there were—tumbled in the ditch in no time.
Four men could lift a gun, and if they couldn’t heave it out of its
wooden carriage, another two would help them, and heave it over, gun and
carriage too. The men enjoyed it, and so did I, and we began pitching
over the little round shot which lay there in heaps, and some grape-shot
done up in basketwork.
There was another wait after that, and we all were bitterly cold. My
nose was running, and below the waist I felt like ice.
The Commander still didn’t seem to know what to do. He had put a few men
out past the huts to warn us in case any Chinese came along, but it was
so dark that he couldn’t see how the ground lay, or the best position to
take up, in case we were attacked.
Then Dr. Barclay had a brilliant idea, and suggested setting fire to the
huts. "They’ll light the place up and dry our clothes, sir," he said.
"Right O!" the Commander chuckled, and it didn’t take many minutes
before they were all of them blazing away like fun.
The Commander said that I could help, so Wilkins and I ran over to the
huts, turned over a funny old lamp burning inside one of them, and set
fire to a lot of shavings and straw. The smoke drove us out, but then
we set fire to the outside in half a dozen places, and soon had a grand
blaze going. It was jolly comforting to stand there and feel our
clothes drying, though the wind would puff the smoke back into our eyes
sometimes.
"Fifth of November, almost, ain’t it, sir?" Wilkins said.
"And there go the fireworks, too," he shouted; and there was a banging
and spluttering in the hut next to ours, and little bits of it flew
about.
"Those are cartridges going off," the Commander shouted, running up.
"Clear out of it, men."
They had begun to move away, and, when he called, moved faster; we’d
hardly got clear before there was a tremendous "hurroosh", and the whole
hut seemed to go right up, and burning planks, strips of thatch and
matting, went flying along through the air, and began blazing away
wherever they fell. My aunt! it did make a smoke, though there wasn’t
much noise, only a very loud "poof", and everyone went scampering back
to the battery with his head down, trying to dodge the bits. We did
laugh.
"Funny place for their magazine, eh, Commander?" I heard Captain
Marshall chuckle; and we all kept pretty clear of the others. The
explosion had made the dogs stop barking—just for a few seconds—just
time for us to hear noises as if the townspeople were waking up at last.
"They’re getting ’busy’ over there," Captain Marshall said. "That
sounds as if our friends would be coming to call on us shortly."
I think that the Commander and he wanted them to come very badly, and I
didn’t mind either, because I wasn’t so cold now, and the flames lighted
the place all round grandly.
They walked all round the lighted-up part, and decided that the best
position for the men would be standing on the shore of the battery wall,
firing over that, and for some men to stand on the beach, farther along,
at each end, and fire over the bank which we all had to climb over. We
couldn’t hear a sound of Mr. Whitmore’s party; but there was another
strange noise like the quacking of thousands of ducks—you could hear it
even with the flames roaring and crackling and the dogs barking.
"Whatever is it, sir?" Wilkins asked me; but I didn’t know, and asked
Dr. Barclay.
"Bull frogs, down in the paddy fields below the six-inch gun," he told
me, and I didn’t say any more, because I thought that he was pulling my
leg.
A few minutes afterwards, the Commander and Captain Marshall and Dr.
Barclay all went along past the huts—they were having a look round—and
Wilkins and myself followed behind them. The flames were between us and
the sea, and suddenly something whistled past me, and I jerked my head
round, and then there was the noise of a rifle going off—and another—and
another, and flick—flick—flick—flick, the bullets went whizzing past us.