The men stood up cheering like madmen; but firing started again from the
bushes, bullets came whistling over, and they were ordered to take
cover.
Saunderson ran back to his breast-work with his men.
"That was a pretty close shave, sir," said Williams, coming up and
painfully reloading his revolver with his wounded hand.
"A very close thing indeed," replied Cummins with a chuckle, as he
reloaded his.
Pattison lay on the ground without moving, blood pouring from his head;
one man was dead, lying half over the sand-bags with a bullet through
his chest; one had a bayonet wound in his thigh, and was sitting up
trying to stanch the flow of blood; another sat stupid and half stunned
with a blow on the head from the butt-end of a rifle.
"Sing out for Dr. Richardson," said Cummins, bending over Pattison.
"Here I am, sir," the Doctor answered, coming up with an axe in one hand
and an empty revolver in the other.
"I did not think it was the time to stand on professional etiquette,
sir."
"My word!" Williams burst out, "I saw that axe flying round, and, man
alive! you saved a beggar from running me through."
A cheer from Sergeant Haig's breast-work made them turn round, and they
saw the head of the _Strong Arm's_ party just appearing over the
shoulder of the hill, beyond the gun.
If fifty men ever cheered loudly these did.
"What about Pattison?" Cummins asked, before he hurried across to greet
them.
"Only stunned I think, sir; he's coming round already," answered Dr.
Richardson.
* * * * *
At the head of the _Strong Arm's_ party was Captain Hunter, looking like
an enormous school-boy out for a holiday, his great red face beaming
with sheer joy, and sniffing the air as stray bullets flew by.
He was followed on to the plateau by his men with the two Maxims and
their tripod stands, box after box of ammunition, more breakers of water
and more provision boxes, slung between them from poles across their
shoulders, coolie fashion.
The Commander hurried up to him.
"Never expected to see you yourself, sir," he said, as Hunter grasped
his hand.
"Well, fact of the matter is this. Helston sent me down in the
picket-boat at the last moment to recall you, but I got there too
late"--with a broad grin and a twinkle in his eye--"to do that, and,
well, when I saw my men going ashore by themselves, I simply couldn't
stay behind, and here I am. Hope we are not too late for a scrap. We
didn't start till nearly seven o'clock, and we've just taken two hours
and a quarter to climb up that confounded hill. My fellows are pretty
well fagged out."
"Only a quarter past nine!" Cummins exclaimed. "I thought it must be
past mid-day." He rapidly explained the situation. "We've just
repulsed a rush from the opposite side, and we have knocked over that
man Hopkins and thirty or forty of their men as well, so they won't be
coming on again just yet.
"Two of our people are killed, I am sorry to say, and five or six
wounded badly. Pattison is badly damaged, and Williams has a bullet
through his wrist. Down below us, under cover of those trees, there are
about three hundred Chinese blue-jackets, and as many more on the crest
behind those bushes. Those, though, won't be worrying us for some time.
"The _Sylvia_ is keeping down the fire of two field-guns which bothered
us a good deal at first from the opposite side of the harbour, and I am
depending upon Parker to keep my rear open."
"You won't be able to do so much longer," Captain Hunter replied; "the
barometer is going down rapidly, and a heavy sea was coming in even
before I left, and it is blowing hard now from the south."
It indeed was, sweeping up from the sea in great gusts which one turned
one's back to, and bringing heavy rain-squalls with it. Several of the
half-cut-through trees, which had not already been felled, had been
blown down, and the remainder swayed ominously.
"I'm afraid not, sir. Where will you have the Maxims?" asked Cummins.
"My dear chap, I'm only a volunteer. You're in command, and I'm only
too jolly glad to do anything you tell me."
"That can't be done, sir. You are the senior officer up here, and must
take command."
Captain Hunter's jolly face clouded over. "Well, look here, Cummins,
'pon my honour I'm confoundedly sorry I've come at all if it spoils your
game. Believe me, old chap, I never thought of it; I didn't, really!"
"I'm only too glad to have you, sir," Cummins said, and what he said he
meant--always. "Why, you are worth a dozen men yourself, sir!"
"D' you really mean that?" Hunter answered, his face flushing with pride
and pleasure, like the great school-boy he was. "We caught sight of a
lot of those skunks on our way up," he continued, "but they were much
too wily to come within reach of us."
"That is serious news, sir. The recoil cylinders of the Krupp gun are
empty, and I had to signal to Parker to send some drums of oil ashore.
They are on their way up now, with a dozen men."
"Phew!" whistled Hunter, "they'll run right into them."
Even as he spoke, the loud report of a solitary Martini was heard,
half-way down towards the sea, quickly followed by more shots, and then
a rattle of sharper reports--Mausers, evidently, by their short, sharp
cracks.
"I must go back for them; you carry on here;" and Captain Hunter sang
out for his marine officer, a dapper little subaltern, to follow him
with thirty men, and, with a cheery shout of "Come along, lads," went
striding down the hill he had just climbed.
Cummins now knew why bullets had almost ceased to whistle past either
from Bush Hill or the trees below him. The little party painfully
toiling up with its oil-drums had been sighted, and the pirate leaders,
knowing probably for what purpose the oil was being brought, had sent
most of their people to creep round under cover and intercept it.
* * * * *
Parker, from the unsteady platform of his destroyer's bridge, had heard
the first few rifle shots from the party which he had just landed to
rush those precious drums of oil to the top of the hill, and knew that
they were being attacked. He could see them, too, lying in a small
circle round their drums, and attempted, as best as he could, to shell
the dense cover from which they were apparently being attacked.
The Commander now semaphored from the top of the hill an urgent message
for him to do his utmost to protect them.
He could do nothing with his guns.
A heavy sea was driving in and pounding itself against the foot of the
hill, smashing to match-wood the boats which had been left on the beach.
The violent motion of "No. 3" herself made accurate shooting from any
gun absolutely impossible, and though Pat Jones crawled out of his
hammock down on the mess-deck to fire his beloved 12-pounder, even he,
splendid old gunner that he was, could do no better.
The little shells were as dangerous to his own men as to the Chinese,
and, not only had Parker to cease firing, but the necessity for
immediately steaming out to sea became completely obvious. He had
already hugged a lee shore too long, and must push away from these
treacherous rocks.
His feelings can be imagined when he was compelled to signal, "Cannot
maintain an accurate fire, and must haul out from the land".
"Hunter and Cummins will know I hung out to the last," was his only
consolation as he turned "No. 3" into the fierce rain squalls which
drove into his face, and plunged her bows into the heavy seas.
Cummins smiled grimly as the signal was reported to him, and anxiously
watched the destroyer fighting her way into safety.
With Parker unable to remain inshore, he knew that it was only a
question of minutes before Bannerman would be compelled to follow his
example, and expected momentarily to find himself once again under shell
fire from these two field-guns.
Another danger was also imminent--a much more serious danger.
Down in the harbour one of the older cruisers, either the _Mao Yuen_ or
the _Yao Yuen_, was being warped across to a spot almost under the ledge
which had concealed him the day before, with the very evident intention
of shelling the top of the hill from there.
Her guns would not be able to touch the Krupp gun, but with shrapnel he
knew that she could sweep the greater portion of the plateau, and knew,
too, that unless that oil arrived and enabled him to use his Krupp gun,
he could not possibly maintain his position. Once he could drop those
12-inch shells into the harbour, however inaccurately at first, he was
confident of being able to destroy that cruiser--in time.
But without that oil and without the support of the ships, the very
existence of the whole party was at stake; and the possibility of
cutting through the mass of encircling Chinamen, fighting his way,
encumbered with wounded, along the crest of the hill, and then
endeavouring to maintain his position at some other point, even the
possibility of rushing one of the forts at the entrance and standing at
bay there, flashed through his brain.
He could do nothing more to assist Captain Hunter at present, so he
employed his men in still further strengthening the sand-bag
breast-works. The Maxims were placed in sand-bag redoubts, one at the
angle between the Log Redoubt and the end of Saunderson's breast-works,
and the other between these two breast-works. Both swept any approach
up the harbour face of the hill by the zig-zag path, and the first also
commanded the bare crest between it and Bush Hill.
Sand-bags, too, were hauled to the edge overlooking the sea, and little
did the men think as they cheerfully piled them up that the Commander,
studying his notebook and the sketches he had taken the day before, was
debating the necessity of abandoning the hill, and the possibility of
rushing one of the two forts.
No rifle fire was annoying them, no shell fire alarming them. Captain
Hunter, whom they idolized, had gone to rescue the oil-drums; therefore
the oil-drums would be up at the top directly, and the big gun would
have the pirates at its mercy, so right cheerfully they worked, despite
the soaking rain sweeping the top of the hill.
Glover was standing near the Commander, blue with cold and soaked to the
skin. Cummins suddenly noticed him and his condition. "Go and help
with the sand-bags, boy; you can run this time," he chuckled, and turned
to watch Captain Hunter's progress below him.
He and his little party of thirty marines had disappeared among the
trees and bushes, crashing their way through them, but now they were
hotly engaged, and their progress could be traced, as they fought their
way down, by the line of smoke puffs which rose above the bushes.
The line steadily descended towards the little spot near the sea, from
which the rapid firing of more Martinis comforted him with the certainty
that the destroyer's men were still guarding the precious oil. The loud
reports of their big-bore rifles, however, were almost drowned by the
constant crackling of the small-bore Mausers.
Had he not been certain that, by a merciful dispensation, a Chinaman can
seldom be made to take aim, he would have thought it impossible for any
of the little band to survive.
Now the wind brought up the sound of British cheers--he could swear to
Captain Hunter's above the rest. The line of smoke puffs swept
downwards, and he knew that they had joined hands with the destroyer's
men.
Then came the upward struggle, and slowly they fought their way, whilst
the Chinese set up a shrill yell of triumph, and the Mauser fire
crackled in one continuous roar.
Still the line of black powder smoke advanced, but more slowly. Then he
saw, with anxious eyes, that it was stationary. The Chinese had got in
above Hunter and cut him off. He watched a single tree; the little
puffs of smoke came regularly behind it; the yells of triumph redoubled.
Captain Hunter and his men could advance no farther. Could he take the
tremendous risk of reinforcing them and still further weakening the
little garrison at the top of the hill?
His mind was made up in a moment, and he called Williams and Saunderson
to him and showed them the position of affairs.
"Take forty of your men, Williams; leave me Sergeant Haig; creep down to
the left till you get on a level with them, and rush their flank. There
is no hurry, and don't waste cartridges."
"Thank you, sir, my men want something to warm them."
As they filed down the hill towards the left, the two field-guns again
opened fire. Bannerman at last had been compelled to haul out in the
face of the gale.
"Take cover, men," Cummins sang out to the few bluejackets and marines
still left to him; "their bark is worse than their bite;" and he
remained in the open watching and waiting for Williams to come in touch
with the enemy.
He and his party had already disappeared among the trees which had
swallowed Captain Hunter and his men nearly an hour before. Ten minutes
went by and nothing happened. Minutes seemed like hours, and to his
tense nerves it seemed that the Chinese were closing in on Captain
Hunter, and that the Martini rifle fire was slackening. Surging through
his brain swept the burning thought that he had made not one, but two
mistakes.
To find the gun unable properly to control the harbour was bad enough,
but now his second mistake was ten times more serious. The Chinese
could fight, and his whole plans had been based on the opposite belief.
For a moment his own inherent optimism and resourcefulness, bred in the
bone through many generations of fighting men, deserted him. He saw the
failure of his scheme, the ruin it would bring to the whole squadron,
and the end of poor Helston's ambitions. Of his own fate he cared
nothing at that moment, but cursed himself for leaving the sea to
venture a soldier's job, and for sacrificing, to his own self-assurance,
the men who had so willingly followed him.
At that moment his vivid brain even pictured the final back-to-back
struggle and the sobbing panting of stricken men as one by one they
fell.
Would he be the last? he wondered.
A shell burst on the ridge, and the jagged fragments screaming past him
woke him from his nightmare to catch sight of Glover's scared face as he
stood at his side.
Putting his hand on the midshipman's shoulder he said softly: "Glover, I
am sorry; get under cover, boy."
But before Glover could move away a great burst of cheering came up from
below.
Williams and Saunderson, with their forty men behind them, were charging
into the flank of the unsuspecting Chinamen, and, hardly firing a shot,
they were driving them like sheep from Captain Hunter's path.
Yells of pain and shrieks of agony told that they were relying on cold
steel. The Martini fire broke out again with a roar, and now the line
of smoke began to ascend once more.
With a gasp of relief and a funny feeling at the back of his throat, the
Commander saw it coming towards him rapidly now, the whole eighty of
them cheering madly.
They had got the Chinamen "on the run".
"Bring a Maxim over here, Glover! Quick, boy! we shall have them when
they break into the open."
The cheering redoubled. Chinese suddenly appeared among the trees below
them, doubling to left and right as Hunter burst through with a dozen or
more of his men. Then came the destroyer's men with their drums of oil,
Collins the Sub at their head, a knot of men carrying some mess-mates,
and, bringing up the rear, Williams, Saunderson, and the marines
fighting slowly, running a few yards, then dropping behind a tree and
shooting downhill.
Directly the oil-drums were safe and the wounded had burst through,
Hunter swung his men round and went down again, his great, joyous,
bellowing cheer heard above the noise of Mauser or Martini. The Chinese
gave way and fell back down the hill. Some that tried to escape to the
left had to pass Sergeant Haig's redoubt, and his men knocked them over
like rabbits; others swept across the right towards Bush Hill, but then
the Maxim spoke with its horrid "br-br-br", and brought them down in
heaps.
In less than a minute not a living Chinaman was to be seen, but a
desultory fire commencing again from "Bush Hill" showed that they were
still under some control.
As Captain Hunter and his party, flushed with success and breathless
with their exertions, swung into the plateau, a shrapnel burst above
them, and the bullets, pouring down all round them, covered them with
dust. A marine fell with a yell, his thigh smashed, but no one else was
touched, and Hunter ran up to Cummins, who had now recovered his
composure. He was simply mad with the physical joy of fighting, and
this hailstone of shrapnel bullets had simply intoxicated him.
"My country! that was a pretty bit of fighting," he roared; "worth ten
years of ordinary life. I've got your oil, and we've brought every man
Jack back again. There's a man on the other side I'd like to shake
hands with--after my own kidney, that chap--a huge fellow with a black
beard; led 'em on time after time, but those skunks of Chinamen would
not follow him."
"He led the first rush," Cummins answered, trying to calm him, "and led
it well, too. Have you lost many men, sir?"
"What a brute I am!" he cried, the joy of battle quickly vanishing. "I
don't know exactly, but we've brought them all back. Before we came
ashore I told my men that if anyone fell he should not be left, and--and
they are splendid fellows, Cummins."
The casualties were serious enough. Five had been killed--two of the
destroyer's and three of the _Strong Arm's_--and eleven wounded--three
of these belonging to Captain Williams's party, three to the destroyer,
and the other five to Hunter's party.
"That oil is worth a good deal now," said Cummins sadly.
* * * * *
Behind the gun-pit parapet Dr. Richardson busied himself with the
wounded, a lieutenant of the _Strong Arm_, Gibbins by name, took charge
of the gun in place of poor Pattison and commenced to fill the recoil
cylinders, the less fatigued of the men carried on hauling sand-bags
towards the edge overlooking the sea, whilst the remainder, thoroughly
exhausted, lay down behind the breast-works.
Shells were still coming from those field-guns, but the _Strong Arm's_,
reassured by the _Laird's_, who had already begun to despise them, soon
learnt that they were harmless so long as they kept down behind their
sand-bags.
Meanwhile preparations were being made to shell the hilltop from the
guns of the cruiser which had been warped across the harbour. Her guns
could not at first be elevated sufficiently to reach the top of the
hill, but they were overcoming this difficulty by letting water into her
on one side and giving her a list to starboard, and thus tilting her gun
muzzles still farther upward.
Hunter and Cummins were anxiously watching this operation--necessarily a
slow one--and it was not completed before Gibbins rushed across to them
and reported the Krupp ready for action.
"We'll weigh in first, old chap!" Hunter exclaimed with glee.
A great shell, grooved and lead-coated to take the rifling, was hoisted
out of the magazine, the derrick raised it to the breech, a dozen men
shoved it home with a long rammer, a quarter charge of powder-bags
followed it, the clumsy breech-block was slowly worked across, Gibbins
sprang up to the sighting-platform and jammed in the friction-tube with
its lanyard, and all was ready.
Cummins coolly examined everything till he was satisfied that nothing
was wrong with gun or mounting, and then the ponderous mass of steel was
laboriously trained towards the spot where lay the cruiser under the
cliffs, at the opposite side of the harbour. From the sighting-platform
not even her masts could be seen, and the direction had to be roughly
found by means of rifle cleaning-rods stuck in a line on the edge of the
intervening plateau.
Clumsy this method was, but the best available.
Cummins grasped the lanyard, the gun's crew were ordered out of the pit
in case of accident, the marines, lying behind the breast-work at the
edge of the plateau and in front of the gun, were cleared out of danger,
and he gave it a sharp tug.
A huge cloud of smoke, a huge, bellowing roar, cubes of burning
gunpowder leapt down the side of the hill, some or the sand-bags were
blown over the crest, the muzzle of the gun cocked itself into the air
as the gun recoiled along its slides and then gently slid forward again.
Everyone rushed to the edge to see where the shell fell. Half a minute
of breathless anxiety, heedless of the bullets that were flying past,
and then, up on the cliffs, behind the cruiser, a balloon-shaped mass of
white smoke burst out, masses of rock leapt into the air and fell
splashing into the sea, and the roaring of the explosion tossed from
hill to hill, and, crashing from cliff to cliff with tremendous
reverberations, came up to them like thunder.
"Their game is up," shouted Hunter. "Cheer, men, cheer!"
Cummins, a quaint little rain-soaked figure, standing on the parapet of
sand-bags behind the gun, and with the lanyard still in his hand, simply
chuckled: "You can load again, men, she is quite safe."
*CHAPTER XXI*
*On One Gun Hill*
The Hill on Fire--Gunner Bolton, R.M.A.--I Help Dr.
Richardson--Doing Well--We Stir Up the Pirates--Reporting to the
"Laird"--A Yarn with Collins--A Overwhelming Rush
_Mr. Midshipman Glover relates his experiences_