"Mr. Hopkins is dying, sir. That is his will, and he wanted to know it
was safe aboard here. He has left everything to Milly."
"To Milly!" said Dr. Fox, astounded. "I knew that he did meet her two
or three times. Was he too in love with her?"
"Yes, sir; I think she half promised to marry him. Aren't you awfully
sorry for him, sir?"
Dr. Fox smiled that cynical smile that made you want to kick him.
"I can't stop here all day," he growled. "I'm short-handed with
Richardson away, and must look after my job. You have had enough
fighting to last you till doomsday, so just you go down to the
ammunition passages and wait there till I come."
"Can't I stay on deck, sir?"
"Do what I tell you!" he snarled, and, to see that I obeyed him, he took
me down below himself.
*CHAPTER XXIII*
*The Attack on the Forts*
Below the Armoured Deck--We Engage the Forts--We Silence the
Forts--My Wounds are Dressed
_Mr. Midshipman Glover's Narrative continued_
The men were hurriedly closing water-tight doors and lowering the
water-tight hatchway covers. Dr. Fox and I must have been nearly the
last to go below, for the men had to stop lowering the big armoured
hatchway cover aft, in order that we might scramble through it and climb
down the steep iron ladder to the magazine flats.
The heavy iron armour fell into place with a thud. I heard the men
above screwing down the clamps which secured it, and for the first time
in my life realized that we were shut in below the armoured deck, and
wondered how we were going to escape if anything happened.
Of course I had often been there before during drills, but this was the
real thing, and I felt like a rat in a trap.
The big space we were now in was called the "cross passage", and ran
right across the ship, with the sloping dome of the armoured deck above
it. The magazines opened into it at the after end, and on each side the
ammunition passages ran for'ard. These were two tunnels just broad
enough for two men to squeeze past, and just high enough for them to
stand erect. They ran along each side of the ship, under the curved
edge of the armoured deck, to open into another cross passage for'ard,
where were more magazines, and from the top of them rose the ammunition
hoists--great armoured tubes, five on each side--leading up to the main
and upper deck 6-inch guns.
From the for'ard cross passage a huge armoured tube ran up to the
fo'c'stle to feed the fo'c'stle 8-inch gun, and there was a similar one
running up from the after cross passage to the quarter-deck gun.
Standing underneath and looking up through this one, I could just catch
a glimpse of the sky; but of course no daylight came down, and though
there were electric lights here and there on the bulk-heads, it was very
gloomy.
Men were in the whitewashed magazines, with felt slippers on their feet,
handing out 6-inch shell and cartridge-cases. Others, rushing out from
the darker ammunition passages, seized them, shoved them into little
canvas bags bound with rope, and dashed back again to feed their own
especial ammunition hoist. Hooking the bags to a rope which ran up the
tube, passed over a pulley-wheel at the top and led down again, they
hauled the shell and cartridges up to the 6-inch gun above them.
I crouched in a corner to be out of the way, and as it grew hotter and
hotter, and the stifling air became full of dust, the electric lights
themselves began to blur indistinctly; and the men, leaping along the
passages, jostling each other as they passed, muttering as they barked
their shins or dropped a projectile, clothed in nothing but boots, duck
trousers and flannels, their faces and necks streaming with
perspiration, looked like demons.
A stoker near me, one of two who stood by with a fire-hose, muttered to
his mate, "Blow me, Bill, if it ain't as 'ot as 'ot."
"You've 'it it to a shovelful; it's wurs'n what them stoke'olds are," I
heard Bill reply, as he cut off some tobacco and stuffed it into his
cheek.
"So long as we don't get no blooming fire down 'ere, I'm a-comfortable
enough a-standin' 'ere a-watching of them others a-workin'. But what
breaks me 'eart every time," he continued, "we don't seem to never get
no 'ead o' water through this 'ere hose-pipe. I don't 'old with them
new-fangled pumps they've got aboard this 'ere junk."
"The same 'ere," answered his mate, and they settled themselves
comfortably on the coiled-up fire-hose to enjoy their quids of tobacco.
Dr. Fox, the three Paymasters, the Chaplain, and the sick-bay people
were trying to get a clear corner, and were laying out bandages,
tourniquets, and surgical dressings, the mere sight of which made me
feel horribly uncomfortable, and more like a rat in a trap than ever.
It was bad enough whilst the men were rushing to and fro, and in that
thick, stuffy atmosphere you could smell nothing but sweating men; but
presently they had brought out as much ammunition as they could heap
round the bottom of the hoists, and there was nothing more for them to
do yet. The ammunition parties grouped silently below their own special
hoists, and the magazine parties had time to pass their arms across
their eyes and wipe the stinging sweat away.
It was a time of terrible suspense, for not a sound could be heard from
above, where we knew the guns' crews were standing round their guns, and
from below nothing but the regular rhythm of the big engines, the rapid
throbbing of the dynamo-engines and the pumps behind the bulk-heads, and
every now and again the harsh rumbling of the steering-engine aft.
Added to all this we were rolling very heavily.
Presently a man came scrambling down one of the hoists--sliding down the
rope--and there was a sudden stir as men eagerly questioned him.
"Are we getting close inshore?" "Have the forts opened fire yet?" "Is
that big gun still firing?" "Where's the _Strong Arm_?"
Then there was silence again--all but the noises of the engines drumming
and thudding on the other side of the white bulk-heads.
The First Lieutenant, trying to appear calm, walked round and round,
first along the port side, then down the starboard passage, seeing that
everything was ready and everybody in his place, speaking a word here
and there to a petty officer, and followed closely by his midshipman
messenger, a very junior chap we called "Daisy".
Then the little bell at our end of the conning-tower voice-pipe tinkled
loudly. The man stationed there sang out for the First Lieutenant, and
he came running up. Captain Helston was giving him an order from the
conning tower.
"Very good, sir," he shouted back.
"Stand by on the port side, men; we are just going to commence."
Oh, wasn't it exciting! and didn't I wish that I was up above that
armoured deck with the sky overhead, instead of lying down there so
stiff and sore that I could barely move!
The men were fidgeting nervously from one foot to the other, and then
the silence was broken by the banging of the guns in the port battery
overhead. A second later the quarter-deck 8-inch went off, and we could
feel the ship quiver; another quiver came from the fo'c'stle big gun
for'ard. Two minutes of this and then men shouted hoarsely down the
hoists for more ammunition, the voice-pipe bells tinkled, and the order
came down to pass up only common shell (shell with thin walls and a
large bursting charge).
Men flew backwards and forwards, the dust thickened again, the heat and
the mugginess were horrid, and every now and again some of the powder
smoke would be blown down the hoists and make those stifling ammunition
passages darker still.
The First Lieutenant walked steadily backwards and forwards along the
port side, singing out, "Steady, men; don't hurry--don't crowd," and the
two stokers near me tucked their feet out of the way and went on chewing
their quids of tobacco.
Then a man slid down one of the starboard hoists and crawled aft to Dr.
Fox. He had a great gash in one leg, with some spun yarn tied tightly
about it.
"They're firing furious," he gasped, "and a splinter from the first
cutter caught me."
Then the port guns ceased firing, and we heard the steering-engine
rumbling "hard over".
"We are turning now, boys, and going past again. Stand by for the
starboard guns," sang out the First Lieutenant.
The quarter-deck gun ceased firing. Now we were almost round again, and
could faintly hear the boom of the _Strong Arm's_ guns coming down the
hoists.
There was a crash and a roar above us, something came clattering down
one of the port upper-deck hoists, a man jumped and picked it up--a
fragment of shell--and he dropped it again precious quickly with burnt
fingers. I remember that the men all laughed at him.
"Want the doctor!" someone shouted down.
In a moment Dr. Fox was there with a bag over his shoulder. They made a
bight in the rope hoist, he placed his foot in it, and grasped the rope
over his head.
"Haul handsomely, men," he growled, and they hauled him up the hoist.
He was down again in a minute or two, sliding down the rope.
"Too late!" I heard him mutter as he landed, his hands and sleeves
covered with blood.
"Who was it, sir?" somebody asked him, but he took no notice.
Then the starboard guns and the quarter-deck 8-inch commenced, and we
had begun to go past those two forts for the second run.
I pictured our shells bursting against the rocks and among the guns I
had seen there, and wondered whether the European in charge was sober or
not, and whether the Commander was still holding out round his Krupp
gun. If only I hadn't been such a fool as to jump down off that parapet
of sand-bags, I might have been with him still.
We were coming to the end of the second run now, and the First
Lieutenant had just said as he wiped his forehead: "They can't stand
much more of this if we're making anything like decent shooting," when
they commenced cheering on deck, and somebody shouted down that the
forts had hoisted a white flag. The men below cheered from one end of
the passages to the other, and the guns above ceased firing.
Dr. Fox and a sick-berth steward climbed up a hoist to look after some
more wounded on deck, and in a few minutes the main engines began to
slow down and presently stopped altogether.
On deck we heard the bos'n's mate pipe, "Away, second cutter!" a voice
yelled down the hoist, "Any second cutters down below there?" A couple
of men belonging to that boat scrambled hastily up, there was silence
again, and we could do nothing but wait and wonder what was happening.
"If we sit here much longer I'm blowed if we sha'n't miss our first
dog-watch," said one of the stokers cheerfully, and unbending his
cramped legs.
"'Tis a hill wind that don't blow nobody no good," added the other
reflectively, and they both spat into a dark corner behind the
fire-hose.
"Put those two men in the Commander's report," said the First
Lieutenant, who had just come over from the opposite side and saw them
spit.
Daisy, his midshipman, got out his pocket-book and took their names.
"What about yer hill wind now?" said the first one who had spoken, as
Daisy went away, and they sat down again. "That will blooming well stop
yer chawnce of going ashore and picking up a bit o' loot."
Old Mellins scrambled down to see me, and jolly glad I was. He is such
a thoughtful chap, and had brought me some grub--a pot of pate de foie
gras and some bread and butter. Till I saw it I never realized how
terribly hungry I was; and you should have seen me eating it, with
Mellins standing over me, spreading great chunks of the pate on thick
slices of bread and butter, and telling me all that had happened.
"Our first run past those forts simply knocked the stuffing out of them.
You couldn't see them for dust and the smoke of the shells, and when we
turned round and went for them again they hardly fired a gun. We could
see them tumbling over each other in their hurry to scramble out of the
forts, and after we'd ceased firing someone hauled down their colours
and hoisted a white flag as big as a sheet. It was simply ripping."
"How about the Commander?" I asked.
"He's going strong, and firing that big gun into the harbour every four
or five minutes. 'No. 2' and 'No. 3' are right in under the forts, and
Toddles has taken the Captain inshore to take possession of them, or
what is left of them."
"Anybody killed?" I asked.
"We have one, poor Joe Connolly, the coxswain of my picket-boat," said
Mellins sadly, "and the _Strong Arm_ has three killed and nearly twenty
pretty badly wounded. A 6-inch shell burst on her upper deck--in the
battery."
Dr. Fox and his sick-berth steward came along then, and Mellins was sent
away to get me some more clothes, as the ones I had on were torn and
blood-stained. It wasn't all my blood, I think, for when Dr. Fox had
ripped off my shirt he only found a clean cut along my ribs, and the
wound in my leg was a nasty stab made, I expect, by one of those horrid
boarding-pikes the Chinese were prodding me with.
This wound was much the more uncomfortable, and Dr. Fox took quite a
long time probing and syringing it till it was quite clean.
It was very painful and smarted a good deal; and wasn't I jolly glad
when he had finished and left me alone again, and Mellins had helped me
into my clean things!
*CHAPTER XXIV*
*The Capture of the Island*
A Crisis--Inside the Pirate Island--A Feeble Resistance--Doctors
Wanted--An Awful Night--Schmidt Escapes
Whilst the _Laird_ and the _Strong Arm_ steamed past the forts for the
first time, at a range of between four and five thousand yards, the
forts had replied furiously and struck the _Laird_ repeatedly.
Hardly had she fired the first gun before a shell passed through her
foremost funnel, making a large rent in it, but, fortunately, not
bursting. A second struck the first cutter, completely wrecking it and
wounding one or two men with the splinters which flew in all directions.
Another shell struck the armoured belt at the water-line and burst,
doing no damage, and leaving only a dent in the hard steel. A fourth
had passed through the ward-room and burst in the Gunnery Lieutenant's
cabin, setting it on fire, whilst the last struck one of the upper-deck
6-inch gun-shields, forced it back on top of the gun and burst, killing
Connolly, the captain of the gun, and wounding three of his men badly.
The _Strong Arm_ had not been struck till the ships began to turn, but
then she was hit by several shells in quick succession, and lost three
killed and seventeen wounded.
But the fire of the two ships had been so terrific, that even as they
steadied on their course, and edged in to within three thousand yards
for their second run, the signalman up aloft in the fore-top saw the
Chinamen already leaving their guns, and before they had completed this
second run the enemy had hauled down their flag and presently hoisted a
white one.
Captain Helston immediately ceased fire, and ordered Lang and Parker to
go close inshore with their destroyers and reconnoitre.
Mr. Lang signalled from "No. 2" that the forts had been evacuated, and
Helston called away the second cutter and went himself to make certain
that such was the case.
There was no doubt about it--the forts were completely deserted--and he
signalled to the _Laird_ and ordered her to land fifty men and occupy
them at once, pushing on himself through the entrance-channel till he
came abreast of the deserted landing-stages. Not a Chinaman could be
seen.
Here he made the men lie on their oars, and now he could see the whole
of the harbour, the smoking wreck of the cruiser at the foot of the
cliffs on his right, the little town on the other side of the harbour,
and the cruisers beyond it, hugging the shore and mixed up in confusion
with the anchored merchant ships.
The cruisers were evidently not showing fight, that was as plain as a
"pike-staff", but the sharp bursts of rifle firing that the wind brought
down from One Gun Hill told him that Cummins was still being severely
pressed.
He knew from Midshipman Glover's hurried report that the little party
was much reduced in numbers and must be running short of ammunition,
and, as far as he could judge, the attack on the forts had not reduced
the danger of the Commander's position. In fact, the inference was that
he might have driven out the garrison of those forts only to reinforce
the crowds of infuriated Chinese, who would now make one more determined
effort to overwhelm the gallant little cluster of men who had so
desperately held on to that hilltop since daylight.
Fortunately the sudden necessity for immediate action, the prompt
resolve to bombard the forts as the only means of relieving the pressure
on the Commander's party, and the celerity with which the reduction of
those forts had been carried out, bore him along on a wave of fortune
which seemed to sweep away his recent indecision and vacillation.
He abruptly determined to take a step still more decisive.
The risks of the project almost appalled him; but the necessity for
instant action was so vividly apparent, that though he momentarily
hesitated before irrevocably committing his little squadron, the
continuous rattle of musketry from the hill above decided him upon one
final resolution.
There might be more guns hidden on the high land all round him. The
cruisers might still oppose him valiantly, and there was but one hour of
daylight remaining, yet he determined to make this last effort for
entire success.
"Get back to the _Laird_ as fast as you can," he said to Toddles, the
midshipman of the boat, who had been looking with wonder at the change
which had come over him.
"Back starboard; give way port. Pull, men, for your lives;" and with
bending oars they drove the boat out to sea again, out between the
destroyers, and splashed through the heavy seas.
With their boat half-full of water, they pulled under the lee of the
_Laird_, hooked on their boat's falls, and were hoisted up with a run.
"Belay those fifty men," Captain Helston told the First Lieutenant, who
hurried up to receive him as he scrambled down on deck, "and go to
quarters again. I'm going to take the whole squadron inside."
"Oh!" whistled the First Lieutenant, and rushed off.
The bugles blared; signals flew to the _Strong Arm_; men passed the word
to the guns' crews that they were going right inside; men bellowed the
news down the ammunition hoists, down the engine-room and stokehold
gratings, and on deck and down below from the bowels of the ship cheer
after cheer burst forth.
Now the _Strong Arm_ had the news, and her men too began to cheer as the
two ships gathered way and made straight for the entrance.
As they passed between the two weather-beaten little destroyers, rolling
gunwale under, with their funnels white with salt, the crews of the
destroyers sprang to "attention" and then broke into cheers. The
_Laird_ was right in the entrance now, her boats, swung out at the
davits, almost grazed, to port and starboard, the rocky ledges in which
the abandoned guns were mounted.
Grandly she answered her helm, swung round the bend in the channel, and
steadied as she majestically moved past the deserted landing-stages.
The _Strong Arm_, carefully handled by the First Lieutenant, followed
her. "No. 2" and "No. 3" dashed in after them, and the whole of the
squadron except the _Sylvia_ was inside the island harbour.
* * * * *
The sudden approach of these two ships to the attack had found the forts
totally unprepared to make any effective resistance.
For the last three weeks the squadron had shown such an evident
disinclination to come to close quarters, that Hopkins, Hamilton, and
Schmidt had been lulled into a sense of false security, and, imagining
that no attack would be made from that quarter, had withdrawn a
considerable number of the artillerymen from the forts, all trained and
disciplined men, to strengthen the attack on One Gun Hill.
The seizure of the Krupp gun had taken them completely by surprise, and
the necessity for its recapture was imperative.
Unable to rely upon their coolies, they had hastily denuded the ships
and gathered sufficient blue-jackets to make the first rush. Though
nearly successful it had ended disastrously, Hopkins being mortally
wounded and such a number of men being killed, that the remainder could
only with difficulty be again induced to advance from cover.
The unsuccessful attempt to cut off the small party with the oil-drums,
the destruction of the cruiser, and the death of Hamilton, the lame
Englishman on board her, made it evident to Schmidt that he must, once
for all, overwhelm Cummins and his men before the weather abated and
allowed further reinforcements to land. He had, therefore, brought up
every coolie he could find, armed them with every weapon he could lay
his hands on, and stiffened their wavering ranks with the disciplined
men from the forts and what blue-jackets he could muster.
Inciting them to fury with tales of what their fate would be if they
were captured, he had plied them with drink, and gathering them behind
the smoke from the burning bushes, had hurled them at the top of the
hill.
It was with this wild, fanatical mob, mad with unaccustomed drink, that
Hopkins had sent the small body of blue-jackets to endeavour to rescue
Glover, and though in this he had been successful, the assault itself
had been finally repulsed.
Only a few men were left in the forts themselves, and the European in
charge, who had been drinking heavily during the last ten days, was in
no fit state to utilize even those that remained to him, and when
Schmidt first awoke to the fact that the squadron had at last ventured
to attack, he left his beaten men to continue to harass the top of the
hill with rifle fire, and rushed down towards the forts.
Before he could reach them he met the terror-stricken mob of men flying
from them, and almost immediately afterwards saw the top-masts of the
_Laird_ and the _Strong Arm_ appearing behind the harbour entrance.
These frightened fugitives, scared out of their very lives, had splashed
hurriedly past the destroyers lying huddled inshore, and spread the
panic among their crews, who, not even waiting till the _Laird_ appeared
inside the harbour, took to their boats or jumped overboard and made for
the shore.
Schmidt knew well enough that there was nothing now to stop Helston's
squadron, knew that the greater part of his blue-jackets were already on
top of the hill--many of them dead--knew that one of his partners had
been blown to pieces on the opposite side of the harbour, and that the
other lay dying; but with a gambler's trust in the last throw of the
dice, he jumped into a dinghy, pulled himself across to the _Hong Lu_,
and tried to rally his cowed and dispirited men.
* * * * *
It was from the sides of the _Hong Lu_ that suddenly, as the _Laird_ and
the _Strong Arm_ steered into the harbour, flames shot out and shells
came wildly past them. The two remaining cruisers joined in, and for
perhaps five minutes the water round the two ships was lashed into foam,
and the cliffs behind them were struck time after time by the Chinese
shells.
But every gun that could bear upon the unhappy cruisers crowded under
the land poured in a fire so concentrated, so coolly aimed, and so
accurate, that their already demoralized crews could not stand to their
guns, and running their ships ashore, swarmed over the bows and left
them to their fate.
The _Hong Lu_ did indeed make one desperate and gallant attempt.
Extricating herself from the other ships, she commenced steaming towards
the _Laird_ and the _Strong Arm_, and came down at great speed with the
intention of either ramming one or other of them, or of forcing her way
past and escaping to sea.
The _Laird_ and the _Strong Arm_, opening out a little in the broader
part of the harbour, poured in a very hail of 6-inch shells. The _Hong
Lu's_ thin, low plates were rent open in a dozen places, water poured
in, and she began visibly to sink by the head. An 8-inch shell burst at
the foot of her foremast under the bridge, her bows were smothered in
flame and smoke, she fell off to port, and then she too ran with a crash
up the shore, and her crew began jumping overboard.
The _Strong Arm_ steamed towards her to complete the destruction, if
necessary, and saw one huge solitary figure on her quarter-deck. This
was Schmidt, who quickly dived into the sea, swam with powerful strokes
to the land, and disappeared in the dense cover.
With the _Hong Lu_ abandoned all opposition ceased, and from the top of
One Gun Hill the faint sound of cheering could be heard. Looking
through their telescopes they could see the gallant little party
clustered behind the breast-works they had defended so long, standing up
on the sand-bags and waving their helmets as they cheered.
They, too, were safe.
The light was already beginning to fade, and heavy squalls of rain made
signalling difficult, but Cummins managed to get one semaphore signal
through to the _Laird_: "Enemy disappearing; am short of ammunition, and
require medical assistance. Richardson is killed."
Helston sent for Dr. Fox and handed him the signal.
"I'll go myself," said the Doctor.
"I thought you would," replied Helston. "I'll give you fifty men, and
you must get up there as fast as you can, and I'll turn my search-lights
on the top of the hill as soon as it is dark. I don't expect that
you'll find the Chinese have any more fight left in them, but if you do
I will help you."
"No. 3" was sent out to bring the _Sylvia_ into the harbour, parties of
men were sent aboard the ships, destroyers, and torpedo-boats to remove
the breech-blocks of their guns, and a strong body of men was sent down
to the forts to do the same there. They found five bodies in the
batteries, but very little material damage done--very little compared to
the apparent destruction as seen from the ships. Two of the smaller
guns had been dismounted and one of the 6-inch had been disabled, but
nothing more, though masses of the rock behind them had been blasted
with the shells and lay between the guns in heaps.
Another party tried unsuccessfully to extinguish the fire aboard the
_Hong Lu_, but had to leave her to her fate, for the flames had taken
firm hold of her and were spreading rapidly towards the magazines.
It was quite dark before these precautions were complete, and meanwhile
Dr. Fox, with his escort of fifty men, was hurrying to the top of the
hill, bearing more ammunition and the urgently-needed surgical
dressings.
He had landed far from the town, and, giving it a wide berth--for
already the sounds of rioting and tumult rose from it--had struck the
zigzag path just as daylight failed.
But few natives had been met, and these had fled precipitately.
Dr. Fox pressed on up the hill, aided by the _Laird's_ search-light,
which lighted up the path ahead of him, made still more slippery and
treacherous by the heavy rain now falling. Urged to his utmost
exertions by the knowledge that he and his men were urgently wanted, he
scrambled on, stumbling every now and then over the bodies of dead
Chinamen and over rifles which had been thrown away in their flight, and
now lay scattered in great numbers on the path.
At last he came out into the open in front of the breastworks, and
feeble cheers greeted him from the remnants of the defenders. The
search-lights of the ships lighted up the whole of that charred open
space below the crest, and hundreds of prostrate bodies dotted it,
thickly piled, literally in heaps, where the Maxims had swept them down
in their last mad rush, their yellow faces horrible in the beams of the
light. Right up to the sand-bags they lay, giving proof of the
fierceness of their charge, whilst the dark eyes and haggard, drawn
faces of the marines and bluejackets behind the breast-work showed only
too plainly the terrible struggle they had made to defend it.
Cummins came forward with blanched, anxious face, his left arm bound
across his chest.
"Thank God! you're come. Poor Richardson was killed three hours ago,
and we have thirty men wanting you."
The worn-out defenders had roused themselves for a minute or two to
welcome their comrades, but then lay down exhausted, and, with all
danger past, fell asleep immediately, drenched though they were by the
bitter cold rain which swept moaning across the plateau.
Nobody on that bleak hilltop will ever forget the night which followed.
The men were too utterly wearied to carry down the wounded, even if this
had been possible. No one thought of leaving the dead unguarded, so the
fifty men whom Dr. Fox had brought hastily pulled down the Log Redoubt
which Captain Williams had maintained so stoutly, and with the timber
made two bonfires under the lee of the gun-pit parapet. By their light
and that of the search-light Dr. Fox dressed the wounded who hobbled
stiffly over from where they had fallen, or were carried to him.
The dead, too, were collected, reverently laid together, and covered
with the big tarpaulin from the Krupp gun--Captain Hunter, Dr.
Richardson, eleven marines, the signalman who had been the first to
fall, the sick-berth steward who had been killed with Dr. Richardson
during that fight round the gun, whilst trying to protect the wounded,
and five blue-jackets.
The Commander resolutely refused aid till the last, and when his turn
came Dr. Fox found that he had a terrible gash on the left
shoulder--from a cutlass--cutting clean down to the collar-bone and
shoulder-blade, and his arm was quite helpless. "Another inch, and you
would have bled to death," said Dr. Fox grimly. "The bones saved you."
"I dodged my head in time, or it would have caught me there," said
Cummins, raising a feeble chuckle; but then he fainted through loss of
blood and sheer exhaustion.
Saunderson had a bullet through his chest, and lay very still, wrapped
tightly round with a bandage, and too worn-out and numbed with cold to
worry about his condition.
"You'll be all right," Dr. Fox told him, and covered him with a blanket;
"only don't move till morning."
* * * * *
Down below every corner of the harbour was being searched by the lights
of the ships, for Schmidt was still at large, and there was no knowing
what devilry he might devise.
The _Hong Lu_, burning fiercely, threw a red glare over the hills and
turned the harbour to a blood colour, and from time to time tremendous
explosions on board her quenched the flames momentarily, but they leapt
out again more furiously than ever.
From the town itself came the angry buzz of shouting and yelling; rifle
shots rang out in a jerky, spasmodic crackling, and it was evident that
the natives, emboldened by hunger, by the desire to save their own
possessions, or by the lust of looting, had gradually crept back and
were now fighting among themselves.
Presently the horrors of the night were intensified by flames springing
from the go-downs and warehouses near the water's edge. In half an hour
they were well alight, burning fiercely, and, fanned by the wind, the
flames spread to the bamboo-matting huts, leaping from one to another
with their fiery tongues till the whole lower part of the town was one
roaring furnace. The flames and the black smoke blowing across the
lurid harbour almost hid the search-lights of the ships.
It was a weird and frightful spectacle, fit end to an awful day.
* * * * *
Far from exulting in its success, Helston's squadron that night was sunk
in gloom darker than the acrid clouds of black smoke sweeping through
its rigging, for the names of the killed and wounded had been signalled
with flash-lamps from the hill, and posted up on each lower deck was the
grim list, the roll of killed beginning with Captain Hunter, idolized by
officers and men alike, and ending with Gunner Bolton, the corner man in
the _Laird's_ Nigger Minstrel Troupe. His mess-mates would chaff him no
more "that he had done them out of a show".
Even Ping Sang was not happy, and wrung his hands as he saw the flames
devour the warehouses, crammed, as he guessed only too accurately, with
his own merchandise, and implored--at times almost commanded--Helston to
endeavour to save them.
But Helston was obdurate--not another man would he risk; and though he
did send two steam-boats to haul off a big steamer lying alongside the
pier under the town, and they succeeded in towing her away before the
flames reached her, he resolutely refused to land another man either to
quell the riot or subdue the fire.
Even now he was anxious about Cummins and Dr. Fox, and "stood by" all
night with a couple of hundred men, to go himself to their assistance if
the hill were again assailed.
In the intervals of smoke he could see the flickering bonfires they had
lighted on top of the hill, and round which they were huddled waiting
for the morning. One incident broke the strain of that terrible night.
It was when the clouds of smoke were densest that suddenly a man aboard
"No. 2", which was lying farthest out from shore, sang out that he had
seen a sail show black above the low land near the narrow outlet.
He lost sight of it behind the driving smoke, and when the view had
cleared again and a search-light had swept towards it, a junk could
plainly be seen bending and staggering under the fierce gusts of wind
which whirled down on her as she cleared the island. A rain squall shut
her out, and when it had passed no further trace of her could be seen.
Mr. Lang thought rightly that Schmidt himself was aboard her, and made a
signal asking permission to endeavour to cut her off to leeward of the
island, but Helston refused to allow him to venture out--the risks were
too great--and doubted not that the helpless, clumsy junk could well be
left to the short shrift of that howling gale outside.
Even his own ships must have been dispersed that night, and he gave
fervent thanks, where thanks were due, that success had been granted
him, and that his squadron lay in safety inside the harbour.
Schmidt it indeed was who, with some of his boldest men, had seized the
junk under cover of the smoke, cut her grass hawser, towed her silently
with a dinghy till she had reached the outlet, hoisted her
bamboo-matting sails till he had cleared the land, and then let her run
before the raging gale under bare poles.
How he at last reached land, gathered more men round him, and spread
terror through the island waters of the Chusan Archipelago, must be told
another day.
*CHAPTER XXV*
*The Fruits of Victory*
Oh, the Pity of It!--We Find Hopkins--Helston has
Suspicions--Helston's Speech--A "Stand Easy"--Ping Sang
Departs--We Hand Over our Ships--Homeward Bound--The Admiral
Speaks his Mind
_Dr. Fox concludes his experiences_
If I had only known that I should have to spend the whole night on top
of that hill, I should never have been such a fool as to volunteer.
The young Surgeon of the _Strong Arm_ was every whit as capable of doing
the work as I was, and his youth would have carried him through the
night's exposure without harm. As it was, I always date the
commencement of my rheumatism from that horrible night, and never cease
regretting that at the moment when Helston showed me the signal from One
Gun Hill, and I read of the death of my Surgeon, Richardson, and of the
wounded lying there without anyone to look after them for the last three
hours, my common sense should have failed me momentarily.
Ugh! How it rained and blew! That zigzag path was a miniature torrent,
and my feet slipped backwards in the squelching mud at every pace. The
idiot, too, who was training the _Laird's_ search-light thought, I have
no doubt, he was lighting my way; but he kept his beam fixed on me and
the men who went with me, with the result that I was nearly blinded.
The shadows were made still more intense, and it was more difficult than
ever to avoid stumbling over the bodies of the dead Chinamen which
littered the path.
Two hours' hard work it was before the wounded were patched up and made
fairly ship-shape.
The Mauser bullet wounds did not bother me much, but quite a number of
men had deep flesh wounds inflicted by cutlasses, swords, or bayonets
during the hand-to-hand fighting, and it does not require much
imagination to understand the difficulty--the impossibility, in fact--of
making a good job of these, dressing them by the unsteady light of the
_Laird's_ search-light, with the rain pouring in torrents and driving
almost horizontally across the top of the hill before the gale.
As each case was finished, and the poor fellow, blue with cold (the skin
of their hands and faces was wrinkled like a washerwoman's hands), was
laid down somewhere in the lee of the dripping sand-bags, I injected
morphia to ease his pain, and could only hope that he would be
sufficiently alive in the morning for us to get him safely down to the
ships, where he might have a chance of being properly looked after.
Little Cummins had about the worst wound of the lot, and even if he
managed to pull through, I had little hope that his left arm would be of
much use to him.
However, he tried to be cheery, especially when I told him that young
Glover was safe and sound aboard the _Laird_, and gave one or two of his
irritating chuckles before he fainted. He then lay quiet for the rest
of the night. There was no need to give him any morphia, for he was
absolutely "played out".
Saunderson, with a bullet through his right lung, did not worry me much,
because so long as he kept still and was tightly bandaged, nothing more
could be done for him, and his grand physique would carry him safely
through the night's exposure.
Things were made more comfortable when the men who had come with me
pulled some logs across from one of the breast-works and made a fire
close to the Krupp gun parapet, and probably more lives were saved by
this means than by anything I did.
The men who had defended the hill all day were now fast asleep, most of
them absolutely unprotected from the cold rain, so I made my fellows
bring them nearer to the fire. Many were so exhausted that they were
carried across without being awakened. In fact, it was so difficult to
distinguish the dead from the living, that they actually carried over
two dead men and laid them down round the fire, nor was their mistake
discovered till morning.
At last I finished, and had time to crouch down behind some sand-bags
and managed to light a pipe, shivering with cold and cursing myself for
a fool for ever having been induced to join Helston in his mad
enterprise.
The gale shrieked and howled; the rain stung my face. Seawards, out of
the pitchy blackness of the night, the waves bellowed as they pounded
the foot of the hill in one incessant roar; the burning ships and
warehouses, the crackling of musketry in the town below, the constant
explosions from the doomed ships, all made of the harbour a very
inferno, from out of which the cold, clear search-light flashed
pitilessly on the slaughter-house round me.
Twenty English and two hundred or more Chinamen lay there sleeping their
last long sleep.
Oh, the pity of it all!
My worst enemy could not accuse me of being sentimental, and that night
all feeling whatever seemed numbed; but as I recognized the dead faces
of Hunter, Richardson, and a dozen men whom I knew, the only thought was
one of bitterness that men should throw away their lives so
comparatively uselessly, and the selfishness of it all made me feel
almost angry with them.
Hunter's family I knew. He left a wife and two children. Richardson had
only recently married; and little did they reckon, they and the other
poor fellows, when they volunteered for this expedition in their lust
for change, for excitement, for self-glorification or chance of
promotion, the misery they were to inflict.
Who bears the bigger share when the man goes out to war?
Is it the man, with his cares forgotten as the shores of England slip
down below the horizon, with the hot blood coursing through his body and
the fighting instinct of the male animal to bear him along, or is it the
woman he leaves behind him--the mother, wife, or sweetheart--who is left
to her humdrum daily duties, with her heart full of empty pains and
aching fears, to hope and long and dread for news, day after day, week
after week?
It seems foolish to write this, but all through that ghastly night, turn
my thoughts how I would, they ever came back to the bitterness, the
selfishness, the pity of it all.
Every now and again some wounded man wanted attention--one man became
delirious, and at intervals uttered horrible shrieks. Pattison also
became delirious, and I had to keep a man watching lest he should tear
off his bandages.
About three in the morning one of my men thought he heard a cry for help
down the sea slope of the hill, and we searched by the light of the
signal lantern for nearly an hour, but found no one.
No longer, no more terrible night, have I ever spent; but at last it did
end--the darkness lessened, the uncanny search-light was switched off,
and daybreak gradually revealed the gruesome sights which had been but
half seen and only partially conjectured before.
Fortunately both the doctors of the _Strong Arm_ came up to relieve me
an hour after daylight, and I quickly scrambled down the hill, slipping
and sliding in the mud.
I met Helston on the way down, and his face lighted up with relief when
he saw me, and I was able to give him a fairly cheerful account of the
wounded. He had landed with a couple of hundred men and driven the mob
of Chinamen out of what was left of the town, and was now on his way to
Hopkins's bungalow, guided by Hi Ling, the head boy.
"Come along with us, Doc, old chap. I want you to see Hopkins before
you go off to the ship, if it is not too late."
We were close to the European bungalows, and Hi Ling led us straight to
the one Hopkins inhabited, going on ahead of us.
As we approached we saw that everything was in disorder. Furniture,
clothes, books, and papers were strewn all over the verandah, and a dead
Chinaman lay sprawling half in, half out of a window.
"Looted during the night," I thought, and saw that Helston also thought
so, and neither of us expected to find the American alive.
Hi Ling met us on the verandah, wringing his hands and moaning. We
pushed aside a bamboo curtain and followed him into a room where
everything was in still greater confusion, a trestle-bed overturned,
drawers ransacked and their contents scattered, and lying on the floor
was Hopkins himself, with a dead Chinaman beside him. The one we had
seen from outside had probably been killed as he tried to escape.
Both had bullet wounds, and had evidently been killed by the revolver
Hopkins still held in his clenched hand.
He was quite dead, and I must confess that I felt much relieved, because
nothing could have saved him, and also I did not want him to speak to
Helston of Milly, as I feared he might have done, for Helston was of
such a peculiar disposition, that I was very anxious that he should know
nothing about the photograph or the will which Hopkins had made in her
favour--nothing, at any rate, till I had got him safely home.
I hurriedly examined Hopkins, and whilst doing this tried to find the
photograph of which Glover had told me; but it was not near him, only
the crumpled-up piece of paper which Helston had signed on young
Glover's safe return.
Poor fellow! the knowledge that his will was safe may have cheered his
last moments.
We prepared to lift the body and place it decently on the bed, but,
unfortunately, whilst we were righting the trestle-bed the photograph
fell on the floor, and though I hastily tried to seize it, Helston
stooped before I did and picked it up.
His face became rigid as he recognized it, and I saw his hand shaking as
if he had an attack of ague, but in a few moments he recovered himself
and gently laid it on the table.
"Help me to lift him, Fox," he said in a husky voice, looking at me
suspiciously, and we laid Hopkins on his bed and left Hi Ling to prepare
his master for burial.
The faithful Chinaman was actually crying. I had never seen a Chinaman
cry before.
Hardly had we gained the verandah before Helston stopped, turned
abruptly, and went back again. Through the open window I saw him place
the photograph in Hopkins's breast, inside his pyjamas.
He rejoined me immediately, and said in a strained, hard voice: "What is
the meaning of it all, Fox? You seem to know something about it. Tell
me, for God's sake!"