As I feared, he magnified the very little that I could tell him, and
would not believe that I knew no more.
Poor chap! his face was drawn and haggard as he rapidly questioned me in
a jerky, constrained manner, trying vainly to conceal his agitation, and
darting suspicious glances at me.
"Did you know anything of this before we left England?"
"Nothing. I knew that they had met. Nothing else."
"But had you no suspicions?"
That made me angry. I hate being badgered.
"Look here, Helston, all I know I have told you. That he should fall in
love with Milly is nothing remarkable. A dozen men, to my knowledge,
are, or pretend they are, in love with her, and as to the photograph,
why, every girl thinks the gift of a picture of herself quite sufficient
a reward for that."
"Yes, perhaps; but there must have been something in it if he has left
her all his money."
"Oh, confound you, don't be such a fool!" And, thoroughly irritated, I
left him to climb his way wearily to the top of the hill, whilst I went
off to the _Laird_ to get something to eat, a bath, and an hour's sleep.
But for that nine stone, more or less, of frilled and furbelowed Milly,
Hunter would not be lying dead on the hill above, nor Richardson either,
and without Richardson I was left single-handed, just when I wanted him
most. I wished most devoutly that Helston and I had never saved the
life of that avaricious old Chinaman, Ping Sang, ten years ago.
The first thing I did when I went aboard the _Laird_ was to get the
First Lieutenant to send half a dozen men ashore to bury Hopkins behind
his bungalow, and then I had a hot bath and turned in, and slept like a
log till I was called an hour later.
I felt better after that, and was hard at work for the rest of the day
preparing one of the cleanest of the merchant ships--the _Hoi Feng_--for
the wounded, and by night we had brought them all down from the hill and
safely aboard her, sending to her the wounded still on board the _Strong
Arm_ and our own ship as well.
But for half an hour for dinner I did not stop working all day, and what
with our own people and the wounded Chinamen, who began creeping back to
the town in great numbers, we had enough to do and to spare.
It was nearly midnight before I finally turned in, and at two o'clock
Jeffreys, the Sub-lieutenant, woke me up and told me that the Captain
was walking up and down the quarter-deck in the rain, and would I speak
to him and try to make him go below, as no one else dare approach him.
He was walking up and down with long strides, his hands clasped behind
his back, his head drooped between his shoulders, and his eyes vacantly
staring ahead of him.
He seemed to wake, as if from sleep, when I put my hand on his shoulder
(his monkey-jacket was wet through).
"And this is the moment Bannerman chooses to ask me for the _Strong
Arm_," he said fiercely, "and poor Hunter not even buried yet. How I do
despise that man, and wish, with all my heart, that I could give her to
Cummins; but he won't be fit for duty for weeks, and is junior to
Bannerman, so I suppose Bannerman must have her. It makes me boil over
with anger to think of him stepping into Hunter's shoes."
This was not, I knew well enough, the real cause of his discomposure,
but I was only too glad that his thoughts should be turned into another
channel.
"He'll be stepping into yours if you don't take more care of yourself
and get below out of this rain," I told him.
Ultimately I managed to induce him to undress and go to bed; but his
mental condition seemed very unstable, and I much feared that the strain
of the whole expedition would result in his complete break-down.
However, he slept soundly enough after that, and was much more composed
in the morning.
That day every man who could be spared from the squadron was marched to
the top of One Gun Hill, and there Hunter, Richardson, and their men
were buried, and their graves marked by rough wooden crosses, with their
names carved on them.
Three volleys were fired. The buglers of the squadron sounded a
melancholy Last Post, and they were left there with that grim
bullet-splashed Krupp gun to guard them.
The expedition had been successful.
It was Helston who read the burial service, and before the men marched
down to their ships he made them a short address as they stood on the
plateau in a hollow square round him. He always showed to advantage on
these occasions with his tall figure, commanding features, and resonant
voice.
"Officers and men of the Royal Navy and Royal Naval Reserve," he
said--"we have paid the last honours to those of our comrades who lie
buried here on the summit of the hill they defended so valiantly, and no
words that I can say will add to their honour.
"They have, by their courage and devotion, enabled this expedition to be
completely successful, and now that our return to England will not long
be deferred, I want to say two things to you.
"Do not forget them.
"When we leave them here on this lonely hilltop standing in the midst of
a distant ocean, sometimes think of them.
"If fate had ordained that any of you standing round me should have been
now lying amongst them, you would have wished to be remembered by your
mess-mates.
"They have done their duty and given up their lives in the doing of it;
so let every man keep the memory of what they have done, before him, as
long as ever he can, and thus pay them a greater honour than by merely
marching here to their burial.
"The other thing which I want to say is this.
"They have not died directly serving their Queen or their Country (we
are, as you know, lent to the Chinese Government), and this makes the
sacrifice of their lives all the more bitter, and it will be still more
deeply felt by their relatives at home.
"But though they were not serving under the British Admiralty, remember
that what they have done here, on this hilltop, will add to the glory of
our navy, and help to keep alive its fighting spirit.
"The Royal Navy has not been tried severely for many generations, and it
is such a deed as this--the defence of One Gun Hill--which increases the
confidence the navy has in itself to maintain its old traditions
untarnished when the hour of trial shall come.
"Rest assured that the lives which have been lost since we left England
will not have been wasted if we--those who are dead and those who are
alive--have helped even a little to increase the honour and prestige of
the Royal Navy.
"Men, remember the mess-mates you are leaving here, even as you would
wish to be remembered yourselves."
Helston always "fancied" himself at speech-making, and was almost
cheerful as he and I walked down the hill together and stopped on the
slopes to watch a crowd of surrendered coolies who had been set to work
to bury their own dead.
* * * * *
For a week after the capture of the island of Hong Lu the gale blew with
such fury that Helston could not venture out of the snug harbour.
During this time practically the whole of the Chinamen had surrendered,
and were employed by Ping Sang and A Tsi to bury their dead countrymen,
and afterwards to load the merchant ships with what goods had been saved
from the great fire and prepare them for departure. Among the coolies
were sufficient seamen to form crews for all the captured merchantmen,
and the survivors of the men-of-war's crews were also set to work on
board the remaining cruisers, destroyers, and torpedo-boats to get them
in a fit state to steam to the mainland.
Personally I should have hesitated to send these men aboard their own
ships again, but Ping Sang and A Tsi never doubted the expediency of
this course, and their trust was not misplaced, for they worked with
such energy that in a very few days the ships were ready for sea, and
cleaner probably than they had ever been.
A Chinaman knows his master when he meets him--he has wits enough for
that--and right well did they labour to appease the wrath of such a
tyrant as was Ping Sang.
Each one thought that the safety of his head and his pigtail depended
upon his exertions, and no greater stimulus was required. Though a
Chinaman may not dread death, he dislikes the idea of the preliminary
pain sufficiently strongly.
At any rate, they coaled our five ships with a speed which could not be
equalled by the smartest ship in the Channel Fleet.
During this time we doctors were extremely busy, and, more by good luck
than by excessive skill, the wounded progressed favourably.
They were all aboard the _Hoi Feng_--the steamer I had converted into a
hospital ship for them--and did extremely well. Pattison was
convalescent in ten days. Saunderson and little Cummins joined him soon
after, and all three were always ready to greet me cheerily whenever I
climbed up the side, Cummins chuckling hugely, and annoyingly, at having
"dodged the doctors", because he knew well that I had at first thought
his arm would have to come off.
Young Glover rather worried me. The boy's wounds would not heal
properly, and the wound in the chest must have penetrated more deeply
than I, at first, had thought, because he developed some pleurisy on
that side.
Helston's broken arm was also on the way to recovery, and the rest in
harbour and the comparative immunity from worry did him a vast amount of
good.
I took him for walks ashore every day when it did not rain, but was
always careful to land on the side opposite to the town, and never went
anywhere near One Gun Hill or Hopkins's bungalow. He always made great
efforts to talk about every subject under the sun, but before we had
gone far he inevitably reverted to the one subject--Milly. It was
slightly tedious, and tried me considerably; but the man's whole
existence was centred round her, so I suppose it was natural.
That did not make it any the less boring, however.
Our people had been for a month on salt provisions, but we were able to
supply them now with fresh vegetables from the island, and killed the
few oxen and goats we could find to give them fresh meat.
There had been many fowls on the island, but, unfortunately, during the
first two days, the coolies had eaten them all.
However, there were plenty of pheasants and pigeons in the woods, and
from somewhere or other guns appeared--every officer seemed to have
brought one, though little did any of us think that we should get any
sport--and shooting-parties landed every day and were so successful,
that the wounded on board the _Hoi Feng_ fairly revelled in fresh game.
The fresh meat and the vegetables did probably more good than all our
doctors' skill; at any rate, we attributed the excellent progress they
made to this change of diet--and rightly, I think.
Eventually the weather moderated, and Helston sent the _Sylvia_ to
Shanghai to telegraph his dispatches to Peking and to the Admiralty at
home, to purchase more surgical dressings and more cattle, and to await
instructions from England before returning.
Ping Sang went with her.
Very glad, too, we were to get rid of him, for the old gentleman had got
"on our nerves", and we had begun to dislike him intensely. Without a
spark of humanity, and unable to sympathize with our heavy losses, he
showed by his manner, even if not by his actual words, that he regarded
us practically as his employees, and, now that our work was
accomplished, was only too anxious to see us started on our way home.
According to agreement with the Admiralty, the cost of the personnel of
the expedition would cease when he had sent us to Hong-Kong, so it was
quite natural that he should try to hasten our departure. However, he
showed so little consideration for everybody that we hated him.
He was also much incensed at Helston's absolute refusal to allow his men
to aid in refitting the captured ships; but Helston rightly considered
that they deserved a rest after their three months' hard work, and a
right good time did they have, leave being given after morning
"divisions" to every man not actually required on board, and they
indulged themselves to their hearts' content in securing trophies,
playing football, seining for fish, and scrambling about the island.
What strange beings blue-jackets and marines are!
They asked to be allowed to mount guard over the graves on One Gun Hill
during the time the squadron remained, and worked out all the details
themselves. Helston found their arrangements such that every man in the
squadron would at one time or other do his turn of duty on that plateau,
and the only alteration he made in the scheme was to detail two
midshipmen for duty there in charge of the hilltop, changing them every
twenty-four hours.
Many of the men also went ashore in their working suits, and the
blacksmiths and the armourers obtained permission to take their tools
with them.
We could see from the ship that they were working round the big Krupp
gun, but did not interfere, and in about ten days they asked Helston and
myself to go up there. We found that they had constructed a stout iron
fence, enclosing the gun-pit and the graves, planted small fir-trees all
round it, and actually built a solid stone cairn supporting a great
boulder of some hard rock. It had evidently come from the beach at the
foot of the hill; but we never asked how they had managed to haul it up,
though we shrewdly suspected that they had forced the coolies to do this
for them.
They had smoothed and polished the faces of this boulder, and on them
had engraved the names of all the men buried there. On one face were
also the names of those killed previously--during the fight south of
Hong-Kong and during the operations outside the island.
Strange fellows they are, for, probably, if Helston had given them
orders to do this, the work would not have been carried out half so
substantially.
They were all up there to show it to Helston. Every man in the squadron
had done a little, so they told me. Helston made a speech, and everybody
was vastly pleased with himself--with justice, too, for the railings and
the monument were stout enough to stand unattended for years.
The _Sylvia_ returned a day or two afterwards with the news that the
Chinese Government was sending a transport with blue-jackets and
officers to take over our ships, and that when this was done we should
be immediately taken down to Hong-Kong and sent home.
She brought a mail which she had found waiting for us at Shanghai.
There was nothing for me, as usual, except a couple of bills. Telegrams
came for Helston from the Admiralty congratulating him and the
expedition on its success, and also the Queen had done us the honour of
telegraphing her congratulations, condolence at our losses, and
expressions of sympathy with the wounded.
These two telegrams were immediately signalled round the fleet, and it
was rather pleasant to know that they had been sent off from England
only three days since.
Helston made a big ceremony of the reading of the Queen's telegram,
"dressed ship", and "fell in" the crew of the _Laird_ on the
quarter-deck, making them a speech after they had heard the telegram,
and calling for three cheers for "The Queen". The feeling of personal
loyalty to the Queen was always so intense that one invariably felt that
the cheers were completely genuine. Every man Jack yelled his cheers
till he was hoarse.
Helston went from the _Laird_ to each of the ships in turn and repeated
the ceremony, returning so extremely pleased with himself that I
conjectured rightly that he had repeated the speech as well.
We had nothing now to do but wait for the transport, and it appeared at
last, a great lumbering steamer, the _Moi Wa_, crowded with Chinese
blue-jackets.
"Ping Sang must have hustled them at Peking," said Helston to me,
evidently surprised at the promptness of the Chinese Admiralty. "He
knows we are anxious to get home, and did his best for us, I expect."
"Did his best for us? For himself, you mean!" I answered. "He doesn't
care a twopenny rap for our feelings, but wants to get rid of us and the
cost of our pay and food. Why, I actually heard the old miser ask the
Paymaster whether he would have to pay the men left behind at Hong-Kong
wounded; and the Paymaster told me that Ping Sang also asked him to let
him know what was the total daily pay of the officers and men killed on
One Gun Hill, and when he learnt it he rubbed his hands with
delight--the fat, oily brute--and said, 'Five pounds a day, fifty
dollars a day, nearly four hundred dollars a week', and went off
chuckling."
"You don't make allowance for him, Doc."
"No, I don't," I replied shortly, "and I cannot either."
How we all managed to pack ourselves into that transport I cannot
imagine, but we did somehow or other after she had been cleaned out,
and, amid much firing of salutes from the Chinese now aboard our old
ships, we slowly steamed out of the harbour three days later, lumbered
through the dark entrance-channel and between the forts which had kept
us at bay for so long, and turned our bows southward.
We all felt a pang of regret at leaving the ships which had been our
homes for such an exciting three months, and I think everybody came on
deck to watch One Gun Hill sink slowly beneath the horizon, and was
somewhat silent for the rest of the day.
We anchored off the dockyard at Hong-Kong four days afterwards. A most
uncomfortable passage it was, and one of the first persons to come over
the side was Harrington, the sub-lieutenant of "No. 1", who had been so
badly scalded and kept in hospital. He was practically well, and only
rather sad that he had been unable to accompany us.
Helston and I, as soon as we could manage it, took rooms at the Peak
Hotel, taking Jenkins with us and Hi Ling as well, for I meant to keep
my eye on that man and see him safely in England, in case there was any
legal trouble about Hopkins's will.
A big cruiser left for home almost immediately, and the crew of the
_Strong Arm_ took passage in her. Bannerman went with them, of course,
and very glad we were to see the last of him. I know that I was.
The remainder of us were ordered home by the next intermediate P. & O.,
and we had five days to wait for her. These five days were full of
troublesome annoyances to me, because the colony, from the Governor
downwards, especially the Chinese merchants, feted us as I certainly had
never been feted before and trust never will be again. However, I
managed to avoid most of the entertainments, and spent most of my time
playing golf in the Happy Valley, and left all those things to Helston,
who, on the average, must have made three speeches a day, so enjoyed
himself thoroughly.
Cummins, Saunderson, and Glover I had sent up to the officer's
sanatorium, and the last two were practically well before we left.
Eventually our P. & O. arrived, and we made a comfortable voyage home in
her, only marred by the foolish enthusiasm of the people at Singapore,
Colombo, and Aden, who gave grand dinners in our honour, and wanted more
speeches. They did not get them from me, but Helston was in his
element.
By the time we reached Port Said, Cummins had resumed duty, little the
worse for his terrible wound, and Helston, frightfully eager to reach
England, especially Fareham, as quickly as possible, telegraphed to the
Admiralty and obtained permission to go overland. He arrived in London
a week before we did.
I joined him at his hotel as soon as possible, and found Jenkins there
in a bland state of happiness.
"The Cap'en is just doing 'imself a treat, sir," he told me. "That
there Miss Milly 'as come to 'er senses at last, sir, and all's going to
end 'appy like. The Admiral 'as been and read 'The Articles of War' to
'er, I reckon, and the Cap'en 'e won't be wanting Mrs. J. and myself to
keep house for him no longer."
"Have you seen your wife yet?" I asked him; and his face dropped as he
answered somewhat mournfully, "Well, sir, I ain't finished my leave
yet."
Helston came in presently, looking marvellously well and full of
animation.
"It's all right, old chap," he sang out, as he nearly wrenched my hand
off. "Milly is going to marry me directly I'm promoted, and, from what
they tell me at the Admiralty, I shall be promoted in July without a
doubt. You must be my best man, old chap; and the Admiral is bringing
her up for a week or so, and we four will have a jolly good time before
we go down to Fareham."
My "jolly good time" meant, as I expected, looking after the Admiral and
listening to his endless and pointless yarns. However, I did not mind
for once in a way, and should have quite enjoyed myself if Milly herself
had seemed happy. But, poor little soul, I could see that she was not,
and one evening, when we happened to be alone in the private
sitting-room, after a very tiring day, she suddenly came over to where I
was reading the evening-paper, buried her head on my shoulder, and burst
out crying. She broke my spectacles, too, which was a nuisance. As far
as I could gather between her sobs, she was feeling frightfully lonely,
wanted a mother, which, poor little soul, she had not had since she was
two years old, and didn't want to marry anyone.