Part 18

He made up his mind in no time. "They’ll try and burn down the door at the back, there’s no window from which we can shoot them," and he gave Miller ten men to go and close the left half of the gateway, whilst he took another ten and slipped round to drive the Chinese across to him.

He wouldn’t let me go.

"Keep the rest of the men at the windows," he said, and disappeared in the fog. I ran round the windows to see that the men were there properly, and then went and stood behind the things piled behind the door at the back and waited.

It seemed like twenty minutes—it probably was only about one—and I was trembling with excitement, and when a little piece of mortar or something fell down the wall, I nearly yelled with fright. Then I heard the rustling noise again, and heard a bundle pushed against the bottom of the door, and then another and another. All of a sudden Mr. Ching’s voice shouted, and there were cheers and shrieks, someone fell against the door with a soft noise, and there was the noise of people scampering all over the ground outside. A volley sounded out from behind me—the crash seemed to come through the windows—and more shouting and yelling, and I couldn’t think what that meant, because the men with the straw couldn’t possibly have got round there by that time.

I ran round to one of the windows at the front, and was just in time to prevent some of the bluejackets jumping out. We couldn’t see anything, not even the flashes of the rifles at the gate. But the firing died down almost at once, and then people began running past the house, and we could hear them panting, and heavy blows and shrieks, and knew that Mr. Ching’s bluejackets were chasing them. It was awfully weird, knowing all going on round us, and not being able to see anything.

Some of the bluejackets were so excited, that they did scramble out to join in the killing, and Martin and the Scotchman called out, from the top of the ladder, to know what was happening, and I heard Sally, very scared, asking too.

The noises stopped, and we could hear our people calling to one another; and we all shouted to let them know the way, and they gradually began to come back, climbing through the windows and panting for breath, several of them wiping their sword bayonets.

"Did you kill them all?" I asked Mr. Ching.

"Most of them, I think. You’ve done us a good turn—very lucky that you saw them."

He had left half a dozen men at the gateway to give him warning if they made another attempt, but Miller himself came back and brought that box of ammunition and two more rifles with him.

Mr. Ching was very pleased with these, because we now had altogether eleven Mauser rifles and seven or eight hundred cartridges.

It was grand, and I forgot all about the mistakes I had made, and my arm, and only longed for the fog to clear away and to see the Captain stalking through the gateway, and Blucher—I knew that Blucher would be there—smelling the bodies and wagging his tail and looking up at him, thinking he had shot them. It was splendid to know that it was partly due to me that we had driven them off, this last time, and that I had found all that ammunition.

"What were you firing at?" I asked Miller; and he told me that a lot of Chinamen had tried to rush through the gate—not the men with the straw bundles, but others from outside.

"We gave ’em ’gip’, sir." He was very happy.

Mr. Ching told me afterwards that they had some tins of paraffin to throw over the straw. Wasn’t it lucky that I had spotted them?

Sally was awfully sweet to Mr. Ching, said that he had saved her life twice, and was so nice that he ferreted round and got her something hot—tea, I think.

The old American was still sticking to his corner; I don’t think that he had moved all the night.

After we had spoiled their little game they let us alone, and all we had to do was to take it in turns to lie down and sleep, and when we were on watch, to listen for any sign of Captain Lester.

The ships hadn’t fired since the fog had come on. We had wondered what they had been firing at all the time.

You can just imagine how we did long for daybreak, and for that beastly fog to clear away.

A long time afterwards Miller came up to me; he was very excited.

"Listen, sir! Listen! The Cap’en’s a-comin’."

I jumped up; it was still pitch dark, and the fog just as thick as ever, and then I heard far away the noise of Maxims—tut-tut-tut-tut, tut-tut-tut-tut.

"Them’s Mary and Jane, sir, right enough." Those were the names the men had given the two Maxims which we used to drill on field-gun carriages.

"They’ve been firin’ for the last twenty minutes, sir."

The Captain’s coming at last. Hurrah! I couldn’t help giving a shout of joy, and ran off to tell Sally, but Mr. Ching had told her a quarter of an hour ago.

"Guess I’m right tired," was all she said to me, and began crying again. I know she had something she wanted to ask me, but didn’t like to.

She didn’t seem half as pleased as I thought she ought to be; but that didn’t worry me at all, and I went round the men who were talking and chattering, and I grinned at them in the dark, and I’m sure that they grinned back. I could have hugged them, they were such fine great fellows, and Mr. Ching squeezed my arm—not the bad one—and said, "We’ve saved Sally Hobbs all right, Ford."

I was absolutely happy, and felt jolly hungry at the same time.

*CHAPTER XIV*

*"Old Lest" takes a Hand*

Holding on—"Old Lest’s" Sorry—The Marine Lands Again—"Old Lest’s" going on—In the Fog—The Fog Lifts—After them!—The Maxim Gun—Keeping ’em on the Run—Shelling the Town—Resting—"It’s Boss Evans!"

_Written by Captain James A. Marshall, Royal Marine Light Infantry_

Fancy me writing a book, or rather, helping to write one. I know a good lot of people will think the world’s coming to an end, or that I’ve turned over a new leaf, and am becoming really a credit to the family. It’s about time I did become a credit to them, poor things! I should imagine.

When I was asked to drive the giddy nib, I laughed. Laughed! why, I’ve never laughed so much since father died, as a dear little girl from Massachusetts told me once, when I tried to cheer her up, after that sad event had happened to her family.

We tried to get old "B.-T."[#] to wield the flowing pen, and tell of all his heroic deeds, but—well—he wasn’t taking any—thank you kindly—and they got me to take on the job.

[#] Lieutenant Gore-Travers, known as Bored-Travers, or "B.-T."

You see, whilst old Truscott, the Commander, was lying on his downy couch with a bullet in him somewhere, he couldn’t be expected to know much of what happened outside him, could he? Old Mayhew, our boss doctor man, wouldn’t say where the bullet really was. Why, bless your soul, he wasn’t going to give himself away, not he, and hung round Truscott’s cabin with a face as long as a jews’ harp whilst he was outside it, and as round and smiling as a Dutch cheese with a slice out of it when he went in.

It was all because that silly young ass Ford saw "red" that night we landed with my chaps to have a bit of a plugging match, whilst Whitmore went off with a No. 9 detonator and something in the gun-cotton "line" to blow a gun of sorts.

He thought that he was half-back in a "footer" scrum, or something like that, charged the whole blooming pack of Chinese, got "offside", and was collared and carried off the ground before we could get the referee to sound his whistle.

We argued it out with them for a while, but when old Truscott was doubled up with a bullet in him (you’d better ask Mayhew where), and two or three of my chaps had had holes made in them, we had to drop back to the battery, and couldn’t even bring away Tuck, one of my men who’d been killed. They were so jolly anxious to make our acquaintance, that it was all we could do to hold on behind the wall, and the bank on the beach, till Whitmore had said goodbye to his chums and got aboard the cutter. Even then we couldn’t have got away, if young Withers in the barge hadn’t dropped a few gentle hints with his Maxim and emptied a couple of belts.

We pulled away back to Lawrence, who was waiting for us in the steam pinnace, and I ought to have been standing up in the stern sheets, waving my gory, glittering sword over my head and singing, "With a long, long pull, and a strong, strong pull, cheerly! lads! pull away", to encourage the sailor men. The only reason why I didn’t, was because in the last rush to the boat I’d got a clap over the head which knocked me silly, had been plumped down in the stern sheets, and didn’t know anything about it till we’d got aboard the old _Vigilant_.

I opened my eyes to find myself in my own virtuous bunk, daylight starting the flies skylarking, and Grainger, my servant, the trusty, faithful and never-to-be-forgotten one, poking me to see if I was still alive. I had the dickens of a headache, and at first thought it was due to the usual cause; but Grainger held up the serge frock[#] which I had worn the night before, and I remembered what had happened.

[#] Serge frock is a tunic made of serge, worn on undress occasions.

"That were your second best serge frock, sir," he said sadly, when he had recovered from his surprise at finding me alive. "Cost you four pun’, three-and-sixpence—with postage, sir."

It was soaked with mud, and had a bullet hole through one sleeve. There was a dark patch of blood, too, just in the centre of my manly bosom, which Grainger never could wash out. Whose blood it was I never knew, and old Mayhew threw things at me when I afterwards asked him if he could examine it, and see if it belonged to a Chinaman whom I had opened up a little during the scrap.

"We ’aven’t paid for it, ’ave we, sir? We couldn’t send it back as a misfit or some’ow, I s’pose? I knew you’d being doing som’ut like that, sir, if I let you wear it, and your third best pair of trouses is all split over one knee another three-pun’-ten gone slosh, sir—that is, if they won’t take ’em back, and there’s another of our hye-glasses gone too."

He shook his head reproachfully at me, and told me that I’d had a crack on the "nut". When I pressed him as to who had been so kind as to see me safely home, he wouldn’t answer, but went on brushing the mud still more firmly in.

"Beggin’ your pardon, sir, I hauled on your legs—a little," he said at last. "An’ I’m feared that ’twas I who split them trouses." He said it as if he didn’t think he’d done a very praiseworthy thing in probably saving my life; possibly he hadn’t.

"I’ll double your pay, Grainger; ’twas jolly good of you. Hope you came out of it all right?"

"I came out of it all right. I don’t go ashore on one of these ’ere shows with my second best things on. Thank you very much, sir, but you’ve forgot to pay me anything for the last three months."

I knew that perfectly well, and it closed the discussion. Financial matters are peculiarly distressing to me in the early morning.

He roused me presently with "’Ere’s your usual breakfast, sir," and put down a tray with a bottle of soda water and a biscuit on it, and looked amazed when I clambered out and demanded shaving water and a bath. It was somewhat out of my ordinary routine to turn out much before 9.30, and he, I saw, thought that that crack on my head had affected my brain.

The old Skipper came in whilst I was dressing. I had never seen the old chap so gentle. "I’m all right, sir, thank you—right as a trivet—my head’s the only part of me which would have stood it. Very sorry we couldn’t do much for you last night. How’s the Commander?"

"Umph! Can’t say. Mayhew can’t say either. Pretty bad, I fear. The others are doing all right. Ran you up against a bigger thing than I thought. ’Old Lest’s’ sorry."

"Fortune of war, sir. I’m paid twelve-and-sevenpence a day for it by a grateful country—less income tax."

The dear old chap grunted and went out again.

It wasn’t till I went into the ward room that I heard that, besides young Ford and Tuck missing, Martin, one of my chaps, and Miller, an armourer belonging to Whitmore’s party, had been left behind.

The Skipper sent a boat to try and communicate with the pirates, and find out whether young Ford and these two men were alive and kicking. The boss pirate man was most polite, wrote back that they were doing well (we didn’t know whether that meant that they were wounded or not), and implored the Skipper not to attack the island again, as he was certain that it would provoke a massacre, or something equally unpleasant, of all the Europeans there, including little Sally Hobbs herself.

He added that he was keeping his prisoners, and as they would probably be the first victims, he thought this knowledge might add force to his entreaties to be let alone.

He didn’t know "Old Lest"—not by a long chalk.

The _Huan Min_ turned up during the morning, and that chap Ching (he was a good enough chap to have been a marine, if they had luxuries like that in the Chinese navy) and the skippers of the _Goldfinch_ and _Sparrow_ came across to the _Vigilant_, and had a regular pow-wow, talkee-talkee in the Captain’s cabin.

Ching was to land at sunset with some fifty of his men, and Hoffman was to go with him and guide him across country, straight to the walled house on the hill. They were to get through at all costs. It was Ching’s own suggestion; he and Hoffman thought they could do it, and I knew they would, if it was possible. Whilst he made a dash for the house, all the ships were to plug shell at two places in the island, some distance from the town itself, in order to distract their attention.

Hoffman wasn’t exactly dead, but that was about all you could say. He must have had an enormous amount of vitality, or whatever you call it, to keep "going". He looked most ghastly ill.

It was determined that every man we could fit out with a rifle and other conveniences for hurrying his "dear brethren" into eternity was to land from the _Vigilant_ and the four gunboats about an hour after Ching, and the whole day was spent in communicating with the _Ringdove_ and the _Omaha_ and completing these arrangements.

I’ve always longed to be a pirate myself, and the next best thing was to have the job of collaring one. My detachment were just as keen as I was, especially after last night’s shindy, and we fell in again and prepared to land, and have another go at ’em, as cheerfully as ducks in a thunderstorm.

"Ever shoved it into a ’uman afore, sir?" Grainger asked me, whilst he was helping me on with my sword and leather gear. He’d been polishing it outside my cabin, on and off, all day long.

"Never; nothing bigger than a cockroach."

"Well, sir, it ’ull be some’ut to ’ang up in the ’all at ’ome when we draws our pension. Won’t it, sir?"

"If we don’t have to pawn it," I told him, and went off to look at Truscott. Poor chap! he was worrying about what would happen to his wife and kids if he "pegged out", so one couldn’t do much to cheer him. He was very down on his luck.

We were a goodish bit behind time getting ashore, as the very dickens of a fog came up from the south and wrapped us in its "blissful mantle of white", as the young padré would have said if he’d been there. It was beastly annoying, and took all the gloss out of my moustache; but old Lawrence got us round to the back of the island somehow or other, chiefly by the sound of the _Ringdove’s_ guns, I think. Of course, he jolly well pretended that he did it with a boat’s compass and a pair of parallel rulers on a chart he’d made. Bless me! I never could understand why navigators make such a song about their job; it’s easy enough—shove on till you hit up against the shore—push off again and go on—that’s all that’s wanted. I bet I would navigate any ship you liked, anywhere you liked, if she’d stand a bit of bumping sometimes. I’ve often asked Lawrence to let me try, but, funnily enough, he won’t.

I’d had an awful job with Grainger to let me wear my other serge tunic—my best one—and it was only by telling him that I wasn’t going to bring discredit on "The Corps" by being found dead in the one I’d worn last night, that he let me wear it.

"I make it a rule in life," I had told him, "never to wear any serge in more than one battle," and he had gone away muttering that "he supposed that they hadn’t either of ’em been paid for, and never would be, so it didn’t hardly matter, though he was blowed if he knew what I was going to wear to-morrow".

Some of his statements were remarkably accurate. We had brought along one of Hoffman’s Chinamen to guide us, but, bless me! by the time we’d got ashore, with wet feet, we couldn’t see two yards in front of us. The fog was as thick as pea soup, and it was like trying to wade through velvet.

I had a pocket compass—we all had—and Lawrence had given us the course we were to steer, but I’m jiggered if I know how we got along at all. I was supposed to be in front, with people thrown out on either flank, as laid down in the "drill book", but it was all I could do to keep them bunched up together, touching each other, and the section leaders bawling out, every minute or two, to give the others a notion where they were. My old sergeant-major nearly wept because he couldn’t know whether they were "dressed" in proper line.

We stumbled through it somehow, going on for two minutes and halting for five or ten, whilst they hauled one of our Maxims along on its carriage behind us, and the shouting that went on to know who was there, and where who was, was enough to wake the dead.

The Skipper landed with us, in an old pair of shooting-boots with huge soles on them—the two-to-an-acre kind—and with a big oak stick in his hands. Young Ponsonby came as his "doggy", and Whitmore had brought Rawlings as his. My marines—Langham with the machine gun section, old "B.-T." with "A" company, and Trevelyan with "B" company—brought our "field state" up to a hundred and fifty-four, all of them _Vigilant’s_, and Barclay came along with a dozen stokers as stretcher-bearers. About two miles to our left, farther along the island, the other landing party, which was supposed to make for the walled house, with Sally in it, and join hands with us there, should have commenced their march already, but we hadn’t the faintest notion whether they’d been able to find the place to land. The skipper of the _Omaha_, Captain John A. Parkinson, U.S.N.[#], was to have been in command, and to have had forty men from his own gunboat and thirty each from our three with him, bringing their brigade up to a strength of one hundred and forty-two—that is, with a few details of stretcher parties.

[#] United States Navy.

We only hoped that they’d been able to find each other and get ashore.

"’Old Lest’ don’t care whether they come or not," the Skipper growled to me, when we’d run up against each other in the fog. "’Old Lest’s’ going on. Umph!"

Even Blucher was unhappy, and wagged his tail doubtfully. He had never been on a shooting expedition like this before, and he didn’t know quite what to make of it, or the fog, and stuck to the Skipper like a leech, for fear of losing him.

We had heard a lot of desultory firing going on, even before we had landed, and couldn’t quite understand it, as it came more from the direction of the walled house than from where Ching should have been; but we did not worry much about that.

We found ourselves running up against huts and bamboo fencing about two hours after we’d landed; but there wasn’t a single soul there, and as we were getting out of them I happened to bump into Trevelyan, who’d lost himself. We were wondering what had become of the inhabitants.

"They’ve gone into town to the theatre, and supper afterwards at the Savoy or the Carlton, I expect," he said jokingly.

"I jolly well wish I had," I said.

That set me thinking of the good times I’d had in London, and I forgot, for a second, all about the beastly island and the beastly pirates, but woke up again with the sound of heavy firing—volleys, too—from the same place from where we’d heard the firing before.

"That’s Ching," I thought; "he’s got his hands full."

We ran into some people ourselves in front of us, heard them yelling, and heard their footsteps, but never saw them. There must have been a goodish lot of them, to judge by the noise they made, and sometimes they fired rifles, and bullets went by, overhead, but they didn’t worry much, and we pressed them before us. Eventually they got all round us, yelling "blue murder", but daren’t come near enough to be "spitted", which was a pity, as their noise was very irritating, and made the men jumpy.

There was no sound of the other little brigade having landed, and in about an hour after the heavy firing had started, it died down again. We were rather worried lest this meant that Ching had failed, but an occasional shot coming from the same direction told us that, at any rate, he was still holding on. I don’t believe that we made half a mile in the first three hours, the fog and darkness were so intense that one actually couldn’t see one’s hand.

A halt was called—for the hundredth time, I should imagine—and presently the Skipper came up, singing out for me, and being passed on from one section to another. "The first bit of firm ground we come to I’m going to stop there," he growled. "It’s no use going on like this. I haven’t the shadowiest idea where I’m going."

"Not the foggiest, I imagine you mean, sir."

"Umph!" he grunted.

He rather liked my polished wit.

It really was the most extraordinary sensation you can imagine, to go lumbering along at this snail’s pace, and to hear those fellows just ahead booing and yelling, and to hear them running towards us, shouting something rude and unladylike and running away, without ever seeing a soul.

We ran up against a bank shortly afterwards, and stayed there for the remainder of the night, the fog sometimes clearing away slightly, but always shutting down, like a blanket, directly we thought of moving on. We found a little gap in the bank for the Maxim, and formed more or less of a hollow square all round it, with my chaps lining the bank.

We let rip a few rounds from it whenever we thought we could hear a lot of those fellows close together, and thought we managed to wing one or two. We certainly found two dead pigs in a sty alongside a hut, about fifty yards away, when the fog did clear away next morning. Ask Whitmore about his Maxim gun and the two pigs; but see that you’ve got a clear start first!

We made ourselves as cosy as we could—from a "drill book" point of view, I mean—and had to be on the alert all night.

The Skipper and Whitmore paced up and down behind the Maxim gun, the Skipper smoking cigar after cigar, and worrying a good deal about not being able to get on. Old "Blucher" came across to me presently, to where I was sitting on the trail of the Maxim gun, eating some sandwiches which Grainger had brought for me, and telling yarns to young Rawlings and Ponsonby to pass away the time. He sat down between my knees and finished off the gristly parts of the beef inside the sandwiches, and wanted his ears played with. He wasn’t at all happy, and the noises all round us and the yelping of dogs had got on his nerves.

I had thrown out half a dozen marines as sentries—only ten yards in front of our bank—and one or other of them kept on letting off their rifles and scooting back. I had to lead them out again, firmly but gently. It’s bad enough on an ordinary dark night to have to do sentry business, but in this fog, when you couldn’t see anyone till he touched you, it was only the steadiest old soldier who could "stick" it. I was at last compelled to keep walking from one to another myself, and spent most of the night doing this.

There were one or two, what you might call, "incidents".