Part 22

There was a lot more rifle firing and machine-gun firing farther to the right, and the field gun stopped shooting; but we couldn’t see the marines and those others now, because they had got across the paddy fields and were under the brow of our ridge. We could hear them cheering, however, though they were out of sight, and the noise seemed to be going towards the gun, and we knew that they were charging it, and simply held our breath and watched Chinamen dodging about, round it, and under the trees, and firing downhill.

Then they began bolting away out of sight—we knew what we should see in a moment or two, and held our breath—and almost directly afterwards a whole crowd of our people went dashing across the open space, and swept round the gun.

We all jumped down, made a rush for the gateway, cheering like mad, and waving, and then I saw someone jump on top of the field gun and wave his cap, and knew that it was Jim Rawlings. I was certain of it, and Miller said he thought it was too, and this simply added everything to the joy, because I had been wondering and worrying whether he was killed or badly wounded—ever since Miller had told me that he had seen him knocked down two nights ago, when Mr. Whitmore’s party was retreating, and just before he himself had been captured.

I felt all "bubbly" inside, and didn’t quite know what to do, and felt very "sniffy", and ran towards the gun, with Miller and Mr. Ching and a lot of his men. Before we could get to it, the first lot of our people had gone off after the Chinese, who were running away; and the next lot of people I saw was a company of American bluejackets, with their long thin Captain in front of them. He gripped my hand and said he was "right glad to find us alive", asked after Sally, and rushed on to the house, his old-looking First Lieutenant shouting out, "Guess things are real bully," as he followed him. Then Mr. Rashleigh and the "Ringdoves" came running up, clustered round the gun, and began cheering. Dr. Hibbert gave me a cheery wink, and Mr. Rashleigh patted me on the back and hurt my arm, and I hadn’t forgiven him for that unfair report of his, and hated him touching me.

I heard him tell his coxswain to take the gun back to the _Ringdove_, and I thought that he couldn’t possibly have known that our people had captured it first; so I told him about it, and that they had only gone in pursuit of the Chinese, but he took no notice of me, and I forgot all about it in the excitement of seeing Captain Lester coming striding along, puffing and blowing, "Blucher" barking and prancing ahead of him, running up and smelling the gun and one or two dead bodies very gingerly. Then he spotted me, and came wriggling up to be patted.

The Captain looked very sourly at me and growled out, "Where’s that chap Ching, and the little lass and Hobbs?" and wanted to know whether Martin and Miller were with me. I must have looked a most awful sight, I know, because I could still only just manage to see out of my left eye by lifting up the lid with my fingers, and of course I was covered with mud, and my left sleeve was dangling down, and my arm was inside my monkey jacket, where the old Chinaman had bandaged it. But, for all that, he didn’t even ask me how I was, and that made me miserable.

"Pongo" came panting along after him, and when he had recovered his breath, I asked if the Commander had landed with them.

It was then that I heard that he had been shot through the body, and that Dr. Mayhew didn’t know whether he would live or die. That made me feel even more wretched, and the Captain, hearing me ask about him, turned round and growled: "If you hadn’t been such a blamed little idiot, he’d never have been shot. Umph! His little finger is worth more than all you confounded young midshipmen—umph!—put together;" and he stalked off to meet the American Captain.

"Pongo" told me that Dicky was going on all right, and then wanted to know all about my arm, and my face, and everything that had happened; but I wanted to be left alone and be miserable, and went away and hid somewhere—I didn’t care what happened; and wanted to run away and get killed, or something like that, till I heard Jim’s voice calling for me. And he found me and comforted me a little, and said that Dr. Barclay did not think that the Commander would die, but that Dr. Mayhew wouldn’t say for certain till another day had gone by. But all the joy and the excitement had gone out of me, and I felt wretched and ill, and had a bit of a "weep", and didn’t mind Jim seeing me, not in the least, and he cleared out and left me, and went away to Mr. Whitmore and presently came back, and told me all about Mr. Whitmore’s party, and how they’d had a pretty tough job getting back to the boat, and never got halfway to the gun. He hadn’t been wounded at all—he didn’t even remember falling down—so Miller must have made a mistake. He was awfully keen to see over the house, and went everywhere, and before I could stop him he poked his nose into the little room place where they had put Mr. Hoffman and five dead bluejackets, and that made him feel rather ill.

Everybody seemed to come up after this. Dr. Barclay had a look at my arm, and I saw the corners of his mouth go down. "’Twill be a long job," he said, and did it up again as comfortably as he could. Miller had coiled himself up behind the wall, and was fast asleep, and so were Mr. Ching and most of his bluejackets—I would have done anything in the world for them. Old Sharpe came up to have a yarn, and cheered me up a little, and Captain Marshall caught sight of me, and came along and said something nice, and I knew that he was sorry, and I was so longing for someone to be pleasant that I made friends. He didn’t "hee-haw" either, as I expected he would, when he first saw my face, and he told me that the Commander knew that I had sent off that message in the letter which the Englishman had written, and was pleased about it. This cheered me a little.

But the Captain took no notice of me, and every time he passed, my heart just felt like lead inside me, and everyone seemed to know that I was in disgrace, even old "Blucher".

It seems silly to say so, but I did fancy that he was not so affectionate as he usually was, and it hurt me.

Then they brought a dead man along with his face covered up, and someone told me that it was Wilkins, the marine bugler, who had helped me to set fire to one of those huts, and throw stones at the dogs, and that made me sadder than ever again.

Both of the landing parties must have managed to slip through in the fog without really running up against many of the Chinese; but now they were swarming all round us, and there was so much to do to keep them off, that I was left alone, and got into a safe corner, and watched the ships firing at the town and the six-inch gun. Sally had been put in a safe place, so the Captain didn’t care in the least where their shells went; and a good many did come pretty close to us, and one of the _Vigilant’s_ eight-inch shells didn’t burst, and came roaring overhead, and fell into the paddy fields below.

Presently a number of houses in the town caught fire, and a lot of the Chinese ran away to try and put the fires out, so that we were not so much worried with them.

I wasn’t there when the mandarin came to see the Captain, and didn’t hear that he had brought the Englishman’s head with him till afterwards, and by that time so many sad things had happened, that I did not feel so very sorry for him.

Then we began our retreat, and it was just before we started that Jim suggested that as I only had one arm, the best thing that I could do was to stick quite close to the Captain. He offered me his revolver, but I still had that one the Englishman had given me, and a good many cartridges for it were still in my pocket, so I got him to load it for me. He said a lot of things to buck me up before he went away, and I tried to feel happier, but it wasn’t much of a success, at any rate whilst I was near the Captain. You see, he didn’t even notice me. I thought that perhaps he would send me away from him, but not noticing me hurt me almost more, and I didn’t want to talk to "Pongo", because he was nearly as much an idiot as "Dicky", and though he tried to buck me "up", he only made me want to kick him. He would keep going at it, too, and I was jolly glad whenever he had to run on a message for the Captain, and left me alone.

I saw Captain Marshall and Mr. Travers rush the hill opposite us, and then we had to follow them across the paddy fields, very slowly, because we had eight wounded men to carry. Eight men from the _Ringdove_ dragged that Chinese gun along behind us, and Jim came up when we were halfway across. He had caught sight of the gun, and was simply furious, because it wasn’t their gun at all, and we both told Mr. Trevelyan so, and he was just as angry.

"Have you said anything to the Gunnery Lieutenant?" he asked.

Jim had told him, but he wasn’t going to do anything. He thought that the Captain had probably given Mr. Rashleigh permission, so wasn’t going to be mixed up with it, and we couldn’t speak to the Captain himself.

We got across all right, but Captain Parkinson lost a lot of people in the rearguard when he left the walled house, and that meant more wounded for us to carry, and then we dragged on again, and Mr. Travers and Captain Marshall had a fearful time when they tried to leave their hill. They did it splendidly, and it was grand to see their men walking backwards down the hill, with their bayonets all sticking out at the brutes above them, and when they ran back, Mr. Travers and Captain Marshall and two or three men had to stop and keep the Chinese from killing a wounded man who had fallen almost in front of their feet—they were so close behind them. We saw Mr. Langham rush back from the Maxim gun and pick him up and carry him along, whilst the others kept the Chinese off, and we all cheered. It was a grand sight, and it washed out a lot of silly things Mr. Langham had done to us in the gunroom.

After that we had seventeen people to carry, which meant very slow work, and then the Captain took charge of the rearguard, because it was the most dangerous place, and I kept close to him and saw that my revolver was all right; but nothing much happened, and we cleared out back to within half a mile of the shore, where that beastly fog began.

I never even saw Sally all this time, because Mr. Ching’s bluejackets stood in a ring all round her, touching shoulders, so that none of the bullets that were always coming along should touch her. I did see her skirt once when we were halted, and she was sitting on the ground in the middle of them; but that was all.

We all joined up together then, and went as fast as we could, and the fog rolled all over us and shut out everything. It was perfectly awful, and we seemed to lose each other and then find each other again, time after time, and there were all our people shouting, and trying to form a square all round us, and farther away in the fog Chinamen were yelling and gradually getting round our flanks, and at last they were even ahead of us.

It was then, that the Captain spoke to me for the first time, and ordered me to try and find Captain Parkinson, and tell him to close his men on the centre, so as not to have too broad a front, and to go very slowly. I did manage to find him, after stumbling into a ditch and hurting my left arm, and very nearly losing my revolver, and was only able to get back to the Captain because his bugler kept on sounding "G’s".

Just being taken notice of bucked me up again very much, and when the Chinese suddenly rushed against our square, making a most awful noise, I wasn’t really frightened—I didn’t want to live unless I could do something to wipe out everything that I had done wrong—and this was my chance, I thought. I was shoved about from side to side, and jammed in among a lot of our men, and was so small, that the brutes perhaps didn’t see me, and somehow or other I managed to keep near the Captain, and his coxswain, and the signalman, and I think I helped them keep the Chinese off him. I know that my revolver was empty when the fighting left off, and I had tried very carefully not to fire except when a Chinaman was almost touching. I had been knocked over by our own men just before the finish, and lost the Captain, but found him again, and got one of the signalmen to reload the revolver.

I have often been asked whether I was frightened, and people think that I am only putting on "side" when I tell them I was not. But I wasn’t, not in the least, because, as you must understand by now, from all I have written, I was too frightfully miserable and too ashamed of myself.

Well, you know what happened, and that I managed to kill a brute who pretended to be dead and tried to kill the Captain, as he was carrying Sally away from those dead bodies round the Chinese gun.

The Captain did not say anything about it at the time, but that didn’t stop me being happy in the least. I didn’t want thanks, I was simply satisfied to have done it—all by myself, too—with lots of people looking on, so that there could not be any mistake about it. Jim soon heard about it, and found me, and gave my good arm a squeeze and went off. I had heard Captain Marshall "hee-hawing" about Ching looking as if he was walking on "air", and I didn’t know what he meant at the time; but now I knew, for I felt that I was walking on air too, and forgot my arm and my face and of being so tired—forgot everything except having saved the Captain—and I’m certain that Mr. Ching could not have felt more happy than I did.

I still stuck to the Captain, although he didn’t say anything to me, and even when I heard that Withers had been killed, I couldn’t feel as sad as I ought, though he was really a chum of mine.

Presently, when all the terrible number of wounded had been patched up, we brought them and the dead down to the sea, and when we got that signal out of the fog from the _Omaha’s_ siren, we settled down to spend the night on the shore, behind a damp bank, and made some fires, and tried to make the wounded comfortable round them. When the Captain had seen to everything, he went over to one of the fires and sat down to light a cigar, as he had run out of matches. I think that he must have been a little tired.

I sat down behind him, with "Pongo" and "Blucher", and presently he turned round—he could see my face by the light of the fire, and I was trembling all over for him to say something—and he growled out, "Haven’t improved the look of your face, Dick!"

Well, I simply ran down towards the sea and hid in the fog, and sat down in the mud and cried for joy. No one else could see me, and I didn’t much care if they did, for I felt too happy to describe it to you. I knew that everything was wiped out at last.

Of course he never cared a little bit about himself, so probably never thought it was such a splendid thing to save his life, or worth the trouble of thanking me for doing so. That is why he hadn’t done it, in so many words; but just that "They haven’t improved the look of your face, Dick!" was all I wanted, and I was too shy to go back for a long time, till I got so cold that I had to, and found Jim there and told him, and he squeezed my arm again, and I know that he was as happy as I was. He hadn’t got hurt all day, not even in the fight in the square. He’d been knocked under a Maxim carriage whilst he was trying to help Mr. Whitmore get into some safe place, after his leg had been broken, and had nothing but a few bruises to show. He really was rather worried about having nothing else to show for it.

He was still bubbling over with anger about that gun. He disliked Mr. Rashleigh even more than I did, and he hated him having it. We couldn’t do anything, although Captain Marshall said that he had no right to it whatsoever. Mr. Travers, with his leg jolly painful, didn’t want to be worried about anything, and Captain Parkinson was too sad about his First Lieutenant having been killed to think of anything else. He did say, "Guess your marines had gone by when my boys came up, and that little fat chap was behind me—some."

"I actually stood on it, sir! Didn’t you see me, Dick?" Jim told him, and I told Captain Parkinson that I had seen him, too, from the gateway with my own eyes, and that was a long time before anyone else came in sight.

He wouldn’t say anything, so we went away and sat down close to the Captain, and began talking about it—you know what I mean—talking just loudly enough for him to hear, if he wanted to; but we were both too frightened to talk too loudly, and I don’t think that he did hear.

It was grand to see the fog rolling away in the morning, and to see the gunboats showing up, and when it cleared away altogether, it was grander still to watch them peppering the Chinese with shells whenever they came out in the open. Then the boats came along, and you should have seen old "Blucher" scrambling into the first _Vigilant’s_ boat that ran up the beach. It made everyone laugh.

I was sent back with the second batch of wounded, and Dicky met me at the gang-way, looking awfully white and scared. He told me that the Commander was doing all right; but I wasn’t allowed to see him, and Dr. Mayhew was almost off his head with worry and work, and hadn’t time to talk to me.

When I saw my face in the looking-glass I didn’t wonder why people had smiled whenever they saw me. The left side was all purple and black, and my forehead was raw, and my left eye and upper lip all swollen.

Old Ah Man burst into tears, when he saw me—he was a funny old chap—and went away and kicked his Chinese stewards and "makee learn" boys, and brought me some beef tea and custard, and cried again when he heard that Withers had been killed.

Then I had a hot bath, Dicky helping me, and turned into my hammock, and it wasn’t till next morning that my arm was properly dressed and put into plaster of Paris.

I knew, even before I went on deck, by the noise of the bell being struck every two minutes, that the fog had come on again. It was denser than ever, if that was possible, and we had to switch on the lights all over the ship to see our way about.

At midday we buried Withers and the five men belonging to the _Vigilant_ who had been killed—buried them overboard. Captain Lester had brought them off from shore, because he feared that if he buried them there the Chinese would dig them up and mutilate them.

It was most awfully solemn and depressing, in that damp, raw fog, with our bells tolling and our colours half-masted and dripping down limply. Out of the fog, on each side of us, the gunboats’ bells were tolling, for they were burying their dead too, and the noise seemed to throb right through you. The Chaplain read the funeral service over the six bodies, covered with Union Jacks, and lying in a row on the quarterdeck, Withers being the smallest and being placed farthest aft, because he was an officer, and the Captain stood behind them, without moving a muscle, and looking terribly stern.

The marines fired three volleys, and "A" and "B" companies fired another three volleys, and then the two bluejacket buglers sounded the "Last Post" six times, and each time, as the last note died away, there was a splash, and I felt as if something icy cold had struck me right in the middle of the back.

I did not dare to look at anyone except the Captain. Then the band played a cheerful march, Mr. Lawrence sang out—"Ship’s company! Right and left turn! Quick march!" and the men marched for’ard into the battery, very silently, looking over the side at the water as they went through the battery screen door.

"Hoist the colours!" the Captain said, and went below. His lips were very tightly squeezed together. No one could eat any lunch, we were all so miserable, and no one even heard Captain Marshall "hee-hawing" for a long time—not for days and days.

But the Commander’s third day had gone by, and Dr. Mayhew and Dr. Barclay, both of them, said that he would get well, and that cheered us all; and in a couple of days or so the Captain began to get angry again, and to grunt and growl at everybody, which was another good sign, and cheered us up a great deal. He was fearfully angry about the fog; for it settled down and never lifted for four days, and was so thick that we could do nothing all that time, and of course the Captain had only half finished his job, and wanted to burn the town and the junks and recapture the yacht.

It did lift on the fifth day, and when the gunboats stood inshore and the Captain landed, with everyone who was well enough to land, there was no one there to oppose him, and only about twenty small junks still remaining in the creek. The pirates had simply cleared out in all the big junks and escaped in the fog, and before they left they had set fire to the yacht and the tramp steamer, and these were simply complete wrecks. Jim told me that they were nothing but bent and warped iron.

The Captain was in a terrible rage about it; but I don’t see how he could blame himself, and it was only lucky that the fog had lifted during the morning on which we had all got off.

He burnt the rest of the town and destroyed the six-inch gun; and the Chaplain went ashore, with a firing party, and read the funeral service over the graves of Mr. Hoffman and Wilkins, the marine bugler, and fired three volleys, and the bluejacket drummer-boy used Wilkins’s own bugle to sound the "Last Post". When this was done, and when the _Huan Min_ had towed away some of the junks and burnt the others, we all steamed back to Tinghai.

The _Ringdove_ was sent up to Shanghai to communicate with the Admiral, and took with her our mails. I wrote a most gorgeous letter to my mother, and you can imagine what tremendously exciting letters we all had to write home.

Jim was in charge of the boat that took the mail bags across to her, and he came back red with anger. "They’ve got that gun all burnished and polished, just abaft the mainmast—I saw it;" and that made us all, everyone in the gunroom, angry again. We had almost forgotten about it in the excitement of getting back to Tinghai and writing home.

Sally and Mr. Hobbs went in her, but before they went Mr. Langham coaxed her down into the gunroom to cut those ribbons across the piano. She was very nervous and uncomfortable, and just as she was going to do it with Webster’s dirk, someone suggested that Withers’s ought to be used, so we went away and fetched it from his chest. When she knew whose it was she cried, and we all felt horribly "snuffy", and then she opened the piano and sat down, but only touched one note and burst into tears again. Mr. Langham pulled out his big handkerchief, shoved it into her hands, and she ran away.

Directly she had disappeared Mr. Langham locked the piano and threw the key through the scuttle into the sea.

When the _Ringdove_ came back she brought six weeks’ mails, and that was the first thing that really cheered us up. We were quite happy.