Part 9

Then Mr. Rashleigh sent for me. He was angry that I hadn’t reported to him directly I had come alongside. I told him all that had happened, and how Scroggs had done nearly everything, and when he’d been killed, how Sharpe had practically done everything, and how Mr. Trevelyan had taken all my Maxim ammunition and gone back to have a look at the pirate place himself. The last bit seemed to make him jolly angry, and he muttered something about "confounded disobedience".

The wind, too, had gone round to almost due north, so that Mr. Trevelyan couldn’t possibly get back for at least three days.

"That ass Trevelyan would put his head into a lion’s mouth, if he thought he could get any news there," he said, and swore angrily. "I’ll have to go and haul him out by the feet, and hope the pirates won’t have snapped his head off. If they haven’t, I will."

We had to go back with him, he couldn’t leave us there, and as soon as his people had set up some more rigging, and done a bit more to make our poop water-tight, and the stern as well, we had to follow the _Ringdove_ back again. It was a fair wind for us, and we didn’t delay her very much. Mr. Rashleigh had offered to let me sleep aboard his gunboat, in order that I could get a good rest; but I had had a jolly good feed in the ward room, and had had a bath, so this made me rather angry. "Just as you like; I don’t care a tuppenny biscuit," he said, and gave me another petty officer to take Scroggs’s place, so at last Sharpe was able to get a little sleep.

I must say that I felt frightened about Jim and Mr. Trevelyan, because neither of them would have thought twice of taking on all the pirates in the world; and they had already had nearly thirty hours to themselves, and I wondered what had been happening. By noon next day we were two miles off the islands, and the channel from which we had escaped; but we had heard or seen nothing of the _Ferret_, and thought that we might possibly have passed her beating back to the rendezvous during the night.

Presently someone shouted that they thought they had heard the noise of a gun. Everyone listened, and in a few minutes we could hear three sharp bangs. "That’s the _Ferret’s_ six-pounder," someone said, and we were all frightfully excited.

The _Ringdove_ signalled us to follow as fast as possible—she had heard them also—and shoved on for all she was worth.

She had all her little sails set, and smoke was pouring out of her funnel.

We saw her enter the channel, half a mile ahead of us, and just as she got into the mouth of it, two clouds of white smoke jumped out from the left-hand side, down by the water’s edge, we saw two great splashes of water leap up behind her stern, and then came the roar. If you’ve never heard the roar of a gun, it’s awfully difficult to describe it; but with cliffs all round, you can hear the noise smashing up against them with a crash, and rolling about and crashing again.

"They’ve got some guns there, sir! Now we’ve got some information as will please the Captin, sir, when he hears of it, sir, eh?" and Sharpe winked at me.

We kept our eyes glued on the _Ringdove_, and saw that she was clearing for action. I have always thought that Mr. Rashleigh might have done that before; and the two guns had reloaded before he could commence firing, and they plugged in two more shots. "One’s hit her," the signalman sang out, "close to the foremast, sir." But she didn’t seem to be badly damaged, and started off with her four-inch guns (three she had on each side, one on the poop, one in the waist, and one on the fo’c’stle). They made an awful noise in the narrow channel; and we could also hear the rattle and see the spurts of smoke from under her bow and stern, and knew that she was working her Nordenfelt machine guns. "They’re digging up the ground all round them pirates’ guns," one of my men sang out, though, as far as I could see, most of the _Ringdove’s_ shells were falling in the water—at first, at any rate.

I couldn’t find the guns, but soon the "Ringdoves" made better shooting, and I could then spot them. Just as I had spotted them they fired again. "Short," yelled a man. "Two hundred over," another shouted.

"They’re too much bothered by those ’Ringdoves’ to do much aiming, sir," Sharpe said very coolly. Then I began to wonder what would happen whilst we were passing them, and whether the _Ringdove_ would wait for us. She didn’t, however, and you can imagine how frightened I was to see her steaming away out of range, and cease firing, after the shore guns had fired another round at her, which fell a long way astern. She was almost hidden in powder smoke too. "They’ll just have time to reload before we get abreast of them," I said to Sharpe; and I don’t mind telling you that I felt in a horrid funk, and, if there had been no one to know anything about it, should have turned the _Sally_ round and run away.

"All right, sir!" Sharpe said; he didn’t look frightened. "Keep her across as far as you can, and send all of ’em who aren’t wanted down below. Mr. Rashleigh will be back in a minute." He took charge of the six-pounder, with one man to help him load, and, "my eye!" he did let off quickly. I sent everyone else down below into the hold except Fergusson and another man, who looked after the tiller tackles, and went amidships myself and stared at those two guns reloading—I couldn’t take my eyes off them—and—and—then they began slowly to train round, till I could only see the black muzzles pointing straight at us, with Sharpe’s little shells bursting on the ground in front of them. I’ve told you how frightened I was, so I must tell you that I did not get behind the mainmast. I would have done anything to get there, but something inside me prevented me, and I have been awfully proud that I didn’t, ever since.

It’s bad enough standing behind a big gun and waiting for it to go off, but it was awful standing in front of two; and I felt that they couldn’t possibly help hitting me—to say nothing of the junk—because, although we had crept over to the far side of the channel, we were only about four hundred yards away. Then off they went, the smoke and the flashes and the roar, Sharpe’s yell, "Look out, sir!" a crash somewhere in our poop, and another crash up above; all seemed to come together.

"The tiller’s smashed, sir! We can’t steer," Fergusson shouted, and I saw that one side of the poop had been blown clean out, and the whole of the upper part of the mainsail had fallen down, and the top of the mast with it.

Sharpe rushed aft and cut the mizzen halyards, and down that sail came. You must understand that we were sailing very fast before the wind, and, of course, if we had only the foresail set, we should have blown along in more or less of a straight line, but the mizzen made us yaw from side to side.

This steadied the _Sally_ a little, and we were going to lower the rest of the mainsail too, when there was a tremendous roar, and the _Ringdove_ came splashing back, in between us and the guns, with all her sails flat "aback", and she didn’t give those guns a chance to fire again. She ran in quite close, and we could see men running away from them; and then round she turned, still firing, and followed us as we staggered this way and that way up the channel.

"Lower that cursed fores’l or you’ll be ashore," Mr. Rashleigh shouted, "and we’ll take you in tow." Jolly coolly he did it, too, and everyone hauled in the grass hawser and made it fast.

In five minutes we were out of range.

"What the furies is the matter?" he shouted from the poop.

"First shot carried away our tiller," Sharpe shouted.

"Anybody hurt?"

"No, sir," he answered. I was too excited to shout.

Still there wasn’t a sound or sight of Mr. Trevelyan’s junk, and we went very slowly up the channel, almost as far as where we had sunk that first pirate junk.

Then all of a sudden we could hear the six-pounder banging away somewhere on our left, and the tut—tut, tut—tut of the Maxim, and in a little opening in the rocks I caught sight of the white ensign I had given Mr. Trevelyan, against the dark shore, and could make out the _Ferret_ herself, jammed at the foot of some rocks, and people on board waving their arms.

The _Ringdove_ had spotted her as well, and we all cheered and steered straight across towards her—at any rate, the _Ringdove_ steered and we were towed round—and the gunboat dropped her anchor about a hundred yards off.

The poor little _Ferret_ was all over to port. She had only her mizzen mast standing, and was evidently hard and fast on the rocks, right in the middle of a small creek.

Mr. Rashleigh went across in the whaler at once, and as he got close to her we could see his boat’s crew pulling very fast, and noticed some bullet splashes round the boat, and the _Ferret’s_ Maxim spluttered out. We couldn’t see what they were firing at, and it was most exciting.

"Mr. Trevelyan, he’s bottled ’em, sir; that’s what he’s done, sir," Sharpe said. He was busy repairing the tiller, and going about the job as if he was on board the _Vigilant_ at Hong-Kong, or Portsmouth, or anywhere else where there was no chance of a scrap.

Well, that was just what it turned out to be. Mr. Trevelyan had fetched the mouth of the channel the morning after he had left me, hadn’t been fired at by the battery, but had coolly crawled through and examined the shore on each side. He had found this creek, sailed up it right past a bend, and found himself in sight of a dozen or more junks all anchored together. He had carried on and opened fire on them, but found that they were too much for him. He had lost his mainmast, had two men killed when it fell, had to haul out again, and, not being able to avoid the rocks in the middle of the creek, had run hard and fast on them.

Jim told me the story, and how they daren’t try and get her off again because she had such a big hole in her bottom, and how the junks had tried to come and capture her, but had to come singly, and couldn’t face the six-pounder shells and the Maxim, and had drawn back. Last night they had tried to rush them in boats, but Mr. Trevelyan had rigged nets all round, and it blew very hard, and many boats were stove in on the rocks, and the nets and the Maxim gun drove off those that did not get alongside.

"It was a most awful night, Dick," he said, "but I wouldn’t have missed it for the world, now it’s all over. And what we should have done without that ammunition you gave us, I don’t know."

All that day the pirates had been firing rifles at them from both sides of the creek, and only one man at each gun was allowed on deck, and they had had to be changed, because three of them had been wounded. Everyone else had kept down below in the hold, with the dirty water up to their knees.

"We couldn’t have stuck it for another day," Jim told me, "and Mr. Trevelyan was going to attempt to land the guns on one of the bigger rocks, which had some trees on it, that very night, and try and cut them down and make a breastwork of them, and hold out till you came."

Mr. Trevelyan had sent him across to that rock during the night to see if it was all right, and he had waded and swam across, and then in the dark slipped down on his way back, and cut himself against the rocks. His hands, and face, and chest, and all over, in fact, were all scratched—great long scratches—and he was so stiff, he could hardly move. He had to be bandaged pretty well all over, but was as happy as anything. "Mr. Trevelyan is a fine chap," he kept on saying. "He’s always thinking of some new dodge. It was grand."

"What are you firing at?" I asked him. "Can you see the junks from the _Ferret_?"

"No, they’re round the corner, but the cliffs are full of the brutes with rifles."

Dr. Hibbert wouldn’t let us see Dicky. "He’s asleep again," he called out from the _Ringdove’s_ poop. "Don’t you come aboard, bothering round. He’ll do all right." He had a lot of work to do, because one of the "Ringdoves" had been very badly smashed "up" by that shot which had hit her, and four or five of Mr. Trevelyan’s men had been more or less badly wounded, and had come across with Jim in the whaler. Dr. Hibbert, and the Paymaster, and the sick-berth attendant were busy in the ward room patching them up.

They had got up steam in the _Ringdove’s_ little steam cutter, and Mr. Rashleigh and Mr. Trevelyan steamed up past the rock and out of sight round the corner.

The _Ferret_ fired her Maxim and the _Ringdove_ her Nordenfelts to keep down the rifle fire, and they got past the entrance safely and out of sight, but came back very soon.

I could see that Mr. Rashleigh was puffing out his cheeks with importance, and that Mr. Trevelyan was looking very vexed about something, as they went aboard the _Ringdove_, and I heard afterwards that Mr. Rashleigh had wanted to steam back to Tinghai at once to report that he had found the headquarters of the pirates. Mr. Trevelyan, however, wanted to burn the pirate junks first, and, if the _Ringdove_ wouldn’t go in and try, had offered to do the job with her boats.

Eventually Mr. Rashleigh gave way, but he wouldn’t take the _Ringdove_ in till his Sub-lieutenant had surveyed the creek, and he sent him away in the whaler to take soundings, although Mr. Trevelyan swore that there was enough water.

The whaler was all right whilst she was in sight, but directly she got round the corner she lost a man wounded, and came hurrying back again. There was another row then; but Mr. Trevelyan had his own way, and a Nordenfelt machine gun was put in the bows of the _Ringdove’s_ cutter and another in the steamboat, and we saw that they were going to follow the whaler and protect her.

Jim and I were supposed to be getting some sleep all this time, but we couldn’t—of course we couldn’t; and just then Mr. Trevelyan shouted to us that I had to go away in charge of the cutter, and Jim in charge of the steamboat, if we’d had enough sleep. The boats dropped down alongside the _Sally_, and we were aboard in a jiffy, Jim grinning with delight. We shouted that we’d had all the sleep we wanted and were quite wide awake, and shoved off after the whaler, Jim taking me in tow and I taking the whaler astern of me.

The steamboat towed us past the _Ferret_, quite close to her. She was an absolute wreck, and all one side looked as though it was smashed in by a big rock. She fired a shell or two to prevent the brutes firing rifles at us from the shore, and the five men left aboard her cheered us. We got past without being fired at, and then we were out of sight of the _Ringdove_, and the steamboat cast us off, and we had to pull in towards the starboard side of the creek and search that with our Nordenfelt, if anyone fired. The steamboat did the same on the other side, and the Sub in the whaler went on taking soundings between us.

"Cutter!" the Sub had shouted, and I held up my hand (he didn’t know my name), "open fire directly you hear rifle shots;" and I sang out, "Ay, ay, sir!" and you may bet we were keen as mustard, and "stood by" with the Nordenfelt’s hopper full of one-inch cartridges, and the lever all ready to jerk backwards and forwards.

You should have seen us watching the banks. I had borrowed the signalman’s field glasses, because my telescope had disappeared in the wreckage of the _Sally’s_ poop, and watched every bit of rock or bush, and saw several Chinamen creeping about. They had rifles, but didn’t fire them.

"There’s a shot, sir!" cried the coxswain, and I saw a splash near the steamboat, and Jim began banging away with his Nordenfelt, but stopped after he’d fired three times, and we had never another shot fired at us. I was rather pleased. To make up for it, we suddenly came in sight of the whole fleet of pirate junks, and a whole crowd of ordinary junks lying behind them. They weren’t more than five hundred yards away, and, when they saw us, began beating drums, and clashing brass things, and yelling, and letting off crackers to frighten us. One of the nearest had her side turned towards us, and began letting off her guns as well, and the din was simply hideous.

It was just like going up to a peaceful wasp’s nest and stirring it up with a stick.

We were both close to the whaler, and the little round shot began to come rather too near. I heard Jim shout, "Couldn’t we go for them, sir?" and my boat’s crew bent forward to be ready for a spurt; but the Sub, who was standing up in the whaler, shook his head, and ordered Jim to take us in tow again. He looked as if he’d jolly well like to have tried, but he had to obey orders.

"There’s enough bally water for an ironclad," he shouted, "all the way up, but we must go back, or it’ll be too late for the _Ringdove_ to do anything."

So back we went again, the men pulling their oars to make it easier for the steamboat, and the round shot bobbing about in the water astern of us, till we’d got out of sight.

But Mr. Rashleigh wouldn’t move for anything the Sub or Mr. Trevelyan said to him. It would be dark in half an hour, and he wasn’t going to risk anything in the dark, and would wait for daylight. I was ordered to take my cutter alongside the _Ferret_, and transfer her guns and stores to the _Ringdove_. This took nearly two hours in the dark, and Mr. Trevelyan came in charge. He was simply bubbling over with anger. "She’s got a searchlight, and the old _Vigilant_ could go up there without winking. I bet ’Old Lest’ would have cleared out the whole blooming crowd by now. My aunt! fancy wasting the whole jumping day! Call himself Rashleigh! My blessed grandmother!" and he spat in the water to show his contempt.

The last thing I took away was my white ensign, and although it was nighttime, I hoisted it on board the Sally again. It had several bullet holes through it, and was torn and looked jolly warworn. I thought even then that I’d keep it—if the signalman didn’t collar it himself—for my mother, or perhaps give it to Nan when I got home.

We had cast off from the _Ringdove_, and had anchored close to her. My orders were to make the cutter "fast" along-side, man it in the morning with all the _Sally’s_ crew who were left, and follow the _Ringdove_ up the creek directly it was light.

I was very excited, but managed to find some place to lie down, and slept jolly well, which only shows how very tired I must have been.

Sharpe woke me at six, half an hour before sunrise. We all had some hot cocoa and some biscuit, and then we got as many rifles and revolvers and cutlasses as we could find, and filled the Gardner’s hopper with cartridges. We crept about in the dark without making any noise, could presently hear the hands "turning out" aboard the _Ringdove_, and took our places in the cutter and waited to shove her off. When it was light enough to just see the rocks, Mr. Rashleigh called out that he was not going to weigh for another half-hour, and there we had to sit, and the longer we waited the less brave we felt—at any rate, I felt. I don’t believe that anyone can feel brave on a dark cold morning.

It seemed like hours before we heard her cable "clanking in", and that woke us up again with a funny, cold feeling, and in a few minutes the water under her stern began to swirl, and she started very slowly for the entrance, and we pulled away from the _Sally_ after her.

Then there came a surprise, if you like. My aunt! it did startle us.

Right on top of the cliffs, over our heads, a terrific roar broke out, and splash went a shot right under the _Ringdove’s_ stern, and the water fell right aboard her.

"They’ve hauled a gun up there—on the right, sir," Sharpe said very quietly, and somehow or other I felt certain that this would decide Mr. Rashleigh not to go up that creek. I am certain that he never really wanted to go there.

He yelled to me to come alongside, and then he yelled for me to go back to the _Sally_, cut her cable, and clear out of it.

I was very frightened, and hurried back to the _Sally_—Ah Chee was the only one aboard her—when another roar came from above, the shot fell between the _Ringdove_ and ourselves, and wetted us all. I saw the _Ringdove_ hurrying towards the foot of the cliffs, where the gun couldn’t touch her.

"We must be nippy, sir," Sharpe said, very excitedly for him.

Just as we were going to run alongside, someone sang out, "What on earth’s that, sir?" pointing to a small rock on the other side of the creek. We all looked, and could see someone standing there and waving his arms. "He’s trying to semaphore," several men cried, and a moment after, "It’s Lootenant Travers, sir."

None of us thought of that gun then, and we shoved off towards him as hard as we could—there were only six of us in a ten-oared cutter—and gave a shout.

"Swim towards us, sir," I yelled, as we got closer and bullets came round, though I didn’t really notice them much. There was a Chinaman with him, and they both waded out as far as they could, and we grabbed them and hauled them in, and pulled back again with another shout, Mr. Travers taking one of the spare oars, and the Chinaman, who was almost dead of fright, hiding under the gunwale.

As we hauled Travers on board he asked, "Have you found Sally Hobbs?" but I shook my head, and hadn’t time to think what that all meant, and shouted to Sharpe, "Cut the anchor rope directly we get aboard and hoist the fores’l." I needn’t have troubled, because that gun above us fired again, and we saw the stump of poor little _Sally’s_ mainmast come toppling down, big pieces of her deck went flying about, and she began to heel over as we ran alongside. Mr. Travers and I jumped aboard, but I saw that she was done for. Her deck was absolutely smashed up amidships, the six-pounder had fallen on top of the cartridge boxes in the hold, and water was bubbling up through two great holes in her bottom.

"We shall have to leave her, sha’n’t we, sir?" I asked.

But there was no doubt of it, and I only just had time to haul down the white ensign and get back into the boat and shove off, before she settled right down, and with a bubbling noise slid under.

"’Twill drown all them cursed bugs and cockroaches what’s been biting at us, curse ’em!" Sharpe said coolly, and we shoved off for the gunboat under the cliff. You bet that Ah Chee had jumped into the cutter directly we’d got alongside!

The _Ringdove_ was waiting for us, and we were all aboard in five minutes. She sneaked out round the foot of the cliffs—Mr. Rashleigh didn’t wait to take soundings now—ran out of the channel past where the two guns had been, without being fired at, and started off for Tinghai.

I saw Mr. Rashleigh rubbing his hands, and heard him chuckling, "I’ve rescued Travers, and the ’Old Man’ will be jolly pleased." He seemed to be awfully proud of himself, but Mr. Trevelyan told Jim angrily: "Of course the Skipper will be pleased; everyone knows that; but he might have burnt the whole nest of them as well, wiped out the whole boiling crowd, if he’d only had the pluck to go in yesterday. Instead of which he gives those chaps time to haul their guns up over his head, where he can’t touch it. Confound him!"

Mr. Travers came up on deck soon afterwards, shaved and clean, with some of the Sub’s plain clothes on. He shook my hand. "Long time since you shoved me in the back in that crowd outside the Mission House, Ford. Thought they would have plugged some of you in that boat. They were firing pretty fast." That was tremendously demonstrative for him.