Part 17

The engine-room telegraph clanged down below, the sleepy artificer answered back, "No. 3" slowly forged ahead with two of the _Laird's_ cutters in tow, and the marines, starting to life with the movement of the engines, knew that their hour for action was approaching.

An hour later "No. 3" had steamed round to the south of the island and stopped her engines in the shadow of the big hill whose shoulder and flattened top loomed darkly above her, outlined against a faint moon.

A strong, cold breeze blew down its slopes, but the sea was only gently ruffled by it.

The first to land in the black shadows at its foot were the Commander, Glover, and two signalmen in one of the Berthon boats. With little danger or difficulty they reached the shore and jumped to land as the boat tore her bottom out against the rocky beach.

A few minutes were spent in hurriedly choosing a more suitable landing-place, and then the spot was marked by a signal lantern placed at the water's edge behind a great rock, so that its light could not be seen from shore.

This was the signal for the rest of the party to land, and in a few minutes they heard the regular beat of oars, and the two cutters, appearing out of the dark, grated up the beach. The men with their rifles slung over their shoulders began hastily jumping ashore.

"Keep your feet dry, men, and don't hurry," said Cummins, as he saw them jumping into the water in their excitement to be the first ashore.

The boats were hauled out of the water and then the order was given to "fall in". They "fell in" in three little detachments--twenty Royal Marine Light Infantry under their subaltern, a huge, jovial giant named Saunderson; ten blue-jackets under Pattison, the late skipper of destroyer "No. 1", who to his great joy had been taken out of the _Sylvia_ and given another chance; and twenty Royal Marine Artillery under their captain, Williams, a famous cricketer and Rugby player. These artillery or Blue Marines had to bring up the rear. The light infantry or Red Marines had to lead the party.

The blue-jackets consisted of six seamen gunners, two armourers with tools to disable or repair the 12-inch gun, and two torpedo men with explosives to destroy it if necessary. Besides these fifty men and their officers there were two signalmen, Richardson, the "young doctor" of the _Laird_, a sick-berth steward, Glover, and the Commander.

Half the men carried axes, half Wallace entrenching spades, and every six men had a nine-gallon water-breaker to carry up between them.

Cummins went slowly from one group to another as they stood at the foot of that hill casting hurried glances upwards, and told them that it was two hours before sunrise, that they had two hours to get to the top, that there was to be no hurry, and that not a word was to be spoken.

"You have to keep together, men. If any man loses touch with the rest, make uphill; he can't go wrong."

In single file, one after another, Cummins going first, Glover sticking to him like a leech, and the two signalmen close behind, they began to clamber up, hauling themselves hand over hand, forcing their way through bushes, and always keeping upward.

It was slow work, and Cummins halted, whenever a clear spot was reached, to enable stragglers to close up. At the first halt, a quarter of an hour after the start, the little party was silently mustered. All were present, fifty-three men and six officers.

There had been a great deal of noise of breaking bushes, falling stones, and muttered oaths, but the shrieking of the wind among the trees effectually drowned it.

Presently Cummins found himself faced by an almost perpendicular cliff and called another halt. Ten minutes--it seemed like hours--went by before he found a way up, and the little column, bending to the left, struggled on again.

Now the ground became more open, covered with coarse grass up to the knees and dotted with stunted trees. Progress was more rapid.

A pheasant disturbed from sleep flew off with a "whr! whr!" which made the men's hearts leap to their mouths. Occasionally a frightened wood-pigeon darted from his roosting-place. Most scaring these noises were in the pitch darkness.

Faintly, at intervals, they could now hear the dull sound of distant firing, sometimes fast and furious, dropping again to a few single shots at long intervals, then recurring with renewed vigour. It was Lang in "No. 2" demonstrating outside the entrance and drawing the attention of the forts. These were replying savagely.

Not a sound came from above except the soughing of the cold wind.

At the next halt two marines were missing. One rejoined, bruised from a fall, but they could not wait for the second. "Who is he?" was whispered along the line. "Bolton, a Blue Marine," was passed back from the rear.

At the end of the first hour he was the only man missing. Some of the water in the breakers had been spilt, a helmet or two knocked off and lost in the darkness--that was all.

Another half-hour of slowly pushing upwards--men were breathing hard and panting; another halt was called.

A blue-jacket had sprained his ankle, and after a hurried examination by Dr. Richardson, two men were told off to assist him. Rifle straps were eased, water-breakers changed hands, and leather gear adjusted.

Looking downwards towards the sea Cummins saw the first faint glimmer of approaching dawn--far away in the east. They must push on. Bending again to the left to keep in more open ground, they still steadily pressed upwards.

Another halt; and the wind, lashing more savagely through the trees, drowned any noise, and told them that now they were reaching the crest of the hill.

Cummins went cautiously forward to reconnoitre, and reappeared, Glover panting with excitement behind him. "I've found the path, Saunderson," he chuckled, and the word was passed to move on again.

Four men were now missing besides Gunner Bolton, but there was no time to wait; already objects were becoming more visible, and daylight was fast approaching.

In another two minutes they were in the open, on a broad, well-beaten track, and a subdued "Oh! oh!" of excitement ran along the men.

The column pressed on rapidly, turning to the right uphill, and walking in the grass at the side of the path to make less noise. Every moment the men expected to be fired upon, and were already beginning to unsling their rifles as their excitement and nervousness increased.

As they turned a corner an angry gust of wind, blowing up from the harbour below, dashed cold rain in their faces--still not a sound in front except the weird noises of the wind as it swept through the trees.

Some of the youngsters were beginning to get "jumpy", and one or two began loading their rifles without orders.

Cummins caught the sound of a breech-block closing (the rifles were Martinis, not Lee-Metfords), guessed what was happening, and knew that someone would let off a rifle and give the whole "show" away.

He halted at once, sent Glover back with orders for every man's rifle to be examined, and for the name of every man, found with a cartridge in his rifle, to be taken.

This took time, but steadied the men, and whilst it was being done Cummins crept forward, followed by Glover, and a blurred, indistinct mass he had seen in front of him gradually shaped itself into a clump of trees. The path dropped slightly in front of him, ran across an open space, and then rose abruptly towards the trees.

"Our gun is up there," whispered the Commander joyously, and lay down, coolly munching a stalk of grass, his supply of toothpicks having failed him, and tried to make out whether there was any sign of life under the trees.

As they lay there another gust of wind carried up from the harbour the clattering noise of beating gongs. "Eh, boy! that's the second time we've heard that noise," he chuckled. "Run back and bring up the men. We are not a hundred yards from the gun."

As the men came up they were rapidly extended from left to right.

"Fix bayonets, men; not a sound--no cheering--no shooting," the order went in whispers from man to man.

The subdued rattle of fixing bayonets ran along the line, and Glover afterwards said it gave him the "shivers" to hear it.

He was lying watching the Commander, and thought he would never give the order to charge.

He could see the indistinct outline of the gun among the trees covered with a huge tarpaulin, and just then somebody near him whispered, "There are people moving about there, sir," and he could actually feel the men bracing themselves for a rush.

At last the Commander was "up", and trotting down the slope with a bit of grass between his teeth. Glover followed, vainly trying to draw his cutlass. The men sprang after them, breasted the rise, swept over some level ground, and with a final rush leaped over a parapet of sand-bags, swarmed around the gun, and found--Gunner Bolton doing "sentry-go" backwards and forwards in rear of the gun! There was not a Chinaman to be seen.

Some of the men simply sat down and laughed, others, furious, cried out that "They'd been jolly well had," and that "Gunner Bolton 'ad made fools of 'em all, 'e 'ad," and that "They would jolly well knock 'is blooming 'ead off, that they would, next general-leave day."

"Fall in, men," sang out the Commander, with a twinkle in his eye. "You shall have plenty of fighting presently."

Then he sent them back for the water-breakers and armourers' stores which they had dropped when fixing bayonets, whilst he and Williams, the captain of marines, took a rapid survey of the position, and Pattison and his blue-jackets commenced to overhaul the gun.

The top of the hill was flattened out into a little plateau about a hundred yards long, sloping gently towards the harbour and then falling abruptly into the steep side of the hill with a quite well-defined edge. It had its back to the sea and was facing the harbour.

At the east end, the end nearest to the entrance channel, and in the corner overlooking the sea, was the gun, an obsolete 12-inch Krupp, mounted in a deep circular pit, and poking its muzzle over a wall of sand-bags ten or twelve feet thick and about six feet high.

A little cluster of stunted trees hid the gun from view out at sea. Their trunks had already been half sawn through in preparation for felling them, and a few more strokes of the axe would bring them down.

The first thing to be done was to ascertain whether the gun could be made ready for service, as otherwise it was useless to remain there.

Already Pattison and his men had hauled away the tarpaulin covering its massive breech, and were rapidly examining the mounting and training gear.

"Rough and clumsy, sir, but we shall be able to train her round all right," he reported.

Magazines had been tunnelled out through the side of the gun-pit down into the ground, and the doors were closed with padlocks. These were wrenched off, and Pattison reported plenty of ammunition. In a corner he found boxes of friction-tubes and fuses.

His men also found the ropes and blocks to be used in training the gun. They were brought out, made fast to the great gun-carriage at one end and to huge steel rings sunk in the concrete foundations at the other, a dozen sturdy Blue Marines "clapped on" to the ropes, and with Cummins standing on the sighting-platform the ponderous mass was slowly, and with many jerks, trained across the harbour.

It was then that the Commander realized his first mistake.

From that sighting-platform he could look down towards the sea, but the other edge of the plateau shut out all view of the harbour. It was now light enough for him to make out "No. 3" below him, but, looking inland, the flat top of the hill prevented him from seeing anything except the high land on the opposite side of the island, across the harbour.

His calculations had been made from that ledge of rock on which he, Glover, and Jones had hidden all the previous day. He had forgotten that they were then sixty or more feet above the harbour level, and had not dreamt that from the water's edge the gun itself was not visible.

To destroy the gun and get back to the _Laird_ was his first thought, and he called for Pattison to jump up with him.

Pattison's face dropped as he, too, saw that fifty yards of hilltop were in between him and the pirate ships he had hoped to sink.

Suddenly Cummins turned to him with a suggestion. "How about half-charges--eh? A pinch of powder will 'flop' them down there--eh?"

"We might try, sir."

"They won't be very accurate at first, Pattison, but we'll improve--eh?"

"Right you are, sir, I'll manage that."

"We'll ferret them out before the day is over," he chuckled again, and looking down behind him he saw the _Sylvia_ looming in towards the shore.

"For once Bannerman is up to time. We'll have the _Strong Arm's_ up here in a couple of hours or so."

He sent the signalmen down the hill to communicate with the _Sylvia_ and to order the second party to land immediately, and then he and Williams made plans for placing the top of the hill in some state of defence.

"We shall have them round us like flies when once they find us sitting up here," Cummins said.

Fortunately for them, the enemy had evidently intended to mount a second gun, had indeed already marked out the site for its gun-pit, and had prepared hundreds of sand-bags to defend it. These lay scattered in heaps on the plateau, and were now used for making breastworks.

Williams and Saunderson hurriedly marked out the positions in which they were to be built, and the marines, piling arms, and stacking their greatcoats and blankets in a heap, "set to" with a will to haul the sand-bags over to the edges.

"Safer to send some men out in the long field, I think, sir," said Captain Williams, the cricketer, and ordered his taciturn sergeant-major--a martinet named Haig--to select two of the older men as sentries and place them, one along the path the column had just followed, and another down the face of the hill, on the zigzag path up which the Commander and Glover had seen the coolies carrying ammunition.

"'Square leg' and 'long on'--eh?" chuckled the Commander.

"Yes, sir, I think they will be enough for the present."

The first breast-work was to be built at the narrow end of the plateau farthest from the gun-pit.

It commanded the crest of the hill over which the little party had made its final rush, and the path they had followed ran along this ridge, dipping down for two hundred yards, and then rising steeply to the bush-covered knoll, on top of which they had extended and fixed bayonets.

One of Sergeant Haig's sentries (Williams's "square leg" man) was already standing in the gap made by the path as it disappeared into the dense bushes, and it was evident that an attacking force could take splendid cover there, and could sweep the greater part of the plateau with rifle fire.

This breast-work was therefore built right across the narrow end of the plateau, sand-bag was piled on sandbag till it was nearly three feet high, and as the men had hauled some great logs of timber across from the gun-pit to strengthen it, they called it eventually the "Log Redoubt", making loopholes in it for their rifles.

The bush-covered knoll in front of them they named "Bush Hill", and few will ever forget it.

Some of the men dragged sand-bags to the edge of the plateau, overlooking the harbour, to form two low breast-works, one on each side of the zig-zag path, as it led up to the gun-pit.

For twenty yards in front of these two breast-works the steep hillside was bare, but below this the whole hill down to the pirate village, which they could see at the bottom gradually becoming distinct as daylight increased, was covered with small trees and dense brushwood, through which the zigzag path wound its way upwards.

Men lying behind these sand-bags were somewhat protected by the Log Redoubt from rifle fire from Bush Hill, so Williams contented himself with raising them only two sand-bags high.

These being roughly completed, more sand-bags were dragged to the opposite end of the plateau, and a little redoubt constructed fifty yards beyond the gun-pit. From here fire could be directed along the farther ridges, which were devoid of cover and sloped steadily downwards, and also down both the harbour and sea slopes of the hill.

Sergeant Haig and nine Blue Marines were given charge of this work, and so it was known as "Haig's Redoubt".

Saunderson and his twenty Red Marines were told off to man the harbour breast-works, and Williams and his remaining ten Marine Artillerymen were to hold the Log Redoubt.

Every man was told off to his own special loophole, and each man laid his rifle and greatcoat on the ground behind it, the precious water-breakers were taken into the gun-pit, and the men's blankets, covered with the gun tarpaulin, were piled to form a little "zareba" in the middle of the plateau.

Meanwhile the signalmen had returned, bringing back two of the stragglers, and reported that the _Strong Arm's_ party were already landing from the _Sylvia_.

It was broad daylight now, and presently the remaining two stragglers came into camp, looking very much ashamed of themselves.

For an hour both officers and men had worked like horses, and all this time the cold wind swept up to them the noises of the waking town at their feet--the dull drumming of Chinese gongs and the clanging of the ships' bells--but nothing else disturbed their work till suddenly the raucous shriek of a steam hooter startled them.

"That is the signal to start work. The coolies will be up here in half an hour," chuckled the Commander.

"What are you going to do when they do come up?" asked Williams. "If we caught them and prevented them from carrying the news back it would be a good thing. Every few minutes is valuable."

"All right, Williams, we'll try."

Then a signalman reported that the second party had already commenced the ascent, bringing with them the _Sylvia's_ two Maxim guns.

At the same moment the sentry on the zigzag path below came running up. "Please, sir, there are fifty or sixty natives coming up from the town."

Cummins ordered everyone to conceal himself. "Don't any of you move till I sound a whistle."

Five minutes later they could hear the merry chatter of the coolies as they climbed up towards the gun, and the foremost of them appeared out of the trees in the open path below them. Something made them suspicious; they stopped and pointed upwards, jabbering rapidly. Then a young fool of a marine raised his head to look over the breast-work behind which he was lying, and, in a panic, they all took fright, threw down their tools, and scampered down hill as fast as their legs could carry them.

"Heaps of time," said Cummins gently; "we'd better go to breakfast. 'Place your field' again, Williams," he chuckled, "and we'd better have a couple of people at 'point' and 'cover point' as well--eh?"

Breakfast of ship's biscuit and corned beef, washed down with a "pull" from the water-bottles, lasted ten minutes, and then everyone set to work again.

Williams suggested that they had better start lopping down the bushes below Saunderson's two breast-works.

"It would give us a better chance if they tried to rush us, sir."

"Now, lads," sang out the Commander, "get your axes and knives and cut down the bushes in front of you--make a clear sweep of them."

They started hacking and cutting, and in half an hour had cleared three or four yards along their front, when suddenly, bang! went a shell, bursting just below them, and the fragments went shrieking overhead.

Every man "ducked", then ran back up the slope, seized his rifle, and lay down behind his own breast-work.

"Whew!" whistled the Commander, "that is their game, is it?"

*CHAPTER XX*

*The Fight for One Gun Hill*

We Must have Oil--Under Shell Fire--The Pirate Guns are Silenced--The First Attack--Hopkins Wounded--The "Strong Arm's" Arrive--The Oil Party Cut Off--A Momentary Respite--The Second Mistake--The Oil is Rescued--The Big Gun Fires

That first shell was quickly followed by two more, both of which burst below among the bushes. A fourth sang overhead, going out to sea.

Williams, Saunderson, Cummins, and the two signalmen searched through their glasses and tried to find the guns that had fired. The shells came two or three a minute--one burst near the men's blankets and covered the tarpaulin with dirt, another crushed through the trees without bursting.

"I see them, sir," yelled one of the signalmen; "right over there, sir, under those trees;" and he pointed in the direction. As they all followed his hand, outstretched towards some trees on a hill, on the other side of the harbour, overlooking the low ground near the outlet channel, they saw two little spurts of flame shoot out from beneath them. Two little thin clouds of grey smoke drifted out of sight, and almost immediately a shell burst three hundred yards in front of the breast-works, high up in the air, and sent down a hail of bullets into the bushes; the other flew overhead.

"Shrapnel," muttered Saunderson, and, seeing Glover looking nervously from one to another, added, "I wish I wasn't so immense. Hi! Glover, come and stand in front of me."

Another shrapnel tore up the ground in front of the breast-work. One or two of the men were covered with dust. They all tried to wriggle themselves into as small a space as possible.

The non-commissioned officers had at first lain down with their men, but now, seeing their officers standing behind them, rose sheepishly on one knee, one after another. Saunderson's sergeant (Wilkins by name) stood upright, walked up to Saunderson, saluted, and said, "Beg pardon, sir, it shall not occur again," marched stiffly back to his men, and stood there like a statue.

"It's pretty hard luck on these youngsters to come under shrapnel fire before they are used to rifle fire," Saunderson said to the Commander. "If I once lay down behind a sand-bag, nothing in this world would induce me to get up again. I think I should give them something to do, sir. They are not old soldiers."

The Commander told Glover to ask Captain Williams to speak to him.

Glover bolted off, only too glad to have anything to do, gave his message, and ran back.

"Never run, boy; you are apt to get overheated," chuckled Cummins.

Poor young Glover looked fearfully ashamed of himself and grew as red as a tomato.

Williams was of the same opinion. "Let them go on cutting down the brushwood, sir."

Cummins nodded assent, and the necessary orders were given, the sergeants repeated them, with many flowery additions, and the men nervously rose to their knees and in a very half-hearted way prepared to obey.

"Leave your rifles, you fools!" shouted Sergeant Wilkins. "There are no niggers to shoot you. Get out of it, all of you!"

Once they got to work, spread out at wide intervals, they became less nervous, and Blue Marines and Red Marines vied with each other as to which should clear the wider space.

Williams and Saunderson worked among their men in the bushes, whilst Cummins sat on the sand-bag breastwork, Glover nervously hovering round him, and Dr. Richardson lying down by his side, waiting for a job.

Every now and then shells burst on the plateau, but it was evident that most of them were directed towards the gun, and Pattison and his men were having a very warm time of it.

Presently Pattison came across from the gun-pit to where the Commander was sitting, saluted, and told him in a very low voice that the recoil cylinders of the gun were empty, and that he could find no oil. The gun, of course, could not be fired with empty recoil cylinders. It would probably have toppled over into the sea.