Part 22

From the for'ard cross passage a huge armoured tube ran up to the fo'c'stle to feed the fo'c'stle 8-inch gun, and there was a similar one running up from the after cross passage to the quarter-deck gun.

Standing underneath and looking up through this one, I could just catch a glimpse of the sky; but of course no daylight came down, and though there were electric lights here and there on the bulk-heads, it was very gloomy.

Men were in the whitewashed magazines, with felt slippers on their feet, handing out 6-inch shell and cartridge-cases. Others, rushing out from the darker ammunition passages, seized them, shoved them into little canvas bags bound with rope, and dashed back again to feed their own especial ammunition hoist. Hooking the bags to a rope which ran up the tube, passed over a pulley-wheel at the top and led down again, they hauled the shell and cartridges up to the 6-inch gun above them.

I crouched in a corner to be out of the way, and as it grew hotter and hotter, and the stifling air became full of dust, the electric lights themselves began to blur indistinctly; and the men, leaping along the passages, jostling each other as they passed, muttering as they barked their shins or dropped a projectile, clothed in nothing but boots, duck trousers and flannels, their faces and necks streaming with perspiration, looked like demons.

A stoker near me, one of two who stood by with a fire-hose, muttered to his mate, "Blow me, Bill, if it ain't as 'ot as 'ot."

"You've 'it it to a shovelful; it's wurs'n what them stoke'olds are," I heard Bill reply, as he cut off some tobacco and stuffed it into his cheek.

"So long as we don't get no blooming fire down 'ere, I'm a-comfortable enough a-standin' 'ere a-watching of them others a-workin'. But what breaks me 'eart every time," he continued, "we don't seem to never get no 'ead o' water through this 'ere hose-pipe. I don't 'old with them new-fangled pumps they've got aboard this 'ere junk."

"The same 'ere," answered his mate, and they settled themselves comfortably on the coiled-up fire-hose to enjoy their quids of tobacco.

Dr. Fox, the three Paymasters, the Chaplain, and the sick-bay people were trying to get a clear corner, and were laying out bandages, tourniquets, and surgical dressings, the mere sight of which made me feel horribly uncomfortable, and more like a rat in a trap than ever.

It was bad enough whilst the men were rushing to and fro, and in that thick, stuffy atmosphere you could smell nothing but sweating men; but presently they had brought out as much ammunition as they could heap round the bottom of the hoists, and there was nothing more for them to do yet. The ammunition parties grouped silently below their own special hoists, and the magazine parties had time to pass their arms across their eyes and wipe the stinging sweat away.

It was a time of terrible suspense, for not a sound could be heard from above, where we knew the guns' crews were standing round their guns, and from below nothing but the regular rhythm of the big engines, the rapid throbbing of the dynamo-engines and the pumps behind the bulk-heads, and every now and again the harsh rumbling of the steering-engine aft.

Added to all this we were rolling very heavily.

Presently a man came scrambling down one of the hoists--sliding down the rope--and there was a sudden stir as men eagerly questioned him.

"Are we getting close inshore?" "Have the forts opened fire yet?" "Is that big gun still firing?" "Where's the _Strong Arm_?"

Then there was silence again--all but the noises of the engines drumming and thudding on the other side of the white bulk-heads.

The First Lieutenant, trying to appear calm, walked round and round, first along the port side, then down the starboard passage, seeing that everything was ready and everybody in his place, speaking a word here and there to a petty officer, and followed closely by his midshipman messenger, a very junior chap we called "Daisy".

Then the little bell at our end of the conning-tower voice-pipe tinkled loudly. The man stationed there sang out for the First Lieutenant, and he came running up. Captain Helston was giving him an order from the conning tower.

"Very good, sir," he shouted back.

"Stand by on the port side, men; we are just going to commence."

Oh, wasn't it exciting! and didn't I wish that I was up above that armoured deck with the sky overhead, instead of lying down there so stiff and sore that I could barely move!

The men were fidgeting nervously from one foot to the other, and then the silence was broken by the banging of the guns in the port battery overhead. A second later the quarter-deck 8-inch went off, and we could feel the ship quiver; another quiver came from the fo'c'stle big gun for'ard. Two minutes of this and then men shouted hoarsely down the hoists for more ammunition, the voice-pipe bells tinkled, and the order came down to pass up only common shell (shell with thin walls and a large bursting charge).

Men flew backwards and forwards, the dust thickened again, the heat and the mugginess were horrid, and every now and again some of the powder smoke would be blown down the hoists and make those stifling ammunition passages darker still.

The First Lieutenant walked steadily backwards and forwards along the port side, singing out, "Steady, men; don't hurry--don't crowd," and the two stokers near me tucked their feet out of the way and went on chewing their quids of tobacco.

Then a man slid down one of the starboard hoists and crawled aft to Dr. Fox. He had a great gash in one leg, with some spun yarn tied tightly about it.

"They're firing furious," he gasped, "and a splinter from the first cutter caught me."

Then the port guns ceased firing, and we heard the steering-engine rumbling "hard over".

"We are turning now, boys, and going past again. Stand by for the starboard guns," sang out the First Lieutenant.

The quarter-deck gun ceased firing. Now we were almost round again, and could faintly hear the boom of the _Strong Arm's_ guns coming down the hoists.

There was a crash and a roar above us, something came clattering down one of the port upper-deck hoists, a man jumped and picked it up--a fragment of shell--and he dropped it again precious quickly with burnt fingers. I remember that the men all laughed at him.

"Want the doctor!" someone shouted down.

In a moment Dr. Fox was there with a bag over his shoulder. They made a bight in the rope hoist, he placed his foot in it, and grasped the rope over his head.

"Haul handsomely, men," he growled, and they hauled him up the hoist. He was down again in a minute or two, sliding down the rope.

"Too late!" I heard him mutter as he landed, his hands and sleeves covered with blood.

"Who was it, sir?" somebody asked him, but he took no notice.

Then the starboard guns and the quarter-deck 8-inch commenced, and we had begun to go past those two forts for the second run.

I pictured our shells bursting against the rocks and among the guns I had seen there, and wondered whether the European in charge was sober or not, and whether the Commander was still holding out round his Krupp gun. If only I hadn't been such a fool as to jump down off that parapet of sand-bags, I might have been with him still.

We were coming to the end of the second run now, and the First Lieutenant had just said as he wiped his forehead: "They can't stand much more of this if we're making anything like decent shooting," when they commenced cheering on deck, and somebody shouted down that the forts had hoisted a white flag. The men below cheered from one end of the passages to the other, and the guns above ceased firing.

Dr. Fox and a sick-berth steward climbed up a hoist to look after some more wounded on deck, and in a few minutes the main engines began to slow down and presently stopped altogether.

On deck we heard the bos'n's mate pipe, "Away, second cutter!" a voice yelled down the hoist, "Any second cutters down below there?" A couple of men belonging to that boat scrambled hastily up, there was silence again, and we could do nothing but wait and wonder what was happening.

"If we sit here much longer I'm blowed if we sha'n't miss our first dog-watch," said one of the stokers cheerfully, and unbending his cramped legs.

"'Tis a hill wind that don't blow nobody no good," added the other reflectively, and they both spat into a dark corner behind the fire-hose.

"Put those two men in the Commander's report," said the First Lieutenant, who had just come over from the opposite side and saw them spit.

Daisy, his midshipman, got out his pocket-book and took their names.

"What about yer hill wind now?" said the first one who had spoken, as Daisy went away, and they sat down again. "That will blooming well stop yer chawnce of going ashore and picking up a bit o' loot."

Old Mellins scrambled down to see me, and jolly glad I was. He is such a thoughtful chap, and had brought me some grub--a pot of pate de foie gras and some bread and butter. Till I saw it I never realized how terribly hungry I was; and you should have seen me eating it, with Mellins standing over me, spreading great chunks of the pate on thick slices of bread and butter, and telling me all that had happened.

"Our first run past those forts simply knocked the stuffing out of them. You couldn't see them for dust and the smoke of the shells, and when we turned round and went for them again they hardly fired a gun. We could see them tumbling over each other in their hurry to scramble out of the forts, and after we'd ceased firing someone hauled down their colours and hoisted a white flag as big as a sheet. It was simply ripping."

"How about the Commander?" I asked.

"He's going strong, and firing that big gun into the harbour every four or five minutes. 'No. 2' and 'No. 3' are right in under the forts, and Toddles has taken the Captain inshore to take possession of them, or what is left of them."

"Anybody killed?" I asked.

"We have one, poor Joe Connolly, the coxswain of my picket-boat," said Mellins sadly, "and the _Strong Arm_ has three killed and nearly twenty pretty badly wounded. A 6-inch shell burst on her upper deck--in the battery."

Dr. Fox and his sick-berth steward came along then, and Mellins was sent away to get me some more clothes, as the ones I had on were torn and blood-stained. It wasn't all my blood, I think, for when Dr. Fox had ripped off my shirt he only found a clean cut along my ribs, and the wound in my leg was a nasty stab made, I expect, by one of those horrid boarding-pikes the Chinese were prodding me with.

This wound was much the more uncomfortable, and Dr. Fox took quite a long time probing and syringing it till it was quite clean.

It was very painful and smarted a good deal; and wasn't I jolly glad when he had finished and left me alone again, and Mellins had helped me into my clean things!

*CHAPTER XXIV*

*The Capture of the Island*

A Crisis--Inside the Pirate Island--A Feeble Resistance--Doctors Wanted--An Awful Night--Schmidt Escapes

Whilst the _Laird_ and the _Strong Arm_ steamed past the forts for the first time, at a range of between four and five thousand yards, the forts had replied furiously and struck the _Laird_ repeatedly.

Hardly had she fired the first gun before a shell passed through her foremost funnel, making a large rent in it, but, fortunately, not bursting. A second struck the first cutter, completely wrecking it and wounding one or two men with the splinters which flew in all directions. Another shell struck the armoured belt at the water-line and burst, doing no damage, and leaving only a dent in the hard steel. A fourth had passed through the ward-room and burst in the Gunnery Lieutenant's cabin, setting it on fire, whilst the last struck one of the upper-deck 6-inch gun-shields, forced it back on top of the gun and burst, killing Connolly, the captain of the gun, and wounding three of his men badly.

The _Strong Arm_ had not been struck till the ships began to turn, but then she was hit by several shells in quick succession, and lost three killed and seventeen wounded.

But the fire of the two ships had been so terrific, that even as they steadied on their course, and edged in to within three thousand yards for their second run, the signalman up aloft in the fore-top saw the Chinamen already leaving their guns, and before they had completed this second run the enemy had hauled down their flag and presently hoisted a white one.

Captain Helston immediately ceased fire, and ordered Lang and Parker to go close inshore with their destroyers and reconnoitre.

Mr. Lang signalled from "No. 2" that the forts had been evacuated, and Helston called away the second cutter and went himself to make certain that such was the case.

There was no doubt about it--the forts were completely deserted--and he signalled to the _Laird_ and ordered her to land fifty men and occupy them at once, pushing on himself through the entrance-channel till he came abreast of the deserted landing-stages. Not a Chinaman could be seen.

Here he made the men lie on their oars, and now he could see the whole of the harbour, the smoking wreck of the cruiser at the foot of the cliffs on his right, the little town on the other side of the harbour, and the cruisers beyond it, hugging the shore and mixed up in confusion with the anchored merchant ships.

The cruisers were evidently not showing fight, that was as plain as a "pike-staff", but the sharp bursts of rifle firing that the wind brought down from One Gun Hill told him that Cummins was still being severely pressed.

He knew from Midshipman Glover's hurried report that the little party was much reduced in numbers and must be running short of ammunition, and, as far as he could judge, the attack on the forts had not reduced the danger of the Commander's position. In fact, the inference was that he might have driven out the garrison of those forts only to reinforce the crowds of infuriated Chinese, who would now make one more determined effort to overwhelm the gallant little cluster of men who had so desperately held on to that hilltop since daylight.

Fortunately the sudden necessity for immediate action, the prompt resolve to bombard the forts as the only means of relieving the pressure on the Commander's party, and the celerity with which the reduction of those forts had been carried out, bore him along on a wave of fortune which seemed to sweep away his recent indecision and vacillation.

He abruptly determined to take a step still more decisive.

The risks of the project almost appalled him; but the necessity for instant action was so vividly apparent, that though he momentarily hesitated before irrevocably committing his little squadron, the continuous rattle of musketry from the hill above decided him upon one final resolution.

There might be more guns hidden on the high land all round him. The cruisers might still oppose him valiantly, and there was but one hour of daylight remaining, yet he determined to make this last effort for entire success.

"Get back to the _Laird_ as fast as you can," he said to Toddles, the midshipman of the boat, who had been looking with wonder at the change which had come over him.

"Back starboard; give way port. Pull, men, for your lives;" and with bending oars they drove the boat out to sea again, out between the destroyers, and splashed through the heavy seas.

With their boat half-full of water, they pulled under the lee of the _Laird_, hooked on their boat's falls, and were hoisted up with a run.

"Belay those fifty men," Captain Helston told the First Lieutenant, who hurried up to receive him as he scrambled down on deck, "and go to quarters again. I'm going to take the whole squadron inside."

"Oh!" whistled the First Lieutenant, and rushed off.

The bugles blared; signals flew to the _Strong Arm_; men passed the word to the guns' crews that they were going right inside; men bellowed the news down the ammunition hoists, down the engine-room and stokehold gratings, and on deck and down below from the bowels of the ship cheer after cheer burst forth.

Now the _Strong Arm_ had the news, and her men too began to cheer as the two ships gathered way and made straight for the entrance.

As they passed between the two weather-beaten little destroyers, rolling gunwale under, with their funnels white with salt, the crews of the destroyers sprang to "attention" and then broke into cheers. The _Laird_ was right in the entrance now, her boats, swung out at the davits, almost grazed, to port and starboard, the rocky ledges in which the abandoned guns were mounted.

Grandly she answered her helm, swung round the bend in the channel, and steadied as she majestically moved past the deserted landing-stages. The _Strong Arm_, carefully handled by the First Lieutenant, followed her. "No. 2" and "No. 3" dashed in after them, and the whole of the squadron except the _Sylvia_ was inside the island harbour.

* * * * *

The sudden approach of these two ships to the attack had found the forts totally unprepared to make any effective resistance.

For the last three weeks the squadron had shown such an evident disinclination to come to close quarters, that Hopkins, Hamilton, and Schmidt had been lulled into a sense of false security, and, imagining that no attack would be made from that quarter, had withdrawn a considerable number of the artillerymen from the forts, all trained and disciplined men, to strengthen the attack on One Gun Hill.

The seizure of the Krupp gun had taken them completely by surprise, and the necessity for its recapture was imperative.

Unable to rely upon their coolies, they had hastily denuded the ships and gathered sufficient blue-jackets to make the first rush. Though nearly successful it had ended disastrously, Hopkins being mortally wounded and such a number of men being killed, that the remainder could only with difficulty be again induced to advance from cover.

The unsuccessful attempt to cut off the small party with the oil-drums, the destruction of the cruiser, and the death of Hamilton, the lame Englishman on board her, made it evident to Schmidt that he must, once for all, overwhelm Cummins and his men before the weather abated and allowed further reinforcements to land. He had, therefore, brought up every coolie he could find, armed them with every weapon he could lay his hands on, and stiffened their wavering ranks with the disciplined men from the forts and what blue-jackets he could muster.

Inciting them to fury with tales of what their fate would be if they were captured, he had plied them with drink, and gathering them behind the smoke from the burning bushes, had hurled them at the top of the hill.

It was with this wild, fanatical mob, mad with unaccustomed drink, that Hopkins had sent the small body of blue-jackets to endeavour to rescue Glover, and though in this he had been successful, the assault itself had been finally repulsed.

Only a few men were left in the forts themselves, and the European in charge, who had been drinking heavily during the last ten days, was in no fit state to utilize even those that remained to him, and when Schmidt first awoke to the fact that the squadron had at last ventured to attack, he left his beaten men to continue to harass the top of the hill with rifle fire, and rushed down towards the forts.

Before he could reach them he met the terror-stricken mob of men flying from them, and almost immediately afterwards saw the top-masts of the _Laird_ and the _Strong Arm_ appearing behind the harbour entrance.

These frightened fugitives, scared out of their very lives, had splashed hurriedly past the destroyers lying huddled inshore, and spread the panic among their crews, who, not even waiting till the _Laird_ appeared inside the harbour, took to their boats or jumped overboard and made for the shore.

Schmidt knew well enough that there was nothing now to stop Helston's squadron, knew that the greater part of his blue-jackets were already on top of the hill--many of them dead--knew that one of his partners had been blown to pieces on the opposite side of the harbour, and that the other lay dying; but with a gambler's trust in the last throw of the dice, he jumped into a dinghy, pulled himself across to the _Hong Lu_, and tried to rally his cowed and dispirited men.

* * * * *

It was from the sides of the _Hong Lu_ that suddenly, as the _Laird_ and the _Strong Arm_ steered into the harbour, flames shot out and shells came wildly past them. The two remaining cruisers joined in, and for perhaps five minutes the water round the two ships was lashed into foam, and the cliffs behind them were struck time after time by the Chinese shells.

But every gun that could bear upon the unhappy cruisers crowded under the land poured in a fire so concentrated, so coolly aimed, and so accurate, that their already demoralized crews could not stand to their guns, and running their ships ashore, swarmed over the bows and left them to their fate.

The _Hong Lu_ did indeed make one desperate and gallant attempt. Extricating herself from the other ships, she commenced steaming towards the _Laird_ and the _Strong Arm_, and came down at great speed with the intention of either ramming one or other of them, or of forcing her way past and escaping to sea.

The _Laird_ and the _Strong Arm_, opening out a little in the broader part of the harbour, poured in a very hail of 6-inch shells. The _Hong Lu's_ thin, low plates were rent open in a dozen places, water poured in, and she began visibly to sink by the head. An 8-inch shell burst at the foot of her foremast under the bridge, her bows were smothered in flame and smoke, she fell off to port, and then she too ran with a crash up the shore, and her crew began jumping overboard.

The _Strong Arm_ steamed towards her to complete the destruction, if necessary, and saw one huge solitary figure on her quarter-deck. This was Schmidt, who quickly dived into the sea, swam with powerful strokes to the land, and disappeared in the dense cover.

With the _Hong Lu_ abandoned all opposition ceased, and from the top of One Gun Hill the faint sound of cheering could be heard. Looking through their telescopes they could see the gallant little party clustered behind the breast-works they had defended so long, standing up on the sand-bags and waving their helmets as they cheered.

They, too, were safe.

The light was already beginning to fade, and heavy squalls of rain made signalling difficult, but Cummins managed to get one semaphore signal through to the _Laird_: "Enemy disappearing; am short of ammunition, and require medical assistance. Richardson is killed."

Helston sent for Dr. Fox and handed him the signal.

"I'll go myself," said the Doctor.

"I thought you would," replied Helston. "I'll give you fifty men, and you must get up there as fast as you can, and I'll turn my search-lights on the top of the hill as soon as it is dark. I don't expect that you'll find the Chinese have any more fight left in them, but if you do I will help you."

"No. 3" was sent out to bring the _Sylvia_ into the harbour, parties of men were sent aboard the ships, destroyers, and torpedo-boats to remove the breech-blocks of their guns, and a strong body of men was sent down to the forts to do the same there. They found five bodies in the batteries, but very little material damage done--very little compared to the apparent destruction as seen from the ships. Two of the smaller guns had been dismounted and one of the 6-inch had been disabled, but nothing more, though masses of the rock behind them had been blasted with the shells and lay between the guns in heaps.