"THE SKIPPER TOOK HER UP IN HIS ARMS""THE SKIPPER TOOK HER UP IN HIS ARMS"The Captain turned round and growled out "Umph!" but took no further notice. However, the word was passed round that a wounded Chinaman had attempted to kill him, and the men were so enraged that they made certain that there were no more wounded pirates left inside the square.This is a fact, whatever you may say about the rights and wrongs of it.The Chinese had had enough fighting to last them for a "month of Sundays", and let us alone after that, and gave us time to look after the wounded. The men, of course, all had their little packets of field dressings with them, and did a good deal of amateur doctoring, whilst Barclay, Hibbert of theRingdove, the doctor of theOmaha, and their stretcher parties looked after the more seriously wounded.Then we staggered down to the beach, wading through the fog with our wounded.When I say staggered, I mean staggered. Our people had been fighting for practically twenty-four hours with no rest, and they were done to a "turn". After that strenuous sixty or seventy seconds' struggle, and the square had been re-formed, and the wounds had begun to pain, and arms and legs and bodies to feel stiff, reaction set in, and if you had seen them walking that last three hundred yards, you would have thought that most of them were drunk.Lucky indeed it was that the Chinese let us alone till we could get the wounded down on the beach behind a bank, light several fires to comfort them, and gradually warmed our fellows up again.I suppose that if they had charged out of the fog again, our men would have roused themselves and put up just as good a fight; but I must say that I felt most extremely anxious till we had the sea at our backs, and that bank at the top of the beach with a deep ditch below it in front of us.We had hoped to find our boats lying off waiting for us, and tried to attract attention by shouting and firing rifles. Eventually we heard one of the gunboats begin firing a gun every half-minute. It turned out to be theOmaha, and presently she began to make a signal with her fog siren. We knew that she was feeling her way in towards us, by the sound of the blasts coming nearer; but of course we could see nothing whatsoever through that maddening nightmare of dirty fog, and out of it came the moaning blasts of theOmaha'ssiren with the message: "Have seen nothing of your boats since this morning.Omaha'sboats have been sent down the coast to where gunboats' brigade originally landed, and have not come back."We well knew that that meant a night to be spent on the bleak shore till the fog should clear away and allow the boats to find their way to us.It was then that the tired men were set to work collecting drift wood and making fires under the bank, whilst Rashleigh and Trevelyan had to line the bank itself, and guard our two flanks across the beach.Although the fires were fairly large ones, they could not be seen fifteen paces from the far side of the bank. That will give you some idea how dense was the fog, so that we were quite safe in making them, and we brought the wounded across and settled them as comfortably as possible. When I talk about the wounded, I mean, of course, the badly wounded, men who were obliged to lie or sit perfectly still; but besides these, nearly everyone was slightly wounded, but could still handle a rifle.Trevelyan had brought a tin of tea tabloids—he always had some dodge up his sleeve—and with the water in our bottles, we made enough tea to give the wounded and my poor little princess a hot drink.Old Grainger "managed" to find another packet of sandwiches for me, and was very disgusted when I gave them to Sally. A strange old chap he was. I suppose that I owed my useless life to him half a dozen times that day, but he would have been offended if I'd even suggested thanking him. He had been my servant for nine solid years, and treated me as if I were a helpless idiot, and that his whole business in life was to turn me out on parade a credit to "The Corps". (I don't mean to infer that he was the only one who treated me as an idiot.)Even during the night, when after a couple of hours' sleep the marines had to take their turn on top of that bank, he began bothering me about my clothes.I had noticed him looking at me as I stood warming myself in front of a fire, and he began: "Them clothes won't be no blooming good again, sir, I'm thinkin'. Two serges and two pairs of trouses in three blessed nights! We ain't got enough gear to turn you out proper now, sir.""That's all right, Grainger; we'll be at Hong-Kong in a fortnight," I said to cheer him."'Ong-Kong!" he sniffed. "They knows us too well there, sir. They wants ready money from us there, sir, and we ain't got none. 'Ow's your arm, sir? You never showed it to the Doctor."I hadn't, I know; but he wouldn't be satisfied till I had pulled up my sleeve, and he had found a bandage and stuck round it, to cover up the two little marks where a bullet had gone in and out.It really didn't trouble me much, except to make my arm stiff.Then Ford and Rawlings came up to me. They ought to have been asleep. They were like two little cock sparrows with all their feathers ruffled."Would you mind telling us, sir, who captured that gun?" Rawlings burst out very angrily."As far as I remember," I told them, "one of 'B.-T.'s' people was first; beat you and Whitmore by a short head.""There!" they both burst out, looking at each other joyously. "Do you know, sir, that Mr. Rashleigh says it's his, and that he captured it?""Stuff and nonsense! That's all my eye! His people were nowhere in sight!""Well, he's got it, sir, and theRingdovesdragged it back, and they say they've got it, and are going to keep it.""Come and ask Mr. Whitmore," young Ford said; but I told them that they were not to wake him, and not to be blithering idiots waking the whole camp."Wait till the morning; no one can take it away to-night."I knew that if it belonged to anyone it belonged to our Skipper, and that it didn't matter a tuppenny biscuit who claimed it now, for "Old Lest" would have it in the long run.Our two hours' watch passed without any serious trouble, a few shots occasionally whizzed overhead, that was all, and before daylight the fog lifted a little, as it had done the previous day.As soon as they could see us, the Chinese made a very half-hearted attack, and the whole brigade had to stand to arms and line the bank; but we had no difficulty in driving them off and keeping them at a respectable distance.As the sun rose the hateful fog swept away altogether, and it was a most blessed sight to see the sun glittering on the muddy water, and theOmahaandRingdoveclose to one another, and only about half a mile from the shore.Little Sally looked such a forlorn, draggled little woman in the damp daylight, that I thought she'd be only too glad for anyone to say something kind to her, so old "B.-T.", moving in a very "dot-and-go-one" manner, and I went over to say "how d'ye do" to her and give her a treat. We were the best-looking fellows in theVigilant, but old "B.-T.", what with his limp and a forty-eight hours' beard round his aristocratic chin, wasn't looking his best, I thought, however, that the bandage round my noble forehead (to cover up a cut someone had given me) would just about "fetch" her, and that she would be interested in about a dozen different specimens of paddy-field mud which were plastered over me.However, she "bristled" up when we came along to pay her homage, and "guessed she didn't want anyone fooling round her—just yet awhile". Poor little princess! She was so miserable, sitting on the beach behind that bank, with the Skipper's overcoat buttoned round her.About an hour after daylight, and the fog had swept away, our boats managed to find us.Old "Blucher" had had enough shooting expeditions to last him till he got home, and jumped into the very firstVigilant'sboat that had run up the beach, got under the thwart in the stern sheets, and never moved till she got alongside the ship.The Skipper gave me the job of covering the embarkation, and it wasn't all "beer and skittles" either, for the Chinese kept up such a persistent and annoying rifle fire, that we had to get theOmahaandRingdoveto shell them out of some paddy fields and clumps of bamboo trees. They tried to steal round the beach and cut a few of us off, and just as we were getting "busy" with them, young Ford and Rawlings came rushing up again, right in the middle of everything, and squeaked out that fat little Rashleigh was taking that wretched Chinese gun aboard theRingdove, that he had actually got it aboard one of his boats, and was just going to shove off, and that as Whitmore was on the sick list, and "B.-T." had gone off to theVigilant, couldn't I do something? They wanted me to go to the Skipper, or something like that, and tell him that it really belonged to theVigilant."My dear young gentlemen," I told them, when we'd stopped a bit of a rush, "if you'll be so obliging as to go out there and ask about five hundred Chinamen, who are very anxious to obtain specimens of our livers, to cease firing and stop where they are till we've decided who shall own their toy cannon, I'll do the best I can to help you. Tell them that the matter won't admit of delay, and no doubt they will oblige you."They looked angry, and rushed away to try and interest someone else in the important question.Gradually everyone was withdrawn from the shore, till there was no one except the Skipper, myself, and my marines remaining. We kept the fellows at bay till the barge came along for us, and then we bolted down to her and scrambled in, the Skipper being actually the last to embark. We had hardly begun to shove off, before the Chinese had lined the other side of that bank and began firing at us; but two can play at that game, and we had another boat and the steam pinnace lying off, to cover our retreat, and they peppered them pretty severely.TheVigilanthad come round to meet us, and we got away out of range all right and alongside her by seven bells in the afternoon, just in time for afternoon tea.As soon as I could manage to do so, I slipped away to Truscott's cabin, and found him much more cheerful.Old Mayhew had said that he couldn't tell what would happen till the end of the third day, and this was the third day since he was wounded, and he had no bad symptoms."To tell the truth, soldier," he whispered, "I'm as hungry as a hunter; tinned milk and soda water ain't very filling, and Mayhew won't let me have anything else, and precious little of that."I felt pretty well "done up", now that everything was finished, so Grainger got me a steaming hot bath, and I turned in and slept till next morning.Before I went to sleep, Grainger came back looking very cheerful. He held up my two damaged pairs of trousers. "We can do 'em all right, sir; one pair 'as a slit in the right leg, and the other a split over the left knee. We'll 'ave a try at taking 'em to pieces, and makin' one good pair out the two of 'em, sir.""All right, Grainger; it will be better than having nothing to wear at all, won't it?" I told him, and went to sleep.I copied this list of casualties from somewhere or other, and think that it is pretty accurate as far as our own ships and theOmahaare concerned, though I cannot guarantee the figures given for theHuan Min.The "slightly wounded" were those requiring some treatment, and most of those who were on the sick list only a few days.CASUALTIES DURING OPERATIONS ROUND HECTOR ISLAND.Capturedandsubse-Slightly   Severely             Died of    quentlyName of Ship. Landed.   Wounded.   Wounded.  Killed.   Wounds.    rescued.Offi-     Offi-      Offi-     Offi-     Offi-      Offi-cers Men cers Men  cers Men cers Men cers Men  cers MenVigilant,      15  145   8   75    4  27    1   9  ...    2     1   2Ringdove,       3   34   2   23  ...   5  ...   2  ...  ...   ... ...Sparrow,        2   39   2   20  ...   9  ...   6  ...    1   ... ...Goldfinch,      2   32   1   16  ...   3  ...   3* ...  ...   ... ...Omaha,          4   41   2   27  ...   8    1   2  ...  ...   ... ...Huan Min.       1   56   1   29? ...  16  ...   8  ...    1?  ... ...Totals,        27  347  16  190    4  68    2  30  ...    4     1   2* This includes the two men killed by the six-inch projectilewhich struck the Goldfinch.CHAPTER XVIFord saves "Old Lest's" LifeThe Vigilant to the Rescue—Rushing the Gun—Ford is Miserable—The Ringdove Steals the Gun—Ford Bucks up Again—Mr. Rashleigh and the Gun—The Burial at Sea—Letters from Home—A Letter from NanWritten by Midshipman FordBefore I tell you anything else, I must tell you this—it is the only thing I can think about at present, and has wiped out all the silly, and idiotic, and bad-tempered things I have ever done—I have saved Captain Lester's life.But for me—Dick Ford, a midshipman only just out of theBritannia, a worm, I suppose you would call me—he would be dead now, and Mrs. Lester and Nan and his other girls, and all Upton Overy, would be awfully miserable, and everybody else who had ever known him.I just look at him when he's striding up and down the quarterdeck, and think that now, in a way, he belongs just a little bit to me. I know that his coxswain, and the signalman, and any number of others who were near him when the Chinese broke our square, saved his life a great number of times; but you have read what Captain Marshall wrote, and know what happened, and what, by good luck, I was able to do, so I don't mind in the least sharing him with all of them, so long as I know that a bit of him does belong to me.You see, I knew all the time that I'd really only made an ass of myself when I was captured, and had my arm broken, and all that, and that instead of helping him in any way, I really had only muddled up his plans. Just before we began the march back to the coast, Jim and I had a long yarn about what was best for me to do, and the only thing he could suggest—you know, of course, that I only had one arm to use—was for me to keep as close to the Captain as he would let me, and always have my revolver handy, in case any Chinese did get near him. Jim said that there was always the chance of some chaps trying to rush us, and it was the only thing he could think of, and as the Captain only had his big oak stick, and never thought of danger to himself in the least little bit, I might make myself useful. Well, that is why I am so absolutely happy—I feel now as though nothing can ever make me feel really miserable again, for long—because if anything does begin to do so, I just think about Captain Lester, and that stops it.When I finished telling you about that awful night in the walled house, we had heard the sound of the Maxim gun firing, and knew that the Captain was coming along to rescue us. That made us all "buck up" tremendously, and the fog lifted a little, and it began to grow lighter, and we could just see the wall and the half-closed gateway, and some of the dead people lying about, and presently we heard the sound of firing coming nearer, and began to think that another half-hour would bring them to us, and that Sally would then be absolutely safe.The pirates were not worrying us at all—there had hardly been a shot for the last two hours—and we guessed that most of them had gone away to try and stop the Captain coming.We even walked about the space inside the walls and counted the dead bodies—there were forty-seven—and peeped through the two gateways, and collected some more Mauser rifles and any amount more ammunition. We made a fire too, and found some food in the house, and tried to make Sally eat some breakfast, but she couldn't touch anything, and went to sleep again."We even walked about the space inside the walls and counted the dead bodies.""We even walked about the space inside the walls and counted the dead bodies."We thought that everything was going on jolly well. My arm was not nearly so painful—I had had some sleep; Mr. Ching was very cheerful; Sally and Mr. Hobbs were both sound asleep; and Miller and the old Scotchman were coiled up asleep as well. Martin, the marine—well, I'm not certain whether I cared much for him—kept on grumbling about his arm, and reminding me that he wouldn't have broken it or been taken prisoner but for having tried to save me. That rather irritated me after a time. Mr. Ching and I were listening to the sound of the firing, and looking through a window in the direction from which it came, watching the fog clearing away from the low land on that side, when all of a sudden there came a roaring noise out of the fog, and something struck the house close to us with a crash, and we heard stones falling on to the ground below.We ran to where it had struck, and found holes big enough for me to climb through in both the front and back walls.Mr. Ching gasped out, "They must have brought up a field gun;" and we looked, but the fog wasn't thin enough yet for us to see anything. He was very frightened, and ran up to that little square room with the iron shutters, and came down with Sally in his arms, took her out of the house and laid her down behind the wall, where it was very thick. He was only looking frightened because of her, I know that, and that he was just like Captain Lester in never being frightened about himself. Martin and Mr. Hobbs came scooting out too.They kept on firing that gun, and sometimes they hit the wall and sometimes the house; and presently Miller, who had woke up, peeped over the wall, and said he could see the gun, and he lifted me up to look over, and I saw it as well, under some trees, about five hundred yards away, along the ridge on which the house was standing. He and Mr. Ching and the bluejackets began firing at the men round it; but they couldn't see it clearly because of the smoke it made and the fog, and as they didn't really know how to sight the Mauser rifles properly, they didn't seem to be able to hit anybody.At any rate, we couldn't stop it firing, and it was knocking the house to pieces.Then a shot struck the top of the wall, and made a gap in it, and stones went flying round, and one struck a bluejacket sitting down, not far from where Sally was, still asleep, struck him on the head, and killed him. Mr. Ching didn't know what to do, because he was so worried lest she should be hurt; and two or three more came along, all hitting the wall, and it was jolly unsafe to stay anywhere near it, so we made her go and lie down behind a very big stone or rock behind the house, and leant some planks of wood against it to make a kind of roof to keep off falling stones.Her father crept under them too.If the firing became more dangerous, Mr. Ching did think of lowering her down a shallow well in the garden under the trees, but that was never wanted.The rifle and Maxim firing became very heavy, and we could hear it coming rapidly nearer, and the fog, which was still lying very dense below the house, now swept away, and we could see that there were flat paddy fields there with a small hill on the other side. It was glorious to be able to look all round again, and suddenly Chinamen went flying down our side of that hill opposite, and we could hear cheering, and then, in a minute or two, some dark figures, waving their arms over their heads, came on to the sky line, and we knew that they were our people, and we all cheered tremendously.You can have no idea what we all felt like, because, although we were expecting them, it was quite a different feeling when we actually saw them."Look there, Miller!" I shouted. "There's a dog there running backwards and forwards;" and Miller spotted it too, and I knew that it must be jolly old "Blucher", and that the Captain must be there.Mr. Ching asked me if I could signal to them, and I managed to do so, climbing up to the top of the square room, and getting out through a hole which the field gun had made in the roof. I was so fearfully excited and happy, that I forgot all about the danger from the gun, and Mr. Ching helped me up and steadied my feet, and I waved a long bamboo, and signalled in Morse that we were all well, but that the gun was doing damage. I saw some tiny little flags waving to say that the signalman with the Captain had read it, and then Mr. Ching pulled me down, and only just in time, because the field gun made two more holes close by, almost immediately afterwards.I was too much excited to worry about the gun in the least—we all were—and went and watched them over the wall at the side, and saw some dark figures come racing down the hill, and presently others whom I knew were marines came along after them and joined up in the paddy fields, and I thought I could recognize Mr. Travers and Captain Marshall by their long legs. It made me go just a little hot all over to see Captain Marshall, because I hadn't forgotten what he had said when I had run away from the bullets, near those burning huts, and didn't quite want to see him.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 theRingdove, 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 theVigilant'seight-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 theRingdovedragged 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 theOmaha'ssiren, 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 firstVigilant'sboat 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 theVigilantwho 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 theHuan Minhad towed away some of the junks and burnt the others, we all steamed back to Tinghai.TheRingdovewas 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 theRingdovecame back she brought six weeks' mails, and that was the first thing that really cheered us up. We were quite happy.I had six long letters from my mother, the first I had had since leaving home, and I sat on my chest in a corner by myself and read them, and it was very jolly to hear all that had happened at home; but they made me miserable, for although she tried to write cheerfully, I knew that she was really very worried. You see, my father would put all the little money he had into silly swindly things which he saw advertised in the papers, and my mother often told me that some of the religious papers had more swindling advertisements in them than ordinary daily papers, and of course my father, being a parson, often saw these. I don't know much about it, but she used to tell me that if he saw an advertisement telling anyone to send, say, five pounds to a man and he would be sure to make it into ten or twenty pounds in a week—by some certain plan he had invented for dealing in stocks and shares—my father would nearly always do it, if he could manage to scrape any money together.I know that my mother often cried about it, and I've often heard him say, "Well, my dear, they seem to know what they are talking about. They can't be all swindlers, or else the editors wouldn't print their advertisements, so I'll just try, this once."He always lost his money, and I know, for a fact, that my mother only had one new dress all the time I was on theBritannia, so as to have enough money to pay for me there.I know that this is rather a "sniffy" chapter, but I can t help it, and I'm telling you just what happened, and how I felt about everything.The Captain sent for me before I had read my letters more than twice, and I shoved them into my chest and ran aft to his cabin.He was sitting at his knee-hole table in his shirt sleeves, smoking a cigar, with heaps of letters all around him, and "Blucher's" head close to his elbow."Good news from home, I hope, Ford? Here's something for you from my girl Nan," and he gave me a folded-up piece of notepaper with "Dick" scrawled across it.I was running out again when he gurgled: "Arm all right? Let me see you move your fingers. Umph. You'll be all right. Umph! I wrote to the missus to tell her you'd shot that chap who tried to cut me down; wrote to your mother too, to tell her you were going on well—told her about it as well. Umph!""Did you really, sir?" I gasped. "Thank you very much indeed, sir!""Umph! Do you know where we are going? Yokohama!—to-morrow; got orders to-night; off you go."I rushed off to tell everybody, and was awfully happy again—everyone was; but what made me so happy was to know that Captain Lester himself had written about me saving his life, and that everyone at Upton Overy would know about it. I knew how my mother would love her letter, and keep it, and read it over and over again. Nan wrote an awfully spidery kind of a fist, and wanted me to bring her a whole lot of "curios" when we came home. She said that I had promised to do so, and that this was just a "reminder". It was jolly to hear from her, and she sent her love to old "Blucher", and wanted to know whether he had had any of his "fits" lately.My face was nearly all right again by this time, but the forehead was darker on the left side, and Dr. Barclay said that he thought it would always be like that.I didn't really mind, because it would always be something to show, and to remind me of everything.As a matter of fact, I was rather pleased about it, but had to pretend I wasn't.
"THE SKIPPER TOOK HER UP IN HIS ARMS""THE SKIPPER TOOK HER UP IN HIS ARMS"
"THE SKIPPER TOOK HER UP IN HIS ARMS"
The Captain turned round and growled out "Umph!" but took no further notice. However, the word was passed round that a wounded Chinaman had attempted to kill him, and the men were so enraged that they made certain that there were no more wounded pirates left inside the square.
This is a fact, whatever you may say about the rights and wrongs of it.
The Chinese had had enough fighting to last them for a "month of Sundays", and let us alone after that, and gave us time to look after the wounded. The men, of course, all had their little packets of field dressings with them, and did a good deal of amateur doctoring, whilst Barclay, Hibbert of theRingdove, the doctor of theOmaha, and their stretcher parties looked after the more seriously wounded.
Then we staggered down to the beach, wading through the fog with our wounded.
When I say staggered, I mean staggered. Our people had been fighting for practically twenty-four hours with no rest, and they were done to a "turn". After that strenuous sixty or seventy seconds' struggle, and the square had been re-formed, and the wounds had begun to pain, and arms and legs and bodies to feel stiff, reaction set in, and if you had seen them walking that last three hundred yards, you would have thought that most of them were drunk.
Lucky indeed it was that the Chinese let us alone till we could get the wounded down on the beach behind a bank, light several fires to comfort them, and gradually warmed our fellows up again.
I suppose that if they had charged out of the fog again, our men would have roused themselves and put up just as good a fight; but I must say that I felt most extremely anxious till we had the sea at our backs, and that bank at the top of the beach with a deep ditch below it in front of us.
We had hoped to find our boats lying off waiting for us, and tried to attract attention by shouting and firing rifles. Eventually we heard one of the gunboats begin firing a gun every half-minute. It turned out to be theOmaha, and presently she began to make a signal with her fog siren. We knew that she was feeling her way in towards us, by the sound of the blasts coming nearer; but of course we could see nothing whatsoever through that maddening nightmare of dirty fog, and out of it came the moaning blasts of theOmaha'ssiren with the message: "Have seen nothing of your boats since this morning.Omaha'sboats have been sent down the coast to where gunboats' brigade originally landed, and have not come back."
We well knew that that meant a night to be spent on the bleak shore till the fog should clear away and allow the boats to find their way to us.
It was then that the tired men were set to work collecting drift wood and making fires under the bank, whilst Rashleigh and Trevelyan had to line the bank itself, and guard our two flanks across the beach.
Although the fires were fairly large ones, they could not be seen fifteen paces from the far side of the bank. That will give you some idea how dense was the fog, so that we were quite safe in making them, and we brought the wounded across and settled them as comfortably as possible. When I talk about the wounded, I mean, of course, the badly wounded, men who were obliged to lie or sit perfectly still; but besides these, nearly everyone was slightly wounded, but could still handle a rifle.
Trevelyan had brought a tin of tea tabloids—he always had some dodge up his sleeve—and with the water in our bottles, we made enough tea to give the wounded and my poor little princess a hot drink.
Old Grainger "managed" to find another packet of sandwiches for me, and was very disgusted when I gave them to Sally. A strange old chap he was. I suppose that I owed my useless life to him half a dozen times that day, but he would have been offended if I'd even suggested thanking him. He had been my servant for nine solid years, and treated me as if I were a helpless idiot, and that his whole business in life was to turn me out on parade a credit to "The Corps". (I don't mean to infer that he was the only one who treated me as an idiot.)
Even during the night, when after a couple of hours' sleep the marines had to take their turn on top of that bank, he began bothering me about my clothes.
I had noticed him looking at me as I stood warming myself in front of a fire, and he began: "Them clothes won't be no blooming good again, sir, I'm thinkin'. Two serges and two pairs of trouses in three blessed nights! We ain't got enough gear to turn you out proper now, sir."
"That's all right, Grainger; we'll be at Hong-Kong in a fortnight," I said to cheer him.
"'Ong-Kong!" he sniffed. "They knows us too well there, sir. They wants ready money from us there, sir, and we ain't got none. 'Ow's your arm, sir? You never showed it to the Doctor."
I hadn't, I know; but he wouldn't be satisfied till I had pulled up my sleeve, and he had found a bandage and stuck round it, to cover up the two little marks where a bullet had gone in and out.
It really didn't trouble me much, except to make my arm stiff.
Then Ford and Rawlings came up to me. They ought to have been asleep. They were like two little cock sparrows with all their feathers ruffled.
"Would you mind telling us, sir, who captured that gun?" Rawlings burst out very angrily.
"As far as I remember," I told them, "one of 'B.-T.'s' people was first; beat you and Whitmore by a short head."
"There!" they both burst out, looking at each other joyously. "Do you know, sir, that Mr. Rashleigh says it's his, and that he captured it?"
"Stuff and nonsense! That's all my eye! His people were nowhere in sight!"
"Well, he's got it, sir, and theRingdovesdragged it back, and they say they've got it, and are going to keep it."
"Come and ask Mr. Whitmore," young Ford said; but I told them that they were not to wake him, and not to be blithering idiots waking the whole camp.
"Wait till the morning; no one can take it away to-night."
I knew that if it belonged to anyone it belonged to our Skipper, and that it didn't matter a tuppenny biscuit who claimed it now, for "Old Lest" would have it in the long run.
Our two hours' watch passed without any serious trouble, a few shots occasionally whizzed overhead, that was all, and before daylight the fog lifted a little, as it had done the previous day.
As soon as they could see us, the Chinese made a very half-hearted attack, and the whole brigade had to stand to arms and line the bank; but we had no difficulty in driving them off and keeping them at a respectable distance.
As the sun rose the hateful fog swept away altogether, and it was a most blessed sight to see the sun glittering on the muddy water, and theOmahaandRingdoveclose to one another, and only about half a mile from the shore.
Little Sally looked such a forlorn, draggled little woman in the damp daylight, that I thought she'd be only too glad for anyone to say something kind to her, so old "B.-T.", moving in a very "dot-and-go-one" manner, and I went over to say "how d'ye do" to her and give her a treat. We were the best-looking fellows in theVigilant, but old "B.-T.", what with his limp and a forty-eight hours' beard round his aristocratic chin, wasn't looking his best, I thought, however, that the bandage round my noble forehead (to cover up a cut someone had given me) would just about "fetch" her, and that she would be interested in about a dozen different specimens of paddy-field mud which were plastered over me.
However, she "bristled" up when we came along to pay her homage, and "guessed she didn't want anyone fooling round her—just yet awhile". Poor little princess! She was so miserable, sitting on the beach behind that bank, with the Skipper's overcoat buttoned round her.
About an hour after daylight, and the fog had swept away, our boats managed to find us.
Old "Blucher" had had enough shooting expeditions to last him till he got home, and jumped into the very firstVigilant'sboat that had run up the beach, got under the thwart in the stern sheets, and never moved till she got alongside the ship.
The Skipper gave me the job of covering the embarkation, and it wasn't all "beer and skittles" either, for the Chinese kept up such a persistent and annoying rifle fire, that we had to get theOmahaandRingdoveto shell them out of some paddy fields and clumps of bamboo trees. They tried to steal round the beach and cut a few of us off, and just as we were getting "busy" with them, young Ford and Rawlings came rushing up again, right in the middle of everything, and squeaked out that fat little Rashleigh was taking that wretched Chinese gun aboard theRingdove, that he had actually got it aboard one of his boats, and was just going to shove off, and that as Whitmore was on the sick list, and "B.-T." had gone off to theVigilant, couldn't I do something? They wanted me to go to the Skipper, or something like that, and tell him that it really belonged to theVigilant.
"My dear young gentlemen," I told them, when we'd stopped a bit of a rush, "if you'll be so obliging as to go out there and ask about five hundred Chinamen, who are very anxious to obtain specimens of our livers, to cease firing and stop where they are till we've decided who shall own their toy cannon, I'll do the best I can to help you. Tell them that the matter won't admit of delay, and no doubt they will oblige you."
They looked angry, and rushed away to try and interest someone else in the important question.
Gradually everyone was withdrawn from the shore, till there was no one except the Skipper, myself, and my marines remaining. We kept the fellows at bay till the barge came along for us, and then we bolted down to her and scrambled in, the Skipper being actually the last to embark. We had hardly begun to shove off, before the Chinese had lined the other side of that bank and began firing at us; but two can play at that game, and we had another boat and the steam pinnace lying off, to cover our retreat, and they peppered them pretty severely.
TheVigilanthad come round to meet us, and we got away out of range all right and alongside her by seven bells in the afternoon, just in time for afternoon tea.
As soon as I could manage to do so, I slipped away to Truscott's cabin, and found him much more cheerful.
Old Mayhew had said that he couldn't tell what would happen till the end of the third day, and this was the third day since he was wounded, and he had no bad symptoms.
"To tell the truth, soldier," he whispered, "I'm as hungry as a hunter; tinned milk and soda water ain't very filling, and Mayhew won't let me have anything else, and precious little of that."
I felt pretty well "done up", now that everything was finished, so Grainger got me a steaming hot bath, and I turned in and slept till next morning.
Before I went to sleep, Grainger came back looking very cheerful. He held up my two damaged pairs of trousers. "We can do 'em all right, sir; one pair 'as a slit in the right leg, and the other a split over the left knee. We'll 'ave a try at taking 'em to pieces, and makin' one good pair out the two of 'em, sir."
"All right, Grainger; it will be better than having nothing to wear at all, won't it?" I told him, and went to sleep.
I copied this list of casualties from somewhere or other, and think that it is pretty accurate as far as our own ships and theOmahaare concerned, though I cannot guarantee the figures given for theHuan Min.
The "slightly wounded" were those requiring some treatment, and most of those who were on the sick list only a few days.
CASUALTIES DURING OPERATIONS ROUND HECTOR ISLAND.Capturedandsubse-Slightly   Severely             Died of    quentlyName of Ship. Landed.   Wounded.   Wounded.  Killed.   Wounds.    rescued.Offi-     Offi-      Offi-     Offi-     Offi-      Offi-cers Men cers Men  cers Men cers Men cers Men  cers MenVigilant,      15  145   8   75    4  27    1   9  ...    2     1   2Ringdove,       3   34   2   23  ...   5  ...   2  ...  ...   ... ...Sparrow,        2   39   2   20  ...   9  ...   6  ...    1   ... ...Goldfinch,      2   32   1   16  ...   3  ...   3* ...  ...   ... ...Omaha,          4   41   2   27  ...   8    1   2  ...  ...   ... ...Huan Min.       1   56   1   29? ...  16  ...   8  ...    1?  ... ...Totals,        27  347  16  190    4  68    2  30  ...    4     1   2* This includes the two men killed by the six-inch projectilewhich struck the Goldfinch.
CHAPTER XVI
Ford saves "Old Lest's" Life
The Vigilant to the Rescue—Rushing the Gun—Ford is Miserable—The Ringdove Steals the Gun—Ford Bucks up Again—Mr. Rashleigh and the Gun—The Burial at Sea—Letters from Home—A Letter from Nan
The Vigilant to the Rescue—Rushing the Gun—Ford is Miserable—The Ringdove Steals the Gun—Ford Bucks up Again—Mr. Rashleigh and the Gun—The Burial at Sea—Letters from Home—A Letter from Nan
The Vigilant to the Rescue—Rushing the Gun—Ford is Miserable—The Ringdove Steals the Gun—Ford Bucks up Again—Mr. Rashleigh and the Gun—The Burial at Sea—Letters from Home—A Letter from Nan
Written by Midshipman Ford
Before I tell you anything else, I must tell you this—it is the only thing I can think about at present, and has wiped out all the silly, and idiotic, and bad-tempered things I have ever done—I have saved Captain Lester's life.
But for me—Dick Ford, a midshipman only just out of theBritannia, a worm, I suppose you would call me—he would be dead now, and Mrs. Lester and Nan and his other girls, and all Upton Overy, would be awfully miserable, and everybody else who had ever known him.
I just look at him when he's striding up and down the quarterdeck, and think that now, in a way, he belongs just a little bit to me. I know that his coxswain, and the signalman, and any number of others who were near him when the Chinese broke our square, saved his life a great number of times; but you have read what Captain Marshall wrote, and know what happened, and what, by good luck, I was able to do, so I don't mind in the least sharing him with all of them, so long as I know that a bit of him does belong to me.
You see, I knew all the time that I'd really only made an ass of myself when I was captured, and had my arm broken, and all that, and that instead of helping him in any way, I really had only muddled up his plans. Just before we began the march back to the coast, Jim and I had a long yarn about what was best for me to do, and the only thing he could suggest—you know, of course, that I only had one arm to use—was for me to keep as close to the Captain as he would let me, and always have my revolver handy, in case any Chinese did get near him. Jim said that there was always the chance of some chaps trying to rush us, and it was the only thing he could think of, and as the Captain only had his big oak stick, and never thought of danger to himself in the least little bit, I might make myself useful. Well, that is why I am so absolutely happy—I feel now as though nothing can ever make me feel really miserable again, for long—because if anything does begin to do so, I just think about Captain Lester, and that stops it.
When I finished telling you about that awful night in the walled house, we had heard the sound of the Maxim gun firing, and knew that the Captain was coming along to rescue us. That made us all "buck up" tremendously, and the fog lifted a little, and it began to grow lighter, and we could just see the wall and the half-closed gateway, and some of the dead people lying about, and presently we heard the sound of firing coming nearer, and began to think that another half-hour would bring them to us, and that Sally would then be absolutely safe.
The pirates were not worrying us at all—there had hardly been a shot for the last two hours—and we guessed that most of them had gone away to try and stop the Captain coming.
We even walked about the space inside the walls and counted the dead bodies—there were forty-seven—and peeped through the two gateways, and collected some more Mauser rifles and any amount more ammunition. We made a fire too, and found some food in the house, and tried to make Sally eat some breakfast, but she couldn't touch anything, and went to sleep again.
"We even walked about the space inside the walls and counted the dead bodies.""We even walked about the space inside the walls and counted the dead bodies."
"We even walked about the space inside the walls and counted the dead bodies."
We thought that everything was going on jolly well. My arm was not nearly so painful—I had had some sleep; Mr. Ching was very cheerful; Sally and Mr. Hobbs were both sound asleep; and Miller and the old Scotchman were coiled up asleep as well. Martin, the marine—well, I'm not certain whether I cared much for him—kept on grumbling about his arm, and reminding me that he wouldn't have broken it or been taken prisoner but for having tried to save me. That rather irritated me after a time. Mr. Ching and I were listening to the sound of the firing, and looking through a window in the direction from which it came, watching the fog clearing away from the low land on that side, when all of a sudden there came a roaring noise out of the fog, and something struck the house close to us with a crash, and we heard stones falling on to the ground below.
We ran to where it had struck, and found holes big enough for me to climb through in both the front and back walls.
Mr. Ching gasped out, "They must have brought up a field gun;" and we looked, but the fog wasn't thin enough yet for us to see anything. He was very frightened, and ran up to that little square room with the iron shutters, and came down with Sally in his arms, took her out of the house and laid her down behind the wall, where it was very thick. He was only looking frightened because of her, I know that, and that he was just like Captain Lester in never being frightened about himself. Martin and Mr. Hobbs came scooting out too.
They kept on firing that gun, and sometimes they hit the wall and sometimes the house; and presently Miller, who had woke up, peeped over the wall, and said he could see the gun, and he lifted me up to look over, and I saw it as well, under some trees, about five hundred yards away, along the ridge on which the house was standing. He and Mr. Ching and the bluejackets began firing at the men round it; but they couldn't see it clearly because of the smoke it made and the fog, and as they didn't really know how to sight the Mauser rifles properly, they didn't seem to be able to hit anybody.
At any rate, we couldn't stop it firing, and it was knocking the house to pieces.
Then a shot struck the top of the wall, and made a gap in it, and stones went flying round, and one struck a bluejacket sitting down, not far from where Sally was, still asleep, struck him on the head, and killed him. Mr. Ching didn't know what to do, because he was so worried lest she should be hurt; and two or three more came along, all hitting the wall, and it was jolly unsafe to stay anywhere near it, so we made her go and lie down behind a very big stone or rock behind the house, and leant some planks of wood against it to make a kind of roof to keep off falling stones.
Her father crept under them too.
If the firing became more dangerous, Mr. Ching did think of lowering her down a shallow well in the garden under the trees, but that was never wanted.
The rifle and Maxim firing became very heavy, and we could hear it coming rapidly nearer, and the fog, which was still lying very dense below the house, now swept away, and we could see that there were flat paddy fields there with a small hill on the other side. It was glorious to be able to look all round again, and suddenly Chinamen went flying down our side of that hill opposite, and we could hear cheering, and then, in a minute or two, some dark figures, waving their arms over their heads, came on to the sky line, and we knew that they were our people, and we all cheered tremendously.
You can have no idea what we all felt like, because, although we were expecting them, it was quite a different feeling when we actually saw them.
"Look there, Miller!" I shouted. "There's a dog there running backwards and forwards;" and Miller spotted it too, and I knew that it must be jolly old "Blucher", and that the Captain must be there.
Mr. Ching asked me if I could signal to them, and I managed to do so, climbing up to the top of the square room, and getting out through a hole which the field gun had made in the roof. I was so fearfully excited and happy, that I forgot all about the danger from the gun, and Mr. Ching helped me up and steadied my feet, and I waved a long bamboo, and signalled in Morse that we were all well, but that the gun was doing damage. I saw some tiny little flags waving to say that the signalman with the Captain had read it, and then Mr. Ching pulled me down, and only just in time, because the field gun made two more holes close by, almost immediately afterwards.
I was too much excited to worry about the gun in the least—we all were—and went and watched them over the wall at the side, and saw some dark figures come racing down the hill, and presently others whom I knew were marines came along after them and joined up in the paddy fields, and I thought I could recognize Mr. Travers and Captain Marshall by their long legs. It made me go just a little hot all over to see Captain Marshall, because I hadn't forgotten what he had said when I had run away from the bullets, near those burning huts, and didn't quite want to see him.
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 theRingdove, 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 theVigilant'seight-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 theRingdovedragged 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 theOmaha'ssiren, 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 firstVigilant'sboat 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 theVigilantwho 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 theHuan Minhad towed away some of the junks and burnt the others, we all steamed back to Tinghai.
TheRingdovewas 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 theRingdovecame back she brought six weeks' mails, and that was the first thing that really cheered us up. We were quite happy.
I had six long letters from my mother, the first I had had since leaving home, and I sat on my chest in a corner by myself and read them, and it was very jolly to hear all that had happened at home; but they made me miserable, for although she tried to write cheerfully, I knew that she was really very worried. You see, my father would put all the little money he had into silly swindly things which he saw advertised in the papers, and my mother often told me that some of the religious papers had more swindling advertisements in them than ordinary daily papers, and of course my father, being a parson, often saw these. I don't know much about it, but she used to tell me that if he saw an advertisement telling anyone to send, say, five pounds to a man and he would be sure to make it into ten or twenty pounds in a week—by some certain plan he had invented for dealing in stocks and shares—my father would nearly always do it, if he could manage to scrape any money together.
I know that my mother often cried about it, and I've often heard him say, "Well, my dear, they seem to know what they are talking about. They can't be all swindlers, or else the editors wouldn't print their advertisements, so I'll just try, this once."
He always lost his money, and I know, for a fact, that my mother only had one new dress all the time I was on theBritannia, so as to have enough money to pay for me there.
I know that this is rather a "sniffy" chapter, but I can t help it, and I'm telling you just what happened, and how I felt about everything.
The Captain sent for me before I had read my letters more than twice, and I shoved them into my chest and ran aft to his cabin.
He was sitting at his knee-hole table in his shirt sleeves, smoking a cigar, with heaps of letters all around him, and "Blucher's" head close to his elbow.
"Good news from home, I hope, Ford? Here's something for you from my girl Nan," and he gave me a folded-up piece of notepaper with "Dick" scrawled across it.
I was running out again when he gurgled: "Arm all right? Let me see you move your fingers. Umph. You'll be all right. Umph! I wrote to the missus to tell her you'd shot that chap who tried to cut me down; wrote to your mother too, to tell her you were going on well—told her about it as well. Umph!"
"Did you really, sir?" I gasped. "Thank you very much indeed, sir!"
"Umph! Do you know where we are going? Yokohama!—to-morrow; got orders to-night; off you go."
I rushed off to tell everybody, and was awfully happy again—everyone was; but what made me so happy was to know that Captain Lester himself had written about me saving his life, and that everyone at Upton Overy would know about it. I knew how my mother would love her letter, and keep it, and read it over and over again. Nan wrote an awfully spidery kind of a fist, and wanted me to bring her a whole lot of "curios" when we came home. She said that I had promised to do so, and that this was just a "reminder". It was jolly to hear from her, and she sent her love to old "Blucher", and wanted to know whether he had had any of his "fits" lately.
My face was nearly all right again by this time, but the forehead was darker on the left side, and Dr. Barclay said that he thought it would always be like that.
I didn't really mind, because it would always be something to show, and to remind me of everything.
As a matter of fact, I was rather pleased about it, but had to pretend I wasn't.