Chapter XXI On One Gun Hill
The Hill on Fire—Gunner Bolton, R.M.A.—I Help Dr. Richardson—Doing Well—We Stir Up the Pirates—Reporting to the “Laird”—A Yarn with Collins—A Overwhelming Rush
Mr. Midshipman Glover relates his experiences
I have often wondered whether or no I was really frightened.
Certainly, whilst we were climbing up that hill through bushes and trees, in the most absolute darkness, I should have been in an utter funk if I had not been obliged to stick to the Commander and do my utmost not to lose touch with him.
As far as I can remember I thought of little else but that, and to wish that he would not go so fast. When at last we had found the pathway—just as it was getting light—I was too excited to be really frightened, and afterwards, when I had to follow the Commander about the level space on the top of “One Gun Hill”, as we called it, I was kept so busy taking messages that I hardly thought of the bullets, or even the shells, and was much more afraid lest the Commander should think that I was funking.
At first it was simply horrid to have to walk across, for you could hear bullets going by and making a noise just like a crack of a thin whip, and sometimes would see one strike the ground or a sand-bag just in front of you, where you would have to pass in a few seconds, and then—well, it was jolly hard work to prevent your legs from going as fast as they could go. I seemed to take up so much room, so much more than anything else near, that it seemed actually impossible for the bullets to miss my body. In fact, when they commenced shelling us, and Mr. Saunderson, who is really an immense man, turned round and told me chaffingly to stand in front of him, I thought that I actually should shield him if I did so. That feeling explains what I mean rather better than anything else I can say.
Later, however, I became so awfully tired and sleepy that things just happened, and I did what I had to do quite mechanically. When the Chinese made their first rush I was hardly even excited, and remember that I thought it the most natural thing in the world to see Hopkins fall down wounded. I was sorry for him, just as one is in a dream, and, in fact, I kept on thinking that presently I should wake up and find myself on board the Laird, with some silly idiot of a midshipman playing a trick with my hammock. It never even occurred to me till long afterwards that all that time the Commander had been standing in front of me to protect me.
I was very cold and very wet, and stood shivering and watching Captain Hunter trying to rescue the oil-drums, and afterwards found myself hauling sand-bags and piling them round one of the Maxims, and getting warmer every minute.
Then I remembered that the Commander had told me to do this.
When a little time afterwards he put his hand on my shoulder, with a terribly sad expression on his face, and said in a strange voice, “Glover, I am sorry,” I had not the least idea what he meant, and thought that it was because I was absolutely drenched to the skin.
Of course I know now what he meant, but at the time had not the faintest notion that we were in so much danger.
What did at last really wake me was the firing of that big Krupp gun and the noise of the shell bursting on the cliff on the opposite side of the harbour, just above the cruiser which was preparing to shell us, and not far from the ledge where the Commander, Jones, and I had been hidden.
Quite close to where it burst were several little groups of Koreans—white patches against the green background. They had been watching from daybreak the attempts to recapture One Gun Hill, but now vanished out of sight, and we never saw them again.
Our second shot, five minutes later, was still nearer the cruiser, but she made no attempt to move, and began firing single guns. They had been obliged to give her a tremendous list to starboard, in order to elevate their guns sufficiently, and as her gunners could not see our Krupp gun from the decks, they had men stationed high up on the cliffs, some distance away, who signalled with flags (I could see them quite plainly) after each shot, whether it was right, left, short, or over.
Most of them went right over (they were firing shrapnel), some burst very short, only the fragments of the shell coming crashing on the ground round the gun, whilst the bullets plunged into the bushes below us, beating them down.
Many actually struck the slope of the hill before bursting, and whether it was these, or whether it was the burning cubes of gunpowder which went flying down the hill each time we fired that gun, I do not know, but presently the bushes and undergrowth began to smoulder, and the smoke, all the denser because they were damp, was driven down towards the town by the wind.
This in time increased the clear space below the breastworks, but the smoke made our shooting all the less accurate, did not hide us at all, either from the two field-guns or the cruiser, and unfortunately concealed the movements of the Chinese behind it.
I suppose that Captain Hunter or the Commander never thought of that at the time, otherwise they might have stamped the fire out when it first began to burn.
“Go and get something to eat,” the Commander had told me; “I sha’n’t want you for half an hour.” So I had gone across to Sergeant Haig’s breast-work, and was lying down close to a fire his men had made, and huddled up against the sand-bags to find some shelter from the wind and rain.
I was feeling precious hungry again, so, unfastening my haversack, I broke off a big hunk of that home-made cake. It was jolly good, and I had a good pull at my water-bottle; old Mellins had filled it with weak tea. It was jolly hard work pulling out the stopper, for my fingers were so numb with the cold.
I broke off another piece of cake and gave it to the marine lying next to me. It was Gunner Bolton, with his rifle pointing through a loophole and his finger on the trigger. He turned round into an easier position, and after a few bites said: “D’ye think, sir, as ’ow I shall get into trouble about that ’ere gun?
“You see, sir, it was just like this. I’d been bringing up the rear and got rather be’ind’and, what with one thing an’ another, and in them thick bushes, it being so dark an’ all, I jest lost mysel’ and couldn’t no’ow find the rest of ’em. So I thinks to mysel’, ‘Jest obey orders’, and when you’re lost, as the Commander said, ‘Jest climb and climb’.
“Well, that was what I did, sir,” he continued, with a half-anxious, half-humorous expression, “and I climbed and I climbed till, blow me! I simply fell over them sandbags, and not a savidge anywhere could I see. So I jest lights my pipe and stops there, knowing the Commander would be along in no time. But you see, sir, I’ve rayther done ’im out of ’is show, and my mates are rayther furious about it too.
“I wish I’d ’ung on to the party, an’ then there wouldn’t ’ave been none of this ’ere trouble.”
He munched his cake solemnly and then added slyly: “That ’sentry-go’ business, sir, that’s what riled ’em. That was just for effect, I don’t mind telling you, sir.”
“That’s all right, Bolton,” I told him. “You won’t hear any more about it from the Commander, I’m sure of that.”
“Well, I ’opes you’re right, sir; an’ if you’ll look arter this ’ere rifle of mine I’ll jest see if there ain’t a little o’ that ’ot cocoa left.”
He crawled away, scraped a little out of the big mess-tins, warmed it over the fire in his own tin cup, and brought it back to me.
It was jolly refreshing, I can tell you, and warm and oily.
He took his rifle from me and watched me drink.
“You’ll put in a good word for me, sir, when we gets aboard the Laird; now, won’t you, sir?”
I promised that I would do so, but could not help smiling.
“You see that ’ere Chinaman?” he said presently, jerking his thumb towards a motionless blue heap which lay about a hundred yards away along the crest—one of those who had bolted away from Captain Hunter. “I shot ’im, sir; knocked ’im all of a ‘eap. Caught ’im in the upper works I did, sir, an’ ’e jest toppled over an’ over an’ never moved a ’air, though there I was all waiting, with another cartridge jammed in, in case ’e did.
“Never moved a ’air,” he kept repeating softly to himself, evidently vastly contented with his marksmanship, “an’ with that ’ere rifle too,” and he kept patting its breech.
“Eh! look at that, sir!” he said, pointing down to the harbour, just after the Krupp gun had fired again, and jumped to his feet, waving his rifle over his head and cheering loudly, as did the others, for the shell had landed, fair and square, in the cruiser’s stern, and seemed to have practically wrecked her.
Every man on top of the hill roared himself hoarse.
However, they sank down behind the sand-bags again, for they had drawn a rapid fire from “Bush Hill” and the field-guns.
I watched the great clouds of black smoke rolling up from the cruiser.
“If that ain’t pluck, call me a coal-shovelling stoker!” cried Bolton, as the big fo’c’stle gun fired again before our Krupp had time to reload, and the shell burst just below the crest.
We ducked our heads behind the sand-bags, and the fragments tore up the ground.
“There’s a Englishman a-running that show, sir; none o’ your spotted Dagos, I’ll be bound.”
He was just a little too talkative for me, so I went away, Sergeant Haig smiling grimly as I left. “Haven’t had much to do this side yet, sir.”
I ran across to the rear of the big gun just as it fired again.
That shot was short, and whilst they were reloading her the cruiser fired two more rounds; but our next shell struck her farther forward, bringing down her funnel and foremast and crumpling her up like match-wood.
We could see them taking to their boats and pulling ashore, and the men yelled again with delight, for although her shells had done very little mischief, and had only wounded one man—a marine behind the “Log Redoubt”—the noise of their bursting shells was intensely unpleasant and disconcerting.
The big Krupp was now turned on the cruisers lying to the right of the town, but these were so much closer in and right down under the land that it was still more difficult to drop shell anywhere near them.
Of course we could not see anything of them from the gun itself, and had to chance more or less the direction and also the powder charge, trying first three bags of powder, which sent the shell almost over the back of the forts at the entrance, and then two bags, which did not send it far enough, but made it go ricocheting down the side of the hill before it burst near the bottom. We tried elevating the sights a little, and gradually began to drop our shells with some amount of precision.
The Hong Lu was, of course, the ship we were most anxious to hit, because she was the only ship which was really good for any serious fighting.
I was watching the men working like demons inside the gun-pit, hauling the big shell and the bags of powder from the magazines, and training her with the clumsy tackles, when presently Dr. Richardson called me.
He had found a little hollow in the side of the hill overlooking the sea, and there he had brought all the wounded men and was busy among them still, with monkey-jacket off and sleeves rolled up.
He was bandaging a marine who had just been struck by a shrapnel bullet.
It had struck him a slanting blow on the back of his head, and he sat there gazing stupidly in front of him, supporting himself mechanically with his hands as he swayed unsteadily.
When he had finished the bandage, Dr. Richardson lowered him on his back in the grass, and injected something into his arm with a syringe which the sick-berth steward handed him.
He shoved the needle right through the skin, and I thought that the man would surely yell, but he only opened his eyes for a second and then closed them again.
“Now, Glover, if you have nothing to do, try and get some cocoa for these fellows.”
I was only too jolly glad to do anything for them—there were nearly twenty of them huddled in a sheltered corner, most of them apparently asleep, and one or two groaning terribly.
I stepped across to Sergeant Haig, and the stern old man got hold of some cocoa and some water out of a breaker, and I hunted up some fairly dry wood for the fire, and in time we got it hot. I had to carry it back myself, as he would not leave his men. When I had done this, and everyone who was not unconscious had had some of the cocoa, Dr. Richardson sent me to get blankets and any oil-skins I could collect. The blankets were not difficult to find, for they were all under that big tarpaulin, but very few men had their oil-skins, and those that had them were not any too willing to part with them.
But I managed to bring back half a dozen, and we covered up all the wounded we could.
Mr. Pattison looked simply awful. He had lost a tremendous lot of blood, and his head was covered with bandages; but his face was a horrid purple colour, and he was puffing out his cheeks and blowing through his lips every time he breathed.
“Hasn’t come round yet,” Dr. Richardson told me.
“Will he die?” I asked anxiously, for everybody had been awfully sorry for him ever since he had lost destroyer “No. 1”, and I, of course, knew too that he was frightfully gone on Milly, and wanted to see him get back his luck.
“Can’t tell, Glover; hope not;” and Dr. Richardson sat down wearily and tried to light his pipe.
“Haven’t we done splendidly so far, sir,” I said, opening my jacket to shield him from the wind as he struck his damp matches.
“Ask Pattison,” he answered, shrugging his shoulders.
Captain Hunter came down just then to see how the wounded were getting on, so I slipped away, and, to tell the truth, was not at all sorry.
And, also, being near so many men who had been hit made me feel rather frightened.
I had better explain to you now exactly how we were situated at this time. All told, one hundred and fourteen men and ten officers had been landed. Of these seven had been killed and eighteen wounded, including Mr. Pattison, but not including Captain Williams (nor indeed Captain Hunter and Mr. Saunderson, who both had skin wounds, and several of the men as well).
This left us thirty seamen and fifty-four marines, one of the wounded blue-jackets and three of the wounded marines being still able to handle their rifles whilst lying on the ground behind the sand-bags.
The marines were manning the breast-works and the blue-jackets the Krupp gun and the two Maxims, Mr. Gibbins being in command of the big gun, and Collins the Sub in command of the Maxims.
The sand-bag breast-works we had made in the morning were now vastly improved, and were much more substantial, because the men, when not firing, had dug away the earth behind them and strengthened them in front with the earth thrown out. Each man, in fact, had vied with his neighbour in digging himself farther into the ground, so that actually there was now a trench behind the breast-works.
The rain, too, had soaked into the bags and made them more heavy and bullet-proof.
Captain Williams’s Log Redoubt ran right across the side facing Bush Hill, and was so high that it kept off a great many of the bullets from there, and made it almost safe to walk about the top of the hill, if you only stooped down.
The Maxim redoubt, too, at the harbour end of this breast-work, was quite strong and nearly four feet high, and Mr. Collins and his men added to it whenever firing was slack.
The town itself was hidden from us by the line of smoke from the smouldering bushes about fifty yards down the slope of the hill. Hardly a shot came from that direction. None either came towards Sergeant Haig’s redoubt or from the sea at our rear.
It was nearly mid-day, and the field-guns were still shelling us, but I think that the noise of their shells was the worst part of them so long as we kept under cover. Although several had burst right in the centre of the plateau during the last hour, nobody had been touched during that time. These were all common shell,6 for they appeared to have run short of shrapnel, or found that they could not rely on the fuses bursting properly.
The men had become so used to these shells, that if one burst they hardly turned to look at it. Sometimes you would see a man screw himself down more firmly into the ground; but most of them took no notice at all, and joked amongst themselves or jeered at the unfortunate signalman, or one of the Maxims’ crews, who happened to be in the open and had to throw himself on the ground to escape the flying splinters.
The Commander did once try to reach those guns with a Maxim, but the range must have been well over two thousand yards. We could not see where the bullets were going, and certainly they had no effect on the people working them.
Once or twice, though, when the firing from the bushes became brisk, we soon made them ease down by letting off fifty or sixty rounds into Bush Hill, and Collins kept both the crews very much on the alert, with belts of cartridges ready to pump out bullets in case the enemy tried to make another rush.
We had a fair amount of ammunition left, a fair amount of water, and plenty of provisions, and so, all things considered, we were pretty comfortable.
The rain too had ceased, the wind also began to lose force, and every now and again the sun came out, though not for long enough to dry our dripping clothes.
Captain Hunter and the Commander had been all this time walking up and down the plateau as if it were the Laird’s quarter-deck, or standing on the edge and watching to see where our big shells were falling. They and Mr. Gibbins, who had to climb up to the sighting-platform each time the gun fired, were the only people much exposed to danger. The Commander did not take shelter, I am sure, because the Captain did not, and to give the men confidence; Captain Hunter because he thoroughly enjoyed the excitement.
Down below us we could see little “No. 3” a mile out to sea, the Sylvia not far from her. Both were having a very bad time of it, half smothered in spray and both rolling heavily—the Sylvia because she had very little of her cargo of coal left and was very high in the water, and “No. 3” because she always did so.
Right away across the island, beyond the entrance, the Laird and the Strong Arm were steaming backwards and forwards, and they too were making pretty heavy weather of it. I wondered whether they could see us at all, and thought how Mellins and Toddles must wish that they were up here with me.
“No. 2”, half buried in the heavy seas off the corner of the island near the forts, was doing her best to keep up communication between the big ships and the Sylvia and “No. 3”.
Mr. Lang always seemed to have the rotten jobs to do; but I have heard that this was because he was something like Mr. Pattison, and never thought of anything except getting close to the enemy, and Captain Helston had never forgotten the loss of “No. 1”.
The big Krupp was now beginning to drop her shells quite close to where the cruisers, torpedo-boats, and the remaining (Patagonian) destroyers were lying. One had fallen almost aboard the Hong Lu, but we could not rely upon any shot with the least degree of accuracy. However, all of them had started to get up steam, clouds of black smoke coming up through their funnels, and the Commander thought immediately that they might try and escape, so Captain Hunter sent me with Gordon the signalman to try and report this to Captain Helston.
The signalman had previously found a little open spot on the hill with a good background, against which his flags could be seen from the sea, and he began waving them vigorously from side to side, whilst I watched through my glasses to tell him directly the signalman on board the Sylvia or “No. 3” spotted him. “No. 3” it was who first ran up the answering pendant.
“Them Sylvia’s don’t think of nothing but sleepin’ an’ eatin’,” growled the signalman, and commenced slowly semaphoring “Captain Hunter to flag-ship.—Am dropping shells into harbour, and ships are rapidly getting up steam. All quiet up here.”
I saw that “No. 3” had taken in the message, and she hauled down the answering pendant and began to steam towards “No. 2” till it was possible to pass it on to her.
Presently “No. 2” had also received it, and hoisted flags to call the Laird’s attention. Her signalmen must have been very much on the alert, for almost immediately her answering flag went crawling up—a tiny little patch in her rigging—to her mast-head, and I could see “No. 2’s” signalman perched on the unsteady bridge, half smothered with spray and semaphoring with his flags.
Down came the flag aboard the Laird, and I could imagine the signal midshipman already tearing down the bridge ladder to take the message to Captain Helston.
“That’ll cheer ’em up, sir, out there in the wet,” said the signalman, as I climbed up again to report to Captain Hunter that I had managed to pass it through to the flag-ship.
I was sent down to wait for any reply, and found the signalman watching the Laird through his telescope. “She’s just going to make a signal from her mast-head semaphore, sir,” he said. So I stood by to write it down as he spelt out the letters.
[The mast-head semaphore consists of two large black-and-white arms, which can be worked from the bridge below.]
“I.F—E.N.E.M.Y—L.E.A.V.E—H.A.R.B.O.U.R,” I wrote down as he sung out the letters, and the message continued, “Endeavour to support me with your gun. ‘No. 3’ and ‘No. 2’ are to rejoin the squadron, and Sylvia to act independently.”
I was just rushing up hill with this when the signalman sung out, “They’ve started again, sir,” and spelt out, “Officers and men, Laird and Strong Arm, congratulate you all on success. Repeat signal to ‘No. 3’ and Sylvia.”
I left him obeying the last order, and took the signal to Captain Hunter.
He and the Commander smiled grimly.
“Those torpedo-boats and destroyers will never dare to go out in this weather,” I heard the Commander say. “The Hong Lu might possibly run away, though she certainly couldn’t fight in this weather, and those other two old tubs could not even run away.” He was right, too, for though they all did weigh anchor directly afterwards, they never attempted to leave the harbour; but, whilst the big ships began slowly steaming round it, merely keeping steerage-way on, the destroyers and torpedo-boats moved in so close to the land that it was impossible for the big Krupp to touch them.
I felt quite sad to signal, “Cruisers not attempting to leave harbour—steaming slowly to avoid shell”, and knew how dreadfully disappointed they all would be.
“If only this gale would blow itself out, we might tempt them out, even now,” I heard the Commander say.
For the next half-hour we tried our utmost to hit the Hong Lu, but as she was constantly on the move, and the clumsy gun could not even train steadily, but went groaning round its roughly-made turn-table in a succession of jerks, it was evidently impossible to do so.
Then we tried another scheme to lay the gun for a certain spot on the cliff opposite us, with a very small charge of powder behind the shell. A man at the edge signalled whenever the Hong Lu in her circling came towards it. Mr. Gibbins stood by with the firing lanyard and fired directly he could see the top of her fore-mast in line with that spot on the cliff—the top of her fore-mast being the only thing he could see from the sighting-platform, and then only when she happened to be right on the far side of the harbour.
Well, we never did hit her, nor any of the others either. They never gave us a chance; tumbled to our plan directly and stopped their engines. Then, when the blue-jackets had struggled with the gun and trained her in a different direction, the Hong Lu would be out of it again. They evidently had people signalling the movements of the gun from the cliff above them.
If we could only have made certain of our powder charge it would have been more easy; but even with, say, only one bag and a half of powder, the shells would never drop in the same place twice running, though, whether it was due to the powder being old and bad, or the gun too worn-out, I do not know.
It was frightfully disappointing, and even the Commander showed signs of irritation. Mr. Gibbins and his sweating gun’s crew were simply furious.
The poor old gun was by this time simply white with bullet splashes, and looked quite helpless as it wobbled from side to side and puffed out its erratic shells.
The marines, too, had constantly to be shifting away from Mr. Saunderson’s breast-works so that it could fire over them, and this annoyed them.
Now that the rain had ceased, the bushes began to burn quite furiously, fanned by the wind, and the cloud of smoke stretched right across our front, rolling down towards the town. The fire had left a clear space of blackened twigs and half-burnt grass for nearly sixty yards in front of Mr. Saunderson’s breast-works, and it was lucky enough for us that it had done so.
There had been a complete lull of firing, and I had gone across to yarn with Mr. Collins, to whom I had not yet spoken.
He was in the Maxim redoubt at the corner, strengthening it with sods of turf, and he winked at me as I came near him. “Having a good time, Glover?”
“Ra-ther,” I said. “Wouldn’t Mr. Parker like to be here too?”
“He’s a splendid chap,” said Mr. Collins. “Never thinks of himself, and sent me up here without my asking. Do you know, he had every mortal thing ready—except the oil-drums, of course. The men even had their leather gear on, and water-bottles filled, before he got the Commander’s signal. He thought he might want reinforcements.”
“I rather expected to see Jones come ashore,” I said.
“Poor old Jones is on his beam-ends, groaning in his hammock, pretty bad with rheumatism or something like it. That day on the ledge in the rain was too much for him. You’re a pretty lucky chap to get ashore—the only midshipman of the whole crowd,” he continued. “How did you manage it?”
“Well,” I said, rather sadly, for I had at one time been conceited enough to imagine that I’d been chosen for ability, “the Commander knows a cousin of mine, and she asked him to look after me.”
Mr. Collins smiled somewhat sarcastically. “If I hadn’t had an aunt who knew an admiral, who’d known Helston years ago, I shouldn’t have been here either.”
“He seems rather down on me now, though,” I said. “Whenever I go near him he sends me away.”
“Can’t you guess why, you fool?” Mr. Collins asked, hammering down a big load of earth his men had brought him.
“No; I thought I’d done something wrong.”
“Silly young ass! Why, he and the Captain are simply being potted at from those bushes beyond us, and he doesn’t want you to be bowled over. He won’t take cover either; he can’t, I suppose, while the Captain struts about enjoying himself. It may be jolly plucky, and Hunter is as grand a man as ever lived, and I’d follow him, and we’d all follow him anywhere, but he’s simply playing the fool.”
“Oh!” was the only thing I could say.
We were interrupted by one of the Maxim gun’s crew pointing down the slope of the hill just beyond the line of smoking bushes.
“Beg pardon, sir, but I think there’s a heap of natives down among them there bushes.”
“Go back and tell the Captain, Glover,” Mr. Collins told me, stepping inside the redoubt and calling his men back to the Maxim.
“Go quietly.”
I had hardly left him before the most frightful yells came from below and from Bush Hill; out from the cloud of smoke burst hundreds and hundreds of screaming Chinamen, and from Bush Hill a most awful fire was opened. I could hear the rattling of a Maxim, and a fearful hail-storm of bullets swept across the level top of the hill.
I had never heard anything like this before, and bent down and ran.
Notes
6 Thin-walled shell with a large bursting charge. Shrapnel shell have a small bursting charge and scatter round bullets when they burst.