Chapter XXIII The Attack on the Forts
Below the Armoured Deck—We Engage the Forts—We Silence the Forts—My Wounds are Dressed
Mr. Midshipman Glover’s Narrative continued
The men were hurriedly closing water-tight doors and lowering the water-tight hatchway covers. Dr. Fox and I must have been nearly the last to go below, for the men had to stop lowering the big armoured hatchway cover aft, in order that we might scramble through it and climb down the steep iron ladder to the magazine flats.
The heavy iron armour fell into place with a thud. I heard the men above screwing down the clamps which secured it, and for the first time in my life realized that we were shut in below the armoured deck, and wondered how we were going to escape if anything happened.
Of course I had often been there before during drills, but this was the real thing, and I felt like a rat in a trap.
The big space we were now in was called the “cross passage”, and ran right across the ship, with the sloping dome of the armoured deck above it. The magazines opened into it at the after end, and on each side the ammunition passages ran for’ard. These were two tunnels just broad enough for two men to squeeze past, and just high enough for them to stand erect. They ran along each side of the ship, under the curved edge of the armoured deck, to open into another cross passage for’ard, where were more magazines, and from the top of them rose the ammunition hoists—great armoured tubes, five on each side—leading up to the main and upper deck 6-inch guns.
From the for’ard cross passage a huge armoured tube ran up to the fo’c’stle to feed the fo’c’stle 8-inch gun, and there was a similar one running up from the after cross passage to the quarter-deck gun.
Standing underneath and looking up through this one, I could just catch a glimpse of the sky; but of course no daylight came down, and though there were electric lights here and there on the bulk-heads, it was very gloomy.
Men were in the whitewashed magazines, with felt slippers on their feet, handing out 6-inch shell and cartridge-cases. Others, rushing out from the darker ammunition passages, seized them, shoved them into little canvas bags bound with rope, and dashed back again to feed their own especial ammunition hoist. Hooking the bags to a rope which ran up the tube, passed over a pulley-wheel at the top and led down again, they hauled the shell and cartridges up to the 6-inch gun above them.
I crouched in a corner to be out of the way, and as it grew hotter and hotter, and the stifling air became full of dust, the electric lights themselves began to blur indistinctly; and the men, leaping along the passages, jostling each other as they passed, muttering as they barked their shins or dropped a projectile, clothed in nothing but boots, duck trousers and flannels, their faces and necks streaming with perspiration, looked like demons.
A stoker near me, one of two who stood by with a fire-hose, muttered to his mate, “Blow me, Bill, if it ain’t as ’ot as ’ot.”
“You’ve ’it it to a shovelful; it’s wurs’n what them stoke’olds are,” I heard Bill reply, as he cut off some tobacco and stuffed it into his cheek.
“So long as we don’t get no blooming fire down ’ere, I’m a-comfortable enough a-standin’ ’ere a-watching of them others a-workin’. But what breaks me ’eart every time,” he continued, “we don’t seem to never get no ’ead o’ water through this ’ere hose-pipe. I don’t ’old with them new-fangled pumps they’ve got aboard this ’ere junk.”
“The same ’ere,” answered his mate, and they settled themselves comfortably on the coiled-up fire-hose to enjoy their quids of tobacco.
Dr. Fox, the three Paymasters, the Chaplain, and the sick-bay people were trying to get a clear corner, and were laying out bandages, tourniquets, and surgical dressings, the mere sight of which made me feel horribly uncomfortable, and more like a rat in a trap than ever.
It was bad enough whilst the men were rushing to and fro, and in that thick, stuffy atmosphere you could smell nothing but sweating men; but presently they had brought out as much ammunition as they could heap round the bottom of the hoists, and there was nothing more for them to do yet. The ammunition parties grouped silently below their own special hoists, and the magazine parties had time to pass their arms across their eyes and wipe the stinging sweat away.
It was a time of terrible suspense, for not a sound could be heard from above, where we knew the guns’ crews were standing round their guns, and from below nothing but the regular rhythm of the big engines, the rapid throbbing of the dynamo-engines and the pumps behind the bulk-heads, and every now and again the harsh rumbling of the steering-engine aft.
Added to all this we were rolling very heavily.
Presently a man came scrambling down one of the hoists—sliding down the rope—and there was a sudden stir as men eagerly questioned him.
“Are we getting close inshore?” “Have the forts opened fire yet?” “Is that big gun still firing?” “Where’s the Strong Arm?”
Then there was silence again—all but the noises of the engines drumming and thudding on the other side of the white bulk-heads.
The First Lieutenant, trying to appear calm, walked round and round, first along the port side, then down the starboard passage, seeing that everything was ready and everybody in his place, speaking a word here and there to a petty officer, and followed closely by his midshipman messenger, a very junior chap we called “Daisy”.
Then the little bell at our end of the conning-tower voice-pipe tinkled loudly. The man stationed there sang out for the First Lieutenant, and he came running up. Captain Helston was giving him an order from the conning tower.
“Very good, sir,” he shouted back.
“Stand by on the port side, men; we are just going to commence.”
Oh, wasn’t it exciting! and didn’t I wish that I was up above that armoured deck with the sky overhead, instead of lying down there so stiff and sore that I could barely move!
The men were fidgeting nervously from one foot to the other, and then the silence was broken by the banging of the guns in the port battery overhead. A second later the quarter-deck 8-inch went off, and we could feel the ship quiver; another quiver came from the fo’c’stle big gun for’ard. Two minutes of this and then men shouted hoarsely down the hoists for more ammunition, the voice-pipe bells tinkled, and the order came down to pass up only common shell (shell with thin walls and a large bursting charge).
Men flew backwards and forwards, the dust thickened again, the heat and the mugginess were horrid, and every now and again some of the powder smoke would be blown down the hoists and make those stifling ammunition passages darker still.
The First Lieutenant walked steadily backwards and forwards along the port side, singing out, “Steady, men; don’t hurry—don’t crowd,” and the two stokers near me tucked their feet out of the way and went on chewing their quids of tobacco.
Then a man slid down one of the starboard hoists and crawled aft to Dr. Fox. He had a great gash in one leg, with some spun yarn tied tightly about it.
“They’re firing furious,” he gasped, “and a splinter from the first cutter caught me.”
Then the port guns ceased firing, and we heard the steering-engine rumbling “hard over”.
“We are turning now, boys, and going past again. Stand by for the starboard guns,” sang out the First Lieutenant.
The quarter-deck gun ceased firing. Now we were almost round again, and could faintly hear the boom of the Strong Arm’s guns coming down the hoists.
There was a crash and a roar above us, something came clattering down one of the port upper-deck hoists, a man jumped and picked it up—a fragment of shell—and he dropped it again precious quickly with burnt fingers. I remember that the men all laughed at him.
“Want the doctor!” someone shouted down.
In a moment Dr. Fox was there with a bag over his shoulder. They made a bight in the rope hoist, he placed his foot in it, and grasped the rope over his head.
“Haul handsomely, men,” he growled, and they hauled him up the hoist. He was down again in a minute or two, sliding down the rope.
“Too late!” I heard him mutter as he landed, his hands and sleeves covered with blood.
“Who was it, sir?” somebody asked him, but he took no notice.
Then the starboard guns and the quarter-deck 8-inch commenced, and we had begun to go past those two forts for the second run.
I pictured our shells bursting against the rocks and among the guns I had seen there, and wondered whether the European in charge was sober or not, and whether the Commander was still holding out round his Krupp gun. If only I hadn’t been such a fool as to jump down off that parapet of sand-bags, I might have been with him still.
We were coming to the end of the second run now, and the First Lieutenant had just said as he wiped his forehead: “They can’t stand much more of this if we’re making anything like decent shooting,” when they commenced cheering on deck, and somebody shouted down that the forts had hoisted a white flag. The men below cheered from one end of the passages to the other, and the guns above ceased firing.
Dr. Fox and a sick-berth steward climbed up a hoist to look after some more wounded on deck, and in a few minutes the main engines began to slow down and presently stopped altogether.
On deck we heard the bos’n’s mate pipe, “Away, second cutter!” a voice yelled down the hoist, “Any second cutters down below there?” A couple of men belonging to that boat scrambled hastily up, there was silence again, and we could do nothing but wait and wonder what was happening.
“If we sit here much longer I’m blowed if we sha’n’t miss our first dog-watch,” said one of the stokers cheerfully, and unbending his cramped legs.
“’Tis a hill wind that don’t blow nobody no good,” added the other reflectively, and they both spat into a dark corner behind the fire-hose.
“Put those two men in the Commander’s report,” said the First Lieutenant, who had just come over from the opposite side and saw them spit.
Daisy, his midshipman, got out his pocket-book and took their names.
“What about yer hill wind now?” said the first one who had spoken, as Daisy went away, and they sat down again. “That will blooming well stop yer chawnce of going ashore and picking up a bit o’ loot.”
Old Mellins scrambled down to see me, and jolly glad I was. He is such a thoughtful chap, and had brought me some grub—a pot of pâté de foie gras and some bread and butter. Till I saw it I never realized how terribly hungry I was; and you should have seen me eating it, with Mellins standing over me, spreading great chunks of the pâté on thick slices of bread and butter, and telling me all that had happened.
“Our first run past those forts simply knocked the stuffing out of them. You couldn’t see them for dust and the smoke of the shells, and when we turned round and went for them again they hardly fired a gun. We could see them tumbling over each other in their hurry to scramble out of the forts, and after we’d ceased firing someone hauled down their colours and hoisted a white flag as big as a sheet. It was simply ripping.”
“How about the Commander?” I asked.
“He’s going strong, and firing that big gun into the harbour every four or five minutes. ‘No. 2’ and ‘No. 3’ are right in under the forts, and Toddles has taken the Captain inshore to take possession of them, or what is left of them.”
“Anybody killed?” I asked.
“We have one, poor Joe Connolly, the coxswain of my picket-boat,” said Mellins sadly, “and the Strong Arm has three killed and nearly twenty pretty badly wounded. A 6-inch shell burst on her upper deck—in the battery.”
Dr. Fox and his sick-berth steward came along then, and Mellins was sent away to get me some more clothes, as the ones I had on were torn and blood-stained. It wasn’t all my blood, I think, for when Dr. Fox had ripped off my shirt he only found a clean cut along my ribs, and the wound in my leg was a nasty stab made, I expect, by one of those horrid boarding-pikes the Chinese were prodding me with.
This wound was much the more uncomfortable, and Dr. Fox took quite a long time probing and syringing it till it was quite clean.
It was very painful and smarted a good deal; and wasn’t I jolly glad when he had finished and left me alone again, and Mellins had helped me into my clean things!