Blunt inspected the work in silence, with its double wall loopholed, and with extra shelters for the men who would be firing therefrom, and finally stood thinking.
“Well,” he said to the men who were watching him anxiously, “I can suggest nothing more. You have done your work admirably. So now knock off and come into the big store-room for refreshments.”
The men cheered and followed into the great place, which, minus its piles of tea-chests carried out to build the wall, looked vast; but the trestle and boards spread ready, and pretty well covered with a substantial tea by Blunt’s Chinese servants, made the place look welcome in the extreme; and upon the men being bidden to fall to, Europeans and Asiatics set to work eagerly, talking, laughing, eating, and drinking, and more resembling a strange picnic party than a number of men expecting to be engaged at any hour in a desperate fight for their lives against a savage foe.
There were only two of those present who looked moody and were silent. These were Blunt and Stan, the former washing down his food with draughts of tea as with frowning brow he cogitated over his plans; the latter, now that the excitement of preparation was over, feeling a strange sense of sinking which the bread and tea did not remove. He wanted to preserve his firmness and show Blunt that he was no coward, but there was what seemed to be a dark mental cloud ahead, and in spite of every attempt to pierce it, there it hung ominously like a portent of what was to come, and as if fate was kindly hiding from him the horrors in store.
Stan set his teeth hard and made a tremendous effort at last.
“I must eat,” he said to himself, “or I shall be as weak as a child, and I must drink to quench this horrible feeling of delirious thirst. Oh, I wish I wasn’t such a weak coward! I’m sure no other fellows of my age can be like me.”
Forcing himself then, he began to eat and drink hurriedly, all the while recalling old school fights into which he had entered with fear and trembling, but without recalling how he had come out.
Then all that he had read of Chinese horrors, and the indifference of these people to life, came floating before his eyes—anecdotes that he had read of their atrocities and savage treatment of their enemies—there they all were, till, instead of seeing any longer that black, cloud-like curtain, the lad now seemed to be seeing red, and he started violently when his companion brought him to himself by suddenly rising and blowing his silver whistle. Then in the silence that immediately ensued Blunt explained his plans to his listeners, and had his words well interpreted to such of the Chinese workers as were not perfect in their knowledge of English.
Blunt spoke briefly, but every word of his instructions was to the point, and the listeners rose from their rough benches at last well drilled in their duties as to the places they were to occupy, the Europeans finding a leader to reply and declare how to a man they would fight to the death; while, when the manager had done, the head of the Chinamen rose and declared that his comrades thoroughly hated all pirates and murderers, and that to a man they too would fight for the good, just master who always behaved to his men as if he were their father.
Blunt smiled and nodded, and then said a few words to the leader about his comrades having rifles. But these were declined, the Chinaman declaring that he and his fellows could do more good with their long knives and hatchets when the enemy came to close quarters; and this he said, as Stan noticed, with a fierce glow in his eyes which proclaimed that, in spite of the speaker being as a rule a mild-spoken, peaceful carpenter, there was Chinese Asiatic savage instinct beneath the skin—showing, too, that he and his fellows were going to prove themselves dangerous foes to the bloodthirsty enemy when they approached.