A Chinese Command: A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas

by Harry Collingwood

Then, even as he flung himself backward off the support on which he was standing, there came a terrific concussion, followed by a rumbling roar as an avalanche of stone went crashing to the ground below; while the very building itself, massive as it was, quaked as though the whole edifice were on the point of crumbling to pieces. Frobisher, dazed and half-stunned by the tremendous shock, and nearly blinded by the shower of dust and mortar that came pouring in upon him, found himself lying on his back on the floor, surrounded by a pile of instruments and machines, blocks of stone, and other débris, until it seemed nothing short of a miracle that he had not been crushed to pieces.

As it chanced, however, he had not received so much as a scratch, and found, as he picked himself up, that nothing worse had befallen him than the acquisition of sundry fresh bruises. And as he was already a mass of contusions from head to foot, he felt that one or two more made very little difference.

He was just about to climb up again to his point of vantage—for he was intensely interested in learning the outcome of this stubborn little fight by the sea-shore—when he happened to glance upward in order to ascertain whether there were any more loose blocks of stone likely to be dislodged and fall on him. As he did so he caught sight of another ray of daylight shining into the gloom of his prison. Upon investigation he saw that the last three shots from the rebel guns must have been so well aimed as to have struck practically the same spot, for, sure enough, there was a ragged hole in the wall, slightly above the window and a little to the left of it, apparently at the junction of the ceiling of his cell and the floor of the chamber above, just big enough for him to thrust his head through. Also, what was more to the point, it was evident that very little effort would be needed to pull down more of the shattered masonry, and so enlarge the hole sufficiently to enable him to crawl through.

But, he decided, it would be sheer suicide for him to attempt to escape at this particular juncture. The mere appearance of his head through the hole would be enough to attract the entire fire of the rebels, since they would naturally take him for one of the garrison; and there was also the very probable chance of his being seen by the riflemen on the battlements, who would be able to pick him off with the utmost ease as he climbed out. No; it would be necessary to delay the attempt until after dark, trusting that meanwhile everybody in general, and the Governor in particular, would be much too busy to pay him a visit of investigation and inspect the damage done.

He therefore placed himself at the window once more, and soon saw that, even during the short interval of his absence, matters had altered considerably. Another rebel gun had been dismounted, leaving only two remaining, while of these one had had its carriage very badly damaged. Also, several more shells from the war-ships must have fallen among the riflemen, for the dead and wounded were now lying scattered about in heaps upon the sand, while the fire from the men in the jungle had dwindled very considerably.

The boats, too, had by this time pushed off from the sides of the transports and were heading—twelve of them altogether, crowded with men—in three lines, “in line ahead”, as Frobisher would have phrased it, for the shore. Each of the leading boats was a steam pinnace whose work it was to tow the rest, and in the bow of each pinnace the Englishman was able to make out a small swivel-gun, with the gunners standing by ready to open fire as soon as the boats drew within range. It could not now be long before the end came, for, when once the boats had landed the troops, the rebels would be hopelessly outnumbered; and it seemed evident that Frobisher’s hope of being rescued by the latter was doomed to disappointment.

By this time the dusk had closed down sufficiently to enable Frobisher to distinguish the trains of small sparks left behind by the fuses of the time-shells which were now bursting thickly over the jungle, the idea of the Chinese evidently being to drive the men concealed there out into the open; and the plan succeeded admirably, although not quite in the manner anticipated.

Frobisher had watched shell after shell fall among the brush and reeds, and had seen group after group of men come reeling out from cover, only to be mowed down by the rifle fire from the fort, when suddenly he perceived a small tongue of flame shoot upward from the seaward corner of the jungle—the corner which was, unhappily for the rebels, right to windward of them; and although a number of men immediately rushed to the spot and did all in their power to trample or beat out the flames, it was of no avail. The fire spread with appalling rapidity, and five minutes after that incendiary shell had fallen the whole of the outer edge of the jungle was a continuous sheet of flame, the roar of which was plainly audible to the imprisoned spectator.

Great masses of dense smoke were driven upward and forward through the jungle, and presently the hidden rebel soldiery came streaming out, driven forth by the flames and smoke; and so swift had been the advance of the fire that the clothing of some of the last to escape was actually smouldering.

Darkness was now falling rapidly, and, sorry as he felt for the rebels in their defeat, the young Englishman could not but admire the weird magnificence of the scene displayed before him. A section of thick jungle, fully a quarter of a mile long and a hundred yards wide, was one roaring, crackling mass of fire. The flames were leaping forward at the rate of many yards a minute, while they must have attained a height of fully thirty feet. Clouds of dense smoke billowed upward, their under surfaces vividly illuminated by the ruddy reflection of the leaping flames. Even the sea itself, for a mile round, was brilliantly illuminated by the glare, and the three little fleets of boats, which were now approaching the shore, with jets of flame spurting from the muzzles of their swivel-guns, appeared to be floating in liquid flame.