“Blood’s thicker than Water!”
“Ay!” replied Mr Gilham, who was equally impatient to go to the rescue of our poor comrades, and, if not able to help them, to fall beside them, the lieutenant speaking in a hoarse tone, with his face of that pattern which shows a desperate purpose, and biting his lip so that the blood came, to keep in his repressed feeling. “But, not before the word’s given for us to go forward. I wish to God this would come!”
It was terrible work for us, lying sheltered there under the lee of the junk to which we were moored, looking on inactive, listening to the whistle of the round shot hurtling in the air and hearing the heavy thud of the missiles as they crashed through the sides of the gunboats; for we pictured the devastation these missiles wrought inboard, with the shrieks of the wounded, the groans of the dying, and the hapless bodies of the dead strewing the decks.
It was more terrible far to us than for those participating in the grim tragedy with all its attendant horrors.
They were fighting and oblivious of everything save a mad longing to kill and slay; while we were doing—nothing!
Every one of us in the launch of the Candahar felt that; and yet, what could we do?
A limit, however, came at length to our endurance.
The Plover and Opossum, which had dropped out of the first line, drifted down nearer to us; and then, the captain in command of the reserve called for volunteers to re-man those staunch little vessels that had borne all the burden and heat of the battle so far, but were staunch, practically speaking, no longer, being almost floating wrecks, and their crews either wounded or dead.
No second call was needed, the men being all alert in an instant, the boats’ crews vieing with each other as to which should supply the fresh hands required for the gunboats; although these would be going, as they well knew, into the very jaws of death.
Fortunately the launch was the nearest.