"Orders are to assemble on the wall as soon as it gets dark enough to go up the ramp unnoticed."
"All right, sir, we'll be there," said Turner, "and I know I'll never come down again alive if we don't get the Chinks on a run. We have got it to do, that's all."
An hour later, in the dusk of evening, a little group of twenty Americans and as many British marines, all of them picked men, crouched on the lofty wall listening to the earnest but low-voiced words of Captain John Meyers, U.S.M.C., the gallant officer who was to lead the charge that would mean life or death to every foreigner then in the city of Pekin. He did not speak more than a minute, but what he said filled every man who heard him with the spirit of a hero. When he had finished he leaped the barricade and started down the wall, with every man of his little party striving to gain his side.
The Chinese tower, from which they had been so harassed, went down like a card-house before their on-rush. A scattering volley of rifle-shots came from the barricade, but the Chinese were too completely taken by surprise to make a stand; even the Kwang-su savages, who never before had known defeat, fled in dismay before that charge of yelling Americans, whose rifles seemed to pour forth a continuous and inexhaustible stream of deadly fire. The Chinese fired a few shots, hurled a few spears, and then ran for their lives, darting from one barricade to another, but never allowed to pause, until such of them as were left alive gained the safe shelter of the Chien Men tower, a quarter of a mile away.
"THE SAVAGES FLED IN DISMAY BEFORE THAT CHARGE OF YELLING AMERICANS"
As the jubilant Americans streamed back towards their own barricades, where ten of their number had been left on guard, Rob Hinckley, proudly bearing a Chinese banner that he had captured, gave utterance to his joyful excitement in the old academy yell with which Hatton boys announced their victorious return from hard-fought ball-games. "Hi-ho! Hi-ho! Hat-ton Hi-ho!" he shouted, and to his amazement the same call came back like an echo from far beneath him in the underlying southern city. "I wonder if it can be Jo!" he thought, and shouted again; but this time there was no reply.