"Let 'em chuck them all over, sir," Captain Marshall suggested; and we did. We had them all—five there were—tumbled in the ditch in no time. Four men could lift a gun, and if they couldn't heave it out of its wooden carriage, another two would help them, and heave it over, gun and carriage too. The men enjoyed it, and so did I, and we began pitching over the little round shot which lay there in heaps, and some grape-shot done up in basketwork.
There was another wait after that, and we all were bitterly cold. My nose was running, and below the waist I felt like ice.
The Commander still didn't seem to know what to do. He had put a few men out past the huts to warn us in case any Chinese came along, but it was so dark that he couldn't see how the ground lay, or the best position to take up, in case we were attacked.
Then Dr. Barclay had a brilliant idea, and suggested setting fire to the huts. "They'll light the place up and dry our clothes, sir," he said.
"Right O!" the Commander chuckled, and it didn't take many minutes before they were all of them blazing away like fun.
The Commander said that I could help, so Wilkins and I ran over to the huts, turned over a funny old lamp burning inside one of them, and set fire to a lot of shavings and straw. The smoke drove us out, but then we set fire to the outside in half a dozen places, and soon had a grand blaze going. It was jolly comforting to stand there and feel our clothes drying, though the wind would puff the smoke back into our eyes sometimes.
"Fifth of November, almost, ain't it, sir?" Wilkins said.
"And there go the fireworks, too," he shouted; and there was a banging and spluttering in the hut next to ours, and little bits of it flew about.
"Those are cartridges going off," the Commander shouted, running up. "Clear out of it, men."
They had begun to move away, and, when he called, moved faster; we'd hardly got clear before there was a tremendous "hurroosh", and the whole hut seemed to go right up, and burning planks, strips of thatch and matting, went flying along through the air, and began blazing away wherever they fell. My aunt! it did make a smoke, though there wasn't much noise, only a very loud "poof", and everyone went scampering back to the battery with his head down, trying to dodge the bits. We did laugh.