Ford Sees Red—Close Fighting—"Where are we?"—Comparing Notes—A Strange Reception—The Captain's Letter—The Chinese Doctor—Investigating—The Mob Attacks—To the Rescue
Written by Midshipman Ford
Directly they started firing we all ran back to the huts, because we were in between the Chinese and the flames, and of course made splendid targets.
Captain Marshall sang out, "Run, Ford, run!" and I did, and jolly fast too; but he and the Commander and Wilkins, the bugler boy, only came along at a jog trot, and "miles" behind me, and Captain Marshall was "hee-hawing" as if he had never seen anything so funny before in his life. He asked me whether I had done the hundred yards in ten seconds, or some rot like that, and before all the men, too, which made me get very red and simply furious. It was all his fault for shouting out "run", and with those bullets kicking up the ground and flying past, I jolly well couldn't stop myself when once I had started. I don't think anyone could. Do you? I caught Wilkins grinning, and this made me more angry still.
"Don't you worry; it was only Marshall's joke," the Commander said. He meant to be nice, but I knew that he thought I ought not to have run, and I simply hated myself.
I was so mad at being such a coward, that I think I would have run straight at them if they had gone on shooting, just to show the men that I could run just as fast that way; but they had left off, and were only shouting at us from the darkness behind the huts. I felt most horrid, and wondered what the Captain would think when Captain Marshall told him. I knew that he would tell him—"hee-hawing" like a grampus, and thinking it a tremendous joke.
"May I take six men out there, sir, out to the right, creep round in the dark, and see if I can find them? Do let me, sir!" I blurted out, almost before I thought of it.
He looked at me very grimly, and must have seen that there was something the matter (there was, very much the matter—everything inside me was working), thought a few moments, smiled at me, and said: "Right you are, if you can get volunteers. Don't go far, and come back when I sound the 'close'."
Get volunteers! Why, they all would have come, and I just took the six nearest, I didn't really care who they were, or if none of them came, I was so mad, and we dropped over the battery wall, and then behind the bank to the beach, and crept along in its shadows. I could just see the water jacket of the Maxim in the bows of the barge lighted up by the flames, and they must have seen our shadows and thought we were Chinamen, because I heard Withers sing out some order, and if I hadn't given the gunroom "whistle", I do believe he might have tried to shoot us. We crept along till we were clear of the firelight, and then I told the marines what I was going to do, extended them to three paces, and started to make inland. I knew pretty well where those rifles had fired—I'd seen the flashes—and I didn't think that there were more than seven or eight altogether, and meant to get behind them, get the Chinamen between me and the fire, and try and bag one or two.
I don't believe anything would have frightened me. That silly "hee-haw" of Captain Marshall, and thinking of running back so fast, simply shoved me along. I wasn't going to let that story get to the Captain and to Mrs. Lester, and my mother and Nan, and all over Upton Overy, without something else tacked on to it.