"No. Mr. Ching of the Huan Min"
She moaned and began crying again.
We lowered the ladder and scrambled down, pulled the things away from the door at the back, and opened it, and there was Mr. Ching and twenty or thirty of his men, all crowding round.
I could only say, "Thank you very much, sir," and should have blubbed if I'd tried to say any more.
"Hoffman brought us, showed us a path up from the water. He's gone to try and keep order. Can she come away at once?"
I don't know what I was going to say. It didn't make any difference, because the noise at the other side of the house suddenly grew fearfully loud, and we heard the gates give way and swing back with a crash, and the mob rush through with frightful yells of triumph. Mr. Ching gave an order, and ran round to the front of the house, and I found myself following him with Miller behind me.
Some more men joined him at the corner, and then we came out into the glare and saw the bright gap in the dark wall made by the gates being open, and a mob sweeping up to the house. They had torches and blazing tufts of straw on poles. A few of the Chinamen inside the wall were trying to keep them back, but I could see most of them dropping over the wall outside.
Mr. Ching's people fired a volley into the mob, and then another, and some shots came from the room I'd just left—the Scotchman and Martin firing, I expect.
The mob didn't seem to have expected any resistance, and stopped and left off shouting. I could see many of them throw their hands up and fall, and there were shrieks and screams, the blazing bits of straw fell on the ground and were trampled out, and they began to fly back through the gateway.
I was swept along with Mr. Ching's men, and found myself in the gateway. Some of them were swinging back one side of it, and pulling aside bodies which were in the way.