"It's lucky, sir, you picked up that bit of Morse, sir; it's put new life into all of us."
I was so proud and conceited of myself, that I told him to go and lie down, and that I would look after the lower windows.
"No, I dars'n't, sir; they're keeping quiet now; but I'm dreadin' they'll be tryin' to rush us. I durs'n't, sir. We've only got about ten rounds a man left, and it may come to bayonet work, sir, afore we get through the night."
There really wasn't a sound coming from outside, and it all seemed so dark and moist and "creepy", that I really had a most horrid feeling "inside".
Mr. Ching came down the ladder. "She's asleep," he said, and I knew that he was disappointed. He began going round the men at the windows, seeing that the ammunition was distributed equally. Some men had only two or three rounds left, and I knew by the sound of his voice that this worried him very much.
One of his men brought round a huge bowl of boiled rice, and the bluejackets scooped it out with their hands and stuffed it down. They brought another one for Mr. Ching, and he shared it with Miller and me and the Scotchman and Martin. It was jolly good and jolly warming, and I have never forgotten it; and now, whenever the messman has a lot of scraps left over, and gives us curry in the gunroom, I think of it and of trying to save the bits of rice that wouldn't go into my mouth, and of that horrid fog.
Mr. Ching was talking of the possibility of getting some ammunition by searching all the dead Chinamen between the house and the wall, but then he remembered that the bluejackets' rifles wouldn't take the pirates' cartridges. They were using Mauser, and his men had only a very old pattern rifle.
"Why couldn't we bring in rifles too, sir?" I said. "There must be heaps of them lying out there;" and then, without thinking what I was going to do, I sang out to Miller to give me a "leg up", and scrambled through the window, and slid down on the ground underneath. Miller slipped down alongside me.
"Come back," I heard Mr. Ching say, but not very determinedly, and I had such a lot of "leeway" to make up for all the stupid things I had done, that I would not have gone back for anybody. You see, I thought that I might do something useful, and also I was rather ashamed that Mr. Ching and his men should have done everything and we so little.
"Give me two bags," Miller whispered; and Mr. Ching handed out two things like haversacks, and he slung one over my shoulder and one over his.