He made up his mind in no time. "They'll try and burn down the door at the back, there's no window from which we can shoot them," and he gave Miller ten men to go and close the left half of the gateway, whilst he took another ten and slipped round to drive the Chinese across to him.
He wouldn't let me go.
"Keep the rest of the men at the windows," he said, and disappeared in the fog. I ran round the windows to see that the men were there properly, and then went and stood behind the things piled behind the door at the back and waited.
It seemed like twenty minutes—it probably was only about one—and I was trembling with excitement, and when a little piece of mortar or something fell down the wall, I nearly yelled with fright. Then I heard the rustling noise again, and heard a bundle pushed against the bottom of the door, and then another and another. All of a sudden Mr. Ching's voice shouted, and there were cheers and shrieks, someone fell against the door with a soft noise, and there was the noise of people scampering all over the ground outside. A volley sounded out from behind me—the crash seemed to come through the windows—and more shouting and yelling, and I couldn't think what that meant, because the men with the straw couldn't possibly have got round there by that time.
I ran round to one of the windows at the front, and was just in time to prevent some of the bluejackets jumping out. We couldn't see anything, not even the flashes of the rifles at the gate. But the firing died down almost at once, and then people began running past the house, and we could hear them panting, and heavy blows and shrieks, and knew that Mr. Ching's bluejackets were chasing them. It was awfully weird, knowing all going on round us, and not being able to see anything.
Some of the bluejackets were so excited, that they did scramble out to join in the killing, and Martin and the Scotchman called out, from the top of the ladder, to know what was happening, and I heard Sally, very scared, asking too.
The noises stopped, and we could hear our people calling to one another; and we all shouted to let them know the way, and they gradually began to come back, climbing through the windows and panting for breath, several of them wiping their sword bayonets.
"Did you kill them all?" I asked Mr. Ching.
"Most of them, I think. You've done us a good turn—very lucky that you saw them."
He had left half a dozen men at the gateway to give him warning if they made another attempt, but Miller himself came back and brought that box of ammunition and two more rifles with him.