We argued it out with them for a while, but when old Truscott was doubled up with a bullet in him (you'd better ask Mayhew where), and two or three of my chaps had had holes made in them, we had to drop back to the battery, and couldn't even bring away Tuck, one of my men who'd been killed. They were so jolly anxious to make our acquaintance, that it was all we could do to hold on behind the wall, and the bank on the beach, till Whitmore had said goodbye to his chums and got aboard the cutter. Even then we couldn't have got away, if young Withers in the barge hadn't dropped a few gentle hints with his Maxim and emptied a couple of belts.
We pulled away back to Lawrence, who was waiting for us in the steam pinnace, and I ought to have been standing up in the stern sheets, waving my gory, glittering sword over my head and singing, "With a long, long pull, and a strong, strong pull, cheerly! lads! pull away", to encourage the sailor men. The only reason why I didn't, was because in the last rush to the boat I'd got a clap over the head which knocked me silly, had been plumped down in the stern sheets, and didn't know anything about it till we'd got aboard the old Vigilant.
I opened my eyes to find myself in my own virtuous bunk, daylight starting the flies skylarking, and Grainger, my servant, the trusty, faithful and never-to-be-forgotten one, poking me to see if I was still alive. I had the dickens of a headache, and at first thought it was due to the usual cause; but Grainger held up the serge frock[#] which I had worn the night before, and I remembered what had happened.
[#] Serge frock is a tunic made of serge, worn on undress occasions.
"That were your second best serge frock, sir," he said sadly, when he had recovered from his surprise at finding me alive. "Cost you four pun', three-and-sixpence—with postage, sir."
It was soaked with mud, and had a bullet hole through one sleeve. There was a dark patch of blood, too, just in the centre of my manly bosom, which Grainger never could wash out. Whose blood it was I never knew, and old Mayhew threw things at me when I afterwards asked him if he could examine it, and see if it belonged to a Chinaman whom I had opened up a little during the scrap.
"We 'aven't paid for it, 'ave we, sir? We couldn't send it back as a misfit or some'ow, I s'pose? I knew you'd being doing som'ut like that, sir, if I let you wear it, and your third best pair of trouses is all split over one knee another three-pun'-ten gone slosh, sir—that is, if they won't take 'em back, and there's another of our hye-glasses gone too."
He shook his head reproachfully at me, and told me that I'd had a crack on the "nut". When I pressed him as to who had been so kind as to see me safely home, he wouldn't answer, but went on brushing the mud still more firmly in.
"Beggin' your pardon, sir, I hauled on your legs—a little," he said at last. "An' I'm feared that 'twas I who split them trouses." He said it as if he didn't think he'd done a very praiseworthy thing in probably saving my life; possibly he hadn't.
"I'll double your pay, Grainger; 'twas jolly good of you. Hope you came out of it all right?"