Old "B.-T.'s" little lot in the rear were having trouble now. They were below us, at the foot of the slope we had just climbed, and were lying down and shooting at a crowd of Chinese clustering round the huts near that pigsty.
"We must have got round 'em in the fog," Trevelyan chuckled.
"Where's that darned Maxim?" the Skipper roared. "Get it up here."
Young Rawlings rushed away to hurry it, and it came rattling up, Langham, who was in charge of it, and his men panting and tugging for all they were worth.
He was ordered to try and stop that gun firing, and then fat little Ponsonby was sent flying downhill to tell Travers to leave the Chinamen alone and come along after us.
The Maxim gun began its "tut-tut-tut-tut", "B.-T." and his chaps came bounding up the hill, and we all roared with laughter as little Ponsonby came running after them, his eyes and mouth wide open with fright at being left behind. "B.-T." was sent down the slope in front of us, with his company, to clear out the chaps who were sniping us; and very prettily he and his two Mids, Jones and Withers, did the job, whilst Trevelyan looked after the brutes in our rear.
They were simply swarming down there behind those huts, and there was not the least doubt that we had got round their main body in the fog. They did not dare to come out in the open, and were keeping up a very wild fire at us.
Langham couldn't get near that gun, and just as it fired again, and someone had sung out that they could see stones and bits of wood flying from a corner of the house, we saw Chinamen streaming across the paddy fields on our left, running and turning, and firing backwards. We could hear heavy firing from somewhere out of sight, and the noise of another Maxim and the chip-chip of a Colt automatic gun.
We all knew that it was the gunboat's brigade driving the Chinese in front of them.
"The other chaps will be there before 'Old Lest', if we don't get a move on. 'Old Lest' ain't going to be beaten by them," the Skipper grunted, and sent me and my marines flying down into the paddy fields below us, after Travers, who had halted and taken cover behind a bank on the other side of them, just before the ground began to rise gently up towards the walled house, and where the gun was a little farther to the left.