"Drill book, Whitmore, old chap! Drill book! When you've got 'em on the run, keep 'em on the run," I said, when I could stop laughing, and he agreed, and "B.-T." agreed, and we got our people together and followed them. As we left the gun we saw the Omaha's people "doubling" up to it.
We must have followed them for the best part of a mile, I should imagine, but they ran a jolly sight faster than we could. We were pretty well "winded", and when we'd driven them back to the outskirts of the town, they rallied there, and we had to pull up and go back again, carrying along three fellows who'd been knocked over in the last hundred yards. They began pressing along after us, and a lot of chaps—some of those who had run away from the other brigade—began worrying our flank, streaming across the paddy fields and firing at us. We managed to keep them back, alternate sections lying down and firing whilst the others ran back fifty yards and lay down in their turn, and covered the retreat of the first little lot. A nice little show it was too—all done according to the drill book—and when we'd got back to within a hundred yards of the walled house, and were passing through the remains of a lot of burnt huts, young Ponsonby came running up with orders from the Skipper to halt there and take up a position.
"He's pretty angry, sir," he told Whitmore; "he's been sounding the recall for the last half-hour."
The fact was that the Chinese hadn't yet had a sufficient lesson, and didn't quite know what it was to run up against us in the daylight, and were now coming for us "hammer and tongs".
Instead of going back to the walled house, and bending on one knee before Princess Sally as her gallant knight, who had lost a couple of eyeglasses, and spoiled serge frocks, two in number, and two pairs of embroidered overalls—bills not yet paid—in her service, and receiving her gracious thanks, I had jolly well to dodge beastly bullets for a couple of hours.
The old Skipper often came round, with "Blucher", to see if things were going all right, and generally stopped to have a yarn with me.
It was from him I learnt that poor old Hoffman had been killed.
"Jolly hard luck after all he's done for us, sir," I had said; but the Skipper only growled "Umph!" and for some reason or other didn't seem so sure.
He had managed to get a signal through to the Vigilant, and ordered her and the gunboats to shell the town and that six-inch gun which Whitmore had tried to destroy.
From my position, looking across the Chinese town and the little creek crowded with junks, I could see them steaming slowly inshore, and presently they began firing very deliberately. (Of course they had only a few seaman ratings left on board to man the guns.)