Their shells burst all over the town; but it takes a lot of shells to set fire to a house, and it was some time before they got a good fire going. A few shells which didn't burst ricochetted over our heads, and one or two fell pretty close to the house; but the Skipper didn't worry about them now. He had lowered little Sally down a shallow well, somewhere in the garden behind the house, and so long as she was safe, he didn't worry about anyone else.
His idea was that if we set fire to the town, most of the people would go back there to try and extinguish the flames, and that then we would tramp back across the island to where we had landed last night.
Certainly a good number of fellows did go back, and except from that hill on the other side of the paddy fields, from where we had seen Ford's signal, we were not much bothered with rifle fire.
It was at the back of the house, where the ground fell steeply towards the creek, and was covered with scrubby bushes, that the Chinese seemed now to be trying to force their way in. The lower slopes were simply swarming with them, and more kept moving up the creek in boats to assist them.
The Skipper came across to me. "Umph!" he growled. "You're a soldier, aren't you?" and when I had acknowledged the soft impeachment, "Umph! What would you do? I'm not a soldier. 'Old Lest's' not much good ashore except after 'birds'. How'd you get out of this mess! Ugh!" and he growled at me as if he would have liked to eat me, and so fiercely that old "Blucher" thought he was in for a row, and cleared off to have a yarn with his chums, the marines. He took me across, behind the house, to have a look at the state of affairs there.
Don't think that he wanted advice. He only wanted someone to talk to, and everyone else was too busy. I wouldn't have suggested anything to him for "worlds".
It was then that I saw Hobbs and Sally for the first time since they had been "burgled". They had fished her up from the well, and she had come across to the Skipper, looking like a ghost, her sad little face all pinched and careworn, hardly the princess I'd all my life been longing to rescue, and throw myself and all my unpaid bills at her feet. She was a most distressful little object, and when the Skipper put his great hand very gently on her shoulder, and told her we were going to start off almost directly, she began crying, and said she didn't want to go.
"She's gone daft about that man Evans," Hobbs whispered to me. He looked more like a monkey than ever.
So that was it, was it? And our little princess didn't want to be rescued! Poor little princess! I just noticed that the front of the house had been pretty well battered in by the Chinese gun, and then caught sight of Ford and Rawlings looking like long-lost brothers. Ford was a pretty ludicrous spectacle, with one side of his face black and blue, one eye closed, and his left arm slung up inside his monkey jacket. This was the first time I had seen him since we had landed to destroy that gun, and he got very red; I remembered that he hadn't taken my jokes in very good part, so went across to make my peace with him.
"We all saw you signalling to us this morning, Ford, on the top of that roof. You must have been under a very hot fire, eh?"