"We even walked about the space inside the walls and counted the dead bodies."
We thought that everything was going on jolly well. My arm was not nearly so painful—I had had some sleep; Mr. Ching was very cheerful; Sally and Mr. Hobbs were both sound asleep; and Miller and the old Scotchman were coiled up asleep as well. Martin, the marine—well, I'm not certain whether I cared much for him—kept on grumbling about his arm, and reminding me that he wouldn't have broken it or been taken prisoner but for having tried to save me. That rather irritated me after a time. Mr. Ching and I were listening to the sound of the firing, and looking through a window in the direction from which it came, watching the fog clearing away from the low land on that side, when all of a sudden there came a roaring noise out of the fog, and something struck the house close to us with a crash, and we heard stones falling on to the ground below.
We ran to where it had struck, and found holes big enough for me to climb through in both the front and back walls.
Mr. Ching gasped out, "They must have brought up a field gun;" and we looked, but the fog wasn't thin enough yet for us to see anything. He was very frightened, and ran up to that little square room with the iron shutters, and came down with Sally in his arms, took her out of the house and laid her down behind the wall, where it was very thick. He was only looking frightened because of her, I know that, and that he was just like Captain Lester in never being frightened about himself. Martin and Mr. Hobbs came scooting out too.
They kept on firing that gun, and sometimes they hit the wall and sometimes the house; and presently Miller, who had woke up, peeped over the wall, and said he could see the gun, and he lifted me up to look over, and I saw it as well, under some trees, about five hundred yards away, along the ridge on which the house was standing. He and Mr. Ching and the bluejackets began firing at the men round it; but they couldn't see it clearly because of the smoke it made and the fog, and as they didn't really know how to sight the Mauser rifles properly, they didn't seem to be able to hit anybody.
At any rate, we couldn't stop it firing, and it was knocking the house to pieces.
Then a shot struck the top of the wall, and made a gap in it, and stones went flying round, and one struck a bluejacket sitting down, not far from where Sally was, still asleep, struck him on the head, and killed him. Mr. Ching didn't know what to do, because he was so worried lest she should be hurt; and two or three more came along, all hitting the wall, and it was jolly unsafe to stay anywhere near it, so we made her go and lie down behind a very big stone or rock behind the house, and leant some planks of wood against it to make a kind of roof to keep off falling stones.
Her father crept under them too.
If the firing became more dangerous, Mr. Ching did think of lowering her down a shallow well in the garden under the trees, but that was never wanted.