Ford of H.M.S. Vigilant: A Tale of the Chusan Archipelago

by T. T. Jeans

I wasn't there when the mandarin came to see the Captain, and didn't hear that he had brought the Englishman's head with him till afterwards, and by that time so many sad things had happened, that I did not feel so very sorry for him.

Then we began our retreat, and it was just before we started that Jim suggested that as I only had one arm, the best thing that I could do was to stick quite close to the Captain. He offered me his revolver, but I still had that one the Englishman had given me, and a good many cartridges for it were still in my pocket, so I got him to load it for me. He said a lot of things to buck me up before he went away, and I tried to feel happier, but it wasn't much of a success, at any rate whilst I was near the Captain. You see, he didn't even notice me. I thought that perhaps he would send me away from him, but not noticing me hurt me almost more, and I didn't want to talk to "Pongo", because he was nearly as much an idiot as "Dicky", and though he tried to buck me "up", he only made me want to kick him. He would keep going at it, too, and I was jolly glad whenever he had to run on a message for the Captain, and left me alone.

I saw Captain Marshall and Mr. Travers rush the hill opposite us, and then we had to follow them across the paddy fields, very slowly, because we had eight wounded men to carry. Eight men from the Ringdove dragged that Chinese gun along behind us, and Jim came up when we were halfway across. He had caught sight of the gun, and was simply furious, because it wasn't their gun at all, and we both told Mr. Trevelyan so, and he was just as angry.

"Have you said anything to the Gunnery Lieutenant?" he asked.

Jim had told him, but he wasn't going to do anything. He thought that the Captain had probably given Mr. Rashleigh permission, so wasn't going to be mixed up with it, and we couldn't speak to the Captain himself.

We got across all right, but Captain Parkinson lost a lot of people in the rearguard when he left the walled house, and that meant more wounded for us to carry, and then we dragged on again, and Mr. Travers and Captain Marshall had a fearful time when they tried to leave their hill. They did it splendidly, and it was grand to see their men walking backwards down the hill, with their bayonets all sticking out at the brutes above them, and when they ran back, Mr. Travers and Captain Marshall and two or three men had to stop and keep the Chinese from killing a wounded man who had fallen almost in front of their feet—they were so close behind them. We saw Mr. Langham rush back from the Maxim gun and pick him up and carry him along, whilst the others kept the Chinese off, and we all cheered. It was a grand sight, and it washed out a lot of silly things Mr. Langham had done to us in the gunroom.

After that we had seventeen people to carry, which meant very slow work, and then the Captain took charge of the rearguard, because it was the most dangerous place, and I kept close to him and saw that my revolver was all right; but nothing much happened, and we cleared out back to within half a mile of the shore, where that beastly fog began.

I never even saw Sally all this time, because Mr. Ching's bluejackets stood in a ring all round her, touching shoulders, so that none of the bullets that were always coming along should touch her. I did see her skirt once when we were halted, and she was sitting on the ground in the middle of them; but that was all.

We all joined up together then, and went as fast as we could, and the fog rolled all over us and shut out everything. It was perfectly awful, and we seemed to lose each other and then find each other again, time after time, and there were all our people shouting, and trying to form a square all round us, and farther away in the fog Chinamen were yelling and gradually getting round our flanks, and at last they were even ahead of us.

It was then, that the Captain spoke to me for the first time, and ordered me to try and find Captain Parkinson, and tell him to close his men on the centre, so as not to have too broad a front, and to go very slowly. I did manage to find him, after stumbling into a ditch and hurting my left arm, and very nearly losing my revolver, and was only able to get back to the Captain because his bugler kept on sounding "G's".