"We couldn't have stuck it for another day," Jim told me, "and Mr. Trevelyan was going to attempt to land the guns on one of the bigger rocks, which had some trees on it, that very night, and try and cut them down and make a breastwork of them, and hold out till you came."
Mr. Trevelyan had sent him across to that rock during the night to see if it was all right, and he had waded and swam across, and then in the dark slipped down on his way back, and cut himself against the rocks. His hands, and face, and chest, and all over, in fact, were all scratched—great long scratches—and he was so stiff, he could hardly move. He had to be bandaged pretty well all over, but was as happy as anything. "Mr. Trevelyan is a fine chap," he kept on saying. "He's always thinking of some new dodge. It was grand."
"What are you firing at?" I asked him. "Can you see the junks from the Ferret?"
"No, they're round the corner, but the cliffs are full of the brutes with rifles."
Dr. Hibbert wouldn't let us see Dicky. "He's asleep again," he called out from the Ringdove's poop. "Don't you come aboard, bothering round. He'll do all right." He had a lot of work to do, because one of the "Ringdoves" had been very badly smashed "up" by that shot which had hit her, and four or five of Mr. Trevelyan's men had been more or less badly wounded, and had come across with Jim in the whaler. Dr. Hibbert, and the Paymaster, and the sick-berth attendant were busy in the ward room patching them up.
They had got up steam in the Ringdove's little steam cutter, and Mr. Rashleigh and Mr. Trevelyan steamed up past the rock and out of sight round the corner.
The Ferret fired her Maxim and the Ringdove her Nordenfelts to keep down the rifle fire, and they got past the entrance safely and out of sight, but came back very soon.
I could see that Mr. Rashleigh was puffing out his cheeks with importance, and that Mr. Trevelyan was looking very vexed about something, as they went aboard the Ringdove, and I heard afterwards that Mr. Rashleigh had wanted to steam back to Tinghai at once to report that he had found the headquarters of the pirates. Mr. Trevelyan, however, wanted to burn the pirate junks first, and, if the Ringdove wouldn't go in and try, had offered to do the job with her boats.
Eventually Mr. Rashleigh gave way, but he wouldn't take the Ringdove in till his Sub-lieutenant had surveyed the creek, and he sent him away in the whaler to take soundings, although Mr. Trevelyan swore that there was enough water.
The whaler was all right whilst she was in sight, but directly she got round the corner she lost a man wounded, and came hurrying back again. There was another row then; but Mr. Trevelyan had his own way, and a Nordenfelt machine gun was put in the bows of the Ringdove's cutter and another in the steamboat, and we saw that they were going to follow the whaler and protect her.