"Belay those fifty men," Captain Helston told the First Lieutenant, who hurried up to receive him as he scrambled down on deck, "and go to quarters again. I'm going to take the whole squadron inside."
"Oh!" whistled the First Lieutenant, and rushed off.
The bugles blared; signals flew to the Strong Arm; men passed the word to the guns' crews that they were going right inside; men bellowed the news down the ammunition hoists, down the engine-room and stokehold gratings, and on deck and down below from the bowels of the ship cheer after cheer burst forth.
Now the Strong Arm had the news, and her men too began to cheer as the two ships gathered way and made straight for the entrance.
As they passed between the two weather-beaten little destroyers, rolling gunwale under, with their funnels white with salt, the crews of the destroyers sprang to "attention" and then broke into cheers. The Laird was right in the entrance now, her boats, swung out at the davits, almost grazed, to port and starboard, the rocky ledges in which the abandoned guns were mounted.
Grandly she answered her helm, swung round the bend in the channel, and steadied as she majestically moved past the deserted landing-stages. The Strong Arm, carefully handled by the First Lieutenant, followed her. "No. 2" and "No. 3" dashed in after them, and the whole of the squadron except the Sylvia was inside the island harbour.
* * * * *
The sudden approach of these two ships to the attack had found the forts totally unprepared to make any effective resistance.
For the last three weeks the squadron had shown such an evident disinclination to come to close quarters, that Hopkins, Hamilton, and Schmidt had been lulled into a sense of false security, and, imagining that no attack would be made from that quarter, had withdrawn a considerable number of the artillerymen from the forts, all trained and disciplined men, to strengthen the attack on One Gun Hill.
The seizure of the Krupp gun had taken them completely by surprise, and the necessity for its recapture was imperative.