"No. 3" was sent out to bring the Sylvia into the harbour, parties of men were sent aboard the ships, destroyers, and torpedo-boats to remove the breech-blocks of their guns, and a strong body of men was sent down to the forts to do the same there. They found five bodies in the batteries, but very little material damage done—very little compared to the apparent destruction as seen from the ships. Two of the smaller guns had been dismounted and one of the 6-inch had been disabled, but nothing more, though masses of the rock behind them had been blasted with the shells and lay between the guns in heaps.
Another party tried unsuccessfully to extinguish the fire aboard the Hong Lu, but had to leave her to her fate, for the flames had taken firm hold of her and were spreading rapidly towards the magazines.
It was quite dark before these precautions were complete, and meanwhile Dr. Fox, with his escort of fifty men, was hurrying to the top of the hill, bearing more ammunition and the urgently-needed surgical dressings.
He had landed far from the town, and, giving it a wide berth—for already the sounds of rioting and tumult rose from it—had struck the zigzag path just as daylight failed.
But few natives had been met, and these had fled precipitately.
Dr. Fox pressed on up the hill, aided by the Laird's search-light, which lighted up the path ahead of him, made still more slippery and treacherous by the heavy rain now falling. Urged to his utmost exertions by the knowledge that he and his men were urgently wanted, he scrambled on, stumbling every now and then over the bodies of dead Chinamen and over rifles which had been thrown away in their flight, and now lay scattered in great numbers on the path.
At last he came out into the open in front of the breastworks, and feeble cheers greeted him from the remnants of the defenders. The search-lights of the ships lighted up the whole of that charred open space below the crest, and hundreds of prostrate bodies dotted it, thickly piled, literally in heaps, where the Maxims had swept them down in their last mad rush, their yellow faces horrible in the beams of the light. Right up to the sand-bags they lay, giving proof of the fierceness of their charge, whilst the dark eyes and haggard, drawn faces of the marines and bluejackets behind the breast-work showed only too plainly the terrible struggle they had made to defend it.
Cummins came forward with blanched, anxious face, his left arm bound across his chest.
"Thank God! you're come. Poor Richardson was killed three hours ago, and we have thirty men wanting you."
The worn-out defenders had roused themselves for a minute or two to welcome their comrades, but then lay down exhausted, and, with all danger past, fell asleep immediately, drenched though they were by the bitter cold rain which swept moaning across the plateau.