Nobody on that bleak hilltop will ever forget the night which followed.
The men were too utterly wearied to carry down the wounded, even if this had been possible. No one thought of leaving the dead unguarded, so the fifty men whom Dr. Fox had brought hastily pulled down the Log Redoubt which Captain Williams had maintained so stoutly, and with the timber made two bonfires under the lee of the gun-pit parapet. By their light and that of the search-light Dr. Fox dressed the wounded who hobbled stiffly over from where they had fallen, or were carried to him.
The dead, too, were collected, reverently laid together, and covered with the big tarpaulin from the Krupp gun—Captain Hunter, Dr. Richardson, eleven marines, the signalman who had been the first to fall, the sick-berth steward who had been killed with Dr. Richardson during that fight round the gun, whilst trying to protect the wounded, and five blue-jackets.
The Commander resolutely refused aid till the last, and when his turn came Dr. Fox found that he had a terrible gash on the left shoulder—from a cutlass—cutting clean down to the collar-bone and shoulder-blade, and his arm was quite helpless. "Another inch, and you would have bled to death," said Dr. Fox grimly. "The bones saved you."
"I dodged my head in time, or it would have caught me there," said Cummins, raising a feeble chuckle; but then he fainted through loss of blood and sheer exhaustion.
Saunderson had a bullet through his chest, and lay very still, wrapped tightly round with a bandage, and too worn-out and numbed with cold to worry about his condition.
"You'll be all right," Dr. Fox told him, and covered him with a blanket; "only don't move till morning."
* * * * *
Down below every corner of the harbour was being searched by the lights of the ships, for Schmidt was still at large, and there was no knowing what devilry he might devise.
The Hong Lu, burning fiercely, threw a red glare over the hills and turned the harbour to a blood colour, and from time to time tremendous explosions on board her quenched the flames momentarily, but they leapt out again more furiously than ever.