Langdon threw his great arms about the lads as they reached the protecting earth mound, while the captain’s voice struck encouragingly upon their ears.
“Splendid!” he exclaimed.
“He was dead, sir,” Phil said sorrowfully. “We couldn’t have saved his body and ourselves too.”
Silence lasted for several minutes, each reverencing the visit of death.
“We must win now!” Commander Hughes exclaimed grimly. “And we must repair that bridge before we can return. But come; we must leave our cover and drive these Chinamen from our path.”
Suiting his action to his words, he blew a shrill blast from his whistle, the signal on the skirmish line for “attention.”
“Forward,” he commanded in a voice that sounded loudly above the din of musketry.
The sailors sprang forward with enthusiasm; the long wait under the fire of an unseen enemy had bottled up their energy. Each sailor’s foremost desire was to come to close quarters with the treacherous Chinamen. The long, slender line moved upward toward the mission crest; the men taking cover as they found it, and shooting when their keen eyes discerned a shadowy form skulking away before their advance into the darker shadows.
The sharp rattle of the Colt guns told the advancing men that the mission was stubbornly resisting.
Phil moved incessantly along the advancing skirmish line, carrying orders from his captain to the flank companies; the alarming song of the bullets ever in his ears.