Mr. Ching asked me if I could signal to them, and I managed to do so, climbing up to the top of the square room, and getting out through a hole which the field gun had made in the roof. I was so fearfully excited and happy, that I forgot all about the danger from the gun, and Mr. Ching helped me up and steadied my feet, and I waved a long bamboo, and signalled in Morse that we were all well, but that the gun was doing damage. I saw some tiny little flags waving to say that the signalman with the Captain had read it, and then Mr. Ching pulled me down, and only just in time, because the field gun made two more holes close by, almost immediately afterwards.
I was too much excited to worry about the gun in the least—we all were—and went and watched them over the wall at the side, and saw some dark figures come racing down the hill, and presently others whom I knew were marines came along after them and joined up in the paddy fields, and I thought I could recognize Mr. Travers and Captain Marshall by their long legs. It made me go just a little hot all over to see Captain Marshall, because I hadn’t forgotten what he had said when I had run away from the bullets, near those burning huts, and didn’t quite want to see him.
There was a lot more rifle firing and machine-gun firing farther to the right, and the field gun stopped shooting; but we couldn’t see the marines and those others now, because they had got across the paddy fields and were under the brow of our ridge. We could hear them cheering, however, though they were out of sight, and the noise seemed to be going towards the gun, and we knew that they were charging it, and simply held our breath and watched Chinamen dodging about, round it, and under the trees, and firing downhill.
Then they began bolting away out of sight—we knew what we should see in a moment or two, and held our breath—and almost directly afterwards a whole crowd of our people went dashing across the open space, and swept round the gun.
We all jumped down, made a rush for the gateway, cheering like mad, and waving, and then I saw someone jump on top of the field gun and wave his cap, and knew that it was Jim Rawlings. I was certain of it, and Miller said he thought it was too, and this simply added everything to the joy, because I had been wondering and worrying whether he was killed or badly wounded—ever since Miller had told me that he had seen him knocked down two nights ago, when Mr. Whitmore’s party was retreating, and just before he himself had been captured.