For one horrible second they thought that the boats had been beaten off, but then they saw that they had no soldiers in them, and knew that, at any rate, the soldiers had managed to land; the haze still made it impossible to see what had happened to them.
Breathlessly the crews of the steamboats, clustering round the two trawlers, watched these boats struggling off. The boat with only one oar working, and no coxswain, was turning circles, but drifting slowly out with the current. The man himself was evidently sitting on the bottom boards, because only his hands appeared above the gunwales, and he kept changing the oar from side to side.
Another boat near this one had two oars working, and they watched the coxswain in the stern crouching down and trying with his free hand to make these two keep time.
Just picture to yourself a stream with a tin floating some ten yards from the bank, and half a dozen boys, with their caps full of stones, throwing stones at it as fast as they can. Picture to yourself that tin with the splashes round it, and you will be able to realize something of what the Sub and the Orphan saw; only, instead of one tin, there were sixteen crippled boats--some of them already half filled with dead and wounded--and the bullet splashes leapt six feet and more out of the water.
Then imagine that, instead of a tin, it was a struggling cat the boys were trying to drown with their stones, and that you were making up your mind to slip off your clothes, swim in, and rescue it, knowing that the boys on the banks would throw stones faster than ever, and bigger ones too, which would really hurt.
Well, at this moment the Sub decided to steam into the hail of bullets and rescue those boats.
He roared out: "We can't sit here doing nothing. Go in and help them!"
The Orphan, pale and staring, rang "full speed ahead", turned the picket-boat's bows round, and dashed back towards the boats. The Hun, yelling and half mad with excitement, followed in the pinnace, and so did some of the other steamboats. The Orphan hardly knew what happened. Bullets hit the protecting screen, a chip of wood from the gunwale hit his cap; splashes leapt up all round him; his ears hummed with the whistling noise. He remembered hearing the Sub roar: "Go for those two over there!" and feeling him grip his hand on the steering-wheel to turn towards the two most crippled boats. He got alongside one--saw Plunky Bill and another hand get hold of her--had a picture of grey faces looking up at him from the bottom of her, and a muddle of khaki lying there across her thwarts; towed her across to the boat with only one man; saw the Sub get hold of her painter, and then found himself, dazed and horribly shaky and sick, back again at the trawler. Plunky Bill came aft, grinning: "There's a 'ole in the funnel, sir, slap-bang through!" and proudly showed a bullet which he had found lying on the deck.