CHAPTER XXI
TO THE RESCUE OF THE MISSION
The ominous sound of strife sent shivers up and down Phil’s spine; the mission was surrounded by a force far in excess of the handful guarding the helpless ones inside its wall; but the droning sound of the Colt gun was reassuring; it showed that Lieutenant Wilson had been on the alert, and he knew that officer well enough to believe that he would sacrifice himself and every man with him before the women and children were allowed to fall into the hands of the cruel Chinese mob.
These thoughts flashed through Phil’s mind while the sailors quickened their pace in obedience to Commander Hughes’ orders.
Reaching the crest of the hill, Phil gazed with his companions through the darkness down upon the valley between the mission hill and the one on which they were standing.
“Don’t deploy yet,” Langdon cautioned in a whisper to the American commander, who, he observed, was on the point of forming for the attack; “we must cross the bridge over that irrigation ditch in the middle of the valley; you can see the shadow of willows along it from here. Once across that, all will be clear ground between us and the mission.”
They pressed forward until the pilot raised his hand warningly and Commander Hughes signaled a halt. Langdon, motioning Phil to accompany him, left the column and advanced cautiously along the road toward the bridge, concealed from their view by a group of willow trees. Reaching the bridge, the pilot examined carefully the bamboo structure, then he gingerly placed his heavy foot on the wooden planking, testing it with his great weight of over two hundred pounds. Motioning Phil to remain where he was, he then walked cautiously across the bridge to test the fastenings on the other side of the deep ditch. The midshipmen saw his huge bulk dissolve in the darkness, but in a few moments he returned and his discovery was calculated to bring despair to the stoutest heart. They quickly joined the main body, waiting impatiently to push forward to the rescue of their comrades.
“Many of the lashings are cut on the far side, sir,” Langdon exclaimed in a low, excited voice; “one or two men at a time can probably cross in safety, but no more. There is no other bridge for five miles, and that may be in a similar condition.”
Here indeed was an effective stop to the eager sailors in sight of the battle between their comrades and the bloodthirsty enemy. The volume of musketry fire directed upon the mission had increased alarmingly, and at frequent intervals came the roar of artillery.
“Breaching the wall or shelling the gate,” Phil whispered in an awed voice as his eyes caught the flash of a heavy explosion at the base of the wall. His gaze, accustomed to the darkness, traveled over the ground across the ditch; it was strewn with high mounds, graves of forgotten Chinamen, and the lad saw that the natural protection offered excellent cover for the sailors when once across the shaky bridge structure; but, and a great fear rose in his mind, it would also aid the enemy in its endeavor to prevent the rescuers from crossing the nearly destroyed structure. Were those mounds even now concealing a large force of Chinese soldiers, who, when the unwary foreigners had rushed upon the tottering bridge, and many had fallen to the bottom of the deep culvert fifty feet below, would open fire upon their demoralized comrades, cut off from further attempts to succor those inside the mission compound?
The sailors advanced in silence to the edge of the ditch, and then Commander Hughes, grasping Langdon’s arm, stepped boldly upon the treacherous planking, whispering to the midshipman hurriedly:
“Stay on this side and send the men over two at a time.”
As soon as the midshipman saw that his captain and the pilot were safely on the other side, he and Sydney silently selected two sailors to follow; then in turn two more to cross the intervening space. Slowly those on the wrong side of the bridge decreased; Phil could see that Commander Hughes had deployed his men to protect the bridge in case of a sudden attack, while he and Langdon at the far side of the bridge were receiving and instructing the men after they had crossed the swaying structure. Then without warning, a flash of flame shot out into the night from the direction of the Chinese graves, and the screech of hostile bullets sounded loudly about the foreigners. Phil, from his position, saw the figures beyond the bridge seek refuge behind a high mound, and then the reverberation of the sailors’ rifles told him that Commander Hughes was returning the fire in the hopes of protecting from the hot fire of the enemy those still to cross the ditch.
The bridge was already swept by a hail of lead; a groan from a man at his side told him that unless they crossed quickly, there would be but few remaining at all to cross the tottering bamboo. He sent five men at a time, watching fearfully until he saw them disappear in the gloom; then six followed; the bridge stood the weight, but swayed and seemed on the point of falling. There were now but four remaining, Sydney and two men, one of whom lay sorely wounded on the ground at his feet.
“Go, Syd!” the lad exclaimed to his brother midshipman. The lad shook his head, forcing the remaining sailor before him; then by mutual consent he and Phil lifted tenderly the wounded man.
Carefully they picked their way across the bullet-swept, swaying structure. With their burden, they reached the middle in safety; Phil shuddered as his eyes took one fleeting glance at the fall below him. Amid the noise of strife, the tearing of the thongs, holding the bridge on the far side, gave the two officers no warning, and not until the floor tilted to an unnerving angle did they see that they must hasten if they would not be precipitated to the bottom of the ditch. The wounded man was a dead weight on their hands; Phil, when he had felt the bridge sinking under him, ran his hand nervously over the face of the wounded sailor; the drooping jaw told him that he had passed beyond mortal aid.
“He’s dead; save yourself!” he cried loudly to his companion as he let fall his burden and sprang forward.
By almost superhuman effort, side by side, the whistle of the enemy’s bullets in their ears, they threw themselves at the rising earth as their platform with increasing speed sank beneath them.
Clutching at the crumbling earth, digging their fingers deep into the rank grass, while the bridge behind them fell with a great crash into the stagnant and noisome water fifty feet below, the two lads drew themselves up, breathless but safe.
Phil quickly found Commander Hughes, who had sought cover behind a mound and was waiting until his men became steadied before giving the order to advance.
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.
“Press forward, keeping the guide on the center!” had been Commander Hughes’ simple instructions, and faithfully were they being carried out by the determined men. The mission loomed through the darkness scarce five hundred yards distant; the tongues of flame from its wall answered by cries of rage and defiance from the enemy’s position inspired the rescuing sailors to renewed exertions to reach the protecting compound. The Chinese who had opened fire upon the Americans during the passage across the ill-fated bridge had stolen away toward the shadowy flanks; between the advancing sailors and their objective there were now no answering shots. Then suddenly the battery which had been hurling shell at the stone wall of the mission turned its fierce attention upon the unprotected rescuers.
“Seek cover!” Commander Hughes ordered; and the men huddled together in groups, thankful for the homes of the dead, which furnished such perfect protection from the well-directed fire of grape and canister from the Chinese artillery, now giving its undivided attention to the approaching reënforcements.
Commander Hughes saw that a new danger confronted the success of his undertaking; those in the mission as yet could not know of the close proximity of their friends, and might they not in their vigorous defense turn the muzzles of their Colt guns against them? The thought was fearful to contemplate.
“Mr. Perry,” he ordered in a strained voice, “those guns,” pointing to the hill on the right from which long tongues of flame darted momentarily, “must be silenced. We dare not advance further under their murderous fire. Take a hundred men and flank them.”
Phil gasped at the suddenness of the order, thanking his captain in his heart for his confidence in his ability to do what seemed to the lad impossible.
“Langdon will show you the way,” Commander Hughes ordered quickly; “don’t expose your men to our own fire. I shall endeavor to get word to the mission. Mr. Monroe will remain with me.”
As silently as possible Phil selected those to go with him, among them being his old friend O’Neil, leading them on a run back toward the ditch which had been crossed scarcely a quarter of an hour before; then he gathered the men about him to explain the dangerous work for which they had been chosen.
“We shall get on the flank of the artillery, and when the order is given to advance we must gain a position from which we can charge directly upon the battery. The lives of all depend upon our success.”
The men in silence accepted the conditions, and in another minute Langdon was leading the small band along the deep ditch in the shadow of the bordering trees. After traversing a few hundred yards the pilot paused at a road crossing the one they were on.
“This is the road we took the other night,” Langdon whispered; “we shall follow it for a short distance and then we shall be on the flank and a little in rear of the Chinese position.”
The command moved cautiously forward until the pilot stopped and the midshipman knew that the position desired had been reached. Deploying his men quietly, he bade them advance silently toward the pandemonium of the Chinese attackers ahead of them. While he moved forward up the gentle rise of the land he could see distinctly the bright flashes from the enemy’s guns, but his own men were as yet undiscovered and protected by the intervening crest of the low hill up which they were doggedly marching. He glanced fearfully to his left to see how Commander Hughes and his men were faring; that part of the battle-ground was in darkness; the Chinese seemed now too much absorbed in their desire to destroy the mission to give thought to the handful of sailors known to have crossed the bridge before it collapsed into the ditch below.
Steadily the flanking party advanced toward the coveted position over the uneven ground, the men casting apprehensive glances to left and right, their rifles held ready for instant conflict.
While Phil’s attention was absorbed by the stirring sight ahead of him, against which he would in but a few minutes launch his hundred men in what seemed a forlorn hope, to take and silence the formidable battery now exerting itself to the utmost to breach the wall of the compound, a terrifying danger loomed before him. The sailors in the compound were delivering a murderous fire from their Colt guns, directed at the troublesome artillery, but many of the bullets were falling alarmingly close to the flanking force. The midshipman realized that he must go no farther; with the battery scarce three hundred yards in his front and his men as yet undiscovered he must call a halt and remain without that awful zone of fire until their friends on the mission wall had been apprised of his intentions by Commander Hughes.
The word was passed quietly by word of mouth along the line, and the sailors, keyed to the highest pitch of excitement, threw themselves face downward on the ground, while less than a hundred yards ahead of them a storm of bullets swept every inch of the soil.
“It looks black,” Langdon breathed in the grass close to Phil’s ear as they both were racked by ominous foreboding while watching the sweep of the devastating stream of bullets; “they haven’t got word to the mission yet that we are here; if those guns are pointed ten degrees further this way, it will be all up with us. See,” he added pointing in the direction of the active artillery, “those guns are behind intrenchments, for otherwise the Chinese could not have stood such a murderous fire for a minute. It’s withering,” he gasped with a shudder, while the singing of bullets redoubled, seeming to be slowly drawing their deadly zone nearer to encompass the crouching sailors.
Phil cast his anxious eyes often on the dark slope of the mission hill where he had left the main force under Commander Hughes, but the night was too dark for him to discover what was going forward. There was nothing for him to do save wait with what patience he could muster. To rush ahead could mean but annihilation at the hands of his own guns. He must not open fire upon the battery, so close that the smell of burning powder was rank in his nostrils; to do so might draw the fire of the Colt guns, for how could the mission know that help was so near at hand?
After what seemed an eternity to the anxious men, the fire of the Colt guns suddenly ceased, while from the Chinese position, believing no doubt that their enemy was weakening, a great volume of musketry fire added its roar to that of the big guns. Phil felt the moment had come; the cessation of the rhythmical discharges of the Colt guns must be the result of communication between Commander Hughes and those defending the compound. He glanced anxiously through the night toward the hidden enemy, while he was at that moment framing the words which would send his hundred men in a mad dash against an intrenched foe, counting their numbers by the thousands.