The three days’ grace thus given to the Chinese he employed in preparations to make good his warning message. He had several powerful ships in his squadron, but none of these could take a direct part in the coming fight, for the entrance to the Pei-ho is obstructed by a wide stretch of shallows, the depth of water on the bar being only two feet at low water, and hardly more than eleven at high tide; and this only in a narrow channel scoured out by the river. Thus, for the actual attack on the forts, he had to rely on the gunboats of his fleet, a number of small wooden steamers of light draft built during the Crimean war for service in the shallow waters of the Baltic and Black Seas. The gunboats with which Admiral Hope crossed the bar and anchored below the forts on the 23rd were the following:-- _Plover_, _Bunterer_, _Forester_, _Haughty_, _Janus_, _Kestrel_, _Lee_, _Opossum_, _Starling_, each of four guns; _Nimrod_ and _Cormorant_, each of six guns. [Illustration: SCENE OF THE OPERATIONS OF 1859 AND 1860.] Each had a crew of forty or fifty officers and men, so that the eleven little steamers brought forty-eight guns and 500 men into action. The heavier ships outside the bar were to send in 500 or 600 more men, marines and bluejackets, in steam launches, boats and junks; this force being intended to be used as a landing party when the fire of the forts had been silenced. No one expected that this would prove a difficult business. It was true that there was a big fort on the south side, with mud ramparts nearly half a mile long, and heavy towers behind them, and another large fort on the north bank, placed so as to sweep the bend of the river; but on all previous occasions the Chinese gunners had made very bad practice with their guns, and had soon been driven from them by the fire of English ships; and, besides, it was not supposed that there were any large number of guns in position on the forts, for very few embrasures had been cut in the mud walls, so far as anyone could see. On the evening of the 24th, no answer having been received from the shore, it was announced that the attack would be made next day, and after dark the admiral sent in one of his officers, Captain Willes (now Admiral Sir George Willes, G.C.B.), to examine the obstacles in the river and see what he could do to remove them. Willes was accompanied by three armed boats, provided with explosives. Rowing up quietly under cover of the darkness the boats came first to a row of iron stakes, each topped with a sharp spike and supported on a tripod base, so that they were just in the proper position to pierce the side or bottom of a ship coming up the river at high water.