Shell after shell from the three-inch guns were poured around her, shells dropping about her as peas would drop if one threw a handful in the air, and she seemed doomed. But in the thick of the batteries, within excellent range, with no cover and no hope of getting clear, she had nothing to do but to keep ahead; and this she did as hard as her panting engines would take her. As hard as coal would steam her she steamed, and for the quarter of an hour during which she was under fire nothing nobler could be imagined than the behaviour of her crew as they brought her up. In front of her, behind her, falling short of her, shooting far over her came the shells at the rate of one in three seconds; they whistled around her, some hit her minor deckwork and glanced into the water; one was seen to hit her square on the bows, another hit her aft and damaged her steam gear; but, fleeing from what seemed her death-trap, she steamed desperately on. On the Bund the Chinese watched in bewilderment. Such a thing they had never seen before. Some of them were looking on a Chinese torpedo-boat in action for the first time, and a grunt of keenest satisfaction went up as she came abreast of foreign territory and the Imperial guns ceased fire. All the time, however, the Kinshan forts, at equally rapid a rate as the Kilometre Ten battery, kept up the return bombardment upon the Imperial base, and there must have been some heavy damage--what it was impossible to tell. But now the torpedo is up opposite the Concessions, and, slowing down, seems to take breath before she puts in alongside the shore and drops anchor for a time. The crew tend their wounded comrades, the hilarious men shout and yell and tell each other how it was done, and urge each other on with patriotic sentiment. {114}