Of course, we did not know all this till afterwards; but we could see the poor little temporary flagship's battered state, as she swung all abroad across the sullen, dark-flowing river, now seemingly red with blood from the flashes of the guns, whose murderous roar rent the air each moment, sweeping down our comrades and laying them mangled and bleeding on the deck, every time we heard the sound. Then, we noticed a signal for assistance thrown out from the solitary spar the _Plover_ had yet standing; and the _Lee_ and _Haughty_, which were anchored below the first barrier and busily engaged with the batteries on the left bank, at once weighed and proceeded to the admiral's aid. A few minutes later, Admiral Hope, though fainting from loss of blood, transferred his flag to the _Opossum_, which had not been so badly served out as the _Plover_; but, no sooner had the square white flag, with its red Saint George's cross been seen flying on the second gunboat, than every gun in every battery was apparently directed on her, the admiral getting wounded a second time, while nearly every officer and man was shot down. "By heavens, it's too cruel!" cried Mr Stormcock, jumping up in the launch as the _Opossum_ dropped down towards us on the ebb tide, away from the withering fire. "Can't we do something to help them?" CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN. "BLOOD'S THICKER THAN WATER!" "Ay!" replied Mr Gilham, who was equally impatient to go to the rescue of our poor comrades, and, if not able to help them, to fall beside them, the lieutenant speaking in a hoarse tone, with his face of that pattern which shows a desperate purpose, and biting his lip so that the blood came, to keep in his repressed feeling. "But, not before the word's given for us to go forward. I wish to God this would come!" It was terrible work for us, lying sheltered there under the lee of the junk to which we were moored, looking on inactive, listening to the whistle of the round shot hurtling in the air and hearing the heavy thud of the missiles as they crashed through the sides of the gunboats; for we pictured the devastation these missiles wrought inboard, with the shrieks of the wounded, the groans of the dying, and the hapless bodies of the dead strewing the decks. It was more terrible far to us than for those participating in the grim tragedy with all its attendant horrors. They were fighting and oblivious of everything save a mad longing to kill and slay; while we were doing--nothing! Every one of us in the launch of the _Candahar_ felt that; and yet, what could we do? A limit, however, came at length to our endurance.