But I was just as bad; and, to relieve our feelings, we helped the marine gunners, who were pounding away at the rascally Chinese, although we had presently to stay our fire, for fear of hitting friends as well as foes. The end was not far off now, things shortly coming to a climax. Half our men fell at the first discharge; but the remainder resolutely rushed on to the broad ditch in front of the bastion, and about a third of these got bravely through this obstruction, some fifty finally reaching the base of the works. There were no scaling ladders, however, wherewith to climb the steep escarpments, no available reinforcements, for every man jack that could be spared from the gunboats was there, to fill the voids in the ranks which dwindled and dwindled each instant; and so at last, although the handful of heroes who succeeded in getting up to the foremost fort, advancing almost within sight, so to speak, of victory, might possibly have held their own where they were until morning, if they had been allowed to remain, being partly sheltered now by the salient angle of the fortification, our senior officer, perceiving the hopelessness of continuing any longer the unequal contest, ordered "the retreat" to be sounded. Then came the most harrowing scene of all. If the Chinese fire had been hot before, its intensity was increased tenfold as soon as the bugle-call echoed out shrilly between the reports of the heavy guns and fusillade of the musketry, and the remnants of the gallant little band began to fall back on their boats, retiring in wonderful order despite the cruel pelting they received on all sides, not a wounded man being left behind whose life could be saved. A wonder it was, though, as Larkyns said, that a single soul escaped; for the guns which were aimed at the poor, worn-out fellows as they waded out through the mud to their boats, were now turned on the latter as they got into these, scattering grape as they were massed together, and when the gunboat advanced to their rescue. "Boom!" came the round shot hopping over them; and "Bang!" and "Rattle!" and "Rattle!" and "Bang!" they went on incessantly until all were out of range, the boats in tow resembling a funeral procession which, with its weird surroundings, seemed like Holbein's "Dance of Death." It was such a ghastly picture, which those who saw it will never forget. The lapping water had by this time overflowed the shelving banks of the river, which spread out far beyond its regular bounds into the reedy plains and marshes on either hand, the swollen stream bringing down, as the tide ebbed again towards midnight, the wreckage of the gunboats that had been sunk during the conflict.