I could see nothing at first except a great broad track running up the side as if some heavy weights had been roughly hauled up it, but looking more closely under the trees I saw crowds of Chinese working like ants, then I made out the bend of a derrick, like a single boat’s davit, showing up against the sky-line. With this to guide me, and looking very carefully, I made out a great tarpaulin or canvas, covering something. It was a huge gun. "Now I know why they fished up the old _Ting Yuen_," said the Commander, "and why she has no guns. They’ve managed to mount one of her 12-inch guns on top of that hill, and there is another on the beach close alongside her waiting to go up too, if I am not mistaken. "My aunt," he chuckled, "how proud our sappers and gunners would be with a job like that!" He seemed perfectly cheerful, and chuckled merrily to himself, though, for my part, I only thought that that big gun up there made it all the more impossible to capture the island, and that lying, as we were, right in the middle of the pirate harbour on a little ledge of rock not a hundred yards away from the sentries, with no chance, as far as I could see, of escaping, was not particularly funny. I was simply frightfully hungry and fearfully thirsty. I had sucked grass and licked wet leaves till I was nearly sick. My legs and body were so stiff that it pained me even to roll over, ever so gently, and the sun was not warm enough to dry me properly. Jones was still sound asleep, and the Commander began making more sketches of the top of the hill, peering hard through his glasses, then adding a little to the drawing, and correcting the measurements by holding the pencil up against his eyes and moving his thumb along it. He was strangely elated. A steam hooter sounded in the town, the clatter and hammering died away, the coolies working in the ships were taken ashore, the sentries cooked their dinner in the hot brazier, and everything became still and quiet except the pain inside me. I felt hungry and miserable and longed for the _Laird’s_ gun-room fire, and knew they were just beginning lunch aboard, and probably having a good rough-and-tumble fight. "Pull your belt in, youngster, and buck up," said the Commander cheerily. "Please, sir, I hav’n’t got a belt." "Well, get a big stone and lie on it." That did relieve the pain a little. "We’ve got eight or nine hours of it, youngster. Move your legs about every now and again to keep them from getting cramp." Presently he asked me what plans I had made, and really I got quite excited in working out different schemes, and he was so jolly about it and never snubbed me that I forgot to be miserable for quite a long time. Every now and again we stopped even whispering, whilst some Koreans straggled along the path beneath us, going to or coming from the fort.