As far as I can remember I thought of little else but that, and to wish that he would not go so fast. When at last we had found the pathway—just as it was getting light—I was too excited to be really frightened, and afterwards, when I had to follow the Commander about the level space on the top of "One Gun Hill", as we called it, I was kept so busy taking messages that I hardly thought of the bullets, or even the shells, and was much more afraid lest the Commander should think that I was funking. At first it was simply horrid to have to walk across, for you could hear bullets going by and making a noise just like a crack of a thin whip, and sometimes would see one strike the ground or a sand-bag just in front of you, where you would have to pass in a few seconds, and then—well, it was jolly hard work to prevent your legs from going as fast as they could go. I seemed to take up so much room, so much more than anything else near, that it seemed actually impossible for the bullets to miss my body. In fact, when they commenced shelling us, and Mr. Saunderson, who is really an immense man, turned round and told me chaffingly to stand in front of him, I thought that I actually should shield him if I did so. That feeling explains what I mean rather better than anything else I can say. Later, however, I became so awfully tired and sleepy that things just happened, and I did what I had to do quite mechanically. When the Chinese made their first rush I was hardly even excited, and remember that I thought it the most natural thing in the world to see Hopkins fall down wounded. I was sorry for him, just as one is in a dream, and, in fact, I kept on thinking that presently I should wake up and find myself on board the _Laird_, with some silly idiot of a midshipman playing a trick with my hammock. It never even occurred to me till long afterwards that all that time the Commander had been standing in front of me to protect me. I was very cold and very wet, and stood shivering and watching Captain Hunter trying to rescue the oil-drums, and afterwards found myself hauling sand-bags and piling them round one of the Maxims, and getting warmer every minute. Then I remembered that the Commander had told me to do this. When a little time afterwards he put his hand on my shoulder, with a terribly sad expression on his face, and said in a strange voice, "Glover, I am sorry," I had not the least idea what he meant, and thought that it was because I was absolutely drenched to the skin. Of course I know now what he meant, but at the time had not the faintest notion that we were in so much danger. What did at last really wake me was the firing of that big Krupp gun and the noise of the shell bursting on the cliff on the opposite side of the harbour, just above the cruiser which was preparing to shell us, and not far from the ledge where the Commander, Jones, and I had been hidden.