"Tell Mr. Gibbins to keep his men inside the gun-pit till they are wanted," roared Captain Hunter, as he looked at his revolver to see that it was loaded, and "Stay there till he leaves it," added the Commander quite fiercely. Hardly had I given the message to Mr. Gibbins, whose men had already seized their rifles, before the marines began rising on their knees, some of them fixing their bayonets. I knew what that meant, and must confess that I was horribly frightened, and felt jolly thankful to get to the lee side of that big gun and behind the parapet. With my head over the sand-bags, I could see all that was going on. Mr. Saunderson fell forward, but scrambled to his knees again, looking very white in the face. A marine near the Commander sprang right in the air with an unearthly yell and collapsed in a heap. A second later hundreds of pale, tawny faces, with little pig eyes, showed up over the crest, and one or two of the marines came crawling back to the gun-pit for shelter. I saw Captain Hunter lift the second off the ground and almost throw him back to his place. They were all on their feet now, firing without putting rifle to shoulder. Chinese went down like nine-pins, but hundreds took their places; a crowd of them were right up to the breast-work, just to the right of the centre Maxim, hitting out with rifles, prodding with bayonets, and slashing with old naval cutlasses. The marines clubbed their rifles, fighting like tigers, man after man dropped down, and a howling mass broke through, pushing Saunderson’s marines on one side by sheer weight of numbers, and came streaming across towards the gun. I saw the dapper little Subaltern from the _Strong Arm_ rushing across with his men from the breast-work overlooking the sea, but they were thrown back like corks in front of a wave, and now the yelling mob was right up to the sand-bag parapet. I had drawn my revolver unconsciously as they came rushing across, and I seemed to become quite cool. "Now’s your time, boys," shouted Mr. Gibbins to the twenty blue-jackets he had inside the gun-pit. "Fire downwards or you’ll hit our own men." He leaped on top of the parapet, and, as the first Chinaman tried to scramble over, struck him a blow on the head which knocked him headlong, and then began coolly and deliberately firing his revolver into the seething mass below him. The whole top of the hill seemed covered with Chinamen, a seething, struggling, yelling mass, with a fringe of marines at the edge, the butt-ends of their rifles, swinging round and round, coming down with sickening thuds on those shaven heads. Here and there among them, two or three marines, back to back, were clearing a circle round them, and across to the left I could see Captain Hunter cleaving them in front of him.