We pulled in towards the nearest boat—close inshore she was—and just beyond her, right under the towering cliffs, were the two battered torpedo-boats, with some dead Chinamen washing about among the wreckage—a nasty sight, I can tell you. We hauled in the moorings of the first boat, one of my four men jumping into her, and we had just commenced to tow her across to where the second bobbed up and down in the water, when ping! ping! came something past my head. A bullet took a splinter out of an oar, and we heard the noise of a rifle high up on the cliffs above us. Then came a regular hail-storm of them—whip! crack! whip! crack! they went singing past, and throwing up little spurts of water all round us. You may bet that we pulled hard and tried to make ourselves small. Suddenly I saw Tomlinson, an A.B., who was pulling stroke oar, get white in the face and drop his oar. Pat Jones, who had come with me, seized it before it could fall overboard, and Tomlinson tumbled down into the bottom of the boat with both his arms shot through, and helpless. Then there was a loud boom from "No. 2" or "No. 3", and one of our 12-pounder shells burst against the cliff just below where they were firing at us; another and another followed, the noise rolling from cliff to cliff and making a hideous roar, whilst stones and rock came rolling down and splashing into the sea. The pirates—Chinamen probably they were, for they shot miserably—left off firing, but before we could weigh the second boat’s moorings they began again, firing from the top of the cliffs, a little farther away. Pat Jones was steadying the dinghy with the oars, whilst Stevens, a Plymouth seaman, and I were hauling in the rope, and hauling, too, for all we were worth, when suddenly Stevens gave a gasp and fell forward, knocking me over, and would have fallen overboard himself had not Jones jumped aft and pulled him aboard. He was dead. I could see that by the way his head hung sideways as he was hauled into the boat, and Jones laid him down alongside Tomlinson, who was groaning horribly. The rope, too, had slipped through my hands, and the moorings had to be hauled up again. Jones and I seized hold of them, and it was then that I felt something hit me in the leg. It felt just as if somebody had struck me hard with a ruler or the flat of one of our dirks. I can’t really remember accurately what happened after that till I found myself pulling the stroke-oar and towing the two Berthon boats away from those horrid cliffs. I felt terribly sick, and it was all I could do to keep my foot from hurting Tomlinson and to keep the other away from the dead man. I seemed to wake up quite suddenly with my wrists feeling like hot irons, and with hardly strength to lift the clumsy oar out of the water. All the time, just as if it was in a dream, Jones behind me kept on saying, "Steady, sir, steady!"