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Either course was quite too sad to contemplate. In fact the Mintonvillians positively would not contemplate them. Give them their devil and they could safely straddle between the horns of their dilemma. Remove their devil and they were undone. But Parson Gilham asserted that there was no devil. Mintonville had consequently to choose between their devil and their parson.
"I bet we don't have any fight at all!" grumbled Mr Stormcock, as he buckled on his sword and prepared to go in the launch with Mr Gilham, who was directed to command her, Larkyns, having to play second fiddle in the boat on this occasion. "Those blessed Chinamen won't come up to the scratch as soon as they see we mean business." "Perhaps not," said Mr Gilham.
"It's poor Popplethorne," said Charley Gilham, the third lieutenant, who had rushed up to the poop from amidships, where he had been stationed, to take command of the lifeboat. "He fell from the upper rigging as he was climbing up into the foretop.
Mr Cheffinch, the gunnery lieutenant, and Charley Gilham, in their turn, were on the lower deck, looking after things there, with all the mates and midshipmen and cadets, each at his allotted post and everyone equipped with sword or dirk buckled on ready for instant action.
Besides thus upsetting my ideas as to the terrible ordeal we had gone through, concerning which, however, I held to my own view in spite of his protest to be contrary, although, of course, I did not tell him so, Mr Gilham informed me that we had suffered no serious damage beyond the injury to the topsail yard.
With that he vanished up the hatchway after Mr Gilham; and, thereupon the unhappy Mr Smythe found himself, with his "final e," in the midst of a seething mass of men racing along the deck to put their rifles and cutlasses back in the racks, being finally compelled to beat a retreat himself to the wardroom, while the boatswain and his mates were piping and shouting all over the ship for the hands to clean themselves and dress for "Divisions."
When passing round with the commander presently to see if all the guns had been properly made fast, so that there should be no chance of their "taking charge" in a heavy seaway and running themselves out without leave or licence when we least expected it, I overheard "Joe" Jellaby talking to Charley Gilham, who had now come up from the lower deck and was standing by the main hatchway.
"Are you all ready, Gilham?" "All ready, sir." "Lower away, then," cried Captain Farmer. "We can but try to save him!"
With that, down went the boat into the water alongside, in such a speedy fashion that the after falls slipping too quickly through the lieutenant's fingers peeled off the skin from the palms of his hands: though Mr Gilham was quite unconscious of the injury he had received until he returned on board, his attention being absorbed in the attempt to save the unhappy midshipman by endeavouring to reach the spot where he had gone down, by this time half-a-mile or so astern.
They did not in any case shoot at our wounded men, but frequently shot at any one who came forward during the fight to bandage the wounded. The slightest movement, however, of the bonâ-fide combatants in our ranks drew a hail of bullets from the trenches. A Scotch sergeant, Gilham by name, a most kindly and courageous man, noticed that a comrade near him had been shot through the abdomen.
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