usily engaged with the
batteries on the left bank, at once weighed and proceeded to the
admiral's aid.

A few minutes later, Admiral Hope, though fainting from loss of blood,
transferred his flag to the _Opossum_, which had not been so badly
served out as the _Plover_; but, no sooner had the square white flag,
with its red Saint George's cross been seen flying on the second
gunboat, than every gun in every battery was apparently directed on her,
the admiral getting wounded a second time, while nearly every officer
and man was shot down.

"By heavens, it's too cruel!" cried Mr Stormcock, jumping up in the
launch as the _Opossum_ dropped down towards us on the ebb tide, away
from the withering fire. "Can't we do something to help them?"

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.

"BLOOD'S THICKER THAN WATER!"

"Ay!" replied Mr Gilham, who was equally impatient to go to the rescue
of our poor comrades, and, if not able to help them, to fall beside
them, the lieutenant speaking in a hoarse tone, with his face of that
pattern which shows a desperate purpose, and biting his lip so that the
blood came, to keep in his repressed feeling. "But, not before the
word's given for us to go forward. I wish to God this would come!"

It was terrible work for us, lying sheltered there under the lee of the
junk to which we were moored, looking on inactive, listening to the
whistle of the round shot hurtling in the air and hearing the heavy thud
of the missiles as they crashed through the sides of the gunboats; for
we pictured the devastation these missiles wrought inboard, with the
shrieks of the wounded, the groans of the dying, and the hapless bodies
of the dead strewing the decks.

It was more terrible far to us than for those participating in the grim
tragedy with all its attendant horrors.

They were fighting and oblivious of everything save a mad longing to
kill and slay; while we were doing--nothing!

Every one of us in the launch of the _Candahar_ felt that; and yet, what
could we do?

A limit, however, came at length to our endurance.

The _Plover_ and _Opossum_, which had dropped out of the first line,
drifted down nearer to us; and then, the captain in command of the
reserve called for volunteers to re-man those staunch little vessels
that had borne all the burden and heat of the battle so far, but were
staunch, practically speaking, no longer, being almost floating wrecks,
and their crews either wounded or dead.

No second c