As I was doing so a hideous groan struck my ear, and the body under my foot seemed to heave.  I started back, and simultaneously the apparent corpse rose up, a tall, blood-besmeared figure, which stared horribly upon me for a moment and then, with another loud and horrid groan, fell prone on his back, his arms widely extended.  I lost no time in scrambling past him after my companions, who had run away, and small blame to them, for it was like the rising of a corpse suddenly endowed with volition.  Both were by this time in what has been forcibly and picturesquely described as a “blue funk”; they trembled ceaselessly; their teeth chattered, and their eyes roved here and there with a wild, hunted look; every now and then they stopped convulsively, imagining that they saw or heard something to indicate the proximity of the ferocious murderers.  As for myself, if my outward man were less open to reproach, my inward condition was nothing much to boast of, and truly the horrors which continually presented themselves, joined to the oppressive midnight shadow and stillness which hung over the place of doom, would have damaged the nerve of a football referee.

We reached the basin through a series of open brick-works, used as timber stores, on its north side.  Everything was darkness and desertion.  The moon was rising far beyond the West Port away in our front, but it was in the last quarter and afforded little light.  There were very few stars visible.  The night had turned piercingly cold, but so great was my mental anxiety and excitement that I seemed unaffected in body by the severity of the weather.  With the lantern we began to search about for a boat, at first without success.  In a square-shaped inlet or creek a little above the dockyard we presently came upon another horrifying spectacle.  A junk lay stranded in the shallows.  It was literally full of dead bodies, and many lay on the adjacent shore.  The unfortunates had evidently been pursued down to where the junk lay, and slaughtered before they could get it off.  It struck me that what we were looking for, a boat, might in all probability be found on board the fatal vessel.  It lay heeled over broadside to the beach, and I waded out to it through the shallow water.  I gained the upper deck with some difficulty and stood amidst the mass of carnage.  Rifle-balls had done the work of death.  Many of the bodies were in army uniforms.  I could find only two boats.  One, a mere cockle-shell, had been perforated by bullets and rendered useless.  Another lay inboard on the quarter-deck, but it was so filled and covered with corpses that at first I did not notice it.  It seemed in fair condition, but the task of ridding it of its horrible freight was so repugnant that I returned on shore to resume the search for one elsewhere.  It was in vain, however; all we could find in the vicinity was an old sampan, which besides being very leaky, was more than three men could manage, only one of them, moreover, having any knowledge of sailoring.