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The Americans on their hill of refuge were joined by

sonic British. There is no doubt that the whole party owed their safety chiefly to the British and American ships in the river which saw their signals and sent parties of marines to the rescue under cover of a barrage of shell fire. The senior American naval officer at Nanking regarded the occasion as one of those on which his general orders from the base must be disregarded, and he co-operated to the fullest possible extent with the British ships. One is reminded of the famous incident a good many years ago when a crippled British gun-boat was at the mercy of one of the Chinese forts, and an American naval officer who was supposed to be neutral rushed his ship to the rescue with the exclamation, " Blood is thicker than water !

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