"Ah! just so," returned Nugent. "Now _we_ are firing because, although we can't be absolutely certain in this darkness, we think that there is a body of men out there who would be not altogether disinclined to rush the camp, if we gave them the opportunity; so we are just potting at them--or what we fancy to be them--whenever we get a clear enough sight of them, just as a hint that we are awake. But as to assistance--n-no, I don't think we need any, at least not at present. Should we do so, later on, I will blow a blast on this whistle of mine." And he produced from his pocket a whistle possessing a particularly shrill and piercing note, with which he had been wont to summon Cupid to the midshipmen's berth aboard the _Psyche_, when that individual's presence had been needed with especial urgency. "Well, d'ye see anything?" he demanded, after I had been peering through his glass for a full minute or more. "I am really not at all certain whether I do, or not," I answered, still working away with the glass. "I thought, a moment or two ago, that I caught sight of something in motion for an instant, but it is so abominably dark, as you say, that--but stay a moment, what is that dark mass out there stretching across the ridge? I don't remember having noticed anything there before nightfall." "Dark mass?" reiterated Nugent; "what dark mass d'ye mean? There is nothing out there, so far as I--" "By Jingo! but there is, though, sir; I can see it myself now, wi' the naked eye!" exclaimed a seaman who was crouching in a sand pit a yard or so distant from where Nugent and I were standing. "There, don't ye see it, Mr Nugent, stretchin' athwart the back of the spit? Why, I can make it out quite distinctly." "Give me the glass," demanded Nugent, snatching the instrument from me and applying it to his eye. For some eight or ten seconds he peered intently through the tube, then exclaimed excitedly-- "Ah, now I have it. Yes, by Jove, Fortescue, you are right, there _is_ something out there; and it looks like--like--ay, and it _is_, too--a body of blacks creeping along toward us on their stomachs! Why, there must be hundreds of 'em, by the look of it; they reach right across the spit! Yes, we shall certainly want help, and plenty of it, to keep those fellows at arm's length. I thought it was only some twenty or thirty when I first made them out. Yes, cut away to the skipper, Fortescue, as hard as you can pelt; tell him what you've seen; and say that I shall be obliged if he will kindly send me as many men as he can spare. That disturbance down by the boats seems to have ceased, so he ought to be able to send us a pretty strong reinforcement." "All right," I said; "I'll tell him, and then comeback with the men." And away I went back through the heavy sand at racing pace, and delivered my message.