In the early hours of the morning the lessening of sounds from the causeway seemed to indicate that the work on the walls was nearly completed. It was pitch dark; not even a reflection of starlight could be seen in the water. Burnet gave the word; the men slipped noiselessly across the embankment, half of them on each side of the causeway; then, no longer preserving silence, dashed into the shallows, which extended some fifteen or twenty paces from the shore, and began to wade towards the working party. The Turks had only a few moments' warning; but they made fierce resistance with clubbed rifles and pioneer tools to the Arabs who swarmed up on each side of the causeway. There were some minutes of bitter hand-to-hand fighting; but the enemy were for the nonce outnumbered; they received no support from the rear; and presently they fled helter-skelter, suffering heavy losses in their flight from the rifle fire of their assailants. Burnet carried the pursuit along the causeway until progress was blocked by a traverse. The enemy were apparently not in sufficient strength to attempt a counter-attack until reinforced. Taking advantage of their inaction, which he knew could not last long, he ordered some of his men to demolish the newly constructed mud walls, while the remainder kept up a dropping fire. When the walls lining the last thirty yards of the causeway had been destroyed, he led the men back to their entrenchments, leaving a small detachment at the ruins of the bridgehead. The night work of the enemy had been frustrated, but Burnet did not flatter himself that the danger was over. Without doubt they were determined to capture the island before the arrival of the relieving force, of whose approach they must by this time be well aware. How would the Arabs, wearied by exertions unfamiliar to them, suffering from scarcity of food, endure the shock and strain of the crisis? With the first lifting of the sky at dawn the field-guns began a systematic shelling of the embankment and of the area immediately behind it, where it was now clear to them from previous events that the garrison were entrenched. The Arabs, lying close under their breastwork, suffered few serious casualties, though many of them were bruised and grazed by fragments of stone and shell, and some were overcome by the nauseating fumes. Presently the guns were turned on the ruins of the bridgehead, and Burnet at once withdrew the detachment from its precarious shelter there.