"That is well said. With your consent, then, we will resist the enemy to the death." He thought of sending a messenger into the British lines with a note relating what had happened and explaining that he could scarcely hope to carry on more than a few days longer. But reflecting that it would take the man several days to reach his destination, even with the best of luck, and that unless the relieving force had already started by then it could hardly arrive in time, he gave up the idea. If he had been able to overhear the counsels of the Turkish officers he would have found his worst fears realised. The destruction of the guns and the capture of Major Burckhardt had infuriated General Eisenstein, who had dispatched a German officer from his staff to conduct the operations, with more field-guns. For some days the enemy's activity was limited to sniping, and to pushing forward the walls along the island section of the causeway. The Arabs could do little to impede them. The work was done at night, with the assistance of kelaks, and always under cover of as many troops as could be concentrated on the causeway and the kelaks on either side. An attempt to attack the wall-builders must inevitably be outflanked. Nor could another gap, nearer the island, be made in the causeway. The enemy was always on the alert, and working parties of Arabs would only have been destroyed. Day by day Burnet saw the walls approaching the bridgehead. Provisions, in spite of the most careful rationing, were running low; and another action like the last would exhaust his stock of ammunition. The walls had been pushed to within fifty yards of the bridgehead when, early one morning, the garrison was startled by the sound of an exploding shell. It had burst on the embankment a few yards below the emplacement from which the machine-gun had repelled the last attack: the enemy was clearly ranging on that spot. The Arabs showed signs of nervousness, but were reassured by the broad smiles upon the faces of the two machine-gunners. Burnet's first precaution after the late action had been to change the position of the gun. Two new emplacements, well masked, had been prepared within a short distance of each other and connected by a shallow trench. Before a second shell fell, Sturge and Jackson, assisted by a party of Arabs, had removed the gun from the threatened position to another about twenty yards away. But Burnet realised that bombardment was the beginning of the end.