It all seemed so peaceable that we were rather disappointed, until suddenly that open space round the fort simply swarmed with crawling figures, hundreds of little white "puff-balls" of smoke seemed to grow out of the sand, and great spurts of white smoke leapt out from the battlemented parapet of the fort itself. The dull booms coming across the water told us that the Prodigal Son must be firing his old muzzle-loading cannon. To judge by the amount of firing, he was having a very bad time of it indeed. "Just in time, Martin, old chap," Popple Opstein chuckled, his face becoming violet in his excitement. "Shove the ’_B.A._’ ahead and we’ll chip in." Mr. Scarlett, sucking in his breath and looking unhappy, wondered why they were fighting in the heat of midday. "They never do so," he said. "It must be a very fierce attack." But I was not going to shove on any faster. To begin with, I had to go carefully, because there were many shoal patches marked on the chart; and, to end with, I couldn’t go faster, because the packing in the high-pressure piston-rod gland had opened out on the way down. The lascar engine-drivers were already terrified at the escape of noisy steam, and if we shoved her on faster the packing might blow out altogether. So I just sent along two or three six-pounder shells—or, to be accurate, four—two among the people on one side, two among the people on the other. "The white sea-lord metes out even justice," old Popple Opstein chuckled (of course I had told him the yarn about the "white sea-lord jolly well wanting to shoot his own leopards "). The little shells burst beautifully, and their result was magical. The dark crawling figures making "puff-balls" tore back to the cover of some huts at the edge of the mangroves, whilst the defenders of the fort gave it them hot with the little cannon. As we anchored within fifty yards of the shore—just abreast the big fort with its red flag, and the white-domed well close to it—the big door at one corner was flung open, and out streamed a crowd of men laden with water-skins and chatties—any mortal thing which would hold water—hurrying to the well. They began working like the very dickens to fill them, and staggered back again into the fort with anxious glances to right and left, to see whether the tribesmen were going to attack again. "We were just in time, old sonny," my chum grinned; "they were short of water." "That’s why they were fighting at noonday," Mr. Scarlett explained. "It must have been a very close thing."