At four o’clock in the morning Mr. Scarlett shook me and reported all quiet and the fire on shore dying down. I scrambled to my feet to take over the "morning" watch, feeling as fresh and wakeful as though I had not been to sleep for a fortnight! The moonlight was very brilliant, so brilliant, indeed, that the telegraph buildings on the dark rocks and the New Fort on the white sand stood out quite as boldly as in the daytime; and all that could be seen of the remains of the fire was a glowing line of red-hot ashes extending along the beach, where the village had been. The slope leading up to the loopholed wall was so flooded with light that I could distinguish even the barbed-wire fence and the shadows of the wires and uprights. Of the Afghans themselves nothing whatever could be made out; but this did not imply that they had gone away, because most of them might be sleeping inside the fort and the others behind it, and at the base of the peninsula the fringe of date-palms threw such extremely dark, puzzling shadows that the camels might have been concealed among these, or even been driven farther along behind the sand-hills without our having noticed any movement. At any rate, whatever had or had not happened, I was not going to leave anything to chance, or take any risks: so the rest of the hands were called and stood to their guns; cocoa was served out; and to make sure that Ellis and Hartley were on the alert I made a flashing signal to them. As it was answered I knew that they, too, were "standing by" their Maxim. After this there was nothing to do but strain our eyes shorewards and wait for daylight. In the half-hour when the increasing light of dawn is absorbing the light of the moon and rendering the outlines of objects uncertain and ill defined, this waiting for an attack is always most scaring. It makes no difference how often one experiences this feeling of acute tension, it always seems to occupy one so completely that not a soul moves or speaks; even breathing is a difficult matter, and breaths come in deep jerks, only when they can be held no longer. But if the strain is great when the moon is there to help, it is ten times as great when there is no moon and the first glimmer of daylight distorts everything so strangely and forms such strange weird shapes. How grateful we were to the moon that morning! Daylight did come at last. The fading shadows under the fringe of date-palm trees showed us hundreds of motionless lumps which gradually outlined themselves into camels; figures began moving about among them, and out from the door of the fort streamed many more to kneel on the sand, facing the glory of the rising sun, throw their arms above their heads, and bend at their devotions.