"Do you know that we’ve only got enough ammunition for one more show like this morning? That’s a fact," Mr. Scarlett growled, turning furiously on him. "This is going to be a regular siege; none of your rushing and firing, packing up and going home again. Them Afghans mean to get inside here, and if we can’t stop them you can’t. The sooner everyone comes aboard the ’_B.A._’ safe and sound, and waits there for the _Intrepid_—well—the sooner the better. This isn’t any darned tomfoolery business, I tell you—twenty times I’ll tell you. If your chaps can’t stand a few bullets smacking among ’em down by that trench," he went on savagely, "they’d better get along ramming sand into more sacks, bags, anything they can get hold of, and make this house shipshape." I don’t think that Mr. Fisher much cared about being spoken to like that. "If you can get any work out of them you’re welcome to try; I can’t," he said sharply. "They’ve been awake and working, off and on, for the last thirty hours." "Right you are, sir; you bet I will. If I can’t do a bit of slave-driving there is no one in the British Navy who can," and, taking him at his word, Mr. Scarlett darted off. He had hardly gone when Hartley ran in to say that a hundred or more Afghans had rushed up the slope from the Old Fort, and behind the sand-hills there. "They’ve gone and ’idden among those blessed huts, sir." Firing broke out again almost immediately, and bullets came thudding against the wall outside my room. Mr. Fisher darted away to line the loopholed wall with his men, and Hartley, singing out: "They’re trying to knock out the Maxim; Ellis and me must get more sand-bags round it," disappeared too. I knew that if one lucky bullet pierced the water-jacket the gun would be useless, and I lay there listening to Ellis and Hartley cursing, as they dragged heavy weights across the roof over my head, and to the patter-patter of bullets thudding against the outer wall and parapet. Those chaps must not be allowed to stay down by the huts—that was imperative. If they got a firm footing there the others would join them during the night, and they would be within a stone’s throw of the loopholed wall. Others could creep round at the foot of the rocks on the east of the building and attack the wall on that side; we could not stop them. Mr. Scarlett and Mr. Fisher both came to my room, and both were of the same opinion. "I’ll signal to the ’_B.A._’ to plug in a few shells till they see us come out of the door, and Ellis and Hartley can work the Maxim, whilst we rush down and drive ’em out," Mr. Scarlett said, his eyes glowing with excitement. What a change had come over him! "And we’ll burn the huts whilst we’re about it," Mr. Fisher added in a crest-fallen, disappointed, rather shamefaced manner.