How I did wish that Mellins and Toddles had been with me to see all this! and I forgot altogether that we were in such a helpless plight. Steam-boats were darting about from one ship to another, and backwards and forwards between the ships and the shore. Over the little town was a thin cloud of blue smoke, and from what must have been forges or workshops, darker columns of smoke curled upwards into the still air, with here and there a white jet of steam. They seemed tremendously busy, and the little town fairly hummed with life. "Carry on to your left and tell me what you see?" the Commander ordered. First of all the high land, under which the cruisers lay moored, sloped gradually towards the channel through which we had drifted, and then ended abruptly in two terraces, one overlooking the other. A zigzag path cut in the face of the cliff opposite us led up to these terraces, starting from a little landing-place at the water’s edge. A steam-boat was lying alongside, having evidently towed a boat-load of stores there, and a long line of coolies were trudging up in pairs with what looked like ammunition boxes suspended between them from bamboo poles across their shoulders. Others were trooping down empty-handed. Following the zigzag path I made out a gun shield covered with a tarpaulin. That was on the lower platform, and sticking out from the rocks I could see the muzzle of a quick-firer on the upper platform. "That’s one of the forts, sir," I said excitedly. Below the guns the rocks ran on for thirty or forty yards, and then were hidden behind some higher rocks on our side of the entrance channel. These shut out all view of the sea. "Now come where I am and look round the corner to the left," said the Commander, rolling out of the way and chuckling to himself with amusement at my excitement. I did as I was told, and, pushing aside some branches, peered down. The path below us—the path on which my cap had fallen—ran along the foot of the cliffs, along the water’s edge, till it came to a little landing-place made of strong balks of timber. Reckoning in cricket pitches—a dodge the Commander had taught me—I thought that it was almost sixty yards away from where our dinghy was sunk. The landing-place, like the one opposite it, had a small derrick at one corner, with tackle and blocks rigged for lifting weights out of a boat. Broad irregular steps cut in the rock led up from it to a well-cut path which, running sharply upwards, turned round a corner and was lost to sight. At this corner a little platform, with a parapet all round it, had been levelled, and on it was a small shelter covered with matting. In front of the shelter was an old oil-drum with its sides pierced with holes, and a little smoke was even now rising gently from it. This was the fire we had seen as we had drifted in. Against the parapet two or three rifles were leaning.