Some of the men simply sat down and laughed, others, furious, cried out that "They’d been jolly well had," and that "Gunner Bolton ’ad made fools of ’em all, ’e ’ad," and that "They would jolly well knock ’is blooming ’ead off, that they would, next general-leave day." "Fall in, men," sang out the Commander, with a twinkle in his eye. "You shall have plenty of fighting presently." Then he sent them back for the water-breakers and armourers’ stores which they had dropped when fixing bayonets, whilst he and Williams, the captain of marines, took a rapid survey of the position, and Pattison and his blue-jackets commenced to overhaul the gun. The top of the hill was flattened out into a little plateau about a hundred yards long, sloping gently towards the harbour and then falling abruptly into the steep side of the hill with a quite well-defined edge. It had its back to the sea and was facing the harbour. At the east end, the end nearest to the entrance channel, and in the corner overlooking the sea, was the gun, an obsolete 12-inch Krupp, mounted in a deep circular pit, and poking its muzzle over a wall of sand-bags ten or twelve feet thick and about six feet high. A little cluster of stunted trees hid the gun from view out at sea. Their trunks had already been half sawn through in preparation for felling them, and a few more strokes of the axe would bring them down. The first thing to be done was to ascertain whether the gun could be made ready for service, as otherwise it was useless to remain there. Already Pattison and his men had hauled away the tarpaulin covering its massive breech, and were rapidly examining the mounting and training gear. "Rough and clumsy, sir, but we shall be able to train her round all right," he reported. Magazines had been tunnelled out through the side of the gun-pit down into the ground, and the doors were closed with padlocks. These were wrenched off, and Pattison reported plenty of ammunition. In a corner he found boxes of friction-tubes and fuses. His men also found the ropes and blocks to be used in training the gun. They were brought out, made fast to the great gun-carriage at one end and to huge steel rings sunk in the concrete foundations at the other, a dozen sturdy Blue Marines "clapped on" to the ropes, and with Cummins standing on the sighting-platform the ponderous mass was slowly, and with many jerks, trained across the harbour. It was then that the Commander realized his first mistake. From that sighting-platform he could look down towards the sea, but the other edge of the plateau shut out all view of the harbour. It was now light enough for him to make out "No. 3" below him, but, looking inland, the flat top of the hill prevented him from seeing anything except the high land on the opposite side of the island, across the harbour.