His calculations had been made from that ledge of rock on which he, Glover, and Jones had hidden all the previous day. He had forgotten that they were then sixty or more feet above the harbour level, and had not dreamt that from the water’s edge the gun itself was not visible. To destroy the gun and get back to the _Laird_ was his first thought, and he called for Pattison to jump up with him. Pattison’s face dropped as he, too, saw that fifty yards of hilltop were in between him and the pirate ships he had hoped to sink. Suddenly Cummins turned to him with a suggestion. "How about half-charges—eh? A pinch of powder will ’flop’ them down there—eh?" "We might try, sir." "They won’t be very accurate at first, Pattison, but we’ll improve—eh?" "Right you are, sir, I’ll manage that." "We’ll ferret them out before the day is over," he chuckled again, and looking down behind him he saw the _Sylvia_ looming in towards the shore. "For once Bannerman is up to time. We’ll have the _Strong Arm’s_ up here in a couple of hours or so." He sent the signalmen down the hill to communicate with the _Sylvia_ and to order the second party to land immediately, and then he and Williams made plans for placing the top of the hill in some state of defence. "We shall have them round us like flies when once they find us sitting up here," Cummins said. Fortunately for them, the enemy had evidently intended to mount a second gun, had indeed already marked out the site for its gun-pit, and had prepared hundreds of sand-bags to defend it. These lay scattered in heaps on the plateau, and were now used for making breastworks. Williams and Saunderson hurriedly marked out the positions in which they were to be built, and the marines, piling arms, and stacking their greatcoats and blankets in a heap, "set to" with a will to haul the sand-bags over to the edges. "Safer to send some men out in the long field, I think, sir," said Captain Williams, the cricketer, and ordered his taciturn sergeant-major—a martinet named Haig—to select two of the older men as sentries and place them, one along the path the column had just followed, and another down the face of the hill, on the zigzag path up which the Commander and Glover had seen the coolies carrying ammunition. "’Square leg’ and ’long on’—eh?" chuckled the Commander. "Yes, sir, I think they will be enough for the present." The first breast-work was to be built at the narrow end of the plateau farthest from the gun-pit. It commanded the crest of the hill over which the little party had made its final rush, and the path they had followed ran along this ridge, dipping down for two hundred yards, and then rising steeply to the bush-covered knoll, on top of which they had extended and fixed bayonets.