"That is the signal to start work. The coolies will be up here in half an hour," chuckled the Commander. "What are you going to do when they do come up?" asked Williams. "If we caught them and prevented them from carrying the news back it would be a good thing. Every few minutes is valuable." "All right, Williams, we’ll try." Then a signalman reported that the second party had already commenced the ascent, bringing with them the _Sylvia’s_ two Maxim guns. At the same moment the sentry on the zigzag path below came running up. "Please, sir, there are fifty or sixty natives coming up from the town." Cummins ordered everyone to conceal himself. "Don’t any of you move till I sound a whistle." Five minutes later they could hear the merry chatter of the coolies as they climbed up towards the gun, and the foremost of them appeared out of the trees in the open path below them. Something made them suspicious; they stopped and pointed upwards, jabbering rapidly. Then a young fool of a marine raised his head to look over the breast-work behind which he was lying, and, in a panic, they all took fright, threw down their tools, and scampered down hill as fast as their legs could carry them. "Heaps of time," said Cummins gently; "we’d better go to breakfast. ’Place your field’ again, Williams," he chuckled, "and we’d better have a couple of people at ’point’ and ’cover point’ as well—eh?" Breakfast of ship’s biscuit and corned beef, washed down with a "pull" from the water-bottles, lasted ten minutes, and then everyone set to work again. Williams suggested that they had better start lopping down the bushes below Saunderson’s two breast-works. "It would give us a better chance if they tried to rush us, sir." "Now, lads," sang out the Commander, "get your axes and knives and cut down the bushes in front of you—make a clear sweep of them." They started hacking and cutting, and in half an hour had cleared three or four yards along their front, when suddenly, bang! went a shell, bursting just below them, and the fragments went shrieking overhead. Every man "ducked", then ran back up the slope, seized his rifle, and lay down behind his own breast-work. "Whew!" whistled the Commander, "that is their game, is it?" *CHAPTER XX* *The Fight for One Gun Hill* We Must have Oil—Under Shell Fire—The Pirate Guns are Silenced—The First Attack—Hopkins Wounded—The "Strong Arm’s" Arrive—The Oil Party Cut Off—A Momentary Respite—The Second Mistake—The Oil is Rescued—The Big Gun Fires That first shell was quickly followed by two more, both of which burst below among the bushes. A fourth sang overhead, going out to sea.