Hinkinson added himself to the skirmishing line, more from a desire for personal safety than with any understanding of what was happening. It appears that he lay there most of the afternoon, firing occasionally into the distance from which the bullets came. His four friends were also engaged in his immediate vicinity. Later in the day his neighbour in the skirmishing line spoke to him and suggested that he might form a sixth in the party. Hinkinson learned from this man that during the night the attackers generally fought among themselves for any food which there might be; and he proposed that the Hinkinson party should stand watch about during the darkness, so as to avoid robbery. They agreed to this; as it seemed the best policy: though Hinkinson himself, in the entry he made at the end of the day, seems to throw doubt upon the likelihood of such proceedings. Fortunately, they did not entirely trust their new comrade; and one of the five kept awake while pretending to sleep. When the night grew dark they heard movements in the skirmishing line, rifles were still blazing intermittently up and down the front, and here and there they caught the groans of the wounded. But in addition to these sounds, to which they had by this time grown accustomed, they heard scuffles, cries of anger, hard breathing and all the noises of men wrestling with each other. It was a cloudy, moonless night and nothing could be seen. At last, long before dawn, they discovered their friend of the afternoon engaged in rifling one of their food-bags. Finding himself discovered, he fled into the darkness and they never saw him again. It was not until well on in the next day that Hinkinson made any further discoveries; but fresh surprises were awaiting him. He learned that the firing-line to which he was opposed was not a portion of the defence of the area at all, but was part of the attacking group. This puzzled him for a day or two, to judge from the remarks which he made in his journal; but at length he seems to have understood that his fellow-attackers were almost as much to be feared as the actual defenders.