Unpromising though the task seemed, Georgia succeeded in finding six women who consented to sew if the Memsahibs would do so too, and a working-party was organised in the little courtyard, from which Mr Hardy and the men-servants were rigorously banished for the time. Since the need of sand-bags--at any rate in such numbers--had not been foreseen, the proper material was lacking, but all the tents in the fort were promptly requisitioned, and their canvas utilised. The regimental tailors cut out the sacks, delivering them into the charge of Rahah, and inside the courtyard Mrs Hardy and Georgia superintended the unskilled workers, while Flora and Mabel took a pride in proving their willingness to blister their fingers for their country. It was fortunate that fine needlework was not required, for the native women’s ideas of sewing were rudimentary in the extreme, but their two instructresses succeeded at last in convincing them, by precept and example, that to sew one side only of a seam was unnecessary as a decoration and not calculated materially to further the usefulness of a sack. When this lesson had been sufficiently impressed upon the pupils, Georgia sat down in the doorway of her room to divide the _pice_ which Colonel Graham had entrusted to her for distribution among them. The sun was setting over the hill beyond the fort, and the women, as they sat cross-legged on the floor, seized the fact that the light was in their eyes as an excuse for turning round to gaze greedily at the money which Georgia was apportioning on a chair. Suddenly there was a whizz and a noisy clatter. A bullet had grazed Georgia’s hand and struck the chair, sending the coins flying, and it was followed by a burst of firing, which caused the terrified workwomen to drop their sacks and exclaim with one voice that they were dead. “Down! down!” cried Georgia, setting the example herself, “and crawl round to the other verandah. They are firing from the hill, but they won’t be able to see us there.”