He lifted his rifle, and took a shot at one of the moving heads. Instantly they all sank down; whether he had hit he could not tell; and a fusillade burst from the trees on the other side of the clearing. For some minutes he saw no more of the diggers; then a head and shoulders showed for a moment, a little nearer than the nearest head had been before. "I can’t stop them, apparently," he thought, "but I can delay them." Hurrying down to the trench behind the barricade, he sent a dozen of his best marksmen, including a couple of the askaris, to the position he had left, with orders to fire at the diggers whenever they appeared. At their first shots there was another fusillade from the forest; then an interval of about a quarter of an hour during which the enemy was silent, though Tom’s men continued to snipe. After that the enemy, having located the position of the trench, began sniping in turn; but the men were so well hidden that they suffered no loss. Presently, however, a shell burst a few yards above the trench, scattering splinters upon its occupants; and a few minutes later another shell fell plump on the parapet at the northern end, killing two men and wounding several. Tom at once withdrew the snipers from their position, and sent them into the similar trench on the other side of the nullah. From this they sniped for a considerable time before they were again detected, and when shells began to fall there also, Tom removed the men to comparative safety in the bed of the nullah. The wounds inflicted by the shells were so severe that he did not feel justified in exposing his willing soldiers to injuries which he was unable to deal with satisfactorily. The sniping being thus put an end to, and a sortie being out of the question, Tom had to reconcile himself to the inevitable. The bombardment slowed down, either because the enemy were satisfied that it had crushed opposition, or maybe to save ammunition. Several times during the day Tom went up to his observation post, and noted the progress of the zigzags. The sap was so narrow that the enemy would have to advance in single file, and he thought his men behind the barricade would have an easy task in shooting them down when the attack came.