Time would not allow of the construction of a regular stockade, with poles properly cut and trimmed, and deeply planted in the ground. It seemed to Tom that the most effective barrier that could be quickly raised would consist of small trees with their foliage, set as closely together as might be, with their crowns pointing outwards, in the form of a rough _chevaux de frise_. The men were set to work on those lines. Some felled or uprooted young trees from the slopes of the nullah, others hauled them to the bottom, and a third gang arranged them side by side across the entrance. Meanwhile a party of boys was employed in cutting brushwood and piling it here and there among the trees where the foliage was thin. A single gap was left on the east side as a gateway for the scouts. The work had only just been roughly accomplished when a scattered volley from Mirambo’s party apprised Tom that the enemy had at last appeared. Immediately afterwards he saw his men running back from the line of bushes, and they had no sooner gained the entrance to the nullah than a regular volley flashed from the cover they had just left. Tom posted his men along the inner side of the barricade, ordered them to kneel, pass the muzzles of their rifles through the brushwood, and fire at the legs of the enemy askaris when he gave the word. Haroun the Arab begged to be entrusted with a rifle: but Tom, remembering another of Mr. Barkworth’s maxims, "Prove all men," refused the request until he should have tested his new recruit. A turncoat has to win confidence. The enemy, however, did not repeat their volley. Apparently they were daunted by the aspect of the barricade which had sprung up so unexpectedly, and which, in the distance, looked formidable enough. Their hesitation to storm it was reasonable, especially if they were in no great strength; and Tom, though he could see nothing of them through the screen of bushes, had come to the conclusion that the vast number his scouts had reported was a figment of their lively imagination. No German, in command of any considerable body of disciplined men, would have been so sluggish in following up a horde of untrained negroes.