“What! with our defences? Well, let’s take a good look round and see what more there is to be done.”
It was getting late in the afternoon, and the westering sun was pouring down its rays with a violence peculiar to a Chinese summer, though the winters are so intensely cold that the people go about with clothes piled upon clothes, so that a wealthy man often resembles an animated feather-bed, and in fact has his garments so quilted with feathers and down that if picked to pieces, though he might not furnish enough for a bed, he could respectably fill a bolster and pair of pillows. There was very little breeze, and Blunt and his companion were longing for that which would come in the evening.
“Only there’ll be a great drawback to it,” said Stan—“the darkness will come too.”
“Yes, the darkness will come too,” said Blunt thoughtfully, for his eyes were wandering over the tea-chest defence-wall inside which they were walking; “but,” he added in words which proved that his thoughts were not upon the darkness, “I don’t like that ending off. It’s weak.”
“What! where it turns round the end of the warehouse?” replied Stan. “Yes; the enemy might make for that corner and come round.”
“And attack us in the flank, as soldiers would say,” exclaimed Blunt. “It won’t do.—Here, three or four of you, get some more tea-chests out and build this end up higher. There ought to be quite a dwarf tower here.”
“No more chests, sir,” said the clerk addressed. “We’ve used them all as far as they’d go.”
“Then use bales. Call up a dozen coolies, and build up a rounded corner as quickly as you can.”
“Yes, sir,” was the eager response, and the man addressed trotted off, followed by his comrades.
“Odd that we shouldn’t have noticed that before. The corner at the other end is strong, and I meant in my hurried mental plans for this to be like it. Stopped, of course, by the material running out. Our weak spot, Lynn; and they say a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Our chain of defences—eh?”