There was now no moonlight, but every night sentries were placed all along the ramparts.
Early on the morning of the sixth day there was not a canoe to be seen anywhere on the sea, and so the men sat down to breakfast cheerfully enough, and even the sentries, completely off their guard, were chatting gaily together on the ramparts.
Suddenly, without a moment's warning, the whole front of the barricade was found to be alive with swarming spear-armed savages.
Luckily every man's revolver was by his side, but the fight that now ensued was terrific. Hand to hand they fought, savages and whites, till the former disappeared at last in the same mysterious way they had come, leaving their dead behind them, and spearing or clubbing all the wounded lest the whites should torture them.
But where had they come from? This was easily explained. They had approached the island under cover of the darkness, and arranged their canoes close under the rocks, and thus out of sight. As soon as this was discovered they were speedily dislodged by the simple expedient of hurling down stones, and as soon as they had put out to sea rifles were once more brought to bear on them.
But by placing sentinels at night here and there on the cliff top no such ruse was again possible.
In this battle the garrison lost two men killed, and had three wounded.
One day Cassia-bud returned from the rock with an empty calibash. The water had given out. Then the sufferings of those unhappy men began in earnest.
The cocoanut supply still held out, however, but the water at last failed to quench the thirst, and the men began to fall sick.
The three wounded men died, and so weak were the others that they could not bury them. All they could do was to drag them to the cliff top and let them roll over into the sea—unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.