“But what is to happen to us?” cried Mabel. “Are we to stay here to be shot at?”
“Calm yourself, my dear girl,” said Mr Burgrave, in gently reproving tones. “You are in no danger at the present moment.”
“You see, Miss North,” said the Colonel, “I don’t want to have to put you either in the hospital courtyard or among the native refugees, and there is nowhere else. After all, this court is so small that the enemy can’t possibly command more than the east side, and we’ll put that right by hanging curtains along the verandah.”
“Why, what good would that be against bullets?”
“The curtain wouldn’t stop them, certainly, but our friends up there are very careful of their ammunition, and never waste a shot. Not being able to see whether any one is in the verandah, they won’t aim at it. It was the sight of a whole party assembled here that was irresistible.”
“But is Georgia to live in darkness?” demanded Georgia’s self-constituted champion.
“Nonsense, Mab! There are three other verandahs to sit in. After all, one expects bullets in a siege,” said Georgia.
“That’s the right spirit, Mrs North,” said Colonel Graham heartily. “As soon as it’s dusk we’ll have the matting up from the club-house—messroom, I mean—floor, and nail it along the roof of this verandah and across the corner where the passage is. Then you’ll be safe from anything but chance shots, and those, I’m afraid, we can none of us guard against.”
“But are those fellows up there to pot at the ladies without our ever having a chance to pay them back, sir?” cried Fitz.
“I was coming to that. Of course the plan is to clear us off the east rampart so that a force from the town may rush it under cover of the fire from the hill, and therefore the parados must be our first care. Still, I think we can spare a few sand-bags for the two western towers, and if we arrange a little sangar on the top of each when it is dark, we can show our chivalrous friends the snipers to-morrow what it feels like to be sniped. Tell Winlock to set all the servants to work filling bags and baskets, and anything else they can find, with earth at once.”