I asked if they'd sent any message to me.
"Mrs. Fisher did, sir, but I'm hanged if I remember what it was exactly."
"Did Miss Borsen?" I asked, trying to hide my nervous anxiety to know whether perhaps what had occurred might have made her show signs of forgiving me.
I felt miserable when he shook his head. "Not as I remember, sir."
There were two things that troubled him: those confounded huts, which rather interfered with his beloved Maxim, and that breastwork. He pointed out that there were not nearly enough men to defend the breastwork, and that it formed admirable cover for an attacking force.
"We ought to level it in, that we ought," he said, shaking his head.
Of course he was right. Hadn't we seen what had happened that very morning?
"Mr. Fisher expects them to clear away back to the hills to-night," I told him. "What do you think?"
He shook his head again. "They don't seem to be carrying out their usual routine; not a bit of it. They ought to retire—that is, if experience is anything to go by. I don't like the look of them occupying the fort; it looks as if they meant to stay."
When I asked him whether he thought the Mir of Old Jask would attack them, and endeavour to recapture his fort, he only made a grimace.