Presently the gunner arrived, with a very long face. "I was careful as I could be, sir, but you know what it is, and things looked so precious ugly at one time that we had to fire fast. It's my belief they simply did it a' purpose, just to make us waste ammunition. They haven't lost heart over it either, for they're skulking all over the place, down among the trees round the Old Fort, and along the beach. They potted at me all the way from the 'B.A.', that they did. They are firing at everyone who shows his nose outside the wall, and none of these here people can go on with levelling the breastwork. They've given that up as a bad job and gone inside again.
"It's a nasty bit of work this, sir, and the sooner I have you safe and sound aboard the 'B.A.,', sir, the better I shall be pleased. And the little lady too; she ought to come and keep Mrs. Fisher company. Mrs. Fisher, sir," he added, lowering his voice and smiling grimly, "tried to come ashore again, but I locked her up in the cabin before I started, and told Percy to shove her breakfast through the port-hole."
I smiled too, for I could quite imagine him doing this, and not wasting any words over it either.
"It was the only thing I could do, for the cabin's made of good steel plate, and if she'd been left to wander round she might have been hit by some of them bullets," he explained.
"I'm certain we shall find them gone to-morrow morning," Mr. Fisher cried, coming abruptly into the room; "and if we don't, the Muscat people will know that the cable is interrupted and something wrong, so will tell the Intrepid as soon as she gets back from the coast. We shall have her here in no time."
"Do you know that we've only got enough ammunition for one more show like this morning? That's a fact," Mr. Scarlett growled, turning furiously on him. "This is going to be a regular siege; none of your rushing and firing, packing up and going home again. Them Afghans mean to get inside here, and if we can't stop them you can't. The sooner everyone comes aboard the 'B.A.' safe and sound, and waits there for the Intrepid—well—the sooner the better. This isn't any darned tomfoolery business, I tell you—twenty times I'll tell you. If your chaps can't stand a few bullets smacking among 'em down by that trench," he went on savagely, "they'd better get along ramming sand into more sacks, bags, anything they can get hold of, and make this house shipshape."
I don't think that Mr. Fisher much cared about being spoken to like that.
"If you can get any work out of them you're welcome to try; I can't," he said sharply. "They've been awake and working, off and on, for the last thirty hours."
"Right you are, sir; you bet I will. If I can't do a bit of slave-driving there is no one in the British Navy who can," and, taking him at his word, Mr. Scarlett darted off.
He had hardly gone when Hartley ran in to say that a hundred or more Afghans had rushed up the slope from the Old Fort, and behind the sand-hills there.