By this time Evans had got the cutter afloat, and had come alongside the Bunder Abbas.
"Arabs crawling along the beach!" he shouted. "The sentry saw them first, fired at them—we've all fired at them—we've not seen any more since."
"Were they firing at you?" I called down, when he left off shouting at me.
He didn't know—he was not certain of anything except that his fellows had managed to kill at least one man.
At any rate, whatever had happened, no one was attacking us now. I stopped the Maxim, and together we waited on the qui vive all night, in case we were attacked again.
When the moon sank, an hour and a half before the sun was due to take her place, it became extremely dark, which made it most trying and nervous work waiting for daylight. Instead of the good night's sleep we had all promised ourselves, not a soul among us so much as closed his eyes after the alarm.
At daybreak not a sign of any living thing could be seen on those desolate sand-hills or on the beach, so we ventured ashore to pick up the cutter's masts and sails, which had been left behind in the panic.
I went too, to have a look at the chap we had shot, and guess what we found—fifty yards along the beach—that paraffin tin! just where we had thought we had seen the enemy crawling along to attack us—simply riddled with bullets. It was like a nutmeg grater, and the sand all round it was scored and tossed about by hundreds more.
I simply sat down and laughed and laughed till I thought something would crack. The whole thing was so obvious. It was high water when the men went to sleep; as the tide fell it left that tin high and dry: the sentry, suddenly catching sight of it and its shadow, lost his head, thought it was someone crawling along the beach, let off his rifle at it, woke the others, and in their excitement they fired at every shadow they saw.
"You killed him, sure enough," I roared, holding up the perforated tin; "the attack was repulsed with great slaughter."