"That's one of the forts, sir," I said excitedly.
Below the guns the rocks ran on for thirty or forty yards, and then were hidden behind some higher rocks on our side of the entrance channel. These shut out all view of the sea.
"Now come where I am and look round the corner to the left," said the Commander, rolling out of the way and chuckling to himself with amusement at my excitement. I did as I was told, and, pushing aside some branches, peered down.
The path below us—the path on which my cap had fallen—ran along the foot of the cliffs, along the water's edge, till it came to a little landing-place made of strong balks of timber. Reckoning in cricket pitches—a dodge the Commander had taught me—I thought that it was almost sixty yards away from where our dinghy was sunk.
The landing-place, like the one opposite it, had a small derrick at one corner, with tackle and blocks rigged for lifting weights out of a boat. Broad irregular steps cut in the rock led up from it to a well-cut path which, running sharply upwards, turned round a corner and was lost to sight.
At this corner a little platform, with a parapet all round it, had been levelled, and on it was a small shelter covered with matting.
In front of the shelter was an old oil-drum with its sides pierced with holes, and a little smoke was even now rising gently from it. This was the fire we had seen as we had drifted in.
Against the parapet two or three rifles were leaning.
Down below, with his legs dangling over the landing-place, a Chinaman, in a sort of uniform, was fishing and keeping up a running conversation with the sailors in the steam-boat alongside the opposite jetty.
Tied up to this landing-place were several small boats.