"Right you are, sir, I'll manage that."
"We'll ferret them out before the day is over," he chuckled again, and looking down behind him he saw the Sylvia looming in towards the shore.
"For once Bannerman is up to time. We'll have the Strong Arm's up here in a couple of hours or so."
He sent the signalmen down the hill to communicate with the Sylvia and to order the second party to land immediately, and then he and Williams made plans for placing the top of the hill in some state of defence.
"We shall have them round us like flies when once they find us sitting up here," Cummins said.
Fortunately for them, the enemy had evidently intended to mount a second gun, had indeed already marked out the site for its gun-pit, and had prepared hundreds of sand-bags to defend it. These lay scattered in heaps on the plateau, and were now used for making breastworks.
Williams and Saunderson hurriedly marked out the positions in which they were to be built, and the marines, piling arms, and stacking their greatcoats and blankets in a heap, "set to" with a will to haul the sand-bags over to the edges.
"Safer to send some men out in the long field, I think, sir," said Captain Williams, the cricketer, and ordered his taciturn sergeant-major—a martinet named Haig—to select two of the older men as sentries and place them, one along the path the column had just followed, and another down the face of the hill, on the zigzag path up which the Commander and Glover had seen the coolies carrying ammunition.
"'Square leg' and 'long on'—eh?" chuckled the Commander.
"Yes, sir, I think they will be enough for the present."