“Just as I took my place another round shot hummed by; but then there was a long interval of silence. With a field glass every feature must have been distinguishable to the gunners, and I had no doubt that they were waiting for orders as to what to do next.
“I glanced round and saw that, with the exception of one fellow squatted behind the parapet some half dozen yards away, clearly as a sentry to keep me in place, all the others had disappeared. Some, no doubt, were on sentry down the path, the others were in the store beneath me. After half an hour's silence the guns spoke out again. Evidently the gunners were told to be as careful as they could, for some of the shots went wide on the left, others on the right. A few struck the rock below me. The situation was not pleasant, but I thought that at a thousand yards they ought not to hit me, and I tried to distract my attention by thinking out what I should do under every possible contingency.
“Presently I felt a crash and a shock, and fell backwards to the ground. I was not hurt, and picking myself up saw that the ball had struck the parapet to the left, just where my guard was sitting, and he lay covered with its fragments. His turban lay some yards behind him. Whether he was dead or not I neither knew nor cared.
“I pushed down some of the parapet where I had been sitting, dropped my cap on the edge outside, so as to make it appear that I had fallen over, and then, picking up the man's turban, ran to the other end of the platform and scrambled down to the ledge. Then I began to wave my arms about--I had nothing on above the waist--and in a moment I saw a face with a uniform cap peer out through the jungle; and a hand was waved. I made signs to him to make his way to the foot of the perpendicular wall of rock beneath me. I then unwound the turban, whose length was, I knew, amply sufficient to reach to the bottom, and then looked round for something to write on. I had my pencil still in my trousers pocket, but not a scrap of paper.
“I picked up a flattish piece of rock and wrote on it, 'Get a rope ladder quickly, I can haul it up. Ten men in garrison. They are all under cover. Keep on firing to distract their attention.'