The natives have to line their wells thirty or forty feet down." The enemy were quiet all day, but the garrison thought it likely that, warned by the lesson of the night before, they were erecting a battery some distance farther back, masked by the trees, and that until it was ready to open fire they would know nothing about it.
"So you have turned miner, Mr.Wilson ?" Isobel Hannay said to him as, after a change and a bath, he came in to get his lunch.
"I calculate I have lost half a stone in weight, Miss Hannay.

If I were to go on at this for a month or two there would be nothing left of me." "And how far did you drive the hole ?" "Gallery, Miss Hannay; please call it a gallery, it sounds so much better.

We got in five yards.

I should hardly have believed it possible, but Bathurst is a tremendous fellow to work.

He uses a pick as if he had been a sapper all his life.