All the women and children should be sent inside this, all the provisions in the town be taken into the palace enclosure, and a large supply of water stored there.
"As soon as the new palisade is finished, all who can be spared from its defence should set to work to throw up a bank of earth against the wall; and upon this the fighting men can take their places, and should be able to defend the palace against any assault." The rajah listened attentively to the interpreter.
"The English officer's words are good," he said, "but we have no timber for the palisades that he speaks of." "Tell the rajah," Harry said, when this was interpreted to him, "that there is plenty of wood and bamboos in the huts that stand outside the line of the new palisade; and that if we pull these down, we can use the materials.

Moreover, in any case it would be well to level these houses for, if the enemy fired them, it would be almost certain to fire the houses inside the palisade." The rajah's face brightened.

The tone of assurance in which Harry spoke reassured him, and he said to the interpreter: "Tell the officer that my people shall do just as he tells them, if he will point out where the defence must be erected." Harry was not long in fixing upon the line for the entrenchments.
It was some two hundred yards in diameter and, at the rajah's orders, the whole of the men and women of the town set to work, to pull down the huts standing within fifty or sixty yards of this.
This was the work of a couple of hours, and the materials were carried up to the line.

The stronger timbers were first planted, in holes dug for them; and the intervals between these were filled with bamboo poles.

On the inside face other bamboos were lashed, with rattans across them.