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Then, lowering his voice still more, Anstey gave an outline of what the new yearlings were supposed to try to do to the lonely plebe on post number three at the hour when ghosts walk. "Humph!" rejoined Dodge quickly. "Let the yearlings try that sort of trick, if they dare. Have those fellows no idea of the sacred position of trust held by a United States sentinel?
Now and then might be heard the measured tread of a sentinel, or the loud breathing of some soldier dreaming perhaps of his distant home or forsaken bride. No other sounds broke upon the night air. The Prussian army slept.
No indignity could rouse him to more than the warfare of abuse, and the result was that long before dawn he found himself once more close to the front. But fortune seemed inclined to fail him here. He was creeping cautiously among a heap of rocks when a sentinel of the advanced line of the Turks discovered and challenged him.
It befell that somewhere near the second hour of night, the moon being overcast at the time for there were threats of a storm in the sky the sentinel on the eastern wall heard a sound of splashing in the moat below, accompanied by the stertorous breathing of a swimmer whose mouth is not well above water.
Down towards the custom-house, as I told you, came a party of wild young men. When they drew near the sentinel, he halted on his post, and took his musket from his shoulder, ready to present the bayonet at their breasts. "Who goes there?" he cried, in the gruff, peremptory tones of a soldier’s challenge.
There from the slip nearly overhead, as the boat whirled around, I heard a sentinel call out, "Stop there, or I fire!" I remained motionless, feeling sure that he would not risk an alarm by reason of a skiff gone adrift. As he called again the boat slewed around, and shot, stern first, far out into the great flood of the Delaware. Never had it seemed to me a dearer friend. I was free.
But amid this general alerte, no violence appeared to be meant, and annoyance, not injury, seemed to have been the goblins' object, excepting in the case of one poor fellow, a trooper, who had followed Harrison in half his battles, and now was sentinel in that very vestibule upon which Everard had recommended them to mount a guard.
The great clouds flew along the sky like an army in retreat. Some, to Winifred, seemed soldiers, others baggage-waggons, horses, gun-carriages, rushing pell-mell for safety. One drooping, tattered cloud she deemed the colours of a regiment streaming under the stars that peeped out here and there watching sentinel eyes, obdurate, till some magic password softened them.
Perceiving his own danger in the fall of the sentinel, he snatched his sword, and calling aloud on his sleeping train, sprung from his couch. He was immediately surrounded by half a score of knights, who started on their feet before Wallace could reach the spot.
But I was not yet fated to escape. The sentinel, whose vigilance I had startled by my lantern in the cell, had given the alarm; and, as I was setting my foot on the plank, a discharge of fire-arms came from the battlement above. I felt that I was struck, and a stunning sensation seized me. I made an attempt to spring forward, but suddenly found myself unable to move.
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