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And they were not at all averse to showing their comrades in the regiment how well they had fared and how stoutly they had held up the colors of the old Thirty-seventh. "Who goes there?" came the sharp challenge of the sentry, as they drew near the American trench, and they knew that a score of rifles was trained upon them to back up the sentry's demand if the answer were halting or suspicious.
To obviate this difficulty, Leonard Hust, who was a sort of privileged person on board, being the captain's confidential servant and man of all work, undertook to engage the sentry's attention by sonic device, for a few moments, just at the opportune period, while the prisoner should get fairly clear of the ship.
He cast a swift glance to the left and right. The sentry's bayonet was just disappearing behind the corner of the hut. To the four hundred other eyes around the parade-ground Lieutenant Ranson's attitude suggested that he was explaining to Cahill's daughter what he wanted for his luncheon. His eyes held her as firmly as though the palings he clasped were her two hands.
The orderly drum had been roused to sound the reveille for the troops to turn out, when there came the report of a sentry's rifle on the left flank, followed by a score of shots, and the morning air rang loud with the wild war-whoops of savages. In an instant the army was in line, the campfires were extinguished, and the governor mounted his horse and proceeded to the point of attack.
The embers from the cook fire glowed a deeper red as the darkness gathered in the pass, and every man seemed to start as though stung with sudden spur when sharp, quick, and imperative there came the cry from the lips of the farther sentry, "Fire, sir, out to the west!" In an instant Lieutenant Drummond had leaped down the rocky cañon and, field-glass in hand, was standing by the sentry's side.
Then I observed a dozen fire-engines painted khaki colour. There were officers' baths, coal and wood on lorries, tents, and everything you can think of and a lot you can't. Ammunition dumps were on our right and left, and the occasional gleam of a sentry's bayonet let you know that somebody was on watch.
This brought the sentry's fire, which as it too was of a British regular of those days Philip felt safe in risking. But though the shot went far wide, he gave a cry as if he had been hit, and staggered back into the woods. He was no sooner within its cover, than he ran swiftly Eastward with all possible silence.
We were slowing up in obedience to a signal from a canvas-covered, half-demolished shelter filled with men in blue uniforms; we were coming to a standstill. Blenheim leaned out, and for a moment I saw his face in the beam of light from the sentry's lantern. It looked thin and set. He was giving beneath the strain. "Behold my comrade!" He thrust our papers into the hands of the sentry.
It was only for a moment that the sentry's attention was thus diverted, but when he looked again the gray gown, the red calash, the swiftly moving figure had disappeared.
"Why, no, only rid of a blackguard not worth hanging; one of the marines, who was to have gone round the fleet this morning, when he went to the forepart of the ship under the sentry's charge, leaped overboard, and drowned himself." "What was his name, Captain B ?" inquired Joey, seizing him by the arm. "His name why, how can that interest you, O'Donahue?
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