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Updated: August 28, 2024
The touch was sufficient to bring the captain to his feet, and he instantly demanded the news. "Nothing but sentry-go, your honour," replied Joyce. "I am as fresh as a regiment that is just marching out of barracks, and can easily stand the guard till daylight. Still, as it was orders to call your honour at two, I could do no less, you know, sir."
And I'll not deny neither but what some of my people was shook maybe all was shook; maybe I was shook myself; maybe that's why I'm here for terms. But you mark me, cap'n, it won't do twice, by thunder! We'll have to do sentry-go and ease off a point or so on the rum. Maybe you think we were all a sheet in the wind's eye.
Colonel John's eye lightened as he recognised its points. With a sign to Bale he fell in behind the man and followed him through two or three ill-paved and squalid streets. Presently the rider passed through a loop-holed gateway, before which a soldier was doing sentry-go. The two followed.
At night there was the bare living room of Wilbraham's shack, without a book, or a paper, or a decent chair; Wilbraham himself, fat, pig-headed, truculent, stumping the devil's sentry-go up and down the bare floor, talking eternally about himself and the mine, till a saint must have loathed the two of them; Thompson, the mine superintendent, silent, slow and stupid, playing ghastly solitaire games in a corner with a pack of dirty cards; and me, Nick Stretton, hunching myself irritably on a hard chair till I could decently go to bed.
They did sentry-go along the dam-top, and patrolled or watched the lower levels of the works below the dam. They patrolled also the street and the road above and below the camp. Well paid human labor had erected this great dam, mixed with the returned soldiers and a small per cent of labor sometimes sullen, with no affection for its work.
Sentry-go for hours in a lonely place like this here, with crocklygaters hanging about to see if you go to sleep to give them a chance to make a grab. Yes, they make a fellow feel sleepy! Just likely, ain't it?" Peter Pegg's thoughts seemed to animate him, and for a turn or two he changed his pace from a slow march to double. "Steady, my lad!" he muttered.
As for me, I spent the night doing sentry-go, for I fully expected to receive a visit from the shore some time during the hours of darkness. But nothing happened; and when at length day dawned and I was relieved, I was inclined to believe that our efforts to conceal our presence on the island from the pirates had been successful.
"Cape smoke?" said I, inquiringly, to Mr Stormcock, who happened to come up the hatchway on to the main deck as the doctor was thus cross-examining the ex-corporal of marines outside the sick bay, where poor Macan was now doing "sentry-go" after his reduction to the ranks, to make his humiliation the more complete. "What is that? It can't be real smoke, I suppose!" The master's mate laughed.
Then the male inhabitants voluntarily placed themselves under martial law, under Henderson's command, taking it in turns to perform sentry-go day and night; while the best mounted among us undertook to act as scouts, riding forth from the town daily in various directions in quest of news of the enemy, and returning in the evening with such intelligence as we had been able to gain.
At one time he used to stand by the sentry, with an ancient glengarry crammed over his bullet head, and conform meticulously to his comrade's slightest movement. This procedure was soon banned, as being calculated to bring contempt and ridicule upon the King's uniform, and Petit Jean was assigned a beat of his own. Behold him upon sentry-go.
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