“Who’s that? You, Smithers?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I say, you have got a lonely watch here to-night. Heard any crocodiles?”
“Heerd any crocodiles, sir? Just you listen!”
“My!” exclaimed Archie.—“I say, Down, why, it can’t be those reptiles, is it? What a row!”
“There’s no mistake about it,” said the Captain. “Why, they must be having a party.” For the wallowing and splashing grew louder than ever.
“Here, I know what it is,” cried Archie merrily. “They can smell Private Smithers here. He’s such a big, well-fed chap that they have gathered together for a feast.”
“Yes, sir; that’s it,” said the man.
“But they haven’t been going on like this before, have they?”
“Just as bad, sir, all the time; and every now and then one of them barks at me just like a wolf.”
“Just like a wolf?” said the Captain. “What do you know about wolves? You never kept a wolf.”
“No, sir. They are not the sort of things I should like to make a pet dog on; but I’ve heerd them lots of times in Canady heigh-ho where they chase the buffalo.”
“Ah, to be sure. You have been in the regiment longer than I have. Well, these brutes are going it! Why, Maine, we ought to have brought our guns and had some shooting.”
“Too dark to see them.”
“Why, what a noise! And they have been going on like this all the time you have been on duty?”
“Yes, sir; it’s been precious cheerful.”
“But what have you done?”
“Oh, just kep’ on the move, sir, so as to baffle them a bit when they seemed disposed to come ashore and join one.”
“But surely you haven’t seen any of them come ashore?”
“Well, sir, to be downright honest, it’s been too dark to see ’em; but I’ve seemed to feel one of ’em crawling ashore now and then; and then I always went right to the end of the beat, so as to get as far off as I could.”
“I say, Down, this is horrible!” said Archie.
“Thank you, sir,” said the man. “It ain’t been nice.”
“Nice—no!” said the Captain. “It seems like planting a sentry to act as a bait to draw the brutes ashore.”
“I don’t think, however, that they would attack a man who was on the alert,” said Archie.
“I shouldn’t like to risk it,” said the Captain, “however much I were on the alert.”
“But the Doctor says from long experience he never knew them attack any one moving about. Of course he says he wouldn’t answer for the life of a man who was lying asleep close to the river’s edge, and we know that they will pull in a woman bathing, or who has waded in to draw water.”
“Yes,” said the Captain, “I can answer for that. Why, they will seize an ox that has walked in to drink. But this is not right. The Major would be angry if he knew of a single sentry being stationed so close to the water as this on a dark night.—Look here, Smithers; move in yonder a bit—up to that hut we just passed. You can well command the landing-place from there, I think?”
“Yes, sir; thank you, sir. No boat could land there without my hearing and seeing it.”
“Well, then, move up there; and when Sergeant Ripsy comes to relieve guard, tell him I changed your position, and that a sentry must not be posted here again on a dark night.”
“Thank you, sir,” said the private. “It has been awful, sir.”
“Awful—yes, my lad. Well, we are three of us now, but I don’t feel at all eager to stay. However, you will be quite safe there—eh, Maine?”
“Oh yes. The heavy, lumbering brutes are not likely to travel up there.—Seen or heard anything else, Smithers?”
“No, sir. I shouldn’t think anybody else would want to come.”
The officers stood talking to the man a few minutes, and then turned off to return to their quarters, while Private Smithers hugged himself with satisfaction as he picked up the still burning half-cigar the officer had thrown away, carefully put it out, and deposited it in his cartridge-box.
“You will do to cut up fine for finishing in a pipe to-morrow, my jockey,” he said.
He stood listening till the faint sounds of his visitors’ voices had completely died away, and then he settled himself by the hut.
“This is jolly,” he muttered. “One’s safe enough here. That’s a capital lookout, for one quite looks down on the water. Yes; no boat could come up here without my hearing it, and I should see any one paddling along. Well, I will say this: our officers are gentlemen, and never want you to do anything that they wouldn’t do theirselves. Glad the Captain was there too, for I don’t suppose Mr. Archie Maine would have ventured to change my place. But I do know what he would have done. I’d bet anybody sixpence, if there was anybody here to bet with and I’d got one, that he’d have stopped to keep me company and—I’m blessed! What’s that?”
The man was standing beneath the spreading eaves of the palm-tree and bamboo hut, quite sheltered by the darkness, and he turned his head on one side to listen, for quite plainly from somewhere up the river, and apparently right under the bank on the other side, he heard the sound of paddles, as if a big boat were approaching.
“Why, I shouldn’t wonder,” he thought to himself, “if that boat has been hanging about there waiting till there was no one on the shore. Blessed if I don’t think they heard us talking and fancy our officers have took the sentry away. Well, I shall jolly soon know. How rum! It must be a big boat; and it’s scared the crocs away, for I can’t hear them a bit now. All right; I’m ready for you, whoever you are. Not fire, eh? But I’ll tell ’em I will if they don’t give up. I wonder who it is. Only fishermen perhaps; but it will give one something to do.”
He drew himself a little closer beneath the projecting attap roof, which extended three or four feet over the sides of the hut, and then felt startled, for suddenly there fell upon his ears, evidently coming from somewhere inland, a rustling sound of footsteps, accompanied by the hard breathing of some one suffering from over-exertion.
“Boat coming ashore! Some one coming down to the landing-place! What does this ’ere mean?” muttered the sentry. “Well, it’s only one;” and he peered carefully from his shelter, trying to make out the approaching figure.
But it was too dark, and he waited a full minute before stepping out boldly; and his rifle gave a loud click, click, as he cried:
“Halt! Who goes there?”
His answer was a sharp half-cry, half-gasp of astonishment, and the loud breathing became quite a pant, like that of an excited dog.
“Here—yes—it—is—all right,” came in rather a high-pitched voice, the accents being those of one not fully accustomed to the English language.
“Well, what’s the word?” cried Smithers, who, with his piece presented, found himself close up now to a slight man of middle height, wearing a sun-hat, dressed in knickerbockers, and apparently having a fishing-creel slung from one shoulder, something like a tin case from the other.
“The—the—word?” he answered.
“Yes. What’s the word?”
“Oh yes; it is all right,” faltered the new-comer,