Tompkins sat on the Academy roof, in coat and gloves, waiting and musing and shivering. The night was clear and moonless. The day had been warm; it was freezing again now. At eleven he heard below the welcome call of Benson, the relieving watch, and scuttled down to the ground as fast as his cold hands and stiff legs would allow. At twelve o’clock Bosworth took his turn. He got up with some difficulty, as he was little used to climbing, and pulled up after him by a string a voluminous ulster borrowed of a larger classmate, in which he rolled himself snugly, as he crouched at the base of the belfry where the lightning-rod reached up its side to the weather-vane above.
For a quarter of an hour complete silence reigned. Then the lone watcher became conscious of vague noises underneath, now at the side, now in front. With heart beating in quick heavy thumps, he freed himself from the ulster and crept around the belfry to the ridgepole that ran toward the front of the building, and along this to the peak of the gable. Projecting his head carefully over, he heard voices,—at first indistinct, then somewhat clearer.
He heard voices,—at first indistinct, then somewhat clearer.—Page 150.
Whatever the unknown persons were doing, they were very deliberate in their movements. Minutes had passed before he made out figures on the roof of the porch below. They waited here, and spent more time in muffled conversation, apparently discussing the method of scaling the wall above, which, as Bosworth said to himself reassuringly again and again as he clung shivering to the cold slates, was unscalable. At last the frost penetrated to his bones, making it obviously dangerous to lie longer in his cramped position. He was just about to grope his way back to his warm coat, when the figures on the porch began to be active again. He heard distinctly—it sounded like Curtis’s voice—“I say we can’t do it. We may as well go home as freeze here.”
A few minutes later the speakers seemed to be on the ground again. Presently their voices were lost in the sound of feet treading carefully the board walk that led to the street. Soon these sounds, too, had died away, and absolute stillness reigned again.
Numb with cold Bosworth crept back to his nook, and wrapped himself once more in the great coat, which he found in a heap by the foot of the lightning-rod. He was puzzled at this, for he had a distinct impression of crawling out of the coat, as a worm out of a cocoon, and leaving it spread on the roof behind him.
“It’s a vile job, anyway,” he groaned, “and I was a fool to let them drag me into it. I shall freeze to death here.”
But the hour was nearly over. He was just falling into a risky doze, when Dearborn’s call came up from below, and presently Dearborn himself startled him by appearing suddenly at the edge of the roof.
“All right up here?” asked the newcomer.