There was no more question of undressing and going to bed than there was of undressing and going to bathe. Some sense in me was alert and expectant. I sat in my tent and waited. And at the end of half an hour or so my waiting was justified, for the canvas suddenly shivered, and some one tripped over the ropes that held it to the earth. John Silence came in.
The effect of his quiet entry was singular and prophetic: it was just as though the energy lying behind all this stillness had pressed forward to the edge of action. This, no doubt, was merely the quickening of my own mind, and had no other justification; for the presence of John Silence always suggested the near possibility of vigorous action, and, as a matter of fact, he came in with nothing more than a nod and a significant gesture.
He sat down on a corner of my ground-sheet, and I pushed the blanket over so that he could cover his legs. He drew the flap of the tent after him and settled down, but hardly had he done so when the canvas shook a second time, and in blundered Maloney.
“Sitting in the dark?” he said self-consciously, pushing his head inside, and hanging up his lantern on the ridge-pole nail. “I just looked in for a smoke. I suppose——”
He glanced round, caught the eye of Dr. Silence, and stopped. He put his pipe back into his pocket and began to hum softly—that under-breath humming of a nondescript melody I knew so well and had come to hate.
Dr. Silence leaned forward, opened the lantern and blew the light out. “Speak low,” he said, “and don’t strike matches. Listen for sounds and movements about the Camp, and be ready to follow me at a moment’s notice.” There was light enough to distinguish our faces easily, and I saw Maloney glance again hurriedly at both of us.
“Is the Camp asleep?” the doctor asked presently, whispering.
“Sangree is,” replied the clergyman, in a voice equally low. “I can’t answer for the women; I think they’re sitting up.”
“That’s for the best.” And then he added: “I wish the fog would thin a bit and let the moon through; later—we may want it.”
“It is lifting now, I think,” Maloney whispered back. “It’s over the tops of the trees already.”