Here and there, screened by his fellows, a tired man's head nodded drowsily. But the "Padre" had learned twenty years before that it took more than a sermon to keep awake a seated man who had perhaps kept the middle watch, and turned out for the day at 6.15 A.M.; in the five hundred odd pairs of eyes that remained fixed on his face he doubtless read a measure of compensation.
* * * * *
The short-cropped heads bowed as in clear tones the Benediction was pronounced—
"... and remain with you ... always." An instant's pause, and then, Officers and men standing upright and rigid, they sang the National Anthem.
The Captain turned and nodded to the Commander, who was putting on his cap.
"Pipe down."
XIX.
THE PARRICIDE.
"'Ark!" said the hedger, his can of cold tea arrested half-way to his lips. But Sal, the lurcher bitch curled up under the hedge, had heard some seconds before. With twitching nose and ears alert, she jumped out of the ditch and trotted up the road. A far-off sound was coming over the downs—a faint drone as of a clustering swarm of bees.
"One of them motor-bikes——" murmured the man and paused. Away in the west, approaching the coast-line and flying high, was a dark object like the framework of a box suspended in mid-air. It drew near, rising and falling on the unseen swell of the ocean of ether, and the droning sound grew louder. "Aeri-o-plane," continued the hedger, again speaking aloud, after the manner of those who live much alone in the open.