When he had done he sat down, and smiles broke out all over his pink, fat face.
“Good, eh?” he said. “That was a funeral dance of prehistoric Crete, that I found among the buried carvings of the palace of Minos, which they have lately——”
“Come back,” I said. “This isn’t ancient Crete, it’s modern New Guinea, and we’re in a hole. Mark, I propose, for tonight, that we let on to go to sleep, but don’t—and then we’ll see what happens. As for supper, I’m going out to cook that myself. I’m not taking any chances just now.”
“As you wish,” said the Marquis. “But you can not deny that it is all most interesting.”
“Oh, very—damned—interesting,” I said. “I hope it doesn’t get any more so. I’d like a little boredom for a change, if you ask me.” And I went to cook the supper—not that I thought it really necessary, but just—in case. One does a lot of things for that reason, in the queer places of Papua.
We had a little coffee in our stores, and I brewed a billy-can full, for I did not want any mistakes made about going to sleep. At the usual hour we put out our light and lay down on the rough sack-beds I had fixed up. The Marquis and I were near enough together to touch each other if we wished. We turned in all standing, even to our boots. The carriers were camped in a little hut close by; our stores were mostly piled up in the tent, and we had our revolvers strapped round our waists.
It was arranged that we were to take watch and watch about, for two hours each, and that the man on watch should sit on his bed, not lie. I could guess the time easily enough, and the Marquis thought he could also. In any case, there should be no striking of matches.
The night wore on but slowly. At first there were constant stirrings in the village—talking, squabbling, moving here and there; then the dogs began to fight; then some of the roosters waked up and crowed, and roused out the rest a good many hours too soon. But by degrees the town settled to rest. I had taken the first watch; had lain down—not to sleep—through the Marquis’; and now my second watch was well on its way.
After a time it grew so still that the silence seemed to tingle, in the way it does when you are awake at night and listening. There was not a breath of wind, no moon, and few stars; the weather had been heavy and thunderous all day, and the sky was clouded. In the triangle made by the opening of the tent I could see—when I had been straining my eyes into the dark for quite a long time—the dim grayness of the village street, and the black bank of palms beyond.
I say there was not a sound, nor anything to see. Seated there on my rough bed, every sense alert, I might have been alone at the end of the world, with the last man dead beside me.