“Rats! don’t you talk to me,” growled the ex-lieutenant. Nevertheless, he turned and walked through the woods toward the encampment, and then lost no time in hurrying to his tent.
Randy slipped on his raincoat, and then resumed his duty as a sentinel. Back and forth he tramped, occasionally exchanging a word or two with Codfish or with the guard at the other end of his post. Thus two hours more dragged by. For half of that time it rained steadily, and if his feet did not get wet, they at least got very damp. Then, however, the shower passed on, and presently the morning stars shone forth.
Randy was watching for the first streaks of the coming dawn and congratulating himself that his lonely vigil would soon come to an end, when an unusual sound broke upon his ears. From a distance came a curious clank! clank! followed by another sound that seemed to be the rattle of several chains.
“Hello! where does that come from?” he asked himself. “Somebody must be getting to work pretty early in the morning.”
The noises kept up for a minute or two, and then abruptly ceased. The young cadet listened for quite a while, and then resumed his tramp. But a little later the strange clanking and rattle of chains was continued, and once more he halted, trying to locate the direction of the sounds.
“Must come from somewhere in the woods,” he reasoned, and he thought this rather strange, for he was of the opinion that this portion of the forest was entirely uninhabited.
Several times after that he heard the strange clanking, and every time it was followed by a rattle as of chains. Then came a sharp tapping, as of a hammer on steel, and with this a curious humming sound, as if some big blowing machine was in action.
“Maybe it’s an airship, or something like that,” he said to himself. “That humming sound may be the propellers going around. Maybe they had an accident and had to come down for repairs.”
It lacked ten minutes of the time for the new sentry to go on duty when Randy, who had come to a halt to learn if the curious clanking was still taking place in the woods, saw a movement behind some trees at a distance.
“Must be either an animal or a man,” he said to himself.