“No danger of that. Remember, all their plunder is stored here,” said Alice, wisely.
This was a fact, and a comforting one. Nevertheless they had no idea of sleeping unguarded that night, and Carl volunteered to stand sentry till midnight, when he would call Bob, who would in turn be relieved by Joe. They all remained awake later than usual, and it was almost ten o’clock when Carl took up his solitary position, sitting on one of the superfluous honey-barrels, his shotgun across his knees, where he could command both the cabin and the bee-yard. There was faint light from the crescent moon, but the air was full of silvery mist, lying heavily in the hollows of the swamps and on the bayou.
Except for the intermittent, customary noises of wild life from the woods, an hour passed in quiet. Carl walked around the cabin once or twice, returned to his place, looked at his watch. It was somewhat past eleven o’clock when he caught a faint, unmistakable dip and splash from the stream. His heart jumped. He made it out again, and thought he even heard a low sound of voices. A boat was coming down the bayou.
Instantly he wakened the other boys. With intermittent, excited whispering they listened, and then disposed themselves behind the tree-clumps in front of the cabin, with guns cocked and each of them strung up to hair-trigger pitch.
The boat came opposite. They could distinctly hear the low mutter of gruff voices, but the mist concealed it entirely from view. The boys expected to hear a landing made; but the rowers went past without stopping. The splash of oars and the voices died down in the distance, going out toward the river.
“Why, they’re not coming here!” Bob whispered, in amazement.
The boat had gone out of hearing. The boys were astonished and almost disappointed, after being keyed up to the point of fighting the thing out at last.
“Maybe they’ll come back,” Carl suggested.
But, though they waited in keen expectation for an hour, nothing more was heard. Toward one o’clock they attempted to resume their rest, with Bob on guard. When he called Joe at three o’clock all had been quiet, and Joe finished the night without disturbance. The boat had not returned up the bayou.
Alice had slept through it all, and had to be given the whole sensational story when she appeared the next morning.