"You don't think that we are likely to be attacked, sir, do you?"
"It is possible we may be," the doctor said. "They will know that Captain Clive has set out from here, with the main body, and has left only a small garrison. Of course they have spies, and will know that there are only eighty men here, a number insufficient to defend one side of this fort, to say nothing of the whole circle of the walls. They have already found out that the English can fight in the open, and their experience at Timari will make them shy of meeting us again. Therefore, it is just possible that they may be marching in this direction today, while Clive is going in the other, and that they may intend carrying it with a rush.
"I should say, today let the men repose as much as possible; keep the sentries on the gates and walls, but otherwise let them all have absolute quiet. You can tell the whites, and I will let the Sepoys know, that they will have to be in readiness all night, and that they had better, therefore, sleep as much as possible today. We will take it by turns to be on duty, one going round the walls and seeing that the sentries are vigilant, while the others sit in the shade and doze off, if they can. We must all three keep on the alert, during the night."
Doctor Rae said that he, himself, would see that all went well for the first four hours, after which Charlie should go on duty; and the two subalterns accordingly made themselves as comfortable as they could in their quarters, which were high up in the fort, and possessed a window looking over the surrounding country.
"Well, Tim, what is the matter with you?" they asked that soldier, as he came in with an earthenware jar of water, which he placed to cool in the window. "You look pale."
"And it's pale I feel, your honor, with the life frightened fairly out of me, a dozen times a day. It was bad enough on the march, but this place just swarms with horrible reptiles. Shure an' it's a pity that the holy Saint Patrick didn't find time to pay a visit to India. If he'd driven the varmint into the sea for them, as he did in Ireland, the whole population would have become Christians, out of pure gratitude. Why, yer honor, in the cracks and crevices of the stones of this ould place there are bushels and bushels of 'em. There are things they call centipades, with a million legs on each side of them, and horns big enough to frighten ye; of all sizes up to as long as my hand and as thick as my finger; and they say that a bite from one of them will put a man in a raging fever, and maybe kill him. Then there are scorpions, the savagest looking little bastes ye ever saw, for all the world like a little lobster with his tail turned over his back, and a sting at the end of it. Then there's spiders, some of 'em nigh as big as a cat."
"Oh, nonsense, Tim!" Charlie said; "I don't think, from what I've heard, that there's a spider in India whose body is as big as a mouse."
"It isn't their body, yer honor. It's their legs. They're just cruel to look at. It was one of 'em that gave me a turn, a while ago. I was just lying on my bed smoking my pipe, when I saw one of the creatures (as big as a saucer, I'll take my oath) walking towards me with his wicked eye fixed full on me. I jumped off the bed and on to a bench that stood handy.
"'What are ye yelling about, Tim Kelly?' said Corporal Jones to me.
"'Here's a riotous baste here, corporal,' says I, 'that's meditating an attack on me.'