“That must go soon,” said Drummond cheerily. “I wish I could take your agony-duty for a few hours everyday. Honour bright, I would.”
“I know you would, old chap,” said Bracy, smiling at him; “but I shall beg Graves not to let you go.”
“Nonsense! Don’t say a word,” cried Drummond. “If you do, hang me if ever I confide in you again!”
Bracy laughed softly.
“I am pretty free from scepticism,” he said; “but I can’t believe that. Now you fellows must go. The dragon will be here to start you if you stay any longer. Serve him right, though, Roberts, to let him go on this mad foray, for he’d get wounded, and be brought back and placed under Dame Gee’s hands.”
“Oh, hang it! no; I couldn’t stand that,” cried the young officer; and a few minutes later they left the room, for Drummond to begin grumbling.
“I don’t care,” he said. “If the Colonel gives us leave we must go. You won’t back out, will you?”
“No; for it would be the saving of some of the poor fellows. But we shall see.”
They did that very night, for, instead of the regular cool wind coming down the upper valley, a fierce hot gust roared from the other direction like a furnaces-blast from the plains; and at midnight down came the most furious storm the most travelled of the officers had ever encountered. The lightning flashed as if it were splintering the peaks which pierced the clouds, and the peals of thunder which followed sounded like the falling together of the shattered mountains, while amidst the intense darkness the sentries on the walls could hear the hiss and seething of the rain as it tore by on the rushing winds which swept through gorge and valley.
The next morning the storm broke dark and gloomy, with the rain falling heavily and the river rolling along thick and turbulent, while one of the first things the sentries had to report was the fact that one of the hostile camps—the one nearest to the fort—was being struck.