“Yes; Pomp be ebber so quiet. Wait till laugh at him.”
“Who goes there?” came from just ahead, out of the darkness.
“Mass’ George an’ me,” said Pomp, promptly.
I hastened to give the word, and we were allowed to pass on, to be challenged again and again, till we reached the part of the palisade on the farther side of the block-house.
Here the sentry proved to be one of the men who had rowed out to us in Colonel Preston’s boat; and as he asked about my wound and Pomp’s hand, we stopped by him where upon the raised platform he stood, firelock in hand, gazing over the great fence toward the forest.
“So your hurts wouldn’t let you sleep, eh?” he said. “Well, we must pay the Indians off for it if they come nigh; but it’s my belief that they won’t.”
Then he fell to questioning me in a low tone about my adventures, and I had to tell him how Pomp and I escaped.
“I should have liked to have been with you, my lad,” he said. “I’m not fond of fighting; had too much along with Colonel Preston; but I should have liked to have been with you when the arrows were flying.”
“I wish you had been,” I said.
“Do you? Well, come, I like that; it sounds friendly. Yes, I wish I’d been there. The cowards, shooting at people who’ve been soldiers, but who want to settle down into peaceable folk, and wouldn’t interfere with them a bit. I only wish they’d come; I don’t think they’d want to come any more.”