Middy and Ensign

by George Manville Fenn

He had almost forgotten the incident, when he started slightly and listened, thinking he could hear a whispering, and this was repeated.

He listened intently, but though he felt sure that he could hear voices, still that need not mean danger, for sound passes so easily across the water, that the noise might have come from down lower in the island, or even from the shore across the river.

The whispering ceased, and then he listened in vain for a time, and at last he was just thinking of pacing up and down once more, when certainly there was a faint splash, and on looking in the direction he could see on the dark water what seemed like a dim shadow gliding along.

It might have been a boat or the shadow of a boat, he could not be sure. In fact, there were moments when he doubted whether it was not some ocular illusion brought about by too intently gazing through the gloom.

And there he stood, hesitating as to whether he should fire and give the alarm.

But the next moment he reasonably enough asked himself why he should do so, for there was nothing alarming in the fact of a tiny sampan gliding over the river. It might be only a fisherman on his way to some favourite spot, or perhaps one of the Malays bound up the river, or possibly after all a mere deception.

There seemed to be nothing to merit the alarm being raised, and he stood watching once more the spot where the boat had disappeared. Still he did not resume his march up and down, but recalled the night of the attack, and began to consider how easy it would be for a crafty enemy to land and take them by surprise some gloomy night. Dark-skinned, and lithe of action as cats, they could easily surprise and kris the sentries. In his own case, for instance, what would be easier than for an enemy to lurk on the edge of the thick jungly patch by which the path ran, and there stab him as he passed?

“It would be very easy,” he thought. “Yes; and if I stand here much longer I shall begin to think that I am doing so because I dare not walk beside that dark piece of wood. Still I dare do it, and I will.”

As if out of bravado, he immediately began to pace his allotted post once more, and he had hardly gone half-way when a sharp sound upon his left made him bring his piece down to the present, and wait with bayonet fixed what he looked upon as a certain attack.

Again he hesitated about firing and giving the alarm, for fear of incurring ridicule and perhaps reprimand. He knew in his heart that he was nervous and excitable, being troubled lest any ill should befall the occupants of the residency, and being in such an excited state made him ready to imagine everything he saw to mean danger.