Middy and Ensign

by George Manville Fenn

“I don’t feel much disposed for sleep,” said Tom Long, who looked uneasy.

“You are not well. The heat has overdone you a little. You go and have a good sleep,” said the captain. “To-morrow I hope we shall have the doctor back among us to set us right.”

“I hope so, too,” said Tom Long, gloomily; and going to his quarters he lay down, with his sword and revolver beside him, ready for use.

Adam Gray was off duty, and he, too, had gone to lie down. But he could not sleep, neither did he wish to do anything else but lie there and think about Rachel Linton, and how pale and unhappy she appeared. He longed to speak words of comfort to her, and to say others as well; but he dared not, for his position forbade it. Still he could not help feeling that she did not look unkindly upon him, nor seem to consider him to be one of the ordinary soldiers.

He sighed as he thought of other days, and then lay listening to the humming noise made by the mosquitoes—wondered whether Rachel Linton was asleep or awake—whether, if she was awake, she was thinking of him.

Then he drove away the thoughts with an angry exclamation, and determined to think about her no more. But as he turned his face to the open window, and listened to the faint hum of the night insects, Rachel Linton’s face came back, and he was thinking of her again, and this time in connection with Captain Smithers.

He knew the captain loved her, and instinctively hated him—Private Gray. He felt, too, that by some means or another the captain knew of, and hated him for, his presumptuous love; the more so that Rachel Linton did not seem to care in the slightest degree for the captain’s advances, but rather avoided him.

Private Gray turned again and again, but he could not lie there any longer for the uneasy feeling that tormented him.

The men in the long room slept easily enough, but he could not, and he told himself that he might just as well get up and go and watch with one of the sentries, for then he would be doing something towards protecting the station.

He rose then softly, and fastening on his belt with the bayonet attached, he went cautiously out into the night air, to see that though the stars twinkled brightly, the night was very dark. All was perfectly still, and as he went cautiously round every man seemed to be on the watch, when suddenly a thought struck him which sent a cold shiver through his breast.