“Oh!” ejaculated Cyril bitterly, “and I did try so hard.”
“Course you did, sir, but human nature’s the nat’ralist thing there is, and it will have its own way. I’d say have a snooze, but orders were that you was to watch, and watch you must.”
“Yes,” said Cyril firmly, “and I will keep awake now.”
He kept his word for fully ten minutes, and then his efforts were vain. If the peril had been ten times greater, he would have dropped off all the same; but he had not slept a minute before there was the sharp report of a gun which came bellowing out of the cave’s mouth, and the boy started up once more as if it were he who had been shot; while from close at hand there was a rush of feet, and John Manning fired at once into the darkness, with the result that there was another rush from Cyril’s right.
Chapter Twenty Six.
In the Gorge.
“Well,” cried the colonel, as the echoing died away, “are they coming on?”
“They were, sir, without us knowing it,” said Cyril. “Your shot frightened them, and then Manning fired and startled some more.”