Stan Lynn: A Boy's Adventures in China

by George Manville Fenn

The manager walked quickly to the nearest opening in the wall of chests and passed through it, leaving Stan to his watch, which he commenced by giving a good searching look up river and down, and then placing his hand behind his ear to listen, before, feeling satisfied that all was right, he stepped to the bottom of the piled-up block of stones, mounted it carefully, rested the butt of his rifle at his feet, felt whether his revolver was within easy reach of his hand, and then began to think about his dream and the strangeness of his imagining that he had walked out to get to the wharf and had then seen his brother-officer, as Blunt seemed to have become now, standing exactly where he had taken his own place.

“All imagination,” he said to himself at last, for he could make nothing else of it, and forcing himself to think of something fresh, he began to peer into the darkness in every direction, and long for his first hour to pass so that he could have something more active to employ his time and go and visit the different posts.

“Let me see,” he mused; “they will challenge me by saying, ‘Who goes there?’ and I shall answer, ‘Stranger, quickly tell’—Nonsense! ‘A friend.’ No, no; that’s wrong. What did Mr Blunt tell me to say? Why, I’ve forgotten the word. I remember that he told me something, but it seems to have gone right out of my head. How stupid, to be sure! I couldn’t have been half-awake after all.

“What shall I do?” thought Stan again, after striving vainly to recall the word. “I must go and ask him again, and that means waking him up. Why, he’ll call me an idiot. I know; I’ll go to the nearest sentry and ask him.”

The lad stopped short in his musings, for a cold chill ran through him at the thought of the risk he would have to run—the idea of the risk coming to his brain with the thought:

“Why, if I can’t give the answer just when he challenges me, he’ll fire and send a bullet through my head.”

The more the lad thought and strove to recall the password, the more confused his brain seemed to grow. Hundreds of words flowed through, but not one which suggested that which was correct. Time, too, was gliding steadily on, and in imagination he felt that he must be getting very near the end of the hour when his duty would lead him to the first post—for what? He felt ready to groan as he told himself that it was to be shot at.

“Whatever shall I do?” he said at last, when he stood on the stone pile fully believing that the time was past, and that if he did not visit the posts the sentries would grow uneasy and give some alarm, the result of which would be that Blunt would wake up; and how could he meet him after being guilty of such a contemptible lapse of duty?

“He’ll look upon me as a complete idiot,” thought the lad; “just, too, when I was trying so hard to behave in a manly way, and making him begin to believe in me. It’s dreadful; it’s horrible! Am I going mad?”

In utter despair, Stan let his rifle-barrel sink into the crook of his left arm, and turning his hands into a binocular, gave a long, careful look up the river, half-expecting to see some tall-sailed junk dropping quietly down the stream. In his excitement he turned trees into masts, and projections from the banks and a solitary long low hut into vessels; but after further inspection he was bound to believe that there was no sign of danger, and at last, with a sigh of weariness, he sank down into a sitting position, with his legs hanging over the side of the pile and his rifle across his knees, to make one more desperate effort to recall the password from the black depths of his brain into which it seemed to have sunk down.