“Come, play up louder, old man; can’t hear. Nothing like a bit of music now and then. That’s one good in being a soldier: you do have a band, while we poor beggars have to carry a rifle without. But there, a man can drop this when he likes, and a soldier can’t.”
He took a turn or two up and down, and stopped again to look up the steep cliff slope running high above him from the shelf on which his duty lay, this being over one of the spots where it would be possible for a daring cragsman to get down to the sea.
“Shouldn’t mind a glass of beer,” he thought. “Salt in the air, I suppose. Well, I can get that by and by. Lord, what’s a fellow got to grumble about? How would it be to do one’s bit inside! Some of ’em pays pretty dear for their little games, and one can’t help feeling sorry for one now and then. Bah! lot’s of ’em are best there. They’d think no more of coming behind me in the dark and chucking me into the sea than kissing their hands. Ugh!” he ejaculated, with a shudder, as he gripped his piece more tightly, and gave a sharp glance; round and up above him at the black crags. “What a fool I am to think of such things, only a chap can’t help it in such a lonesome place. Well, one side is safe,” he muttered, with a half laugh. “So are the others, stupid poor devils! Not much chance for any of them coming out for a quiet pipe to-night.”
A faint note or two from the distant band on the pier, floated to the warder, and he went on musing:
“Now, I dessay if I was over yonder having a smoke and listening to that music I should think nothing of it, and be for getting back somewhere to have a bit o’ supper; but because I’m here and can’t get near it every tootle of that old cornet sounds ’eavenly; and the lights seem grand. It was just the same down at home; there was our big old apple tree, the Gennet-Moyle, as I could get up when I liked, or knock as many down as I pleased with mother’s clothes props—good apples they was, too; but they wouldn’t do—one always wanted to get over Thompson’s walls to smug those old hard baking pears, which was like nibbling the knobs off the top of the bedposts.”
He laughed until his shoulders shook.
“Poor old Thompson!” he said half aloud. “Said he’d have some of us put in prison for stealing. Wonder whether some of these poor beggars began that way and then went on. Humph! maybe. Well, they should have known better.”
He continued his march up and down for a while, and then stopped once more, grounded his piece, and stood there quite invisible to anyone a few yards away. He went on thinking about the town at the head of the bay, and the music, and of how time was going; and then his thoughts went back to the great body of dangerous criminals shut up in the huge, grim buildings, and of how much depended on the care and diligence of those in charge—a mere handful compared to those they guarded.
“Only we’ve got the law on our side and they haven’t,” he thought; and as the thought ran through his brain he felt the blood pulsate sharply and there was a heavy throb at his heart, for there was a peculiar sound away to his right, high up the steep slope of the cliff, as if a stone had been dislodged and had slipped down a few yards before stopping in a cleft. He stood listening intently, but the sound was not repeated—all was still as death; but the man’s pulses had been stirred, and his heart beat in a manner that was painful.
It was not that he was particularly wanting in courage, but, shut in there by the darkness, it was impossible to keep back the thought that a desperate man who had stolen out or hidden might be lurking close by ready to spring upon him in an unguarded moment, drive him off the cliff shelf which formed his beat, and all would be over in an instant. For a fall there meant death by drowning or the fearful crash on to the rocks below.