In less than half an hour after this Creggan was fast asleep, and dreaming that he was bounding over the smooth waves of the blue Minch in his skiff, with poor honest Oscar in the bows, and bonnie wee fair-haired Matty in the stern-sheets all smiles and dimples, her eyes twinkling with fun and merriment.
The dream seemed a very short one.
"Surely," he said, when the bugle sounded, "I cannot have slept an hour."
Yet it was already half-past one, and the moon had westered and was slowly sinking towards the horizon.
Before two breakfast was finished, a ration of rum served out, and the march resumed.
They must walk silently now.
The road was better, so that under the light of the stars only, for the moon had sunk, they had reached the wide straggling city by five o'clock.
Here the forces separated, the marines and blue-jackets lying in wait in a piece of jungle in the east; the soldiers making a silent detour to the back of the city, where was a dense primeval forest.
The guns were a long way behind, but just as the sun was tipping the glorious clouds of palms with its crimson rays, they were dragged in.
The sound of one gun and a bursting shell was to give notice to the soldiers hidden in the forest that the battle had indeed begun.