They could see Captain Bates take a dark lantern from one of the quartermaster's police detail, and scan the ground closely all around where the cannon crackers had been discharged.
"Nothing more doing," muttered yearling Prescott. "We may as well be going back to camp, Greg. But we'll lose a heap of that six hours and a half of sleep tonight."
"Think so?" demanded Holmes moodily.
"Know it. The tac. saw us twice on this path, and he has us marked. The O.C. and the K.C. (commandant of cadets) will hold their own kind of court of inquiry tonight, and you and I are going to be grilled brown."
"We didn't set the cannon crackers off; we didn't see anyone around the monument, and we don't know anything about it."
"All true," nodded Dick. "But we'll have to say it in all the different styles of good English that we can think of."
Dick and Greg reached the encampment, and passed inside the limits, just before they heard the guard marching back.
Then all was ominously quiet over at the tent of the O.C., Captain
Bates.
Tattoo had gone some time ago. Now the alarm clock told the bunkies that they had just three minutes in which to get undressed and be in bed before taps sounded on the drum.
"It's a shame, too," muttered Dick in an undertone. "We won't be any more than on the blanket before the summons from the O.C. will arrive."