But our foes, wily as savages always are, had evidently in their recent hand-to-hand struggle with us detected the evidences of our extreme fatigue, and were by no means disposed to allow us much time or opportunity to recuperate our exhausted energies, for the men had scarcely flung themselves upon the ground, where sleep instantly seized upon them, when the canoes were once more put in motion and again the unhappy blue-jackets were called upon to resist an attack. I now began to feel a strong suspicion that the enemy had quite counted upon our being kept upon the alert during the whole of the previous night, the perfect silence which they had maintained being, as they very probably surmised, rather a harassing than a reassuring circumstance to us, and that they fully intended to take the fullest possible advantage of this during the ensuing day. But their heavy losses in killed and wounded had at the same time made them increasingly wary, and for the next hour or two they contented themselves with a continuous series of demonstrations which drew our fire and kept us incessantly on the alert, without actually renewing their attack.
At length the wind dropped away to a flat calm and the rays of the unclouded sun beat remorselessly down upon us with a fierce intensity which in our exhausted condition was positive agony. A burning unquenchable thirst took possession of us, and the men resorted to the water-kegs so incessantly that the water diminished with startling rapidity, and foreseeing the possible difficulty of obtaining a further supply I was at last reluctantly compelled to put them upon an allowance, so that very speedily we had thirst added to our other miseries. And during all this time our aching eyes were every moment directed down the river in the hope, which grew less and less as the day wore on, of detecting the approach of the boats which we felt certain were on their way to effect our rescue.
Chapter Twenty.
Rescued.
Finally the long, harassing, anxious day drew to a close, the sun set, the night-mists gathered once more about us, and the hoped-for rescue had not appeared.
We were by this time completely worn out, and I foresaw that unless the men could obtain a little rest our pertinacious enemies must inevitably prove victorious.
Of course in this matter of rest everything depended upon the behaviour of the foe. If from principle or superstition, or for any other reason, it was their invariable habit to abstain from fighting at night all might yet be well with us, for though our stock of provisions and water was getting low, and the ammunition for our muskets was getting short, I felt convinced that, could our lads but secure three or tour hours of unbroken rest, they were quite equal to holding the battery for another twenty-four hours at least. Unfortunately I knew nothing whatever about the fighting customs of the natives, and was consequently quite without a guide of any kind beyond my own reason. I felt convinced that the blacks had fully realised the advantage to them of our fagged condition during the past day, and had little doubt but that they were acute enough to trace it to its correct source; the question then was, would they allow us to pass an undisturbed night and thus sacrifice an important advantage? I greatly doubted it. But they might allow a few hours’ cessation of hostilities in the hope of lulling us into a feeling of false security, and thus making us the victims of an easy, yet well-executed surprise. The more I thought about the matter the more probable did this course of action appear; and at last I resolved to put it to the test by dividing the men into watches and allowing them an hour’s sleep at a time.
But before doing this I thought I would repeat my experiment of the previous night and endeavour to secure a little more water, and this I did with such signal success that we actually refilled all our breakers, besides giving every man an opportunity to completely slake his thirst.