“Oh, no; not that bad. But they’ve got something up their sleeves.”
Guy “went to bed” that night with the horribly humorous suggestion of Prof. Anderson on his mind. This together with the fears earlier expressed concerning the Gulf Stream and a breaking up and turning over of the iceberg, prevented him for several hours from sleeping. He lay near the entrance of the cave a few feet from the fire. Watson, the professor, and Glennon were lying near him, all apparently asleep. On the opposite side of the fire was the watchman. The watches were an hour each, and during the time that Guy lay awake several men were relieved. About midnight according to the boy’s reckoning, Gunseyt took his turn.
During all this time Guy had not spoken to any of the men on watch. He longed to go to sleep and lay quietly in a constant endeavor to lose consciousness and forget the fearfulness of the ever increasing dangers that surrounded him. But it seemed that every fibre of his nervous system was too much alive to encourage a suggestion of slumber. He was very hungry, too, and if it had not been for the one comfort of the warm atmosphere of the cave, there would have been no limit to his wretchedness, mental and physical.
And the appearance of Mr. Gunseyt on duty did not tend to lesson his discomfort and apprehension, but tended rather to increase the latter. No sooner had the man whom Gunseyt relieved laid down than the new sentinel began to look around him in a manner hardly reassuring to the boy who watched him with half-open eyes. The man who last preceded him fell asleep almost immediately, while the leader of the malcontents appeared to observe this with a good deal of satisfaction. Ten minutes elapsed, during which time the watchman kept his eyes fastened on the man who had just lain down. Then he turned to the fire and put on some more fuel. This done, he made a hasty examination of all the supposed sleepers as if to find out if everybody indeed was lost in slumber.
The inspection appeared to satisfy him. He stooped down and gently shook one of the men, who arose quickly as if he had expected such an awakening. Then another and another and another were awakened in like manner, until six men stood around the fire whispering to one another and gazing furtively at their reclining companions. Guy recognized them as the seamen and the passengers who appeared to have accepted Gunseyt as their leader in opposing the saner and more human will of the majority.
As he watched the men, he wondered that Watson and the professor had consented to permit any of them to be on sentinel duty alone. He even wondered why he himself had not made an objection. Probably they were even now bent on some sort of mischief. Presently they turned to the entrance where Gunseyt pushed out the blocks of ice in the lower section of the doorway. Then they got down on their hands and knees, one after another, and crawled out, after which they replaced the blocks of ice, and Guy was unable to see what more they did.
But the boy did not remain quiet “in his bed” after the disappearance of the men. He arose and went to the entrance, where he pulled inward the lower blocks of ice and peered out. He could see their shadowy forms moving diagonally across the lower area. Then he crawled out to get a clearer view, for the night was still cloudy and he could not see a great distance.
“I’ll look into this business a little before I wake anybody up,” he decided.
He stood at the head of the steps leading up to the cave and watched the men as they walked down across the area toward the other side near the water’s edge. Several times some of them looked back, while Guy hugged the wall of ice for concealment.
“My goodness!”