"Good-evening," he said. "This is a sortie of mine, understand, and if I have chosen to spare your life, it is for reasons of my own. I am going back into my house, and you would better notify your friends that I am awake and on guard. It may save them much hard work and a little loss of blood."
He slipped back over the ice toward the fort with an agility marvellous in an old and ill man. Despite his calm manner, I had no doubt that fever was still in his veins. Being so nervous and excitable when well, it was natural that he should be calm when ill, especially in certain stages.
I could see him for at least twenty feet, and then he disappeared in the darkness that now clothed the hut like a mask on a man's face. I felt no doubt that he was inside, ready to shoot down the first man who attempted to enter after him.
In this emergency I thought it best to find Crothers, notify him that the attack had failed, and withdraw our forces. I believe a prudent general always withdraws when things go wrong. Moreover, I was getting very cold. Embracing the earth when it has an inch coat of ice on its bosom is no such delightful proceeding.
Putting my ear to the ice, I heard the scraping of Crothers's hobnails not fifteen feet away. I was sure that I was making no mistake this time, and I speedily overhauled him, to find that it was the real Crothers. He coincided with my view that it would be better to withdraw, like the King of France of the ancient rhyme, and try again. He gave a whistle which may have been a part of the Confederate set of signals, though I don't know, and in a few minutes our entire army had retreated and reassembled at our own hut, casualties none, and the enemy still in possession of his defences.
As we had satisfactory proof that the colonel was vigilant, we decided to end the military operations for that night and devote what was left of it to keeping warm. The hut was occupied by Miss Hetherill, whom the doctor reported to be in a sound slumber and doing well. As all the space under shelter was necessarily reserved for the lady, we decided to build a big fire near the hut and sit around it until morning. It was a hard task, owing to the icy condition of the firewood, but we got it to going at last, and the cheerful, crackling blaze put heart in us all. We had no fear that the colonel would come out and shoot at us in the light. He was not that kind of a soldier, and, besides, his plan, as far as we could divine it, was to escape from us, not to inflict any special injury upon us.
Dr. Ambrose was somewhat cast down at our failure to seize the colonel at the first attempt, but his spirits were revived presently, and when I asked him to tell me about some of the old battles in which he and the colonel and the others present except myself had fought, he became animated and time ceased to limp.
An hour of this, and the doctor broke off abruptly. As Crothers and I had been in the thick of the campaign all the time, he suggested that we roll ourselves in our blankets and try to get a little sleep by the fire. We followed his advice, and in five minutes I was dead to the world and its vanities. But presently I was dragged back out of infinite depths and told to sit up and open my eyes.