“But I’m not going to be bumped off just now, thank you,” Buck said to himself with a grim straightening of the lips. “They won’t dare fire a gun, and they don’t know I’m ready for them and waiting.”
Another hour passed, a tortured, harrowing hour in which he fought sleep desperately with all the limited resources at his command. In spite of his determination to keep his eyes open at any cost, his lids drooped and lifted, drooped and lifted, drooped and were dragged open by sheer will-power. Each time it was more difficult. Just as the water laps inexorably at length over the face of an exhausted swimmer, so these waves of sleep, smothering, clutching, dulled his senses and strove to wrap him in their soft, treacherous embrace.
There came at last a complete wiping out of consciousness, how long or short he never knew, from which he was jarred into sudden wakefulness by a sound. He had no idea what it was nor whence it 118 came. He merely found himself abruptly in full possession of his senses, nerves tingling, moisture dewing his forehead, his whole being concentrated in the one act of—listening!
For what seemed an eternity he could hear nothing save the heavy breathing of sleeping men. Then it came again, a slow, faint, dragging sound that ceased almost as soon as it began.
Some one was creeping stealthily toward him across the cabin floor!
CHAPTER XII
THWARTED
Instantly a sense of elation, tingling as an electric shock, surged over Stratton, and his grip on the Colt tightened. At last he was face to face with something definite and concrete, and in a moment all the little doubts and nagging nervous qualms which had assailed him from time to time during his long vigil were swept away. Cautiously drawing his gun into position, he felt for a match with the other hand and prepared to scratch it against the side of the bunk.