“Well, of course that’s right but I move that we camp for the night pretty soon. To tell the truth I’m rather tired.”
“Second the motion just as soon as we come to a spring or a brook.”
Fortunately they were not long in finding an ideal place for a camp within a quarter of a mile and Jack declared that he had never seen a more likely brook for trout. And within an hour he had proved his judgment by returning with a full dozen of the largest brook trout Bob had ever seen.
“It’s too bad,” Bob said a little later as they were washing up their supper dishes by the side of the brook, “but we’ll have to stand watch to-night. It wouldn’t be safe for both of us to go to sleep at the same time.”
Jack readily agreed with him and insisted that he would take the first watch but to this Bob would not hear, declaring that he was not tired and that he knew the other was. After some argument Jack yielded after he had made Bob promise that he would call him promptly on the stroke of twelve.
“I’ll have to be careful not to go to sleep on watch this time,” Bob thought as he leaned back against the tree.
Jack had been asleep for nearly two hours and not a sound save the call of an occasional night bird and the distant croaking of a colony of frogs had disturbed the silence of the deep forest.
“Two hours more,” he thought as he glanced at his watch. “And I’m having to fight to keep awake now. Guess I’d better move about a bit.”
He got slowly to his feet and was about to move toward the brook with the intention of plunging his head into the cold water, when a slight sound off to his left caught his ear. A dead branch cracked as if some man or beast had stepped on it.
He strained his ears for several minutes but the sound was not repeated.