An hour’s sentry-go may seem to you but a short spell, but if you had a swarm of agile sharp-sighted savages prowling about you all the time, and knew that your own life and those of others who depended on you would be sacrificed if your vigilance flagged, perhaps you would find it long enough.
It was ten o’clock when Kavanagh was roused to go on; Dobbs was his companion, and Corporal Adams posted them.
“You are to challenge any one approximating this post,” he said; “and if they say ‘friend’ or ‘rounds’ you must stop them and make them give the countersign. If they can’t you must run them in, and if they won’t be run in you must run them through with your bayonet; if they won’t be run through you must wait and see if there’s many of them, and if there is you must shoot. But you mustn’t alarm the camp without reason, mind you.”
And with these somewhat conflicting “must’s” and “must not’s” he left them in the gloom. The position was as uncomfortable a one as Kavanagh had ever been in. His imagination peopled the night around him with supple forms ready to leap upon him from behind every time he turned in walking his beat. I won’t say that either he or Thomas Dobbs was frightened, for that would be a slur on a soldier, and one or the other might have me up for it; but they did not half like it. They had been on about twenty minutes when Kavanagh thought he saw something move by a rock a little in front of him, and the next time he met Dobbs, as they both patrolled to the same spot and turned, he whispered his suspicions to him, and he went with him a few paces back along his beat and gazed in the direction, but could distinguish nothing. Kavanagh did not know whether to challenge or not, but thought it best to wait and watch; perhaps he might have been mistaken.
Presently he heard Dobbs cry, “Who goes there?” in a decidedly startled voice, and he brought his own rifle down to the charge. But immediately afterwards Dobbs said—
“What! Is it you, Hump, old boy, come to do a bit of sentry-go? By jingo, you made me jump!”
And no wonder; in such a ticklish situation, to have something jump upon you in the dark, when all your nerves are on the stretch, must be very startling.
Five minutes passed, and there again by the rock Kavanagh was certain he saw a figure move this time, and he, in his turn, called—
“Who goes there?” again bringing down his bayonet.
There was no reply, and he waited, uncertain what to do next, when Hump suddenly dashed forward with a low, angry growl; and presently exclamations were heard in an unknown tongue indeed, but which, from the accent, did not appear to be blessings.