“A quarter past two,” he announced.
A silence fell on them. Somehow the intimate and homely fact that one of the little company possessed a watch which had not stopped served rather to enhance than allay the sense of peril and abandonment which their brief talk had dispelled for the moment. A soldier who took part in that glorious but terrible retreat from Mons confessed afterwards that his spirit quailed once, and that was when he read the route names on a London suburban omnibus lying disabled and abandoned by the roadside.
The Marble Arch, Edgware Road, Maida Vale and Cricklewood—what had these familiar localities to do with the crash of shell-fire and the spattering of bullets on the pavé? Similarly, the forlorn castaways on Hanover Island felt that a watch was an absurdly civilized thing among the loud-voiced savageries of wind and wave.
The moonlight died away, too, with a suddenness that was almost unnerving. True, the moon had only vanished behind a cloud-bank. But her face was veiled effectually, and the growing darkness soon showed that she would not be visible again that night.
They tried to sleep, but the effort failed. Lack of food was a more serious matter now than mere physical exhaustion. All four were young and vigorous enough to withstand fatigue, and to wake up refreshed after the brief repose they had already enjoyed.
But they were stiff and cramped, and their blood was beginning to yield to a deadly chill. Though they huddled together as closely as possible, there was no resisting the steady encroachment of the bitter cold.
At last Maseden counseled that they all stand up, and, despite the urgent need of conserving their energies, obtain some measure of warmth by stretching their limbs and breathing deeply.
He even suggested that they should sing, but the effort to start a popular chorus was such a lamentable failure that they laughed dismally.
Then he tried story telling. He judged, and quite rightly, that the majority of his hearers would be deeply interested in a recital of his own recent adventures.
Greatly daring, he left out no detail, and, in a darkness which was almost tangible because of its density, he was well aware how alert was every ear to catch the true version of an extraordinary marriage.