“’St! Forward.” Every now and then Gerard halts and listens; his thoughts are of the precious packet sleeping on his breast.
In fact, it was madness, this night excursion along the most uncertain of foot-paths. Why couldn’t they send up their despatches earlier?
Krayveld had answered that they couldn’t send them before they got them. Gerard shrugged his shoulders in the dark. Despatches from Government were hardly likely, he thought, to be worth a single soldier’s life.
With a feeling of very real relief he reached the rice-fields beyond the wood. He stopped and counted his men. Rear-guard there all right? Forward. Who’s that making his poniard click?
Far in the distance, miles away, lay a couple of sleeping villages; those nearest had been razed to the ground; some brute was howling among the ruins. From the fort rang the beat of the hour, as struck by a sentry on a wooden block, breaking across the solitude with terrifying distinctness. Eleven.
Beyond the rice-fields, through the tall, still grass, and by the sickening marshes, with their reeds and sleeping water-fowl, then up again into the great forest, darkling, dangerous. Into the depths of the forest, deeper, deeper.
“Hist!” In a moment the men had formed round their leader, for the noise of crackling branches resounded in every ear. Again.
The enemy was upon them!
“Kalong. Kalong,” said one of the Amboinese.
“It’s the big bats, sir, out feeding,” echoed the sergeant.