It might have been from the novelty of the situation, but the night was well on before any of us got to sleep. Tod and Rupert Temple went off first, and next (I thought) Temple did. I did not.
I dare say you’ve never slept four in a bed—and, that, one of littered straw. It’s all very well to lie awake when you’ve a good wide mattress to yourself, and can toss and turn at will; but in the close quarters of a tent you can’t do it for fear of disturbing the others. However, the longest watch has its ending; and I was just dropping off, when Temple, next to whom I lay, started hurriedly, and it aroused me.
“What’s that?” he cried, in a half-whisper.
I lifted my head, startled. He was sitting up, his eyes fixed on the opening we had left in the tent.
“Who’s there?—who is it?” he said again; and his low voice had a slow, queer sound, as though he spoke in fear.
“What is it, Temple?” I asked.
“There, standing just outside the tent, right in the moonlight,” whispered he. “Don’t you see?”
I could see nothing. The stir awoke Rupert. He called out to know what ailed us; and that aroused Tod.
“Some man looking in at us,” explained Temple, in the same queer tone, half of abstraction, half of fear, his gaze still strained on the aperture. “He is gone now.”