“Right enough. Where’s your old pair of night-glasses; and have ye a gun? If I find the disturber I may want to bend it over his head. I would sooner catch him than kill him.”
“It ain’t a mite hospitable to treat you this way, Cap’n Mike.”
“Pooh, man. Ye do me a favor. ’Twould reconcile me to buying the next farm if there was a chance of a ruction now and then.”
An hour later Captain Michael O’Shea was climbing the long, easy slope of the barn roof. One end of it supported a water-tank built upon a platform of stout timbers. Here the enterprising lookout found room to sit and scrutinize the surrounding woods and fields. The sky was starlit but the darkness had a duskier, more impenetrable quality than on a clear night at sea. O’Shea’s keen vision, accustomed to sweep large and lonely horizons, was rather baffled, but the powerful glasses enabled him to distinguish the vague outlines of the woodland and meadow and pasture boundaries.
In a blithe humor he smiled at the odd situation in which he found himself. Good old Johnny Kent had actually achieved a farm, and here was his commander perched on top of the barn like a weather-cock, and enjoying it, forsooth. His nimble wits had framed the most effective strategy possible. It would be futile to go blundering through the woods on a blind trail. From his elevated station he could see the first spark of fire to glow in any direction. The incendiary would linger to make sure that the fire had fairly caught, and O’Shea hoped to catch him unawares and overpower him.
The silent hours wore on and drew near to midnight when he had promised to arouse Johnny Kent. Nothing suspicious had been descried. A whippoorwill sounded its call with such breathless, unflagging persistence that the sentinel amused himself counting the sweet, monotonous notes and concluded that a vast deal of energy was going to waste.
“That bird is over-engined for its tonnage,” he reflected. “Well, I have stood me watch in worse places than this. ’Tis a shame to turn poor old Johnny out of his bunk. I will stay up here awhile and listen to the long-winded bird and enjoy the pleasure of me own company.”
His back against the water-tank, he could not walk to ward off the drowsiness that was borne on the wings of the soft night wind all laden with the smells of trees and earth and hay-fields. His vigilance relaxed and his thoughts drifted away to other climes and places.
He came out of his revery with a sudden start, convinced that he had been caught napping, for his eyes had failed to detect anything moving in the direction of the barn. But he could hear some one groping about close to the side of the building. A stick snapped, the bushes rustled, and there were other sounds very small yet significant. Captain Michael O’Shea gingerly forsook the little platform and began to slide down the roof, fairly digging his fingers and toes into the shingles with the tenacity of a cat.
The overhanging eaves made it difficult to observe what was going on below. In order to peep over the edge of the roof, the shipmaster was compelled to sprawl upon his stomach with his heels higher than his head and with no purchase by which to maintain his grip. It was a wide-angled roof or he would have tobogganed off into space before his laborious descent carried him as far as the eaves. However, in his trade a man who could not hang on by his eyelids was a lubber of a sailor, and the bold O’Shea wriggled into position an inch at a time.