"What will happen then?"
"Now you're asking a question I can't answer. We've got to wait more or less on the movements of the Blue army, you see. After all, we're on the defensive. Of course, we've taken the offensive to-day, and on the showing that's been made so far the Blues are very much out of it. On the single day the umpires would have to give the decision to General Harkness. He's in a better position right now to prevent an attack on the capital itself than he was before the war began."
Then Durland called the order to sound taps, and in a few minutes the Troop was sound asleep.
Bremerton that night was peaceful and quiet. Over in the telegraph office watchful soldier operators were at work, but the clicking of their keys did not disturb the Scouts in their well-earned rest. For miles all about them there was bustle and activity. Troops, exhausted after a day of work that was very real indeed for a good many of the militiamen, clerks and office workers, camped along the roads and took such rest as they could get. This game was proving as much of an imitation of war as many of them wanted to see.
They had come out expecting a restful, pleasant vacation, with the thrill of a war game as an additional incentive for them to turn out, but they were finding that it closely resembled hard work—the sort of work they got too little of in their crowded days of office routine. Later they would enjoy the recollection of it, but while they were doing it there was a good deal of roughing that wasn't so pleasant.
A late moon made the countryside brilliant, and easy to cover with the eye, and when, a couple of hours after midnight, the roll of rifle firing in the distance, coming like light thunder, awoke the Scouts, who were sleeping three in a room, many of them rushed to their windows.
Jack Danby shared a room with Pete Stubbs and Tom Binns, his particular chums, and he laughed at them.
"What are you looking for, powder smoke?" he asked them. "Don't you remember that they're using smokeless powder in this war? You couldn't see that firing if it were within a hundred yards."
The firing soon became general and Jack himself grew interested.
"That doesn't sound just like outposts coming together," he said. "It seems to me that it's pretty general firing, as if considerable bodies of men were getting engaged. I'd like to be out there and see what's going on."