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Trapped by Malays: A Tale of Bayonet and Kris, a fiction by George Manville Fenn |
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Chapter 15. Peter's Sentry-Go |
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_ CHAPTER FIFTEEN. PETER'S SENTRY-GO Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp, up and down on the regular beat, sometimes in the full silvery moonlight, sometimes in the shade cast by the hut; one minute only the footsteps to break the silence, or the wallowing plash of one of the great reptiles that haunted the river-deeps. "That's cheerful!" muttered the sentry. "Ain't so bad, though, as old Joe made it out when he was doing his sentry-go below there, close to the water. My word, how clear it is to-night! I should just like to have a regular old-fashioned sentry-box down there, close to the landing-place, with a good, strong door to it as one could fasten tight, and loopholes in the sides, and plenty of cartridges ready for a night's shooting. I'd let some of 'em have it! Wouldn't it make 'em savage, though! They'd come out and turn the box over if it was not well pegged down. Wouldn't do much good, though, if I hit every time, for lots more of the ugly beggars would come. Mister Archie says they lay eggs. Pretty chickens they must be when they are hatched. Hullo! what boat's that?" For the plashing of poles reached his ears, and the dark form of a good-sized sampan came round a curve, with its attap awning glistening softly like dead silver in the moonlight. The sentry waited in the shade of the hut till the boat came nearer, and then challenged, when a familiar voice responded: "That you, Peter Pegg?" "Mister Archie, sir! Yes, sir." "It's all right. We are going up the river a little way in the moonlight. Beautiful night!" "Yes, sir; lovely, sir. I'd be on the lookout, sir, though." "What for?" "Them alligator things, sir. I have heard a good many of them knocking about there." "Oh, they won't come near us with the men splashing as they pole us along." The boat passed on, and as the sentry had a glimpse of a white face and the folds of a veil he stood musing and watching till the boat had passed and disappeared. "No," he thought, "I don't suppose the brutes will go near them. They soon scuttle off when they hear a splash. Nice to be him, enj'ying hisself with his lady. Wonder who it is. Miss Doctor, perhaps. Nice girl. But he's only a boy. Wish I was a officer. I used to think it would be all the same for us when I 'listed. My word, how the Sergeant did lay on the butter and jam! And talked about the scarlet, and being like a gentleman out here abroad with the niggers to wait on us--and then it comes to this! Sentry-go for hours in a lonely place like this here, with crocklygaters hanging about to see if you go to sleep to give them a chance to make a grab. Yes, they make a fellow feel sleepy! Just likely, ain't it?" Peter Pegg's thoughts seemed to animate him, and for a turn or two he changed his pace from a slow march to double. "Steady, my lad!" he muttered. "There ain't no hurry;" and he dropped back into the regular pace, and began thinking about the boat and its occupants. "Nice young lady she is; and I suppose that there Sir Charles is going to make a match with her, for she and Mister Archie always seem just like brother and sister. I suppose he ain't been well. Been precious quiet lately. Can't have offended him, for he was as jolly as could be last time I saw him. He's getting more solid-like and growed up. But my word, what fun we have had together sometimes! And what a row there would have been if we had been found out! It wouldn't have done. But it has cheered me up many a time when I have had the miserables and felt as if I'd like to cut sojering and make for home. It was nice to have a young officer somewheres about your own age ready for a lark. Poor old Mother Smithers, and that brown juice--what do they call it--cutch and gambia?--as dyes things brown. The officers' clean shirts as was washed in that water--haw, haw, haw!--What's that?" The listener brought his piece to the ready, and the _click, click_ of the lock followed instantly upon a shrill cry which seemed to thrill the sentry along every nerve. "Is it the crocs?" he thought; and then close upon the distant sound of blows and a splash or two came in Archie's well-known but now excited tones: "Sentry Pegg! Help!" The young private obeyed his first instinct, and that was, instead of firing, to give the alarm, to run down as fast as he could to the water's edge and plunge in amongst the scattered, overhanging trees, making as well as he could judge for the direction from which the cries had arisen. "Here! Coming! Coming!" he panted, as he rushed in where the trees were thickest, to become, directly after, conscious of a figure starting up from behind a bush that he had just passed, and from which, glittering and flashing, came the sparkle of quite a little cloud of fire-flies. The lad swung himself round as he scented danger, and struck back with the butt of his rifle; but it was only to miss his assailant and expose his head to a blow from the other side--so heavy a stroke from a formidable, club-like weapon that he dropped, with a faint groan, while from the direction of the boat right out towards the middle of the river there was a resumption of the plashing of poles. _ |
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