The roar swelled into a crescendo. What seemed like echoes came from
other quarters out of the darkness. The camp was waking.
The noise from the guard-tent waxed louder.
The unknown marauder rose from his seat on Private Jones, and
vanished.
Private Jones also rose. He climbed out of the ditch, shook himself,
looked round for his assailant, and, not finding him, hurried to the
guard-tent to see what was happening.
VII
A CLUE
The guard-tent had disappeared.
Private Jones' bewildered eye, rolling in a fine frenzy from heaven to
earth, and from earth to heaven, in search of the missing edifice,
found it at last in a tangled heap upon the ground. It was too dark to
see anything distinctly, but he perceived that the canvas was rising
and falling spasmodically like a stage sea, and for a similar
reason--because there were human beings imprisoned beneath it.
By this time the whole camp was up and doing. Figures in
_deshabille_, dashing the last vestiges of sleep away with their
knuckles, trooped on to the scene in twos and threes, full of inquiry
and trenchant sarcasm.
"What are you men playing at? What's all the row about? Can't you
finish that game of footer some other time, when we aren't trying to
get to sleep? What on earth's up?"
Then the voice of one having authority.
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