It was three o'clock.
"Is that you, captain?" said a voice from the next room. "Is it time for
you to begin watch again?"
"Yes," said the captain, "it is about time. How do you happen to be
awake, Miss Markham? Ralph! I believe the boy is snoring."
"Of course he is," said Edna, speaking in a low voice. "We cannot expect
such a boy to keep awake, and so I have been on watch. It was easy enough
for me to keep my eyes open."
"It is too bad," said the captain, and then, listening for a moment, he
said: "I truly believe that Maka is snoring, too, and as for that black
fellow over there, I suspect that he sleeps all the time. Miss Markham,
you have been the only person awake."
"Why shouldn't I be?" said she. "I am sure that a woman is just as good
as a man for keeping watch."
"If they should come," thought the captain, as he again sat in the dark,
"I must not try to fight them in the passage. That would have been my
best chance, but now some of them might pick me off from behind. No, I
must fight them in this chamber. I can put everybody else in the middle
apartment. Perhaps before to-morrow night it might be well to bring some
of those loose rocks here and build a barricade. I wish I had thought of
that before."
The captain sat and listened and thought. His listening brought him no
return, and his thinking brought him too much. The most mournful ideas of
what might happen if more than two or three of the desperadoes attacked
the place crowded into his mind.
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