"Only a stone," he said; but he wiped it off, till I told him there was no more showing—he wiped it off very carefully—and then went up the ladder.
Miller hadn’t the faintest idea what time it was—somewhere about midnight, he thought. We were standing near one of the open shutters, and could just see the three or four bluejackets who were guarding it. Outside there was simply a grey black wall of fog. It had settled down so thickly, that you couldn’t see a yard from the house, and was drifting in through the windows all damp and beastly. Everything was pitch dark; I couldn’t see the flames at all (as a matter of fact, the huts had burnt themselves out, but I didn’t know that); and Miller told me that everything had been pretty quiet during the last half-hour, nothing except an occasional shot, and that the Scotchman and Martin were still in the upper room. "We had a stiffish bit of business getting back to the house, sir. There seemed to be thousands of them on top of us, but they seem to have cleared off—some of them—and I’m thinkin’ they may be after going for the Captain’s party."
"Have you heard nothing of them—no firing or anything like that?" I asked; and when he said "No", asked him if he thought they would be able to find their way to us. He scratched his head and wouldn’t give an answer.
"It’s lucky, sir, you picked up that bit of Morse, sir; it’s put new life into all of us."
I was so proud and conceited of myself, that I told him to go and lie down, and that I would look after the lower windows.
"No, I dars’n’t, sir; they’re keeping quiet now; but I’m dreadin’ they’ll be tryin’ to rush us. I durs’n’t, sir. We’ve only got about ten rounds a man left, and it may come to bayonet work, sir, afore we get through the night."
There really wasn’t a sound coming from outside, and it all seemed so dark and moist and "creepy", that I really had a most horrid feeling "inside".
Mr. Ching came down the ladder. "She’s asleep," he said, and I knew that he was disappointed. He began going round the men at the windows, seeing that the ammunition was distributed equally. Some men had only two or three rounds left, and I knew by the sound of his voice that this worried him very much.