mes in turn to collect any tubs or barrels that had been
overlooked before.

The men worked well, and a cheer was sent up whenever some barrel was
rolled in from one of the farther dwellings and carried up to the
block-house roof, and filled ready. But at last there was nothing more
to be done in this direction, and we rested from our labours.

So great had been the stress of the previous night, that the men were
ordered to lie down to sleep in turns, so as to be prepared for a fresh
alarm; but it was a long time before I could close my eyes as I lay
under the canvas.

I was weary, of course, but too weary, and though I closed my eyes
tightly, and said I would go to sleep, there was always something to
battle against it. At one time, just as I fancied I was dozing off,
there was the sound of footsteps and a burst of laughter from some of
the children, who raced about in the hot sunshine untroubled by the
dangers that threatened.

As I lay listening, and recognising the sport in which they were
engaged, I could not help wishing that I was a child, and not mixed up
with all these terrors just as if I were a man.

"If we could only be at peace again!" I thought; and I lay wakeful,
still thinking of the garden, the growing fruit, the humming-birds that
whirred about like great insects among the flowers, and emitted a bright
flash every now and then as the sun glanced from their scale-like
feathers.

Then I pictured the orioles too, that pale yellow one with the black
back and wings, and the gay orange and black fellow I so often saw among
the trees. "How beautiful it all used to be!" I sighed. "Why can't
the Indians leave us alone?"

At last I grew drowsy, and lay dreamily fancying it was a hot, still
night at home with the window open, and the cry of the whip-poor-will--
that curious night-jar--coming from out of the trees of the swamp far
beyond the stream where the alligators bellowed and the frogs kept up
their monotonous, croaking roar.

_Buzz_--_oooz_--_oooz_!

"Bother the flies!"

I was wide-awake with the sun glaring on the canvas, and a great fly
banging against it, knocking and butting its head and wings, when all
the time there was the wide opening through which it had come ready for
it to fly out.

"Ugh! You stupid thing," I muttered, pettishly, as I lay watching it
hardly awake, thinking I would get up and catch it, or try to drive it
out; but feeling that if I did I should only kill it or