ng brutes are not likely to travel up
there.--Seen or heard anything else, Smithers?"

"No, sir. I shouldn't think anybody else would want to come."

The officers stood talking to the man a few minutes, and then turned off
to return to their quarters, while Private Smithers hugged himself with
satisfaction as he picked up the still burning half-cigar the officer
had thrown away, carefully put it out, and deposited it in his
cartridge-box.

"You will do to cut up fine for finishing in a pipe to-morrow, my
jockey," he said.

He stood listening till the faint sounds of his visitors' voices had
completely died away, and then he settled himself by the hut.

"This is jolly," he muttered. "One's safe enough here. That's a
capital lookout, for one quite looks down on the water. Yes; no boat
could come up here without my hearing it, and I should see any one
paddling along. Well, I will say this: our officers are gentlemen, and
never want you to do anything that they wouldn't do theirselves. Glad
the Captain was there too, for I don't suppose Mr Archie Maine would
have ventured to change my place. But I do know what he would have
done. I'd bet anybody sixpence, if there was anybody here to bet with
and I'd got one, that he'd have stopped to keep me company and--I'm
blessed! What's that?"

The man was standing beneath the spreading eaves of the palm-tree and
bamboo hut, quite sheltered by the darkness, and he turned his head on
one side to listen, for quite plainly from somewhere up the river, and
apparently right under the bank on the other side, he heard the sound of
paddles, as if a big boat were approaching.

"Why, I shouldn't wonder," he thought to himself, "if that boat has been
hanging about there waiting till there was no one on the shore. Blessed
if I don't think they heard us talking and fancy our officers have took
the sentry away. Well, I shall jolly soon know. How rum! It must be a
big boat; and it's scared the crocs away, for I can't hear them a bit
now. All right; I'm ready for you, whoever you are. Not fire, eh? But
I'll tell 'em I will if they don't give up. I wonder who it is. Only
fishermen perhaps; but it will give one something to do."

He drew himself a little closer beneath the projecting attap roof, which
extended three or four feet over the sides of the hut, and then felt
startled, for suddenly there fell upon his ears, evidently coming from
somewhere inland, a rustling sound of