“Let me go,” he cried; “don’t keep me back; they all want to keep me back. Do they think I’ll stay below when it’s my watch?”
He staggered a step forward, swayed and collapsed upon the floor in a heap.
Somehow they got him back upon the bench and Sally tucked him in with the blankets and pillows she had brought. Yet the moment his strength revived he was struggling to get up again, shouting and raging at them both. Billy held him down with all his strength but was scarcely able to keep him quiet. At last the old man’s excitement seemed to die down a little and he lay still, apparently quite exhausted. He kept repeating, however, what he had been shouting a moment before.
“It’s my watch,” he insisted over and over in a broken whisper. “Let me go, it’s my watch.”
He lay quiet finally, and Billy and Sally, both quite worn out, leaned limply against either side of the bench.
“Will this horrible night ever end?” thought Billy. “Is there anything left now that can still happen?”
It seemed almost in answer to his unspoken words that there came again a noise above them. It was no faint creaking this time, but the unmistakable sound of running feet, the banging of a door and the slam of a window thrown suddenly wide open. There was a loud shout in the wood outside to the right of them, it was answered immediately by a second, this time from the left, and there was a heavy rustling and crashing as of somebody running at headlong speed through the underbrush. There was a quick, breathless silence, then, above them, the sound of a sharp metallic click.
Sally got up, marched to the fireplace and took down the candle that burned on the mantel.
“I can’t stand it any longer,” she said firmly; “I’m going to see who’s up there.”
“No, no,” cried Billy, “you shan’t; you mustn’t. If you have to find out, I am the one to go.”
“You can’t go,” she returned briefly. “Captain Saulsby will lie still for you, but I can’t do anything with him. You can’t leave him.”
This was so true that Billy was forced to accept it. He did remove his arm for a minute, but the restless patient sat up at once and had to be forced down again among the pillows.
“You see,” said Sally, almost triumphantly, and went on toward the stairs.
