The baffled burglar had fled but a few yards, when, casting his eye back, he saw their helplessness.  Losing danger in hatred he came back, not now to rob, but murder, his left hand lifted high and gleaming like his cruel eye.  As he prepared to plunge his knife through the canvas, flash bang! flash bang! bang! came three pistol-shots in his face from the patrol, who were running right slap at him not thirty yards off, and now it was life or death.  He turned and ran for his life, the patrol blazing and banging at him.  Eighteen shots they fired at him, one after another; more than one cut his clothes, and one went clean through his hat, but he was too fleet, he distanced them; but at the reports diggers peeped out of distant tents, and at sight of him running, flash bang went a pistol at him from every tent he passed, and George and Robinson, who had struggled out into the night, saw the red flashes issue, and then heard the loud reports bellow and re-echo as he dodged about down the line, and then all was still and calm as death under the cold, pure stars.

Craake!

They put up their tent again.  The patrol came panting back.  “He has got off—­but he carried some of our lead in him.  Go to bed, captain, we won’t leave your tent all night.”

Robinson and George lay down again thus guarded.  The patrol sat by the tent.  Two slept, one loaded the arms again and watched.  In a few minutes the friends were actually fast asleep again, lying silent as the vast camp lay beneath the silver stars.

Craake!

And now it was cold, much colder than before, darker, too, no moon now, only the silver stars; it makes one shiver.  Nature seemed to lie stark and stiff and dead, and that accursed craake her dirge.  All tended to shivering and gloom.  Yet a great event approached.

Craake!

A single event, a thousand times weightier to the world, each time it comes, than if with one fell stroke all the kingdoms of the globe became republics and all the republics empires, so to remain a thousand years.  An event a hundred times more beautiful than any other thing the eye can hope to see while in the flesh, yet it regaled the other senses, too, and blessed the universal heart.

Before this prodigious event came its little heralds sweeping across the face of night.  First came a little motion of cold air—­it was dead-still before; then an undefinable freshness; then a very slight but rather grateful smell from the soil of the conscious earth.  Next twittered from the bush one little hesitating chirp.

Craake! went the lugubrious quail, pooh-poohing the suggestion.  Then somehow rocks and forest and tents seemed less indistinct in shape; outlines peeped where masses had been.

Jug! jug! went a bird with a sweet jurgle in his deep throat.  Craake! went the ill-omened one directly, disputing the last inch of nature.  But a gray thrush took up the brighter view; otock otock tock! o tuee o o! o tuee oo! o chio chee! o chio chee! sang the thrush, with a decision as well as a melody that seemed to say:  “Ah! but I am sure of it; I am sure, I am sure, wake up, joy! joy!”