When this duty was accomplished, the officers proceeded to the posts of the several sentinels who had been planted since the last relief, to ascertain if any or either of them had observed aught to justify the belief that an enemy had succeeded in scaling the works.  To all their enquiries, however, they received a negative reply, accompanied by a declaration, more or less positive with each, that such had been their vigilance during the watch, had any person come within their beat, detection must have been inevitable.  The first question was put to the sentinel stationed at the gate of the fort, at which point the whole of the officers of the garrison were, with one or two exceptions, now assembled.  The man at first evinced a good deal of confusion; but this might arise from the singular fact of the alarm that had been given, and the equally singular circumstance of his being thus closely interrogated by the collective body of his officers:  he, however, persisted in declaring that he had been in no wise inattentive to his duty, and that no cause for alarm or suspicion had occurred near his post.  The officers then, in order to save time, separated into two parties, pursuing opposite circuits, and arranging to meet at that point of the ramparts which was immediately in the rear, and overlooking the centre of the semicircular sweep of wild forest we have described as circumventing the fort.

“Well, Blessington, I know not what you think of this sort of work,” observed Sir Everard Valletort, a young lieutenant of the ——­ regiment, recently arrived from England, and one of the party who now traversed the rampart to the right; “but confound me if I would not rather be a barber’s apprentice in London, upon nothing, and find myself, than continue a life of this kind much longer.  It positively quite knocks me up; for what with early risings, and watchings (I had almost added prayings), I am but the shadow of my former self.”

“Hist, Valletort, hist! speak lower,” said Captain Blessington, the senior officer present, “or our search must be in vain.  Poor fellow!” he pursued, laughing low and good humouredly at the picture of miseries thus solemnly enumerated by his subaltern;—­“how much, in truth, are you to be pitied, who have so recently basked in all the sunshine of enjoyment at home.  For our parts, we have lived so long amid these savage scenes, that we have almost forgotten what luxury, or even comfort, means.  Doubt not, my friend, that in time you will, like us, be reconciled to the change.”

“Confound me for an idiot, then, if I give myself time,” replied Sir Everard affectedly.  “It was only five minutes before that cursed alarm bell was sounded in my ears, that I had made up my mind fully to resign or exchange the instant I could do so with credit to myself; and, I am sure, to be called out of a warm bed at this unseasonable hour offers little inducement for me to change my opinion.”

“Resign or exchange with credit to yourself!” sullenly observed a stout tall officer of about fifty, whose spleen might well be accounted for in his rank of “Ensign” Delme.  “Methinks there can be little credit in exchanging or resigning, when one’s companions are left behind, and in a post of danger.”