Page:A Sailor Boy with Dewey.djvu/214

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198
A SAILOR BOY WITH DEWEY.

"Cannot the Spanish soldiers protect the water works?"

"I don't know. They used to have their hands full with the rebels alone. Now they have us Americans to fight in addition."

Longley had but a single cot at hand, and as all could not sleep on that, we told him to keep his resting place and proceeded to make ourselves comfortable on the floor.

It would have been well had one or another remained on the watch, but Dan, Gory, and I were thoroughly fagged out, and Longley had been on guard the night before.

"We'll risk it," said the clerk, as he passed around such blankets as he possessed, not for coverings, as it was too warm for that, but to be made up into such couches as our ingenuity could devise.

We turned in about eleven o'clock and I slept soundly until a little after three in the morning. I awoke with a start and knew at once that some noise had aroused me. I listened, but all was as silent as the grave, excepting for the snoring that came from Matt Gory's corner.

"Something is wrong," I thought, and turned over in the direction of the barred window, close to Longley's couch. There was a faint light, and the sight that I saw filled me with horror.

A man hung to the bars from the outside. In