"They have engaged the pickets," said Laguerre.

The volleys were followed by others, and volleys, more uneven,
answered them still more wildly.

"They are driving the pickets back," explained Laguerre. We all stood
looking at him as though he were describing something which he
actually saw. Suddenly from the barracks came the discordant calls of
many bugles, warning, commanding, beseeching.

Laguerre tossed back his head, like a horse that has been too tightly
curbed.

"They are leaving the barracks," he said. He pulled out his watch and
stood looking down at it in his hand.

"I will give them three minutes to get under way," he said. "Then we
will start for the warehouse. When they come back again, they will
find us waiting for them."

It seemed an hour that we stood there, and during every second of that
hour the rifle-fire increased in fierceness and came nearer, and
seemed to make another instant of inaction a crime. The men were
listening with their mouths wide apart, their heads cocked on one
side, and their eyes staring. They tightened their cartridge-belts
nervously, and opened and shot back the breech-bolts of their rifles.
I took out my revolver, and spun the cylinder to reassure myself for
the hundredth time that it was ready. But Laguerre stood quite
motionless, with his eyes fixed impassively upon his watch as though