But the first company of the Avengers, tentatively scrambling about the north-west corner to see what sort of watch the English kept, were promptly checked by a dozen bayonets thrust down from above, and having received information, they departed without standing on ceremony. Let it not be thought that I slept much in the power-house. It was altogether too picturesque and vivid for me. My heart beat with a rousing and incommunicable joy. I was again among my own kind. I had done my best to sympathise with those others over the wall. I had tried to help and understand Keller Bey, but though I might wear the red cardigan, follow Garibaldi, run up the "tatter of scarlet" under Keller Bey's orders, my heart beat with the after-guard. My instincts were "yellow"--the rest was but the rash of the blood which came with youth and would pass like a malady of childhood. Small wonder I did not sleep. Into that entrancing and mysterious hangar, hooded and cloaked men stole from nowhere in particular. Each gave a kick or a shake in passing to other men, who, silently rising, cloaked themselves, seized arms, adjusted belts, and so wordlessly clanked away into the dark. Then the new-comers would go over to the embers of the fire on the forge in the corner, where the red glow would reveal him as a pleasant-faced English lad, munching ardently his bread and sausage, or heating his coffee on the coals. In the gloom of the dormitory shake-downs men would talk rapidly, muttering in their sleep. If a man snored too vigorously, Jack Jaikes, or a lieutenant of that considerable sub-chief, would turn him over on his side, or, in extreme case, send him to the boiler-room, where the men had room to snore one against the other. These Jack Jaikes, always reminiscent of Glasgow, called the "Partick Social Warblers," in memory of a certain church glee-club soiree, to enter which he had once paid a "silver collection" in the unfulfilled expectation of "tea and a bag." But that night as I lay I kept awake for the pure joy of knowing myself alive. I loved the breathing of the men about me, the ordered mystery of the comings and goings, the clicking of the telegraphic machine as Jack Jaikes bent over it, even the little circle of golden light which the lamp shed, and the bristly way his moustache had of standing out beyond the wicks of his grimly humorous mouth. I wondered if he ever slept. Certainly he lay down. He had a blanket with which he covered himself, head and all. It was not much of a blanket, being pierced in the centre so that it could be worn with the head thrust through, poncho-wise, as he stalked about. It was full of burnt holes, showing where he had thrown himself down on cinders, some of which had proved too recent.