An hour passed; two hours, three. It was after midnight, and all the boys were sleeping soundly. Jake arose noiselessly and crept to the tree at whose roots Sam had laid his baggage. It was thirty feet or more from any of the boys, and Jake was not afraid of waking them. He fumbled about in Sam's baggage until he felt something hard and round and cold. He drew out a little circular brass box about two and a half inches in diameter, with a glass top to it. It was Sam's compass. He tried hard to raise the glass in some way, but failed. Finally, with much fear, lest he should awaken some of the boys, he struck the glass with the end of his heavy Jack knife and broke it. This admitted his fingers, and taking out the needle of the compass he broke it half in two. Then replacing the brass lid, leaving all the pieces of the ruined instrument inside, he slipped the compass back into its original place and crept back to his bed by the fire. "Now," he thought "I reckon Mr. Sam Hardwicke's long head will be puzzled, and I reckon I'll be even with him, when he gives up that he can't go on, and has to turn back to Camp Jackson. A pretty story he'll have to tell, and wont people want to know how his compass got broke? They'll think it very curious, and maybe they wont suspect that he broke it himself, for an excuse. Oh! wont they though!" He fairly chuckled with delight, in anticipation of Sam's humiliation. He knew that the country south of them was wholly unsettled, a perfect wilderness of woods and canebrakes and swamps, which nobody could go through without some guide as to the points of the compass, and hence he was satisfied that the destruction of Sam's instrument was an effectual way of compelling the young captain to retreat while it was still possible to retrace the trail the party had made in coming. He was so delighted that he could not sleep and hours passed before he closed his eyes. CHAPTER X. A DISTURBANCE IN CAMP. Jake Elliott got very little sleep that night. Indeed it was nearly daylight when he fell asleep and it was one of Sam's marching rules to march early. He waked the boys every morning as soon as it was sufficiently light for them to begin preparing breakfast, and by sunrise they were ready to begin their day's march. This morning it was cloudy and there were symptoms of a coming storm. Sam was up at the first breaking of day, and he hurriedly waked the boys. "Come, boys," he said, "we must hurry or we shall be too late to cross a river that's ahead of us, before it begins to rise. Get breakfast over as quickly as possible, for we mustn't fail to make seventeen miles to-day, and if it rains heavily it'll be bad marching in this swamp. There's higher ground ahead of us for to-morrow, but we mustn't be caught in here by high water in the creeks."