Devine, who could not hear anything, felt horribly anxious as to what their opponents might be doing.

Suddenly there was a fresh rustling among the undergrowth, and Saunders thrust the rifle into his companion's hands.
"Crawling in at the back of us! Let them see you on the opposite side!" he said.
Devine wriggled through the fern, and, though he knew that this was rash, stood up where the moonlight fell upon him, with the long barrel glinting in front of him.

He fancied, though he could not be certain, that he saw a shadowy figure flit back among the trees, and in any case the rustling died away again.

After that he crawled back to Saunders, for, as he admitted afterward, he did not like standing on the other side of that thicket alone.
He subsequently repeated the maneuver several times, and Saunders once or twice answered the jumpers' warnings with a sardonic invitation to remove the post.

Neither of them afterward was sure how long the horrible tension lasted, though they agreed that a very little more of it would probably have broken down their nerve; but at length a faint sound came out of the shadows down the valley.