He now felt equal to keeping awake for some time.
Outside, by this time, all was darkness, save where a few embers of the recent camp fire glowed dully.
Dick threw himself down, resting his head on his elbows, in the doorway of the tent.
"Now, don't you dare go to sleep!" he ordered himself, repeating the command frequently as a means of aiding himself to keep his eyelids from closing.
"You keep awake!" he half snorted, as he felt drowsiness getting nearer.

He pinched himself, inflicting more than a little pain.
At last, however, the young leader of Dick & Co.

found that his drowsiness had passed for the time being, like the sentinel in war time.
"Now, I think I can keep awake until daylight, if I have to," muttered young Prescott to himself.

"At daylight it won't be so very mean to wake one of the other fellows and let him take my place." Yet, after an hour had passed, Dick was almost doomed to discover that nature had some rights and knew how to assert them.
His eyes had just closed when he awoke with a start.
Someone was treading lightly past the wall of the tent, coming toward the door.

Dick had barely time to glide back behind the flap of the tent when the unknown someone stopped at the doorway.
It was too dark to make out anything distinctly under the canvas, but the stranger listened to the combined snorings of five of the six boys, then chuckled softly.
"Oh! Funny, is it, to think that we're all asleep, and that you may help yourself at will to the food that cost us so much money!" thought Dick wrathfully.