They knew their one chance of holding on to life lay in their own distrust, watchfulness, dexterity, and that hope, by the very nature of their lives, could not be lasting.

They had doomed themselves.

What, then, could possibly have dwelt in the depths of their minds as they went to their beds on a starry night like this, with mystery in silence and shadow, with time passing surely, and the dark future and its secret approaching every hour--what, then, but hell?
The hell in Duane's mind was not fear of man or fear of death.

He would have been glad to lay down the burden of life, providing death came naturally.

Many times he had prayed for it.