midnight
The light of a full tropic moon threw the shadow of the roof over them like a soft , brown velvet pall . They were to be buried between day-break and sunrise , that the men who buried them might escape the heat of the day . The American picket lines had been posted a quarter of a mile beyond the church , near which no other guards had been placed . Not long after midnight a surgeon , one of the two men left on duty in the church , happened to look out through a broken window towards the shed , and in the shadow , against the open moonlight-flooded field beyond , saw something moving . Looking close he could make out the slim , brown figure of a native passing swiftly from one covered form to another , and turning back the cocoanut-fibre cloth to look at each dead man 's face . Calling the man who was working with him the surgeon pointed out the man beneath the shed to him . `` That fellow has no business there , '' he said , `` He has slipped through the lines in some way .