nearly midnight before
Darkness had just closed in when I received orders to leave my exalted post and to join the party destined to storm the works at daybreak on the following morning . This was just according to my taste . I had never a fancy to know that work was being done and not to be engaged in it . It was nearly midnight before I joined O'Driscoll and my other friends . I found them sitting round their watch-fires , not so much on account of the cold as to keep off the mosquitoes , and enjoying a good supper , which they ate as they cooked . We had no cloaks , so we sat up all night discussing the probabilities of our success on the morrow . We talked and laughed and joked as if there was nothing particularly serious to be done .