midnight
I felt almost sorry for them when I thought how they would envy me when they read of the fight in the newspapers . I decided it would be called the battle of Santa Barbara , and I imagined how it would look in the head-lines . I was even generous enough to wish that three or four of the cadets were with me ; that is , of course , under me , so that they could tell afterward how well I had led them . At midnight we filed silently out of camp , and felt our way in the dark through the worst stretch of country we had yet encountered . The ferns rose above our hips , and the rocks and fallen logs over which we stumbled were slippery with moss . Every minute a man was thrown by a trailing vine or would plunge over a fallen tree-trunk , and there would be a yell of disgust and an oath and a rattle of accoutrements . The men would certainly have been lost if they had not kept in touch by calling to one another , and the noise we made hissing at them for silence only added to the uproar .