better.
'Nothing like the open-air life,' he said, as he climbed into his sleeping bag and put his dentures in the empty coffee-cup.
'Hadn't one of us better stay on guard?' asked Peregrine, 'I mean we don't want to be taken unawares.'
Glodstone groped for his false teeth. 'In the first place, no one knows we're here,' he said when he'd managed to find them and get them back in his mouth, 'and in the second, we've come the devil of a long way today and we're going to need all our strength when we reach the Chateau.'
'Oh, I don't know. We've only come about twelve miles and that's not all that far. I don't mind taking the first watch and I can wake you at midnight.'
'I shouldn't if I were you,' said Glodstone, and put his teeth back into the mug. He lay down and tried to make himself comfortable. It wasn't easy. The ground in the hollow was uneven and he had to sit up again to dislodge several stones that had wedged themselves under his sleeping-bag. Even then he was unable to get to sleep but lay there conscious that his hip seemed to be resting on a small mound. He shifted sideways and finally got it settled but only at the expense of his right shoulder. He turned over and found his left shoulder on a stone. Once more he sat up and pushed the thing away, upsetting the coffee mug in the process.
'Damn,' he mumbled and felt around for his teeth. As he did so, Peregrine, who had been peering suspiciously over the edge of the hollow, slid down towards him.
'Don't move another inch,' said Glodstone indistinctly.
'Why not?'
'Because I've mislaid my bloody dentures,' Glodstone mumbled, aware that his authority was being eroded by this latest admission of a physical defect and terrified that Peregrine would step on the damned things. In the end, he found the top plate resting against something that felt suspiciously like sheep droppings. Glodstone shoved it hurriedly back into the mug and made a mental note to wash it carefully in the morning before having breakfast. But the bottom plate was still missing. He reached across for his torch and was about to use it when Peregrine once more demonstrated his superior fieldcraft and his night vision by whispering to him not to turn it on.
'Why the devil not?' asked Glodstone.
'Because there's something moving around out there.'
'Probably a blasted sheep.'
'Shall I slip out and see? I mean if it's one of the swine and we captured him, we could make him tell us how to get into the Chateau and what's going on mere.'
Glodstone sighed. It was a long, deep sigh, the sigh of a man whose bottom plate was still missing while the other was in all probability impregnated with sheep dung and who was faced with the need to explain that it was extremely unlikely that one of the 'swine' (a term he regretted having used so freely in the past) was wandering about on a barren plateau at dead of night.
'Listen,' he hissed through bare gums, 'even if it is one of them, what do you think they're going to think when the...er...blighter doesn't turn up in the morning?'
'I suppose they might think '
'That we're in the neighbourhood and have got him and he's told us he knows. So they'll be doubly on the qui-vive and '
'On the what?'
'On the lookout, for God's sake. And the whole point of the exercise is that we take them by surprise.'
'I don't see how we're going to do that,' said Peregrine. 'After all they know we're coming. That oil trap in the forest '
'Told them we're coming by road, not across country. Now shut up and get some sleep.'
