Captain Pond, of the East and West Looe Volunteer Artillery
(familiarly known as the Looe Die-hards), put his air-cushion to his
lips and blew. This gave his face a very choleric and martial
expression.
Nevertheless, above his suffused and distended cheeks his eyes
preserved a pensive melancholy as they dwelt upon his Die-hards
gathered in the rain below him on the long-shore, or Church-end,
wall. At this date (November 3, 1809) the company numbered seventy,
besides Captain Pond and his two subalterns; and of this force four
were out in the boat just now, mooring the practice-mark--a barrel
with a small red flag stuck on top; one, the bugler, had been sent up
the hill to the nine-pounder battery, to watch and sound a call as
soon as the target was ready; a sixth, Sergeant Fugler, lay at home
in bed, with the senior lieutenant (who happened also to be the local
doctor) in attendance. Captain Pond clapped a thumb over the orifice
of his air-cushion, and heaved a sigh as he thought of Sergeant
Fugler. The remaining sixty-four Die-hards, with their firelocks
under their great-coats, and their collars turned up against the
rain, lounged by the embrasures of the shore-wall, and gossiped
dejectedly, or eyed in silence the blurred boat bobbing up and down
in the grey blur of the sea.
"Such coarse weather I hardly remember to have met with for years,"
said Uncle Israel Spettigew, a cheerful sexagenarian who ranked as
efficient on the strength of his remarkable eyesight, which was
keener than most boys'. "The sweep from over to Polperro was
cleanin' my chimbley this mornin', and he told me in his humorous way
that with all this rain 'tis so much as he can do to keep his face
dirty--hee-hee!"
Nobody smiled. "If you let yourself give way to the enjoyment of
little things like that," observed a younger gunner gloomily, "one o'
these days you'll find yourself in a better land like the snuff of a
candle. 'Tis a year since the Company's been allowed to move in
double time, and all because you can't manage a step o' thirty-six
inches 'ithout getting the palpitations."
"Well-a-well, 'tis but for a brief while longer--a few fleeting
weeks, an' us Die-hards shall be as though we had never been. So why
not be cheerful? For my part, I mind back in 'seventy-nine, when the
fleets o' France an' Spain assembled an' come up agen' us--sixty-six
sail o' the line, my sonnies, besides frigates an' corvettes to the
amount o' twenty-five or thirty, all as plain as the nose on your
face: an' the alarm guns goin', up to Plymouth, an' the signals
hoisted at Maker Tower--a bloody flag at the pole an' two blue 'uns
at the outriggers. Four days they laid to, an' I mind the first time
I seed mun, from this very place as it might be where we'm standin'
at this moment, I said 'Well, 'tis all over with East Looe this
time!' I said: 'an' when 'tis over, 'tis over, as Joan said by her
weddin'.' An' then I spoke them verses by royal Solomon--Wisdom two,
six to nine. 'Let us fill oursel's wi' costly wine an' ointments,'
I said: 'an' let no flower o' the spring pass by us. Let us crown
oursel's wi' rosebuds, afore they be withered: let none of us go
without his due part of our voluptuousness'--"
"Why, you old adage, that's what Solomon makes th' _ungodly_ say!"
interrupted young Gunner Oke, who had recently been appointed parish
clerk, and happened to know.
"As it happens," Uncle Issy retorted, with sudden dignity--"as it
happens, I _was_ ungodly in them days. The time I'm talkin' about
was August 'seventy-nine; an' if I don't mistake, your father an'
mother, John Oke, were courtin' just then, an' 'most too shy to
confide in each other about havin' a parish clerk for a son."
"Times hev' marvellously altered in the meanwhile, to be sure," put
in Sergeant Pengelly of the "Sloop" Inn.
"Well, then," Uncle Issy continued, without pressing his triumph,
"''Tis all over with East Looe,' I said, 'an' this is a black day for
King Gearge,' an' then I spoke them verses o' Solomon. 'Let none of
us,' I said, 'go without his due part of our voluptuousness'; and
with that I went home and dined on tatties an' bacon. It hardly
seems a thing to be believed at this distance o' time, but I never
relished tatties an' bacon better in my life than that day--an' yet
not meanin' the laste disrespect to King Gearge. Disrespect? If his
Majesty only knew it, he've no better friend in the world than Israel
Spettigew. God save the King!"
And with this Uncle Issy pulled off his cap and waved it round his
head, thereby shedding a _moulinet_ of raindrops full in the faces
of his comrades around.
This was observed by Captain Pond, standing on the platform above,
beside Thundering Meg, the big 24-pounder, which with four
18-pounders on the shore-wall formed the lower defences of the haven.
"Mr. Clogg," he called to his junior lieutenant, "tell Gunner
Spettigew to put on his hat at once. Ask him what he means by taking
his death and disgracing the company."
The junior lieutenant--a small farmer from Talland parish--touched
his cap, spread his hand suddenly over his face and sneezed.
"Hullo! You've got a cold."
"No, sir. I often sneezes like that, and no reason for it whatever."
"I've never noticed it before."
"No, sir. I keeps it under so well as I can. A great deal can be
done sometimes by pressing your thumb on the upper lip."
"Ah, well! So long as it's not a cold--" returned the Captain, and
broke off to arrange his air-cushion over the depressed muzzle of
Thundering Meg. Hereupon he took his seat, adjusted the lapels of
his great-coat over his knees, and gave way to gloomy reflection.
Sergeant Fugler was at the bottom of it. Sergeant Fugler, the best
marksman in the Company, was a hard drinker, with a hobnailed liver.
He lay now in bed with that hobnailed liver, and the Doctor said it
was only a question of days. But why should this so extraordinarily
discompose Captain Pond, who had no particular affection for Fugler,
and knew, besides, that all men--and especially hard drinkers--are
mortal?
The answer is that the East and West Looe Volunteer Artillery was no
ordinary Company. When, on the 16th of May, 1803, King George told
his faithful subjects, who had been expecting the announcement for
some time, that the Treaty of Amiens was no better than waste paper,
public feeling in the two Looes rose to a very painful pitch.
The inhabitants used to assemble before the post-office, to hear the
French bulletins read out; and though it was generally concluded that
they held much falsehood, yet everybody felt misfortune in the air.
Rumours flew about that a diversion would be made by sending an army
into the Duchy to draw the troops thither while the invaders directed
their main strength upon London. Quiet villagers, therefore, dwelt
for the while in a constant apprehension, fearing to go to bed lest
they should awake at the sound of the trumpet, or in the midst of the
French troops; scarcely venturing beyond sight of home lest,
returning, they should find the homestead smoking and desolate.
Each man had laid down the plan he should pursue. Some were to drive
off the cattle, others to fire the corn. While the men worked in the
fields, their womankind--young maids and grandmothers, and all that
could be spared from domestic work--encamped above the cliffs,
wearing red cloaks to scare the Frenchmen, and by night kept big
bonfires burning continually. Amid this painful disquietude of the
public mind "the great and united Spirit of the British People armed
itself for the support of their ancient Glory and Independence
against the unprincipled Ambition of the French Government."
In other words, the Volunteer movement began. In the Duchy alone no
less than 8,362 men enrolled themselves in thirty Companies of foot,
horse, and artillery, as well out of enthusiasm as to escape the
general levy that seemed probable--so mixed are all human actions.
Of these the Looe Company was neither the greatest nor the least.
It had neither the numerical strength of the Royal Stannary Artillery
(1,115 men and officers) nor the numerical eccentricity of the St.
Germans Cavalry, which consisted of forty troopers, all told, and
eleven officers, and hunted the fox thrice a week during the winter
months under Lord Eliot, Captain and M.F.H. The Looe Volunteers,
however, started well in the matter of dress, which consisted of a
dark-blue coat and pantaloons, with red facings and yellow wings and
tassels, and a white waistcoat. The officers' sword-hilts were
adorned with prodigious red and blue tassels, and the blade of
Captain Pond's, in particular, bore the inscription, "_My Life's
Blood for the Two Looes!_"--a legend which we must admit to be
touching, even while we reflect that the purpose of the weapon was
not to draw its owner's life-blood.
As a matter of mere history, this devoted blade had drawn nobody's
blood; since, in the six years that followed their enlistment, the
Looe Die-hards had never been given an opportunity for a brush with
their country's hereditary foes. How, then, did they acquire their
proud title?
It was the Doctor's discovery; and perhaps, in the beginning,
professional pride may have had something to do with it; but his
enthusiasm was quickly caught up by Captain Pond and communicated to
the entire Company.
"Has it ever occurred to you, Pond," the Doctor began, one evening in
the late summer of 1808, as the two strolled homeward from parade,
"to reflect on the rate of mortality in this Company of yours?
Have you considered that in all these five years since their
establishment not a single man has died?"
"Why the deuce should he?"
"But look here: I've worked it out on paper, and the mean age of your
men is thirty-four years, or some five years more than the mean age
of the entire population of East and West Looe. You see, on the one
hand, you enlist no children, and on the other, you've enlisted
several men of ripe age, because you're accustomed to them and know
their ways--which is a great help in commanding a Company. But this
makes the case still more remarkable. Take any collection of
seventy souls the sum of whose ages, divided by seventy, shall be
thirty-four, and by all the laws of probability three, at least,
ought to die in the course of a year. I speak, for the moment, of
civilians. In the military profession," the Doctor continued, with
perfect seriousness, "especially in time of war, the death-rate will
be enormously heightened. But"--with a flourish of the hand--
"I waive that. I waive even the real, if uncertainly estimated, risk
of handling, twice or thrice a week and without timidity or
particular caution, the combustibles and explosives supplied us by
Government. And still I say that we might with equanimity have
beheld our ranks thinned during these five years by the loss of
fifteen men. And we have not lost a single one! It is wonderful!"
"War is a fearful thing," commented Captain Pond, whose mind moved
less nimbly than the Doctor's.
"Dash it all, Pond! Can't you see that I'm putting the argument on a
_peace_ footing? I tell you that in five years of _peace_ any
ordinary Company of the same size would have lost at least fifteen
men."
"Then all I can say is that peace is a fearful thing, too."
"But don't you see that at this moment you're commanding the most
remarkable Company in the Duchy, if not in the whole of England?"
"I do," answered Captain Pond, flushing. "It's a responsibility,
though. It makes a man feel proud; but, all the same, I almost wish
you hadn't told me."
Indeed at first the weight of his responsibility counteracted the
Captain's natural elation. It lifted, however, at the next
Corporation dinner, when the Doctor made public announcement of his
discovery in a glowing speech, supporting his rhetoric by extracts
from a handful of statistics and calculations, and ending,
"Gentlemen, we know the motto of the East and West Looe Volunteer
Artillery to be '_Never Say Die!_' but seeing, after five years'
trial of them, that they never _do_ die, what man (I ask) will not
rejoice to belong to such a Company? What man would not be proud _to
command it_?"
After this, could Captain Pond lag behind? His health was drunk
amid thunders of applause. He rose: he cast timidity to the winds:
he spoke, and while he spoke, wondered at his own enthusiasm.
Scarcely had he made an end before his fellow-townsmen caught him off
his feet and carried him shoulder high through the town by the light
of torches. There were many aching heads in the two Looes next
morning; but nobody died: and from that night Captain Pond's Company
wore the name of "The Die-hards."
All went well at first; for the autumn closed mildly. But with
November came a spell of north-easterly gales, breeding bronchial
discomfort among the aged; and Black Care began to dog the Commander.
He caught himself regretting the admission of so many gunners of
riper years, although the majority of these had served in His
Majesty's Navy, and were by consequence the best marksmen.
They weathered the winter, however; and a slight epidemic of
whooping-cough, which broke out in the early spring, affected none of
the Die-hards except the small bugler, and he took it in the mildest
form. The men, following the Doctor's lead, began to talk more
boastfully than ever. Only the Captain shook his head, and his eyes
wore a wistful look, as though he listened continually for the
footsteps of Nemesis--as, indeed, he did. The strain was breaking
him. And in August, when word came from headquarters that, all
danger of invasion being now at an end, the Looe Volunteer Artillery
would be disbanded at the close of the year, he tried in vain to
grieve. A year ago he would have wept in secret over the news.
Now he went about with a solemn face and a bounding heart. A few
months more and then--
And then, almost within sight of goal, Sergeant Fugler had broken
down. Everyone knew that Fugler drank prodigiously; but so had his
father and grandfather, and each of them had reached eighty.
The fellow had always carried his liquor well enough, too.
Captain Pond looked upon it almost as a betrayal.
"I don't know what folks' constitutions are coming to in these days,"
he kept muttering, on this morning of November the 3rd, as he sat on
the muzzle of Thundering Meg and dangled his legs.
And then, glancing up, he saw the Doctor coming from the town along
the shore-wall, and read evil news at once. For many of the
Die-hards stopped the Doctor to question him, and stood gloomy as he
passed on. It was popularly said in the two Looes, that "if the
Doctor gave a man up, that man might as well curl up his toes then
and there."
Catching sight of his Captain on the platform, the Doctor bent his
steps thither, and they were slow and inelastic.
"Tell me the worst," said Captain Pond.
"The worst is that he's no better; no, the worst of all is that he
knows he's no better. My friend, between ourselves, it's only a
question of a day or two."
Silence followed for half a minute, the two officers avoiding each
other's eyes.
"He has a curious wish," the Doctor resumed, still with his face
averted and his gaze directed on the dull outline of Looe Island, a
mile away. "He says he knows he's disgracing the Company: but he's
anxious, all the same, to have a military funeral: says if you can
promise this, he'll feel in a way that he's forgiven."
"He shall have it, of course."
"Ah, but that's not all. You remember, a couple of years back, when
they had us down to Pendennis Castle for a week's drill, there was a
funeral of a Sergeant-Major in the Loyal Meneage; and how the band
played a sort of burial tune ahead of the body? Well, Fugler asked
me if you couldn't manage this Dead March, as he calls it, as well.
He can whistle the tune if you want to know it. It seems it made a
great impression on him."
"Then the man must be wandering! How the dickens can we manage a
Dead March without a band?--and we haven't even a fife and drum!"
"That's what I told him. I suppose we couldn't do anything with the
church musicians."
"There's only one man in the Company who belongs to the gallery, and
that's Uncle Issy Spettigew: and he plays the bass-viol. I doubt if
you can play the Dead March on a bass-viol, and I'm morally certain
you can't play it and walk with it too. I suppose we can't borrow a
band from another Company?"
"What, and be the mock of the Duchy?--after all our pride! I fancy I
see you going over to Troy and asking Browne for the loan of his
band. 'Hullo!' he'd say, 'I thought you never had such a thing as a
funeral over at Looe!' I can hear the fellow chuckle. But I wish
something could be done, all the same. A trifle of pomp would draw
folks' attention off our disappointment."
Captain Pond sighed and rose from the gun; for the bugle was sounding
from the upper battery.
"Fall in, gentlemen, if you please!" he shouted. His politeness in
addressing his Company might be envied even by the "Blues."
The Doctor formed them up and told them off along the sea-wall, as if
for inspection. "Or-der arms!" "Fix bayonets!" "Shoul-der arms!"
Then with a glance of inquiry at his Captain, who had fallen into a
brown study, "Rear rank, take open order!"
"No, no," interposed the Captain, waking up and taking a guess at the
sun's altitude in the grey heavens. "We're late this morning: better
march 'em up to the battery at once."
Then, quickly re-forming them, he gave the word, "By the left!
Quick march!" and the Die-hards swung steadily up the hill towards
the platform where the four nine-pounders grinned defiance to the
ships of France.
As a matter of fact, this battery stood out of reach of harm, with
the compensating disadvantage of being able to inflict none.
The reef below would infallibly wreck any ship that tried to approach
within the point-blank range of some 270 yards, and its extreme range
of ten times that distance was no protection to the haven, which lay
round a sharp corner of the cliff. But the engineer's blunder was
never a check upon the alacrity of the Die-hards, who cleaned,
loaded, rammed home, primed, sighted, and blazed away with the
precision of clockwork and the ardour of Britons, as though aware
that the true strength of a nation lay not so much in the
construction of her fortresses as in the spirit of her sons.
Captain Pond halted, re-formed his men upon the platform, and,
drawing a key from his pocket, ordered Lieutenant Clogg to the
store-hut, with Uncle Issy in attendance, to serve our the
ammunition, rammers, sponges, water-buckets, etc.
"But the door's unlocked, sir," announced the lieutenant, with
something like dismay.
"Unlocked!" echoed the Doctor.
The Captain blushed.
"I could have sworn, Doctor, I turned the key in the lock before
leaving last Thursday. I think my head must be going. I've been
sleeping badly of late--it's this worry about Fugler. However, I
don't suppose anybody--"
A yell interrupted him. It came from Uncle Issy, who had entered the
store-hut, and now emerged from it as if projected from a gun.
"THE FRENCH! THE FRENCH!"
For two terrible seconds the Die-hards eyed one another.
Then someone in the rear rank whispered, "An ambush!" The two ranks
began to waver--to melt. Uncle Issy, with head down and shoulders
arched, was already stumbling down the slope towards the town.
In another ten seconds the whole Company would be at his heels.
The Doctor saved their reputation. He was as pale as the rest; but a
hasty remembrance of the cubic capacity of the store-hut told him
that the number of Frenchmen in ambush there could hardly be more
than half a dozen.
"Halt!" he shouted; and Captain Pond shouted "Halt!" too, adding,
"There'll be heaps of time to run when we find out what's the
matter."
The Die-hards hung, still wavering, upon the edge of the platform.
"For my part," the Doctor declared, "I don't believe there's anybody
inside."
"But there _is_, Doctor! for I saw him myself just as Uncle Issy
called out," said the second lieutenant.
"Was it only _one_ man that you saw?" demanded Captain Pond.
"That's all. You see, it was this way: Uncle Issy stepped fore, with
me a couple of paces behind him thinking of nothing so little as
bloodshed and danger. If you'll believe me, these things was the
very last in my thoughts. Uncle Issy rolls aside the powder-cask,
and what do I behold but a man ducking down behind it! 'He's firing
the powder,' thinks I, 'and here endeth William George Clogg!'
So I shut my eyes, not willing to see my gay life whisked away in
little portions; though I feared it must come. And then I felt Uncle
Issy flee past me like the wind. But I kept my eyes tight till I
heard the Doctor here saying there wasn't anybody inside. If you ask
me what I think about the whole matter, I say, putting one thing with
another, that 'tis most likely some poor chap taking shelter from the
rain."
Captain Pond unsheathed his sword and advanced to the door of the
hut. "Whoever you be," he called aloud and firmly, "you've got no
business there; so come out of it, in the name of King George!"
At once there appeared in the doorway a little round-headed man in
tattered and mud-soiled garments of blue cloth. His hair and beard
were alike short, black, and stubbly; his eyes large and feverish,
his features smeared with powder and a trifle pinched and pale.
In his left hand he carried a small bundle, wrapped in a knotted blue
kerchief: his right he waved submissively towards Captain Pond.
"See now," he began, "I give up. I am taken. Look you."
"I think you must be a Frenchman," said Captain Pond.
"Right. It is war: you have taken a Frenchman. Yes?"
"A spy?" the Captain demanded more severely.
"An escaped prisoner, more like," suggested the Doctor; "broken out
of Dartmoor, and hiding there for a chance to slip across."
"Monsieur le Lieutenant has guessed," the little man answered,
turning affably to the Doctor. "A spy? No. It is not on purpose
that I find me near your fortifications--oh, not a bit! A prisoner
more like, as Monsieur says. It is three days that I was a prisoner,
and now look here, a prisoner again. Alas! will Monsieur le
Capitaine do me the honour to confide the name of his corps so
gallant?"
"The Two Looes."
"_La Toulouse!_ But it is singular that we also have a Toulouse--"
"Hey?" broke in Second Lieutenant Clogg.
"I assure Monsieur that I say the truth."
"Well, go on; only it don't sound natural."
"Not that I have seen it"--("Ha!" commented Mr. Clogg)--"for it lies
in the south, and I am from the north: Jean Alphonse Marie Trinquier,
instructor of music, Rue de la Madeleine quatr '-vingt-neuf, Dieppe."
"Instructor of music?" echoed Captain Pond and the Doctor quickly and
simultaneously, and their eyes met.
"And _Directeur des Fetes Periodiques_ to the Municipality of Dieppe.
All the Sundays, you comprehend, upon the sands--_poum poum!_ while
the citizens _se promenent sur la plage_. But all is not gay in this
world. Last winter a terrible misfortune befell me. I lost my
wife--my adored Philomene. I was desolated, inconsolable. For two
months I could not take up my _cornet-a-piston_. Always when I
blew--pouf!--the tears came also. Ah, what memories! Hippolyte, my--
what you call it--my _beau-frere_, came to me and said, 'Jean
Alphonse, you must forget.' I say, 'Hippolyte, you ask that which is
impossible.' 'I will teach you,' says Hippolyte: 'To-morrow night I
sail for Jersey, and from Jersey I cross to Dartmouth, in England,
and you shall come with me.' Hippolyte made his living by what you
call the Free Trade. This was far down the coast for him, but he
said the business with Rye and Deal was too dangerous for a time.
Next night we sailed. It was his last voyage. With the morning the
wind changed, and we drove into a fog. When we could see again,
_peste!_--there was an English frigate. She sent down her cutter and
took the rest of us; but not Hippolyte--poor Hippolyte was shot in
the spine of his back. Him they cast into the sea, but the rest of
us they take to Plymouth, and then the War Prison on the moor.
This was in May, and there I rest until three days ago. Then I break
out--_je me sauve_. How? It is my affair: for I foresee, Messieurs,
I shall now have to do it over again. I am _sot_. I gain the coast
here at night. I am weary, _je n'en puis plus_. I find this
_cassine_ here: the door is open: I enter _pour faire un petit
somme_. Before day I will creep down to the shore. A comrade in the
prison said to me, 'Go to Looe. I know a good Cornishman there--'"
"And you overslept yourself," Captain Paul briskly interrupted, alert
as ever to protect the credit of his Company. He was aware that
several of the Die-hards, in extra-military hours, took an occasional
trip across to Guernsey: and Guernsey is a good deal more than
half-way to France.
"The point is," observed the Doctor, "that you play the cornet."
"It is certain that I do so, monsieur; but how that can be the
point--"
"And instruct in music?"
"Decidedly!"
"Do you know the Dead March?"