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Our compliments to Bonyparty:
He’ll find us well and likewise hearty!

The moment for resistance, for effective protest, had passed. There was really nothing for the Colonel to do but accept the situation with the best face he could muster. As the chaise drew up alongside the battery, he did indeed cast one wild look around and behind him, but only to catch a bewitching smile from the Mayoress–a young and extremely good-looking woman, with that soft brilliance of complexion which sometimes marks the early days of motherhood. And Captain Pond, with the Doctor and Second Lieutenant Clogg at his elbow, was standing hat in hand by the carriage-step; and the weather was perfect, and every face in the crowd and along the line of the Die-hards so unaffectedly happy, that–to be brief–the Colonel lost his head for the moment and walked through the inspection as in a dream, accepting–or at least seeming to accept–it in the genial holiday spirit in which it was so honestly presented. Bang-Bang! went the eighteen-pounders, and through the smoke Colonel Taubmann saw the pretty Mayoress put up both hands to her ears.

“Damme!” said Gunner Spettigew that evening, “the practice, if a man can speak professionally, was a disgrace. Oke, there, at Number Two gun, must ha’ lost his head altogether; for I marked the shot strike the water, and ’twas a good hundred yards short if an inch. ‘Hullo!’ says I, and glances toward the chap to apologise. If you’ll believe me, I’d fairly opened my mouth to tell ‘en that nine times out of ten you weren’t such a blamed fool as you looked, when a glance at his eye told me he hadn’ noticed. The man looked so pleased with everythin’, I felt like nudgin’ him under the ribs with a rammer: but I dessay ’twas as well I thought better of it. The regular forces be terrible on their dignity at times.”

Colonel Taubmann had, however, made a note of the Die-hards’ marksmanship, and attempted to tackle Captain Pond on the subject later in the afternoon–albeit gently–over a cup of tea provided by the Mayoress.

“There is a spirit about your men, Captain–” he began.

“You take sugar?” interposed Captain Pond.

“Thank you: three lumps.”

“You find it agrees with you? Now in the Duchy, sir, you’ll find it the rarest exception for anyone to take sugar.”

“As I was saying, there is certainly a spirit about your men–“

“Health and spirits, sir! In my experience the two go together. Health and spirits–the first requisites for success in the military calling, and both alike indispensable! If a soldier enjoy bad health, how can he march? If his liver be out of order, if his hand tremble, if he see black spots before his eyes, with what accuracy will he shoot? Rheumatism, stone, gout in the system–“

Colonel Taubmann stared. Could he believe his eyes, or had he not, less than an hour ago, seen the Looe Artillery plumping shot into the barren sea a good fifty yards short of their target? Could he trust his ears, or was it in a dream he had listened, just now, to Captain Pond’s reasons for marching his men home at a pace reserved, in other regiments, for funerals?–“In my judgment, sir, a step of twenty-four to thirty inches is as much as any man over sixty years of age can indulge in without risk of overstrain, and even so I should prescribe forty-eight steps a minute as the maximum. Some criticism has been levelled at me–not perhaps without excuse–for having enlisted men of that age. It is easy to be wise after the event, but at the time other considerations weighed with me–as for instance that the men were sober and steady-going, and that I knew their ways, which is a great help in commanding a company.”