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The garrison clock had struck eleven before, dog-tired as they were, they had reduced the two dormitories to conditions of cleanliness in which it was possible for self-respecting men to lie down and take their sleep. And so they laid themselves down and slept, in their dreams remembering Looe and their families and rooms that, albeit small, were cosy, and beds that smelt of lavender. Captain Pond had apportioned to each man three fingers of rum, and in cases of suspected catarrh had infused a dose of quinine.

It was midnight before he lay down in his quarters, on bedding he had previously aired before a sullen fire. He closed his eyes–but only to sleep by fits and starts. How could his men endure three weeks of this? He must keep them occupied, amused. . . . He thought of amateur theatricals. . . . Good God! how unsatisfying a supper was biscuit, after a long day’s ride! Was this how the regular army habitually lived? . . . What a pig’s-sty of a barracks! . . . Well, it would rest upon Government, if he buried his men in this inhospitable hole. He raised himself on his pillow and stared at the fire. Strange, to think that only a few hours ago he had slept in Looe, and let the hours strike unheeded on his own parish clock! Strange! And his men must be feeling it no less, and he was responsible for them, for three weeks of this— and for their good behaviour!

Early next morning (Sunday) he was astir, and having shaved and dressed himself by lantern light, stepped down to the gate and roused up the superannuated sergeant with a demand to be conducted round the fortifications.

The sergeant–who answered to the incredible name of Topase–wanted to know what was the sense of worriting about the fortifications at this hour of the day: and, if his language verged on insubordination, his wife’s was frankly mutinous. Captain Pond heard her from her bed exhorting her husband to close the window and not let in the draught upon her for the sake of any little Volunteer whipper-snapper in creation. “What next?” she should like to know, and “Tell the pestering man there’s a bed of spring bulbs planted close under the wall, an’ if he goes stampin’ upon my li’l crocuges I’ll have the law of him.”

Captain Pond’s authority, however, was not to be disobeyed, and a quarter of an hour later he found himself, with Sergeant Topase beside him, on the platform of the eighteen-pounder battery, watching the first rosy streaks of dawn as they spread and travelled across the misty sea at his feet. The hour was chilly, but it held the promise of a fine day; and in another twenty minutes, when the golden sunlight touched the walls of the old fortress and ran up the flagstaff above it in a needle of flame, he gazed around him on his temporary home, on the magnificent harbour, on the town of Falmouth climbing tier upon tier above the waterside, on the scintillating swell of the Channel without, and felt his chest expand with legitimate pride.

By this time the Doctor and Lieutenant Clogg had joined him, and their faces too wore a hopefuller, more contented look. Life at Pendennis might not prove so irksome after all, with plenty of professional occupation to relieve it. Captain Pond slipped an arm within the Doctor’s, and together the three officers made a slow tour of the outer walls, plying Sergeant Topase with questions and disregarding his sulky hints that he, for his part, would be thankful to get a bite of breakfast.

“But what have we here?” asked Captain Pond suddenly, coming to a halt.

Their circuit had brought them round to the landward side of the fortress, to a point bearing south by east of the town, when through a breach–yes, a clean breach!–in the wall they gazed out across the fosse and along a high turfy ridge that roughly followed the curve of the cliffs and of the seabeach below. Within the wall, and backed by it,–save where the gap had been broken,–stood a group of roofless and half-dismantled outbuildings which our three officers studied in sheer amazement.