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The Looe Die-Hards
by
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?“