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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.”