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“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.