omed boats in the camp
and off the coast by Boulogne with intent to invade us, public excitement
in the twin towns of East and West Looe rose to a very painful pitch.
Of this excitement was begotten the East and West Looe Volunteer
Artillery, which the Government kept in pay for six years and then
reluctantly disbanded. The company on an average numbered sixty or
seventy men, commanded by a Captain and two Lieutenants of their own
choosing. They learned the exercise of the great guns and of small arms;
they wore a uniform consisting of blue coat and pantaloons, with scarlet
facings and yellow wings and tassels, and a white waistcoat; and the
ladies of Looe embroidered two flags for them, with an inscription on
each--'_Death or Victory_' on the one--on the other, '_We Choose the
Latter._'

They meant it, too. If the course of events between 1803 and 1809 denied
them the chance of achieving victory, 'tis at least remarkable how they
avoided the alternative. Indeed it was their tenacity in keeping death at
arm's length which won for them their famous sobriquet.

The Doctor invented it. (He was surgeon to the corps as well as to its
senior Lieutenant.) The Doctor made the great discovery, and imparted it
to Captain Pond on a memorable evening in the late summer of 1808 as the
two strolled homeward from parade--the Captain moodily, as became a
soldier who for five years had carried a sword engraved with the motto,
'_My Life's Blood for the Two Looes,_' and as yet had been granted no
opportunity to flesh it.

"But look here, Pond," said the Doctor. "Has it ever occurred to you to
reflect that in all these five years since you first enlisted your
company, not a single man of it has died?"

"Why the devil should he?" asked Captain Pond.

"Why? Why, by every law of probability!" answered the Doctor.
"Take any collection of seventy men the sum of whose ages divided by
seventy gives an average age of thirty-four--which is the mean age of our
corps, for I've worked it out: then by the most favourable rates of
mortality three at least should die every year."

"War is a fearful thing!" commented Captain Pond.

"But, dammit, I'm putting the argument on a _civilian_ basis! I say that
even in time of peace, if you take any seventy men the sum of whose ages
divided by seventy gives thirty-four, you ought in five years to average a
loss of fifteen men."

"Then," murmured Captain Pond, "all I can say is that peace is a fea