Of course, I heard it. The Bank--." Here he
checked himself and rubbed his eyes.

"You're dreaming; that's what's the matter with you," said Sergeant
Archelaus, using the familiarity of an old servant. "There's a ship on
the rocks."

"A ship? Where?"

The Sergeant, candle in hand, stepped to the casement, which the
Commandant, following his custom, had opened a little way before
getting into bed.

"Lord knows where she be by this time, if St. Ann's pilots ha'n't found
her. The gun sounded from west'ard, down by the Monk."

"Fog, is it?" asked the Commandant, staring about him and remembering.

"Fog it is," answered Sergeant Archelaus, and added, "Poor souls!"

"Thick?" By this time the Commandant had flung back the bed-clothes and
was thrusting his feet into his worn slippers.

"I never seen a thicker in my born days."

"If we had a gun----"

"Ah--if," agreed Sergeant Archelaus, curtly, and turning, let his voice
rise in a sudden passion. "Why did I wake ye? Set it down to habit.
I've known the time when the sound of a gun would have fetched forty
men out of the Barracks to save life or to take it; and a gun within
thirty seconds to alarm all the Islands. But we! What's the use of us?"

"Get on your coat," said the Commandant, sharply, putting on his
trousers. "Get on your coat and run to the bell--that is, if
Treacher----"

But at this moment the muffled note of a bell began to sound through
the fog, vindicating Treacher's vigilance. Treacher, however, was not
the ringer. The Commandant had scarcely slipped on his fatigue jacket,
and begun to search in the wardrobe for his overcoat, when Treacher's
voice sounded up the staircase, demanding to know if the garrison was
awake.

"Awake?" called back Archelaus. "Of course we be, and coming before you
can sound th' alarm. Reach down the bugle, man--from the rock behind
th' door, there--and sound it."

Treacher sounded. He was out of breath, and the two high notes quavered
broken-windedly; but the Commandant's chest swelled with something of
old pride. The alarm would reach the town, and the town would know that
the garrison had not been caught napping. He snatched at the candle
from the candlestick in Sergeant Archelaus' hand and rammed it into the
socket of a horn lantern he had unhooked from the cupboard.

"Come along, men! Keep sounding, Treacher--keep sounding!"

Even so he had called once--a many years ago--in the trenches under the
Redan. Treacher