ended cheeks his eyes
preserved a pensive melancholy as they dwelt upon his Die-hards
gathered in the rain below him on the long-shore, or Church-end,
wall. At this date (November 3, 1809) the company numbered seventy,
besides Captain Pond and his two subalterns; and of this force four
were out in the boat just now, mooring the practice-mark--a barrel
with a small red flag stuck on top; one, the bugler, had been sent up
the hill to the nine-pounder battery, to watch and sound a call as
soon as the target was ready; a sixth, Sergeant Fugler, lay at home
in bed, with the senior lieutenant (who happened also to be the local
doctor) in attendance. Captain Pond clapped a thumb over the orifice
of his air-cushion, and heaved a sigh as he thought of Sergeant
Fugler. The remaining sixty-four Die-hards, with their firelocks
under their great-coats, and their collars turned up against the
rain, lounged by the embrasures of the shore-wall, and gossiped
dejectedly, or eyed in silence the blurred boat bobbing up and down
in the grey blur of the sea.

"Such coarse weather I hardly remember to have met with for years,"
said Uncle Israel Spettigew, a cheerful sexagenarian who ranked as
efficient on the strength of his remarkable eyesight, which was
keener than most boys'. "The sweep from over to Polperro was
cleanin' my chimbley this mornin', and he told me in his humorous way
that with all this rain 'tis so much as he can do to keep his face
dirty--hee-hee!"

Nobody smiled. "If you let yourself give way to the enjoyment of
little things like that," observed a younger gunner gloomily, "one o'
these days you'll find yourself in a better land like the snuff of a
candle. 'Tis a year since the Company's been allowed to move in
double time, and all because you can't manage a step o' thirty-six
inches 'ithout getting the palpitations."

"Well-a-well, 'tis but for a brief while longer--a few fleeting
weeks, an' us Die-hards shall be as though we had never been. So why
not be cheerful? For my part, I mind back in 'seventy-nine, when the
fleets o' France an' Spain assembled an' come up agen' us--sixty-six
sail o' the line, my sonnies, besides frigates an' corvettes to the
amount o' twenty-five or thirty, all as plain as the nose on your
face: an' the alarm guns goin', up to Plymouth, an' the signals
hoisted at Maker Tower--a bloody flag at the pole an' two blue 'uns
at the outriggers. Four days they laid to, an' I mind the first ti