THE LOOE DIE-HARDS.

CAPTAIN POND, OF THE EAST and West Looe Volunteer Artillery (familiarly known as the Looe Die-hards), put his air-cushion to his lips and blew. This gave his face a very choleric and martial expression.

Nevertheless, above his suffused and distended 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 time I seed mun, from this very place as it might be where we’m standin’ at this moment, I said ‘Well, ‘tis all over with East Looe this time!’ I said: ‘an’ when ‘tis over, ‘tis over, as Joan said by her weddin’.’ An’ then I spoke them verses by royal Solomon—Wisdom two, six to nine. ‘Let us fill oursel’s wi’ costly wine an’ ointments,’ I said: ‘an’ let no flower o’ the spring pass by us. Let us crown oursel’s wi’ rosebuds, afore they be withered: let none of us go without his due part of our voluptuousness’—”

“Why, you old adage, that’s what Solomon makes th’ ungodly say!” interrupted young Gunner Oke, who had recently been appointed parish clerk, and happened to know.

“As it happens,” Uncle Issy retorted, with sudden dignity—"as it happens, I was ungodly in them days. The time I’m talkin’ about was August ‘seventy-nine; an’ if I don’t mistake, your father an’ mother, John Oke, were courtin’ just then, an’ ‘most too shy to confide in each other about havin’ a parish clerk for a son.”

“Times hev’ marvellously altered in the meanwhile, to be sure,” put in Sergeant Pengelly of the “Sloop” Inn.

“Well, then,” Uncle Issy continued, without pressing his triumph, “‘’Tis all over with East Looe,’ I said, ‘an’ this is a black day for King Gearge,’ an’ then I spoke them verses o’ Solomon. ‘Let none of us,’ I said, ‘go without his due part of our voluptuousness’; and with that I went home and dined on tatties an’ bacon. It hardly seems a thing to be believed at this distance o’ time, but I never relished tatties an’ bacon better in my life than that day—an’ yet not meanin’ the laste disrespect to King Gearge. Disrespect? If his Majesty only knew it, he’ve no better friend in the world than Israel Spettigew. God save the King!”

And with this Uncle Issy pulled off his cap and waved it round his head, thereby shedding a moulinet of raindrops full in the faces of his comrades around.

This was observed by Captain Pond, standing on the platform above, beside Thundering Meg, the big 24-pounder, which with four 18-pounders on the shore-wall formed the lower defences of the haven.

“Mr. Clogg,” he called to his junior lieutenant, “tell Gunner Spettigew to put on his hat at once. Ask him what he means by taking his death and disgracing the company.”

The junior lieutenant—a small farmer from Talland parish—touched his cap, spread his hand suddenly over his face and sneezed.

“Hullo! You’ve got a cold.”

“No, sir. I often sneezes like that, and no reason for it whatever.”

“I’ve never noticed it before.”

“No, sir. I keeps it under so well as I can. A great deal can be done sometimes by pressing your thumb on the upper lip.”

“Ah, well! So long as it’s not a cold—” returned the Captain, and broke off to arrange his air-cushion over the depressed muzzle of Thundering Meg. Hereupon he took his seat, adjusted the lapels of his great-coat over his knees, and gave way to gloomy reflection.

Sergeant Fugler was at the bottom of it. Sergeant Fugler, the best marksman in the Company, was a hard drinker, with a hobnailed liver. He lay now in bed with that hobnailed liver, and the Doctor said it was only a question of days. But why should this so extraordinarily discompose Captain Pond, who had no particular affection for Fugler, and knew, besides, that all men—and especially hard drinkers—are mortal?

The answer is that the East and West Looe Volunteer Artillery was no ordinary Company. When, on the 16th of May, 1803, King George told his faithful subjects, who had been expecting the announcement for some time, that the Treaty of Amiens was no better than waste paper, public feeling in the two Looes rose to a very painful pitch. The inhabitants used to assemble before the post-office, to hear the French bulletins read out; and though it was generally concluded that they held much falsehood, yet everybody felt misfortune in the air. Rumours flew about that a diversion would be made by sending an army into the Duchy to draw the troops thither while the invaders directed their main strength upon London. Quiet villagers, therefore, dwelt for the while in a constant apprehension, fearing to go to bed lest they should awake at the sound of the trumpet, or in the midst of the French troops; scarcely venturing beyond sight of home lest, returning, they should find the homestead smoking and desolate. Each man had laid down the plan he should pursue. Some were to drive off the cattle, others to fire the corn. While the men worked in the fields, their womankind—young maids and grandmothers, and all that could be spared from domestic work—encamped above the cliffs, wearing red cloaks to scare the Frenchmen, and by night kept big bonfires burning continually. Amid this painful disquietude of the public mind “the great and united Spirit of the British People armed itself for the support of their ancient Glory and Independence against the unprincipled Ambition of the French Government.” In other words, the Volunteer movement began. In the Duchy alone no less than 8,362 men enrolled themselves in thirty Companies of foot, horse, and artillery, as well out of enthusiasm as to escape the general levy that seemed probable—so mixed are all human actions.

Of these the Looe Company was neither the greatest nor the least. It had neither the numerical strength of the Royal Stannary Artillery (1,115 men and officers) nor the numerical eccentricity of the St. Germans Cavalry, which consisted of forty troopers, all told, and eleven officers, and hunted the fox thrice a week during the winter months under Lord Eliot, Captain and M.F.H. The Looe Volunteers, however, started well in the matter of dress, which consisted of a dark-blue coat and pantaloons, with red facings and yellow wings and tassels, and a white waistcoat. The officers’ sword-hilts were adorned with prodigious red and blue tassels, and the blade of Captain Pond’s, in particular, bore the inscription, “My Life’s Blood for the Two Looes!"—a legend which we must admit to be...