Jack was resting in the afternoon with the officers of his company. Illness and fatigue had worn them all to shadows. Pomeroy was wounded, Smith was so haggard as to be hardly recognizable, while Shirley’s spirits had forsaken him, and his chums were too much depressed even to object to the melancholy dirges which he quoted, on the homoeopathic principle, for his own solace. Jack alone retained something of his old cheerfulness, and he was doing his best to hearten his companions, before their turn came to embark, when a messenger entered, saying that Sir John Hope desired to see Mr. Lumsden at once. He hurried off, and returned half an hour later with even greater cheerfulness in his eyes and gait. "What do you think, you fellows?" he cried. "I am not going to sail with you after all!" "Thank heaven!" said Pomeroy, with his head bandaged. Jack smiled at his old chum’s petulance. "I’m not so thankful, Pommy," he said. "But for one thing I’d much rather go home with you. As it is—" "Well, what’s your one thing?" said Smith, as he paused. "I’ll tell you some day. I don’t want to leave Spain just now, that’s all." "What are you going to do, then?" asked Pomeroy. "Hope is sending me with a despatch to Seville, to Mr. Frere, our minister there. I’m to put myself at his orders. The general thinks that people at home will be so mad at this retreat that they’ll howl for leaving Spain to its fate; so it’s very probable that I shall not be long behind you. And you’ll be as fit as fiddles when I see you again." "My own mother wouldn’t know me now," said Smith. "You always have had all the luck. Ten chances to one you’ll be promoted again, while we, what with our wretched condition and that awful Bay of Biscay, shall either be thrown to the fishes on the way home or drop into our graves as soon as we get there." "’Call for the robin redbreast and the wren,’" quoted Shirley dolefully. "Now, Shirley, cheer up!" said Jack. "Don’t give all the fellows the blues." "Faith, no," said the voice of Captain O’Hare, who had heard the last words as he entered. "I’m so weak myself I could hardly kill a fly, but I’m captain o’ this company, and I won’t have my men driven into the dumps. There’s that Wilkes, now. I left him outside, smoking some unmentionable stuff with his mates, singing ’Down among the dead men’, in a voice that would scare an undertaker. ’Faith,’ says I, ’it’s delighted ye ought to be, seeing ye’re a sergeant before your time.’ ’Sir,’ says he, ’I’m only promoted cos poor Sergeant Jones is down among the dead men, and what I want to know is, whether it ain’t my dooty to have the nat’ral feelings of a man and a brother.’ But what’s this I hear, Lumsden?—we leave you behind, eh?" "Yes, though I hope you’ll soon be out again. Surely our government won’t throw up the sponge!"