“I quite agree with you, Mr. Gilmore. It’s dog’s work without dog’s food. I don’t mind myself working here with a chopper eight or ten hours a day, but I do like a good supper at the end of it. The worst of it is, that when it is all over it is the troops who get all the credit, while we poor beggars do the greater part of the work. The soldiers are well enough in their way, but they are very little good for hard work. How do you account for that, sir?” “I can only suppose, Dimchurch, that while they get as much food as we do, they have nothing like the same amount of hard work to do.” “That’s it, sir. Why, look at them at Portsmouth! They just go out of a morning and drill on the common for a bit, and then they have nothing else to do all day but to stroll about the town and talk to the girls. How can you expect a man to have any muscle to speak of when he never does a stroke of hard work? I don’t say they don’t fight well, for I own they do their duty like men in that line; but when it comes to work, why, they ain’t in it with a jack-tar. I do believe I could pull a couple of them over a line.” “I dare say you could, Dimchurch, but you must remember that you are much stronger than an ordinary seaman.” “Well, sir, I grant I am stronger than usual, but I should be ashamed of myself if I could not tackle two of them soldiers.” “Yes, but don’t forget they have been cooped up on board a ship for a month, with nothing to keep them in health, and certainly no exercise, while you are constantly doing hard work. If you were to put these men into sailors’ clothes, and give them sailors’ work for six months, they would be just as strong and useful.” “Well, sir, if they are that sort of men why do they go and enlist in the army instead of becoming sailors. It stands to reason that it is because they know that they cannot do work.” “Why, Dimchurch, I have heard that in the great towns girls think as much of soldiers as of sailors.” “Well, that shows how little they know about them. In a seaport, what girl would look at a soldier if she were pretty enough to get a sailor for a sweetheart.” “You are a prejudiced beggar,” Will laughed, “and it is of no use arguing with you. If you had gone as a soldier instead of taking to the sea you would think just the other way.” On the next morning the march was renewed, and in the evening they reached the fort. They had had several severe skirmishes during the day, losing eight killed and twenty-two wounded, but the garrison, consisting of three hundred, surrendered without further resistance as soon as the place was surrounded, and the sailors then rejoined their ships. “Well, I am mighty glad I am back on board,” Dimchurch said to Will the evening they re-embarked. “This marching, and chopping trees, and being shot at from ambushes, doesn’t suit me. There is nothing manly or straightforward about it. Hand to hand and cutlass to cutlass is what I call a man’s work.”