to the other; the obligation, as a point of honour, on both sides-- To set the cause above renown, To love the game beyond the prize, To honour while you strike him down The foe that comes with fearless eyes. To count the life of battle good, And dear the land that gave you birth, And dearer yet the brotherhood That binds the brave of all the earth.[16] It was, as it were, the swordsmen's obligatory recognition of each other in 'the Salute' when they first come face to face, ere the sword-blades cross and clash in fight; one of the courtesies of war between destined opponents, wishing one another well until the striking of the appointed hour-- Health and high fortune till we meet, And then--what pleases Heaven! 'Always be polite,' said Bismarck once to Moritz Busch; 'be polite to the foot of the scaffold, but hang your man nevertheless!' Nothing could be nicer than Rodney's attentions, but he was in deadly earnest all the same--he meant, at the proper time, 'to hang his man nevertheless!' [Illustration: THE PITONS OF ST. LUCIA] Another incidental detail. It was while Rodney's fleet off Gros Islet Bay was getting ready for sea that, according to local tradition, the grim little real-life tragedy of the Pitons took place. The Pitons or 'Sugar Loaves,' as, from their general shape, they are to this day commonly called by seafaring men, are two gigantic cones of rock, of volcanic origin, that thrust themselves up out of the sea off the south-westernmost end of St. Lucia, rising abruptly, almost sheer from the water's edge. The larger of the two, the Grand Piton, towers up to a height of some 2720 feet, or nearly seven times the height of St. Paul's Cathedral; the smaller has an elevation some 300 feet less. A number of sailors, the story goes, either stragglers from a watering-party or, possibly, men from the _Russell_, a seventy-four, then undergoing repairs in the _carenage_, managed to get on to the Grand Piton, clambering up on to its lower slopes 'by means of lianes and scrub.' Their intention was to try and scale the huge mass and plant a Jack flag they had brought with them on the boulders at the summit. The Grand Piton is covered almost to the top with dense bush, but there are bare patches and open areas of rock surface and ledges here and there. How many landed or started to climb is not stated, but, according to the story told at St. Lucia to this day, lookers-on with telescopes made out four men, including one man with the flag, more than half-way up. Immediately afterwards one of the party was seen to stagger and fall, and then roll down a little way and disappear. The others went on until some two or three hundred feet higher up, when a second man dropped. The two survivors went on steadily higher still, and then suddenly one of the two was seen to go down. His companion apparently took no notice. He pressed on with his flag, intent only on getting to the top. He nearly succeeded. The last man seemed to