By this time the Doctor and Lieutenant Clogg had joined him, and their faces too wore a hopefuller, more contented look. Life at Pendennis might not prove so irksome after all, with plenty of professional occupation to relieve it. Captain Pond slipped an arm within the Doctor's, and together the three officers made a slow tour of the outer walls, plying Sergeant Topase with questions and disregarding his sulky hints that he, for his part, would be thankful to get a bite of breakfast. "But what have we here?" asked Captain Pond suddenly, coming to a halt. Their circuit had brought them round to the landward side of the fortress, to a point bearing south by east of the town, when through a breach--yes, a clean breach!--in the wall they gazed out across the fosse and along a high turfy ridge that roughly followed the curve of the cliffs and of the seabeach below. Within the wall, and backed by it,--save where the gap had been broken,--stood a group of roofless and half-dismantled outbuildings which our three officers studied in sheer amazement. "What on earth is the meaning of this?" "Married quarters," answered Sergeant Topase curtly. "You won't want 'em." "Married quarters?" "Leastways, that's what they was until three days ago. The workmen be pullin' 'em down to put up new ones." "And in pulling them down they have actually pulled down twelve feet of the wall protecting the fortress?" "Certainly: a bit of old wall and as rotten as touch. Never you fret: the Frenchies won't be comin' along whilst _you're_ here!"--thus Sergeant Topase in tones of fine sarcasm. "By whose orders has this breach been made?" Captain Pond demanded sternly. "Nobody's. I believe, if you ask me, 'twas just a little notion of the contractor's, for convenience of getting in his material and carting away the rubbish. He'll fix up the wall again as soon as the job's over, and the place will be stronger than ever." "Monstrous!" exclaimed Captain Pond. "Monstrous! And you tell us he has done this without orders and no one has interfered!" "I don't see what there is to fret about, savin' your presence," the old sergeant persisted. "And, any way, 'twon't take the man three days at the outside to cart off the old buildings. Allow another four for getting in the new material--" "Seven days! seven days! And Great Britain engaged at this moment in the greatest war of its history! Oh, Doctor, Doctor--these professionals!" Sergeant Topase shrugged his shoulders, and, concluding that his duties as a cicerone were at an end, edged away to the gatehouse for his breakfast.