"For my part," declared Miss Sally, hardily, "I shall go to Lerryn." "Sally!" "It used to be great fun. In later years mamma disapproved, but there is (may I confess it?) this to be said for war, that beneath its awful frown--under cover of what I may venture to call the shaking of its gory locks--you can do a heap of things you wouldn't dream of under ordinary circumstances. Life, though more precarious, becomes distinctly less artificial. Two years ago, for instance, lulled in a false security by the so-called Peace of Amiens, I should as soon have thought of flying through the air." "Has it occurred to you," Miss Pescod suggested, "what might happen if the Corsican, taking advantage to-night of our dear Major's temporary absence--" "Don't!" Miss Sally interrupted with a shiver. "Oh, decidedly I shall go to Lerryn to-night! On second thoughts it would be only proper." On the dark waters below them, beyond the Quay, a hoarse military voice gave the command to "Give way!" One by one on the fast-dropping tide the boats, keeping good order, headed for the harbour's mouth. The Major led. _O navis, referent_ . . . Think, I pray you, of Wolfe dropping down the dark St. Lawrence; of Wolfe and, ahead of him, the Heights of Abraham! CHAPTER VII. THE BATTLE OF TALLAND COVE. "Now entertain conjecture of a time When creeping murmur and the poring dark Fills the wide vessel of the universe. . . ." The _avant-garde_ of the Looe Diehards occupied, and had been occupying for two dark hours--in a sitting posture--the ridge of rock which, on its eastern side, sheltered Talland Cove. One may say, considering the heavy dew and the nature of the ridge--of slate formation and sharply serrated--they had clung to it obstinately. Above them the clear and constellated dome of night turned almost perceptibly around its pole. At their feet the tide lapped the beach, phosphorescent, at the last draught of ebb. Somewhere in the darkness at the head of the beach--either by the footbridge where the stream ran down, or in the meadow behind it--lay the main body. A few outposts had been flung wide to the westward, and Captain Pond for the second time had walked off to test their alertness and give and receive the password--"_Death to the Invader_." "And a more cold-running act of defiance I don't remember to have heard--no, not in all my years of service," said Gunner Israel Spettigew, a cheerful sexagenarian, commonly known as Uncle Issy, discussing it with his comrades on the ridge. "There's a terrible downrightness about that word 'death.' Speaking for myself, and except in the way of business, I wouldn' fling it at a cat." "'Tis what we must all come to," said Gunner Oke, a young married man, gloomily shifting his seat. "True, lad, true. Then why cast it up against any man in particular, be he French or English? Folks in glass houses, simmin' to me, shouldn' throw stones."