Major Vigoureux | Page 4

full of manure. The level sun-rays, painting the turf to a
green almost unnaturally vivid, and gilding the straw of the manure,
passed on to flame upon Sergeant Treacher's breast as though beneath
his unbuttoned tunic he wore a corslet of burnished brass. The
Commandant blinked, again removed his glasses, and, having
repolished, resumed them.
"Treacher, what are you wearing?"
"Meanin' the weskit, sir?" asked Treacher.
"Is it a waistcoat?"
"Well, sir, it used to be an antimacassar; but Miss Gabriel had it made
up for me, all the shirts in store bein' used up, so to speak."
Too well the Commandant recognised it; an abomination of crochet
work in stripes, four inches wide, of scarlet, green, orange-yellow, and
violet. For years--in fact ever since he remembered Miss Gabriel's front
parlour--it had decorated the back of Miss Gabriel's sofa.
"She said, sir, that with the autumn drawing on, and the winter coming,
it would cut up nicely for a weskit," Treacher explained.
"Miss Gabriel," began the Commandant, "Miss Gabriel has no
business----"
"No, sir?" suggested Treacher, after a pause.
"You will take it off. You will take it off this instant, and hand it to
me."
"Yes, sir." Treacher obediently slipped off his tunic. "I don't like the
thing myself; it's too noticeable, though warming. Miss Gabriel called it

a Chesterfield."
"It's a conspiracy!" said the Commandant.
CHAPTER II
SERGEANT ARCHELAUS IS RE-FITTED
The Commandant, still with a hot heart, walked for a little way beside
Sergeant Treacher. He carried the offending waistcoat slung across his
arm, and once or twice hesitated on the verge of indignant speech; but
by-and-by seemed to recollect himself, halted, turned, and, parting from
Treacher without more words, marched off for his customary evening
walk around the fortifications.
Let us follow him.
The garrison occupied the heights of a peninsula connected with St.
Lide's by a low sandy isthmus, across which it looked towards the
"country side" of the island, though this country side was in fact
concealed by rising ground, for the most part uncultivated, where
sheets of mesembryanthemum draped the outcropping ledges of granite.
At the foot of the hill, around the pier and harbour to the north and east,
clustered St. Hugh's town, and climbed by one devious street to the
garrison gate. From where he stood the Commandant could almost look
down its chimneys. Along the isthmus straggled a few houses in double
line, known as New Town, and beyond, where the isthmus widened,
lay the Old Town around its Parish Church. These three together made
Garland Town, the capital of the Islands; and the population of St.
Lide's--town, garrison, and country side--numbered a little over
fourteen hundred. Garrison Hill, rising (as we have seen) with a pretty
steep acclivity, attains the height of a hundred and ten feet above sea
level. It measures about three-quarters of a mile in length and a quarter
of a mile in breadth, and the lines of fortification extended around the
whole hill (except upon the north-west side, which happened to be the
most important); a circuit of one mile and a quarter.
[Illustration]

You entered them beneath a massive but ruinous gateway, surmounted
by a bell, which Sergeant Treacher rang regularly at six, nine, and
twelve o'clock in the morning, and at three, six, and nine p.m., and
struck to announce the intervening hours: for the Islands had no public
clock. To the left of this gateway the Commandant always began his
round, starting from King George's Battery, to which in old days the
Islanders had looked for warning of the enemy's approach. Then it had
mounted seven long eighteen-pounders: now--The Commandant sighed
and moved on; past the Duke's Battery (four eighteen-pounders), the
Vixen (one eighteen and one nine-pounder), and along by a breastwork
pierced with embrasures to the important battery on Day Point, at the
extreme south-east. Here five thirty-two pounders--and, three hundred
yards away to the west, in the great Windlass Battery, no fewer than
eleven guns of the same calibre--had grinned defiance at the ships of
France. To-day the grass grew on their empty platforms, the nettles
sprouted from their angles ... and the Commandant--what was he doing
here?
I fear the answer may provoke a smile. He was drawing his pay.
The guns, the garrison, were gone these five years; but by some
oversight of the War Office neither the Commandant nor his two
sergeants had been retired. Regularly, month by month, his pay-sheet
had been accepted; regularly the full amount had been handed to him
by Mr. Fossell, agent at Garland Town for Messrs. Curtis' Bank on the
mainland. Clearly there was a mistake somewhere, and often enough
his conscience smote him, urging that he ought, in honour, to call
attention to it. He was defrauding the Government, and, through the