Major Vigoureux | Page 2

to begin over again. Last Wednesday I
wore 'em over to the Off Islands, to practise 'em on the sea-birds; and

last evening after dusk I walked through the town with 'em--yes, sir,
right out past the church and back again, my blood being up, and came
home and cut a square out of the old ones to wrap round the bung of the
water-butt."
The Commandant eyed the sergeant's legs in silence, choking down
half-a-dozen angry criticisms. No; he could not trust himself to speak;
and, after a minute, cramming his clenched fists into the pockets of his
frayed fatigue-jacket, he swung about on his heel and walked out of the
garden with angry strides.
Was the Lord Proprietor making sport of him?--purposely making him
and his garrison the laughing-stock of the Islands?
The Commandant walked up the road with a hot heart: past the
Barracks and beyond them to the down, where a ruined windmill
overlooked the sea. He wanted to be alone, and up here he could count
upon solitude. He wanted to walk off his ill-humour. But the ascent was
steep, and he, alas! no longer a young man; and at the windmill he was
forced to stand still and draw breath.
At his feet lay the Islands, bathed in the light of a fast-reddening
October sunset. Against such a sunset, if the air be very clear, you may
see them from the cliffs of the mainland--a low, dark cloud out in the
Atlantic; and in old days the Commandant had repined often enough at
the few leagues which then had cut him off from the world, from active
service, from promotion.
Gradually, as time went on, he had grown resigned, and with
resignation he had learnt to be proud of his kingdom--for his kingdom
de facto it was. The Islanders had used to speak of him sometimes as
The Commandant, but oftener as The Governor. (They never called
him The Governor nowadays.) His military establishment, to be
sure--consisting of a master-gunner, four other gunners, and two or
three aged sergeants--scarcely accorded with his rank of major; but by
way of compensation he was, as President of the Council of Twelve,
the chief civil magistrate of the Islands.

This requires a word or two of explanation. The Reigning Sovereign of
England retained, as he yet retains, military authority over the Islands,
and from him, through the Commander-in-chief, our friend held his
appointment as military governor. But His Majesty King William III
and his successors, by a lease two or three times renewed, had granted
"all those His Majesty's territories and rocks"--so the wording ran--to a
great and unknown person of whom the Islanders spoke reverentially as
The Duke, "together with all sounds, harbours, and sands within the
circuit of the said Isles; and all lands, tenements, meadows, pastures,
grounds, feedings, fishing places, mines of tin, lead, and coals, and all
profits of the same, and full power to dig, work, and mine in the
premises; and also all the marshes, void grounds, woods, under-woods,
rents, reservoirs, services, and all other profits, rights, commodities,
advantages, and emoluments within the said Isles; and a moiety of all
shipwreck, the other moiety to be received by the Lord High Admiral;
as also all His Majesty's Liberties, Franchises, Authorities, and
Jurisdictions, as had before been used in the said Islands; with full
power to hear, examine, and finally determine all plaints, suits, matters,
actions, controversies, contentions, and demands whatever, moved and
depending between party and party inhabiting the said Isle (all business,
treason, matters touching life or member of man, or title of land; and
also all controversies and causes touching ships, and other things
belonging to the High Court of Admiralty always excepted)"--all this
for an annual rent of Forty Pounds.
The Duke, in short, was by his lease made Lord Proprietor, with all
civil jurisdiction. But, being far too great a man to reside in the Islands,
or even to visit them, he entrusted his business to a resident Agent, and
deputed his magistracy to an elective Council of Twelve, over which
the Commandant for the time being invariably presided. But this
custom (it should be explained) rested on courtesy and not upon right.
Based upon compromise--for the boundaries between the civil and
military jurisdictions were at some points not precisely determined--it
had been found to work smoothly enough in practice, it had stood the
test of a hundred and fifty years when, in the year after Sevastopol,
Major Narcisse Vigoureux arrived in the Islands to take over the
military command, and the Duke nominated him for the Presidency

quite as a matter of course.
As President, he had power, with the assent of the Court, to inflict fines,
whippings, and imprisonment--this last with the limitation that he could
not commit