Major Vigoureux | Page 5

Government, the taxpayer.
Yes; conscience put this plainly enough, and he felt it to be
unanswerable. But if he obeyed conscience and published the
mistake--good Heavens! what would happen to him? Already, three
years ago, the Lord Proprietor had resumed the shipping dues which
had made so welcome an addition to his income. On the strength of
them he had made a too liberal allowance to his brother's widow; and
now to maintain it he was driven to deny himself all but the barest

necessary expenses. Yet how could he cut it down? The two girls were
growing up. Their mother had sent them to a costly school. As it was,
her letters burdened him with complaints of her poverty: for she was a
peevish, grasping woman--poor soul!
Again, if he published the mistake, he impoverished not himself only
but his two sergeants: and Treacher was a married man. He often
drugged his conscience with this. But his conscience, being healthy,
was soon awake and tormenting him.
It humiliated him, too. Government, which sent him his full pay, never
sent him stores, ammunition, or clothing for his men. He wanted no
ammunition; but his men needed clothing--and he dared not ask for it.
Their uniforms were (as Miss Gabriel had more than once pointedly
asserted in his hearing) a scandal to the Islands. Moreover, the price of
hens' eggs ruling high in Garland Town, he had discovered that gulls'
eggs made a tolerable substitute. It was in scrambling after gulls' eggs
for his Commanding Officer that Sergeant Archelaus had ruined his
small-clothes.... And now you know why in the course of his discussion
with Sergeant Archelaus the Commandant had winced more than once.
Worst of all, the fatal secret tied his tongue under all the many slights
(as he reckoned them) which the Lord Proprietor put on him. No; worst
of all was the self-reproach he carried about in his own breast. But none
the less the Commandant, as a sensitive man, chafed under the Lord
Proprietor's tyranny, which was the harder to bear for being slightly
contemptuous. He felt that all his old friends pitied him while they
turned to worship the rising sun; while, as for Miss Gabriel (who had
never been his friend), he feared her caustic tongue worse than the
devil.
But to attack him thus through his men! Had Miss Gabriel and the Lord
Proprietor conspired to inflict this indignity?
The Commandant was a sincere Christian: ever willing to believe the
best of his kind, incapable of harbouring malice, or, except in the brief
heat of temper, of imputing it to others. In the short three hundred yards
between the Day Point and Windlass Batteries he repented his worst

thoughts. He acquitted his enemies--if enemies they were--of
conspiracy. The coincidence of the two gifts was fortuitous: they had
been offered without guile, if also without sufficient care for his
feelings. But this kind of thing must not happen again, and obviously
the most tactful way to prevent it was, not to remonstrate with Miss
Gabriel or with the Lord Proprietor, but to provide (somehow) his two
sergeants with a re-fit.
The Commandant had arrived at this conclusion and at the Sand Pit
Battery (five thirty-two pounders) almost simultaneously, when, across
the breastwork, he was aware of Mr. Rogers, Lieutenant R. N., and
Inspecting Commander of the Coast-guard, standing at the head of the
slope just outside the fortifications, and conning the sea through a
telescope.
"Hullo!" said Mr. Rogers--a short man with a jolly smile--lowering his
glass and facing suddenly about at the sound of the Commandant's
footfall. "Hullo! and good evening!"
"Good evening!" responded Major Vigoureux.
"Queer-looking sky out yonder."
"So it is, now you come to mention it." The Commandant, shaken out
of his brown study, slowly concentrated his gaze on the western
horizon.
"See that bank of fog? I don't know what to make of it. No wind at all;
the glass steady as a rock; and a heavy swell rolling up from westward.
Take hold of my glass and bring it to bear on the Monk"--this was the
lighthouse guarding the westernmost reef of the Off Islands. "Every
now and then a sea'll hide half the column."
"For my part," said the Commandant, "I've been out of all calculation
with the weather for a week past. It's uncanny for the time of year."
"There's the devil of a rumpus going on somewhere, to account for the
sea that's running," said Mr. Rogers, and checked himself in the act of

handing the telescope across the breastwork, as he caught sight of
Sergeant Treacher's waistcoat, which the Commandant was nervously
shifting from his right arm to his left.
"Hullo!" said Mr. Rogers, again.
"It's--it's a sort of waistcoat," explained the Commandant.
"It may be," said Mr.