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." "I reckon you fellows might find something more cheerful to talk about." Gunner Oke shifted his seat again, and threw a nervous glance seaward.
"William Oke, William Oke, you'll never make a sojer! Now I mind back in 'seventy-nine when the fleets of France an' Spain assembled and come together agen us--sixty-six sail of the line, my billies, besides frigates an' corvettes an' such-like small trade; an' the folks at Plymouth blowing off their alarm-guns, an' the signals flying from Maker Tower--a bloody flag at the masthead an' two blue uns at the outriggers.

Four days they laid to, in sight of the assembled multitude of Looe, an' Squire Buller rode down to form us up to oppose 'em.