Rye and Winchelsea to vail their bonnets--to take in sail,
mark you: no trumpery dipping of a flag would satisfy us--and when
they stiff-neckedly refused, had silenced the one town and carried
off the other's chain to hang across our harbour from blockhouse to
blockhouse. Also, was it not a gallant of Troy that assailed and
carried the great French pirate, Jean Doree, and clapped him under
his own hatches?

"The roaring cannons then were plied,
And dub-a-dub went the drum-a;
The braying trumpets loud they cried
To courage both all and some-a."

"The grappling-hooks were brought at length,
The brown bill and the sword-a;
John Dory at length, for all his strength,
Was clapt fast under board-a."

That was why we wore our uniforms embroidered with gold (_dores_).
The Frenchmen, if they came, would understand the taunt.

But most of all we were proud of Solomon Hymen, our Major and our
Mayor of Troy.

I can see him now as he addressed us on the evening of our first
drill, standing beside the two long nineteen-pounders on the Old
Fort; erect, with a hand upon his ivory sword-hilt, his knops and
epaulettes flashing against the level sun. I can see his very
gesture as he enjoined silence on the band; for we had a band, and it
was playing "Come, Cheer Up, My Lads!" As though we weren't cheerful
enough already!

[But "Come, come!" the reader will object. "All this happened a
hundred years ago. Yet here are you talking as if you had been
present." Very true: it is a way we have in Troy. Call it a
foible--but forgive it! The other day, for instance, happening on
the Town Quay, I found our gasman, Mr. Rabling, an earnest Methodist,
discussing to a small crowd on the subject of the Golden Calf, and in
this fashion: "Well, friends, in the midst of all this pillaloo,
hands-across and down-the-middle, with old Aaron as bad as any and
flinging his legs about more boldacious with every caper, I happens
to glance up the hill, and with that I gives a whistle; for what do I
see but a man aloft there picking his way down on his heels with a
parcel under his arm! Every now and then he pulls up, shading his
eyes, so, like as if he'd a lost his bearin's. I glances across to
Aaron, and thinks I, 'Look out for squalls! Here's big brother
coming, and a nice credit _this'll_ be to the family!' . . ."
The historic present, as my Latin grammar used to call it, is our
favourite t