“I’d like to see him laying aloft on a stormy night,” muttered Kennedy. The fuglemen fell back into their places, exactly to time again as far as Hornblower could see, but not exactly enough apparently, as the sergeant-major bellowed his discontent and brought the fuglemen out and sent them back again. Hornblower positively goggled at the ensuing formalities, as the fuglemen strode their three paces forward, all exactly to time like marionettes worked by the same strings, turned their heads to look down the line, and gave the time for detaching the bayonets, for sheathing them, and for returning the muskets to the men’s sides. “Unfix-bayonets!” roared the mounted officer, uttering the first words Hornblower had understood. A third order brought down every musket-butt to earth. A huge sergeant-major, his sash gleaming on his chest, and the silver mounting of his cane winking in the sun, dressed the already perfect line. A shouted order turned every man to face the quayside, the movements being made so exactly together that five hundred boot-heels made a single sound.
The sailors watched as the band ended with a flourish, and one of the mounted officers wheeled his horse to face the column.
The rigid drill, the heavy clothing, the iron discipline, the dull routine of the soldier were in sharp contrast with the far more flexible conditions in which the sailor lived. The sailors standing ready on the quay looked at the soldiers marching up curiously, with something of pity and something of contempt mingled with their curiosity. Two mounted officers rode behind the colour, and after them came the long red serpent of the half-battalion, the fixed bayonets flashing in the sun, while all the children of Plymouth, still not sated with military pomp, ran along with them. The hot sunshine was reflected from the brass instruments behind them the regimental colour flapped from its staff, borne proudly by an ensign with the colour guard round him. Midshipman Hornblower’s unmusical ear caught the raucous sounds of a military band, and soon, with a gleam of scarlet and white and gold, the head of the column came round the corner. “They’re coming,” said Midshipman Kennedy.
0 kommentar(er)
