What more could he do?
It seemed an ill thing to desert the old man; to leave him alone among the sea-birds. Yet he must.
Putting his arm round the other, he raised his head; then thrust a boulder between the dead man's shoulders to prop him.
A moment he knelt beside the old Commander with closed eyes. Then he bent and kissed the chill forehead.
"Good-bye, sir," he said in breaking voice, and rising to his feet saluted.
III
Old Ding-dong was left alone: his back against the white cliffs for which he had lived and died; his head with a skyward cock; his gaze seaward to where, when the mists rose with the morning, he would see the Colours of his Country waving above those waters that he, and his peers, had made hers for ever.
The old man asked no more.
Tired now, he wished to be alone with his sword, his Bible, and his memories.