Detachment E would set fire to the corn and the hayricks.
Detachment F would horse themselves and ride inland to warn the towns and villages, and make all possible preparations for blowing up the bridges and otherwise impeding the enemy's advance after the rearguard's passage. And so on.
Gunner Sobey, though but a volunteer, possessed that simplicity of intellect which we have come to prize as the first essential in a British soldier. It was not his to reason why; not his to ask how the French had gained a footing in Talland Cove, or how, having gained it, they were to be dislodged. Once satisfied of their arrival, he left them, as his soldierly training enjoined, severely alone. Deplorable as he might deem the occurrence, it had happened; and ipso facto, it consigned him, in accordance with general orders, to Detachment D, with the duties and responsibilities of that detachment. On these then—and at first on these, and these only—he bent his practical, resolute mind. It will be seen if he stopped short with them.
Picking himself up from the dry ditch, intent only on heading for home, he was aware of a dark object on the brink above him; which at first he took for a bramble bush, and next, seeing it move, for a man.
It is no discredit to Gunner Sobey that, taken suddenly in the darkness, and at so hopeless a disadvantage, he felt his knees shake under him for a moment.
"Parley-voo?" he ventured.
The proverb says that a Polperro jackass is surprised at nothing, and this one, which had been browsing on the edge of the ditch, merely gazed.
"I—I ax your pardon," went on Gunner Sobey, still slightly unhinged. "The fact is, I mistook you for another person."
The jackass drew back a little. It seemed to Gunner Sobey to be breathing hard, but otherwise it betrayed no emotion.
"Soh, then! Soh, my beauty!" said Gunner Sobey, and having clambered the ditch, reached out a caressing hand.