"
"Law, miss!" said Lavinia. "Apprentice?"
Cai Tamblyn heard of it in the garden, which was really a small
flagged courtyard leading to the terrace, which again was really a
small, raised platform with a table and a couple of chairs, where the
Major sometimes smoked his pipe and overlooked the harbour and the
shipping. Along each side of the courtyard ran a flower-bed, and in
these Cai Tamblyn grew tulips and verbenas, according to the season,
and kept them scrupulously weeded. He was stooping over his tulips
when Miss Marty told him of the Millennium.
"What's that?" he asked, picking up a slug and jerking it across the
harbour wall.
"It's a totally different thing from the end of the world. To begin
with, Satan is to be taken and bound for a thousand years."
"Oh!" said Cai Tamblyn with fine contempt. "_Him!_"
CHAPTER IV.
HOW THE TROY GALLANTS CHALLENGED THE LOOE DIEHARDS.
That it was the Major's idea goes without saying. At Looe they had
neither the originality for it nor the enterprise.
I have already told you with what sardonic emphasis he quoted the
saying that 'twas hardly worth while for Great Britain to go to war
merely to prove that she could put herself in a good posture for
defence. The main secret of strategy, he would add, is to impose
your idea of the campaign on your enemy; to take the initiative out
of his hands; to throw him on the defensive and keep him nervously
speculating what move of yours may be a feint and what a real attack.
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