with their hands upon my arms, a third stood behind with a cocked pistol pointed at my head, while the others, seven or eight in number, were helping to his feet the man whom I had struck, who was bleeding freely from a cut over the eye.
‘Take the horse up to Daddy Mycroft’s,’ said a stout, black-bearded man, who seemed to be their leader. ‘It is no mere dragooner hack,[Note I. Appendix] but a comely, full-blooded brute, which will fetch sixty pieces at the least. Your share of that, Peter, will buy salve and plaster for your cut.’
‘Ha, houndsfoot!’ cried the Dutchman, shaking his fist at me. ‘You would strike Peter, would you? You would draw Peter’s blood, would you? Tausend Teufel, man! if you and I were together upon the hillside we should see vich vas the petter man.’
‘Slack your jaw tackle, Pete,’ growled one of his comrades. ‘This fellow is a limb of Satan for sure, and doth follow a calling that none but a mean, snivelling, baseborn son of a gun would take to. Yet I warrant, from the look of him, that he could truss you like a woodcock if he had his great hands upon you. And you would howl for help as you did last Martinmas, when you did mistake Cooper Dick’s wife for a gauger.’
‘Truss me, would he? Todt und Holle!’ cried the other,Billiga M?n Ralph Lauren Pants, whom the blow and the brandy had driven to madness. ‘We shall see. Take that, thou deyvil’s spawn, take that!’ He ran at me, and kicked me as hard as he could with his heavy sea-boots.
Some of the gang laughed, but the man who had spoken before gave the Dutchman a shove that sent him whirling. ‘None of that,’ he said sternly. ‘We’ll have British fair-play on British soil, and none of your cursed longshore tricks. I won’t stand by and see an Englishman kicked, d’ye see,Billiga Ralph Lauren Scarves, by a tub-bellied, round-starned, schnapps-swilling,Billiga Kvinnor Ralph Lauren Kl?nningar, chicken-hearted son of an Amsterdam lust-vrouw. Hang him,Maillot Hongrie Pas Cher, if the skipper likes. That’s all above board, but by thunder, if it’s a fight that you will have,Billiga Nike Free 3.0 V3, touch that man again.’
‘All right,Billiga Belstaff XL500 Replica Jackor, Dicon,Maillot Wanyama,’ said their leader soothingly. ‘We all know that Pete’s not a fighting man, but he’s the best cooper on the coast, eh, Pete? There is not his equal at staving, hooping, and bumping. He’ll take a plank of wood and turn it into a keg while another man would be thinking of it.’
‘Oh, you remember that, Captain Murgatroyd,Argentina Dres Dámské,’ said the Dutchman sulkily. ‘But you see me knocked about and shlagged, and bullied, and called names, and what help have I? So help me, when the Maria is in the Texel next, I’ll take to my old trade, I will, and never set foot on her again.’
‘No fear,’ the Captain answered, laughing. ‘While the Maria brings in five thousand good pieces a year, and can show her heels to any cutter on the coast, there is no fear of greedy Pete losing his share of her. Why, man, at this rate you may have a lust-haus of your own in a year or two, with a trimmed lawn, and the trees all clipped like peacocks, and the flowers in pattern, and a canal by the door,Valencia Dres, and a grlinks:
http://www.inox-gamerz.com/index.php?site=news_comments&newsID=2/
http://www.inox-gamerz.com/index.php?site=news_comments&newsID=2/
http://www.inox-gamerz.com/index.php?site=news_comments&newsID=2/ |
