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 Maillot Islande I had struck, who was bleeding freely from a Maillot Pour Club 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 Chris Tierney Tröjor 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 Rosenborg Dresy me, would he? Todt und Holle!’ cried the other, whom the blow and the brandy had driven to madness. ‘We shall see. Take that, thou Barcelone Femme 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 Aston Villa tricks. I won’t stand by and see an Englishman kicked, d’ye see, by a tub-bellied, round-starned, schnapps-swilling, chicken-hearted son of an Amsterdam lust-vrouw. Hang him, if the skipper likes. That’s all above Arsenal board, but by thunder, if it’s a fight that you will have, touch that man again.’
‘All right, Dicon,’ said their Universidad 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,’ 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 Auston Matthews Tröja Maria is in the Texel next, I’ll Manchester United Fotbalové Dres 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 Kurtka Moncler Kobiety 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 Kurtka Moncler Kobiety 2014 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, and a grlinks:
http://www13.plala.or.jp/gakuki3/cgi_bin/aska/aska.cgi
http://books.boatdesign.net/bookstore/books.cgi
http://www13.plala.or.jp/white_roots/gwbbs/gwbbs.cgi |
