The wild hunting-shirt men are in a jocular mood. The terrified rushing about of Governor Maurequez excites their laughter.
“Where is your humane General Jackson?” wails Governor Maurequez, in appeal to the hunting-shirt men. “Where is he—I beseech you? I hear he is the soul of merciful forbearance!”
At this the hunting-shirt laughter breaks out with double volume, as though Governor Maurequez has evolved a jest.
The alarmed Governor, catching sight of a couple of dead Spaniards, fresh killed in the struggle with the foolish interior fort, expresses his grief in staccato shrieks, which serve as weird marks of punctuation to the laughter of the rude hunting-shirt men. The laughter ceases when the General himself rides up.
“Thar's the Gin'ral,” says a hunting-shirt man, biting his merriment short off. “Thar's the man of mercy you're asking for.”
Governor Maurequez starts back at sight of the gaunt face, emaciated by sickness born of those Benton bullets, and yellowed to primrose hue with the malaria of the Alabama swamps. The lean figure on the big war stallion might remind him of Don Quixote—for he has read and remembers his Cervantes—save for the frown like the look of a fighting falcon, and the fire-sparkle in the dangerous blue eyes. As it is, he feels that his visitor is a perilous man, and begins to bow and cringe.
“I beg the victorious Senor General,” says he, pressing meanwhile a right hand to his heart, and presenting the white square of truce with the other—“I beg the victorious Senor General to spare my beautiful Pensacola!”
“You are Governor Maurequez!” returns the General, hard as flint.
“Yes, Senor General; I am Governor Maurequez, as you say. Also”—here his voice begins to shake—“I must remind your excellency that this is a province of Spain, and ask by what right you invade it.”
“Right!” returns the General, anger rising. “Did you not fire on my messenger? Sir, if you were Satan and this your kingdom, it would be the same! I would storm the walls of hell itself to get at an Englishman.”