“I don’t,” observed Burke, with a wink at Ryan, “I don’t blame the peasantry so much as those who are leading them astray. There’s Davitt, for instance.”
“I wish,” growled the major, “that I had that rapscallion within reach of my horsewhip, sir, for five minutes. I’d flay him,—flay him alive, sir. If he ever is fool enough to come in my direction, he’ll remember Joe Boomerang—fighting Joe—as long as he lives. Green snakes and wild elephants! I would annihilate the released convict, the pardoned thief, the—the—by the jumping Harry, sir, I would exterminate the wretch!”
Ryan slowly rose, stretched his long form to its uttermost dimensions, and leaning over to the astounded major, in a deep base thundered, “I am the man, Major Boomerang, at your service. I have listened to your abominable bombast in silent contempt as long as I was not personally concerned. Now that you have attacked me, I demand satisfaction. I suppose your friend, Capt. Neville, will act for you. Captain, you will oblige me with your card. My second shall wait upon you to-morrow. As an officer, even though no gentleman, you cannot disgrace the uniform you have worn, Major Boomerang, by refusing to meet me. Good day.”
We had reached Portarlington, and Ryan leaped lightly on to the platform and disappeared, leaving the major puffing and blowing and gasping like an exhausted porpoise. “By the jumping Harry!” he at last exclaimed, but his voice had changed from its bouncing barytone to a timorous tenor, “I cannot fight a convicted thief. I won’t! D—— me, if I will!”
“I beg your pardon, major,” I observed. “You are mistaken; Davitt is not a thief. He was merely a political prisoner. You can meet him with perfect propriety. I shall be happy to arrange the preliminaries for you. I expect he’ll choose pistols. Let me see, Burke, wasn’t it with pistols he met poor Col. Smith? Ah, yes, to be sure it was. He shot him in the left groin. Don’t you remember what a job they had extracting the bullet? People said, you know, that it was the doctors and not Davitt that killed him.” Burke assented with a nod.
The major gazed at us with a sort of dazed, bewildered look, like a man in a dream. “Good God!” he murmured at last; “has he killed a man already? Why didn’t they arrest him? Why didn’t they hang him? I’m not going to be killed—I mean to kill a man that should be hanged. I’m not going to be popped at by a fellow that goes about shooting colonels as if they were snipe.”
“But, my dear major,” I remonstrated, “you must uphold the traditions of the cloth. In fact, the government will expect you to act just as Smith did.” (The major groaned.) “Smith didn’t like the idea of meeting Davitt, he’s such a dead shot.” (The major’s visage became positively blue.) “But the Duke of Cambridge wrote to him that he must go out for the honor of the service.”
“The service be d——d!” exploded the major, over whose countenance a kaleidoscope of colors—red, purple, blue, yellow, and white—were flashing and fluctuating; “I shall not fight a common low fellow like this. Now, if I had been challenged by a gentleman, it would be a different matter. By the jumping Harry, sir!” he cried, as he felt his courage returning at the prospect of evading the encounter, “if, instead of that low-bred cur, one of those Irish popinjays in Parliament had ventured to beard the lion heart of Boomerang, I should have sprung, sir, sprung hilariously at the chance. But there isn’t a man among them that wouldn’t quail at a glance from me, sir; yes, a lightning glance from fighting Joe, who has looked the Bengal tiger in the eyes and winked at the treacherous crocodile. Parnell is a coward, sir! Biggar and O’Donnell would hide if they heard that blazing Boomerang was round; and as for that whipper-snapper Healy, why, sir, I could tear him limb from limb, without exerting my mighty muscles.”
Little Tim Malone sprang to his feet like an electrified bantam-cock, and shaking his fist right under the major’s nose, he hissed: “You are a cur; an unmitigated, red-eyed, yellow-skinned, mongrel cur. I am Healy. I’ll have your life’s gore for this, if you escape my friend Davitt. I shall request him as a favor only to chip off one of your ears, so that I may have the pleasure of scarifying your hide. Captain Neville, as you must act for your brother officer, I shall send a friend to you to-morrow.” He sat down, and a solemn silence fell upon the company. The prismatic changes of hue which had illuminated the major’s features had disappeared altogether, and his face was now a sickening whitey-yellow. Not a word was spoken until we reached Limerick Junction, where Malone got off. The gallant Boomerang recovered a little at this, and managed to whisper to me, “Can Healy fight?”
“He is a master of fence,” I replied. “I suppose, as the insulted party, he will demand choice of weapons. His weapon is the sword; at least, he has always chosen that so far.”