His gigantic figure, clad in pink and green pajamas, seemed to fill the store: he had at least a dozen arms and legs and every one of them smashed everything it touched
If I had not known the truth, I should have thought him not only intoxicated but mad. His gigantic figure, clad in pink and green pajamas, seemed to fill the store; he had at least a dozen arms and legs and every one of them smashed everything it touched. The canvas chairs were trampled as though by an elephant. The rickety bar, built up of whisky cases, went like a match-box. He leaped the remnants and swung his pick along the shelf where the glasses stood. Not one of them survived. He seized a bottle of whisky in each hand and slung the two half across the clearing.
“Oh, my Lord! Oh, my Lord!” the storekeeper kept saying. “Who’s to pay for this?”
“Stop him!” yelled the miners, as they saw the whisky begin to go. The Marquis shot me a glance as he swung his pick above a cask of beer, and I will swear there was a wink in it. By this time all the incriminating glass was gone.
The murder of a man, I think, would have been looked upon more calmly than the murder of a cask of beer, up here on the Kilori goldfield, a long week from the coast. But this last exploit was never carried through. With one accord, the miners flung themselves upon the handle of the pick and dragged it down. They dragged the Marquis down next by sheer force of numbers and sat upon him. One even counseled them to “sit upon his head!” and flung his own body across the Marquis’s fat cheek, as if he were a kicking horse.
He did not resist. I caught another lightning wink from underneath the surging pile and I did my best to get the indignant miners off.
“He’ll be all right now if you let him alone,” I declared. “I’ve often known him like this, and when it’s over, it’s over. After all, he’s only done for a couple of quarts of whisky and a few tumblers.”
“Where’s what he’s drunk, to make him like this?” yelled the insulted storekeeper. “He’s got to pay for all he took and all he done. Marquis! A nice sort of marquis he is, I don’t think!”
“He took a bottle to his room with him last night,” I said hastily. “It doesn’t take much to make him like this; he has no head. You’ll be paid all right, Burchell; he’s got any amount of money.”
“Let him up, boys,” ordered the storekeeper. The diggers got off reluctantly and left the Marquis on the floor, breathing hard and looking wild.