“Round my neck,” answered Blount. “He seeks to throttle me, this learned clerk here, with his sophistications.”
The three gentlemen sat down, the student remaining standing.
“How throttle?” said Sidney.
Jack Sparrow took the answer out of the soldier’s mouth:
“We were discussing your friend, Master Raleigh, sirs, whom the Captain here will dub the very thief of opportunity.”
“And hold to it,” said Blount.
“Nay,” said the ex-graduate, “when, as I maintain and repeat, Opportunity is the common property, whereby to take it is no more offence in a man than the picking of blackberries on the highway.”
“Or the picking of pockets,” said Mr. Greville.
“Hold, Fulke,” said Sidney: “I do perceive a flaw there, in that the seizure or prehension is by its very terms held personal to the appropriator. Thus I may take my opportunity, but not another man’s.”
“Well decreed, Phil,” cried the soldier, with a shout of triumph, and smacked a hand to his knee. “How now, Master Quiddity? Wilt answer to that?”