An instant later the guards began to run along the platform slamming the doors. Just before they reached the carriage that sheltered Topham, two Germans came running up. One of them grabbed the handle of the door and jerked it open, and both precipitated themselves into the carriage, despite the Brazilian’s strenuous protests.
“We have as good right here as you, nicht wahr?” asserted the foremost, seating himself without any ceremony. “This carriage is not reserved? What? It has no placard out? No!”
Ferreira fumed, pouring out so swift a torrent of guttural German that Topham, good German scholar as he was, could not understand one word in five. The intruders, however, clearly understood very well. Scornfully indifferent at first, they soon roused to the assault and apparently gave back as good as he sent.
In the middle of the dispute the train started, but neither Ferreira nor his adversary seemed to note that the case was closed. Hotter and hotter waxed the wordy war. Soon the two men were glaring at each other, shaking their fists and seeming on the point of flying at each other’s throats.
Topham watched the contest with twinkling eyes. If he had been in Italy or France, where men are supposed to be more excitable, the scene would not have seemed very strange to him. But that notoriously phlegmatic Germans should work themselves into a passion over such a trifle seemed to him amazing. He scarcely believed, however, that the quarrel would end in actual violence; and so, though ready to aid Ferreira (Elsa’s brother) if need arose, he sat still and looked on, letting a ghost of a smile flicker across his lips.
Instantly, with bewildering abruptness the other German leaned across the carriage, shaking his fist in the American’s face, and shouting something which Topham did not catch, but which he instinctively knew was insulting.
The navy officer flushed angrily, and the next moment the other launched a blow at his face.
Topham parried and struck back shrewdly. He landed, but before he could follow up his advantage, the other German precipitated himself upon him, and in an instant the carriage became a pandemonium of struggling, kicking, fighting men.
Topham was big and strong, but he had been taken unawares, and found himself pinned down in the seat in the grasp of men stronger than he. Ferreira, though he struggled, did so ineffectively, and both intruders were practically free to concentrate on the American. The bout ended with Topham and Ferreira on the floor with the two Germans sitting on top of them, panting.
The struggle had lasted for some time, and in the momentary hush that followed its cessation the shriek of the locomotive was heard, whistling for a stop.