Again Captain Joncaire laughed. He and the two other French, and Captain Vanbraam, touched water scarcely at all. They drank repeatedly of wine and of brandy, while they ate; but Washington, the Hunter saw, scarcely wet his lips except with water.
After a time the chatter had increased. The meats were removed, but the liquors remained, and the cakes were passed. The three French were red of face, and bright of eye; Jacob Vanbraam was a little flushed, but not much so. Washington sat quietly, letting Vanbraam and the French do most of the talking, and mainly bowing reply to a question or a salute.
He spoke no French; Jacob Vanbraam, however, spoke the French. Every little while he uttered a sentence or two in English, that Washington should know what was being said.
The Hunter was sleepy; but Tanacharison had bidden him keep his ears open, so he only pretended to sleep.
The French were getting drunk and boastful. They talked rapidly, sometimes all together, and Captain Vanbraam made them laugh with his poor French, and they thought him drunk, too, and let him say to Washington whatever he pleased.
“Down we go, in the spring,” bragged Captain Joncaire. “Down to the Beautiful River. The English will be too late. They are slow. When they would move their settlers in, they will be stopped by French forts. They can do nothing. They have yet to cross the mountains, and we have only to go down the rivers.”
“Yes, yes; but by what right do you enter the country of the Ohio, gentlemen?” stammered Jacob Vanbraam.
“By the discovery by our great La Salle sixty years ago,” they babbled. “The Mississippi is ours and all the land watered by the rivers flowing into it. Huzzah! And what have the English? Nothing but their little colonies along the sea, bounded by the mountains. All west of the mountains, French.”
“So you deny their claim to land west of the mountains?” Jacob Vanbraam queried.