"Bonjour, monsieur!" he said.
Jogman placed one hand upon the slab, the better to steady the shop which, ignoring the law of gravity, was reeling in most unshoply fashion.
"Bone Dewar, yerself!" he cried, incensed at being addressed in an unintelligible language. "Why th' hell can't ye speak English—like a—white man?"
How often we too have been unreasonably irritated by a foreign and incomprehensible tongue! Jogman's sense of injustice was preternaturally keen just then. The butcher was a trifle alarmed at his attitude without in the least understanding the cause of complaint.
"Quest ce que vous voulez, monsieur?" he demanded nervously.
"Drop that hatchet!" cried his irrational customer, making a step forward. "Drop it, er I'll drop you."
The unfortunate shopkeeper grasped his weapon more firmly still, and stood tremulously on the defensive.
"I'll learn ye to do as ye're told!" shouted Jogman, and seizing a large knife from the slab he rushed at the frightened man who ran screaming into the street, with Jogman in hot pursuit.
The sight of a British soldier brandishing a meat knife and chasing a fellow citizen along the main street was terrifying in the extreme to the peaceful denizens of the town. They ran shrieking for help, bolting into their shops or houses, and barring the doors as though the devil himself with a regiment of imps on horseback were at their heels.
Jogman had cleared the Rue de Londres and in the pride of drunken conquest was about to attack the lesser streets, when the Military Police hove in sight. Much to his annoyance the disturbance interrupted Sergeant Honk in a monosyllabic conversation, which he was holding with a pretty French girl. He humped himself around the corner just in time to see the Sergeant of Police take the belligerent Jogman by the scruff of the neck and the seat of his breeches and heave him into a waiting ambulance.