SCHWEITZER. Then you are out, by old Harry! He did not part from us like one that had any masterpiece of roguery in view. Have you forgotten what he said as he marched us across the heath? "The fellow that takes so much as a turnip out of a field, if I know it, leaves his head behind him, as true as my name is Moor." We dare not plunder.
RAZ. (aside to SPIEGELBERG). What are you driving at? Speak plainer.
SPIEGEL. Hush! hush! I know not what sort of a notion you and I have of liberty, that we should toil under the yoke like bullocks, while we are making such wonderful fine speeches about independence. I like it not.
SCHWEITZER (to GRIMM). What crotchet has that swaggering booby got in his numskull, I wonder?
RAZ. (aside to SPIEGELBERG). Is it the captain you mean?—
SPIEGEL. Hush! I tell you; hush! He has got his eavesdroppers all around us. Captain, did you say? Who made him captain over us? Has he not, in fact, usurped that title, which by right belongs to me? What? Is it for this that we stake our lives—that we endure all the splenetic caprices of fortunes—that we may in the end congratulate ourselves upon being the serfs of a slave? Serfs! When we might be princes? By heaven! Razmann, I could never brook it.
SCHWEITZER (overhearing him—to the others). Yes—there's a hero for you! He is just the man to do mighty execution upon frogs with stones. The very breath of his nostrils, when he sneezes, would blow you through the eye of a needle.
SPIEGEL. (to RAZMANN). Yes—and for years I have been intent upon it. There must be an alteration, Razmann. If you are the man I always took you for—Razmann! He is missing—he is almost given up—Razmann— methinks his hour is come. What? does not the color so much as mount to your cheek when you hear the chimes of liberty ringing in your ears? Have you not courage enough to take the hint?
RAZ. Ha! Satan! What bait art thou spreading for my soul?
SPIEGEL. Does it take? Good! then follow me! I have marked in what direction he slunk off. Come along! a brace of pistols seldom fail; and then—we shall be the first to strangle sucking babes. (He endeavors to draw him of.)