The lieutenant stood staring as if he could not comprehend it all for a minute or two, and then flushing with rage he stamped about.
“The scoundrel! The hound! The thief!” he roared. “I’ll have him yet, though, and when I do catch him I’ll hang him to the yard-arm, like the dog he is.”
“Dog yourself,” cried a fierce voice that we did not recognise, it was so changed; and Bigley struck the lieutenant full in the face with the back of his hand. “My father is a better man than you.”
Chapter Thirty Six.
The Lugger’s Return.
The lieutenant staggered back from the effects of the blow. But recovering, he whipped out his sword and made at Bigley, who hesitated for a moment and then dashed up the cliff-side, dodging in and out among the rocks, and he was twenty yards away before the lieutenant had gone ten, and gaining at every leap.
Seeing that he could not catch him, the lieutenant drew a pistol from his belt and would have fired, but my father caught his arm.
“Stop, sir,” he cried; “he is but a boy.”