“Come on! the devil take you! I’ll show whether I’m afraid.”
While they were feeling their way cautiously down, very slowly, for fear of breaking their necks in the dark, Spatu observed:
“At this moment Vanni Pizzuti is safe in bed, and he complained of Goosefoot for getting his percentage for nothing.”
“Well,” said Cinghialenta, “if you don’t want to risk your lives, stay at home and go to bed.”
’Ntoni, reaching down with his hands to feel where he should set his foot, could not help thinking that Master Cinghialenta would have done better not to say that, because it brought to each the image of his house, and his bed, and Mena dozing behind the door. That big tipsy brute, Rocco Spatu, said at last, “Our lives are not worth a copper.”
“Who goes there?” they heard some one call out, all at once, behind the wall of the high-road. “Stop! stop! all of you!”
“Treachery! treachery!” they began to cry out, rushing off over the cliffs without heeding where they went.
But ’Ntoni, who had already climbed over the wall, found himself face to face with Don Michele, who had his pistol in his hand.
“Blood of Our Lady!” cried Malavoglia, pulling out his knife. “I’ll show you whether I’m afraid of your pistol!”
Don Michele’s pistol went off in the air, but he himself fell like a bull, stabbed in the chest. ’Ntoni tried to escape, leaping from rock to rock like a goat, but the guards caught up with him, while the balls rattled about like hail, and threw him on the ground.