“HIS RIGHT ARM POISED WITH CLENCHED HAND ALOFT,” ETC.
“Well, Clinker,” said Piron, kindly, “don’t let us talk any more about the earthquake. You told me yesterday that you had a note from Colonel Lawton, saying he would not take passage in the brig with us to New Orleans, as his business obliged him to leave before we could sail?”
Clinker choked out something like “Yes,” as if it were the last sound a body could sigh with three or four hundred tons on his back.
“I’m dooced glad to hear it, Piron; for your military friend didn’t enlist my fancy at all, and I don’t believe any more of his patriot sarvice than I do in Clinker’s earthquake. That colonel is a baste; and if my words prove true, I’ll lave a thousand pounds to old Clinker there.”
Paddy Burns’s words did prove true; and old Clinker was with him when he gave a quake the earth had nothing to do with, it being entirely of an apoplectic nature; but he got the thousand pounds nevertheless.
“For once in your life, Burns, I agree with ye; and if that military mon went to shoot grouse with me in the Hielands, I’d tramp behind him, and keep both barrels of me gun cocked. The devil take his black wig and his green eyes! and he passing himsel’ aff for a Scot, too! Tut, mon!”
“By the way, Clinker,” said Piron, during a pause in the conversation, “if the colonel is not going with us, I must take him back his magnificent snuff-box he forgot when he left us so suddenly the other morning. Here it is, with the letters of his name on it in brilliants. I thought it too valuable to send by one of the blacks, and I kept it to carry myself.”
How singular it was that the colonel should have forgotten his royal treasure! Keep your wits about you, Captain Brand, or one of these days you’ll be forgetting your pistols.
“Given to him by a connection of his family, was it, Paddy? Weel, mon, let’s take a peench for the honor of Sackveel Street, and then push it along to Meester Darcantel.”