“No, no, comrade,” broke in José, “none of your jokes to-night, you forget that we have a visitor. Not but what I should like to sacrifice this old demonio of an Indian to himself,” he added, in an outburst of drunken fury. “Curse him! he insulted me and my father and mother, yonder on board the ship.”
“And are you going to put up with that from this wooden Indian god? Why, if I were in your place, by now I would have filled him as full of holes as a coffee-roaster, just to let the lies out.”
“That’s what I want to do,” said José, gnashing his teeth, “he has insulted me and threatened me, and ought to pay for it, the black thief,” and, drawing a large knife, he flourished it in my face.
I did not shrink from it; I did not so much as suffer my eyelids to tremble, though the steel flashed within an inch of them, for I knew that if once I showed fear he would strike. Therefore I said calmly:
I did not so much as suffer my eyelids to tremble.
“You are pleased to jest, señor, and your jests are somewhat rude, but I pass them by, for I know that you cannot harm me because I am your guest, and those who kill a guest are not gentlemen, but murderers, which the high-born Don José Moreno could never be.”
“Stick the pig, José,” said Smith, “he is insulting you again. It will save you trouble afterwards.”
Then, as Don José again advanced upon me with the knife, of a sudden the señor sprang up from his chair and stood between us.
“Come, friend,” he said, “a joke is a joke, but you are carrying this too far, according to your custom,” and, seizing the man by the shoulders, he put out all his great strength, and swung him back with such force that, striking against the long table with his thighs, he rolled on to and over it, falling heavily to the ground upon the farther side, whence he rose cursing with rage.