“Do you s’pose we can take it?”
“There seems to be a sight of you here; but I shouldn’t want to make a guess till after I’d seen whether there’s going to be a row among all hands or not. Father says when thieves fall out honest men get their due.”
However frightened Isaac might be, he was not disposed to allow any boy of his own size to call the members of this army thieves, even though they were in a state of insubordination, and forgetting all his fears he demanded sternly:
“Who are you calling thieves?”
“Now, you needn’t get so huffy, ’cause I didn’t mean anything,” Nathan replied quietly, and yet with no show of alarm; 92 “but father is always sayin’ that, an’ I s’pose it means—well I don’t know what, except that all hands of you are fightin’ here, an’ it looks like as if Captain Delaplace would get the best of it.”
“Who’s he?”
“The commandant of the fort, of course.”
“Well, see here, Nathan, it begins to look as though there was goin’ to be a row for a fact, and I hoped you lived close by so I could go to your house till it was over.”
“But you’re a soldier, ain’t you?”
“Not much of one.”