At other times he is the buccaneer, the flinger of foul oaths, and terrible damning curses. But as a rule they are not vindictive, they have no sting—for Hawk is a forgiving and humble man in reality, in spite of his mask of arrogance.
A remarkable character in every way, he fell unknowingly into the old north-country Quaker talk of “thee and thou.”
Another minute he gives an order in those hard, calm, commanding words which, had he had the chance, would have made him, in spite of his lack of schooling, one of the finest Generals the world could ever know.
On these occasional gleams of pure leadership he finds the finest King's English ready to his lips, while at other times he is ungrammatical, ordinary, but never uninteresting or slow of intuition.
He was a master of slang, and like all strong and vivid characters had his own peculiar sayings.
He never thought of looking over my shoulder when I was sketching. He was a gentleman of Nature. But when he saw I had finished, his clear, deep-set eyes (handed down to him from those old Norseman ancestors) would glint with interest—
“Dekko the drawing,” he would say, using the old Romany word for “let's see.”
“PRACtically” was a favourite word.
“PRACtically the 'ole Peninsula—”
“PRACtically every one of 'em—”