He caught up a leather thong and cracked it like a whip. The lion spat, but rather like puss at the fireside. His great yellow eyes blinked mildly and the lines about them were lines of worry, very pathetic to see, and his chin whiskers waggled. "Don't be hard on him," I begged.
"Stand there!" cried Angus Jones.
The beast reared meekly on his haunches and stayed so until permitted to drop. Angus Jones waved a ham bone and spoke with emotion.
"They accused us as monarchists. Their only mistake was that we are kings. And here is another royalty who shall enter upon his own this tide. Royal shall be our portion. Come, friends, once more into the breach of hospitality, and we'll teach these yellow simps who they've been entertaining unawares. Come where glory waits!"
We went forth into Funchal, and before our steps as we moved it might have been a city of the dead, but further about it seethed. No one crossed our path, and every house was barred and bolted where we passed, but only just in time. There was a scuttling, a screaming, and a terror in the air, a slamming of doors and windows, a crying upon saints and small children. Ox sleds stampeded in the next square. A flock of goats climbed a garden wall ahead of us. Dogs and boys went heeling it up every alley, and people swept past the street ends in a froth of white faces. Even church bells began to chatter and toll as for a pestilence.
Through all we paced in stately procession, slowly, munching in content, and Thomas with a skittish wreath of sausages round his neck, so that I know not what chance kept the alarm from reaching our new acquaintance until the very instant of our entrance into his bazaar—where there was no back door. The drop of his jaw, his squeal as he climbed the shelves against an avalanche of bottles and demijohns, his frantic perch among the basketwork—these were rare tribute....
"Are you there, old dear, late of Lawrence, Mass.?" inquired Angus Jones. "The drinks are on us. What will you have, Martini Angostura de Souse?"
Thomas was somewhat curious of Martinho and sat him down in the midst of the shop. Here he yawned upward chastely, and the quaking of Martinho made the glassware dance.