This is carrying the joke too far, I said to myself; and, before the ruffian could guess what I intended, I was on my feet, and had delivered a right-hander on the side of his head that sent his gold hat spinning across the floor, and himself, and his slippers after it.
"Actus majoris potentiae contra ecclesiasticam personam!" dictated the mayor to the notary; while his highness, the prince, held his stomach, and laughed until the tears ran down his cheeks.
"I should like to have seen that performance!" he exclaimed when he had got his breath again. "Did the padre excommunicate you?"
Not much, he didn't, your highness! From that moment I became a person of consequence among the haidemaken. The leader slapped me heartily on the shoulder, and said approvingly:
"You're the right sort, lad—we need no further proof."
After a bumper all 'round, to celebrate my entrance to the community, every man wrapped himself in his bear-skin, and lay down on the floor of the cavern. Although the torches had been extinguished I could see, by the faint light which penetrated from the entrance, that Madus ascended a rope ladder to a deep hollow high up in the wall, and drew the ladder up after her.
In a very few minutes the snores from the four hundred robbers proclaimed them oblivious to this work-a-day world.
At day-break the watchman's horn brought every man to his feet; at the same moment the leader appeared from an adjoining chamber, and gave to each one his task for the day.
After we had breakfasted, Nyedzviedz conducted me, in company with Madus and several of the band, to the armory.
"Here Baran," he said,—thrusting his foot against the culverin I mentioned before—"you claim to be a skilled bombardier. Let us see if you understand how to manage a thing like this. We stole it from Count Potocky's castle, and brought it here with great difficulty. Sixteen men would carry it two hundred steps, then other sixteen would relieve them, and so on. We didn't find out until we had got it up here that it would be of no use to us. The first time we tried to fire it off—it lay on the ground as now—four men sat astride of it, as on a horse, to steady it. I, myself, directed the shot toward the mouth of the cavern, and three men stood behind me to observe operations. When I applied the fuse, the infernal thing sprang into the air flinging the four men astride it to the roof of the cave; while the ball, instead of going where I had aimed—out of the entrance—imbedded itself in the wall over yonder, where it still sticks."