In justice to the narrator it is right to say that these words are not so bad as they sound.
“The fisherman’s look and action were so terrible whilst he poured forth his wrath, which was kept alive by the thought of the smouldering embers of his own cottage, that the Spaniard could not but obey. With a ludicrous compound of fun and terror he began to dance and sing, or rather to leap and wail, while Gurnet stood before him with a look of grim ferocity that never for a moment relaxed.
“Whenever the Spaniard stopped from exhaustion Gurnet shouted ‘Go on,’ in a voice of thunder, and the poor man, being thoroughly terrified, went on until he fell to the ground incapable of further exertion.
“Up to this point Gurnet had kept saying to himself, ‘He is fond o’ dancin’ an’ singin’, let un have it, then,’ but when the poor man fell his heart relented. He picked him up, threw him across his shoulder as if he had been a bolster, and bore him away. At first the men of the place wanted to hang him on the spot, but Gurnet claimed him as his prisoner, and would not allow this. He gave him his liberty, and the poor wretch maintained himself for many a day as a wandering minstrel. At last he managed to get on board of a Spanish vessel, and was never more heard of, but he left his guitar behind him. It was picked up on the shore, where he left it, probably, in his haste to get away.
“The truth of this story, of course, I cannot vouch for,” concluded Mr Donnithorne, with a smile, “but I have told it to you as nearly as possible in the words in which I have often heard my grandfather give it—and as for the guitar, why, here it is, having been sold to me by a descendant of the man who found it on the seashore.”
“A wonderful story indeed,” said Oliver—“if true.”
“The guitar you must admit is at least a fact,” said the old gentleman.
Oliver not only admitted this, but said it was a sweet-sounding fact, and was proceeding to comment further on the subject when Mr Donnithorne interrupted him—
“By the way, talking of sweet sounds, have you heard what that gruff-voiced scoundrel Maggot—that roaring bull of Bashan—has been about lately?”
“No, I have not,” said Oliver, who saw that the old gentleman’s ire was rising.