“Ay, ay,” cried one of the others, “you may say that, François. Nothin’ but frost and starvation, and nobody to bury us when we’re dead.”
“Except the Huskies,” broke in another, “who would save themselves the trouble by converting us all into dans!”
“Tush, man! stop your clapper,” cried François, impatiently; “let us settle this business. You know that Monsieur Stanley said he would expect us to be ready with an answer to-night.—What think you, Gaspard? Shall we go, or shall we mutiny?”
The individual addressed was a fine specimen of an animal, but not by any means a good specimen of a man. He was of gigantic proportions, straight and tall as a poplar, and endowed with the strength of a Hercules. His glittering dark eyes and long black hair, together with the hue of his skin, bespoke him of half-breed extraction. But his countenance did not correspond to his fine physical proportions. True, his features were good, but they wore habitually a scowling, sulky expression, even when the man was pleased, and there was more of sarcasm than joviality in the sound when Gaspard condescended to laugh.
“I’ll be shot if I go to such a hole for the best bourgeois in the country,” said he in reply to François’ question.
“You’ll be dismissed the service if you don’t,” remarked Massan with a smile.
To this Gaspard vouchsafed no reply save a growl that, to say the best of it, did not sound amiable.
“Well, I think that we’re all pretty much of one mind on the point,” continued François; “and yet I feel half ashamed to refuse after all, especially when I see the good will with which Messieurs Stanley and Morton agree to go.”
“I suppose you expect to be a bourgeois too some day,” growled Gaspard with a sneer.
“Eh, tu gros chien!” cried François, as with flashing eyes and clinched fists he strode up to his ill-tempered comrade.