Captain Doc appealed to Americans and creoles alike, and the Riffraffs marched quite as often to the stirring measures of "La Marseillaise" as to "The Bonny Blue Flag."
Ever since the first guns at the forts, the good captain had been disporting himself in full feather. He was "ready for the enemy."
His was a pleasing figure, and even inspiring as a picturesque embodiment of patriotic zeal; but when this afternoon the Riffraffs had planted their artillery along the levee front, while the little captain rallied them to "prepare to die by their guns," it was a different matter.
The company, loyal to a man, had responded with a shout, the blacksmith, to whose deaf ears his anvil had been silent for twenty years, throwing up his hat with the rest, while the epileptic who manned the papier-mâché gun was observed to scream the loudest.
Suddenly a woman, catching the peril of the situation, shrieked:
"They're going to fire on the gunboats! We'll all be killed."
Another caught the cry, and another. A mad panic ensued; women with babies in their arms gathered about Captain Doc, entreating him, with tears and cries, to desist.
But for once the tender old man, whose old boast had been that one tear from a woman's eyes "tore his heart open," was deaf to all entreaty.
The Riffraffs represented an injured faction. They had not been asked to enlist with the "Coast Defenders"—since gone into active service—and they seemed intoxicated by the present opportunity to "show the stuff they were made of."
At nearly nightfall the women, despairing and wailing, had gone home. Amid all the excitement the little girl Idyl had stood apart, silent. No one had noticed her, nor that, when all the others had gone, she still lingered.