“Pouf!” said the captain. “We all have trouble with them sometimes—you must know that well.”
“No, by Jupiter!” cried Frank Owen. “If I couldn’t gain them willingly, they might go to the devil for me. But you hurt her—pray let her go—you must indeed.”
“Do you mind your own affair,” said the captain, “and don’t meddle;” and, exerting his strength, he drew Esther in, and partially succeeded in shutting the door—she calling the while again on Owen to help her. Frank stepped forward, and, putting his foot against the door, sent it into the room, causing Captain Von Dessel, who was behind it, to stagger back with some violence, and to quit his hold of Esther, who ran down stairs.
“Very good, sir,” said the captain, stalking grimly out of his room, pale with rage. “You have thought right to interfere with me, and to insult me. By Gott! I will teach you better, young man. Shall we say in one hour, sir, in the Fives’ Court?”
Owen nodded. “At your pleasure,” said he, and, entering his own quarters, shut the door.
Meanwhile my grandfather walked about with the telescope he had brought with him to look after the fleet under his arm, enjoying the unusual sight of happy faces around him. And he has remarked it as a singular feature of humanity, that this prospect of relief from physical want inspired a far more deep and universal joy than he had witnessed in any public rejoicings arising from such causes as loyalty or patriotism evinced at a coronation or the news of a great victory, or the election of a popular candidate; and hence my grandfather takes occasion to express a fear that human nature is, except among the rarer class of souls, more powerfully and generally influenced by its animal propensities than by more refined causes.
He was so engrossed with the philanthropic pursuit of enjoying the joy of the multitude, and the philosophic one of extracting moral reflections therefrom, that he quite forgot he had not breakfasted. He was just beginning to be reminded of the circumstance by a feeling of hollowness in the region of the stomach, and to turn his steps homeward, when a light hand was laid on his arm. My grandfather turned, and beheld the face of the young Jewess looking wistfully in his.
She began at first to address him in Spanish—the language she spoke most naturally; but, quickly perceiving her mistake on hearing the extraordinary jargon in which he replied (for it is a singular fact that nobody but Carlota, who taught him, could understand my grandfather’s Spanish), she exchanged it for his own tongue. She told him in a few hurried words of the quarrel Owen had incurred on her account with Von Dessel, and of the challenge she had overheard given by the latter, beseeching the Major to hasten to prevent the result.
“In the Fives’ Court! in an hour!” said my grandfather. “When did this happen?”
Esther thought nearly an hour ago—she had been almost so long seeking my grandfather.