“Yes, captain,” continued Thaddeus, drawing back a step or two, whilst D’Auverney fixed his eyes upon him with a strange and sorrowful expression. “Yes, I wept for him that day, and he well deserved it. He was black, it is true, but gunpowder is black also, and—and——”
The good sergeant would fain have followed out his strange comparison, for there was evidently something in the idea that pleased him; but he utterly failed to put his thoughts into words, and after having attacked his idea on every side, as a general would a fortified place, and failed, he raised the siege, and without noticing the smiles of his officers, he continued:
“Tell me, captain, do you recollect how that poor negro arrived all out of breath, at the moment that his ten comrades were waiting on the spot?—we had had to tie them though. It was I who commanded the party; and when with his own hands he untied them, and took their place, although they did all that they could to dissuade him; but he was inflexible. Ah, what a man he was; you might as well have tried to move Gibraltar! And then, captain, he drew himself up as if he were going to enter a ballroom, and this dog, who knew well enough what was coming, flew at my throat——”
“Generally, Thaddeus, at this point of your story, you pat Rask,” interrupted the captain; “see how he looks at you.”
“You are right, sir,” replied Thaddeus, with an air of embarrassment; “he does look at me, poor fellow—but the old woman Malajuda told me it was unlucky to pat a dog with the left hand, and——”
“And why not with your right, pray?” asked D’Auverney, for the first time noticing the sergeant’s pallor, and the hand reposing in his bosom.
The sergeant’s discomfort appeared to increase.
“By your leave, captain, it is because—well, you have got a lame dog, and now there is a chance of your having a one-handed sergeant.”
“A one-handed sergeant! What do you mean? Let me see your arm. One hand! Great heavens!”
D’Auverney trembled, as the sergeant slowly withdrew his hand from his bosom, and showed it enveloped in a blood-stained handkerchief.