The stranger was still reading; he looked up and started. Mr. Pott started.
“What’s the matter?” whispered Mr. Pickwick.
“That reptile!” replied Pott.
“What reptile?” said Mr. Pickwick, looking about him for fear he should tread on some overgrown black beetle, or dropsical spider.
“That reptile,” whispered Pott, catching Mr. Pickwick by the arm, and pointing towards the stranger. “That reptile Slurk, of the Independent!”
“Perhaps we had better retire,” whispered Mr. Pickwick.
“Never, Sir,” rejoined Pott, pot-valiant in a double sense—“never.” With these words, Mr. Pott took up his position on an opposite settle, and selecting one from a little bundle of newspapers, began to read against his enemy.
Mr. Pott, of course read the Independent, and Mr. Slurk, of course, read the Gazette; and each gentleman audibly expressed his contempt at the other’s compositions by bitter laughs and sarcastic sniffs; whence they proceeded to more open expressions of opinion, such as “absurd,” “wretched,” “atrocity,” “humbug,” “knavery,” “dirt,” “filth,” “slime,” “ditch-water,” and other critical remarks of the like nature.
Both Mr. Bob Sawyer and Mr. Ben Allen had beheld these symptoms of rivalry and hatred, with a degree of delight which imparted great additional relish to the cigars at which they were puffing most vigorously. The moment they began to flag, the mischievous Mr. Bob Sawyer, addressing Slurk with great politeness, said—
“Will you allow me to look at your paper, Sir, when you have quite done with it?”
“You will find very little to repay you for your trouble in this contemptible thing, sir,” replied Slurk, bestowing a Satanic frown on Pott.
“You shall have this presently,” said Pott, looking up, pale with rage, and quivering in his speech, from the same cause. “Ha! ha! you will be amused with this fellow’s audacity.”
Terrible emphasis was laid upon “thing” and “fellow”; and the faces of both editors began to glow with defiance.
“The ribaldry of this miserable man is despicably disgusting,” said Pott, pretending to address Bob Sawyer, and scowling upon Slurk.
Here, Mr. Slurk laughed very heartily, and folding up the paper so as to get at a fresh column conveniently, said, that the blockhead really amused him.
“What an impudent blunderer this fellow is,” said Pott, turning from pink to crimson.
“Did you ever read any of this man’s foolery, Sir?” inquired Slurk of Bob Sawyer.
“Never,” replied Bob; “is it very bad?”
“Oh, shocking! shocking!” rejoined Slurk.
“Really! Dear me, this is too atrocious!” exclaimed Pott, at this juncture; still feigning to be absorbed in his reading.
“If you can wade through a few sentences of malice, meanness, falsehood, perjury, treachery, and cant,” said Slurk, handing the paper to Bob, “you will, perhaps, be somewhat repaid by a laugh at the style of this ungrammatical twaddler.”
“What’s that you said, Sir?” inquired Mr. Pott, looking up, trembling all over with passion.
“What’s that to you, sir?” replied Slurk.
“Ungrammatical twaddler, was it, sir?” said Pott.
“Yes, sir, it was,” replied Slurk; “and blue bore, Sir, if you like that better; ha! ha!”
Mr. Pott retorted not a word at this jocose insult, but deliberately folded up his copy of the Independent, flattened it carefully down, crushed it beneath his boot, spat upon it with great ceremony, and flung it into the fire.
“There, sir,” said Pott, retreating from the stove, “and that’s the way I would serve the viper who produces it, if I were not, fortunately for him, restrained by the laws of my country.”
“Serve him so, sir!” cried Slurk, starting up. “Those laws shall never be appealed to by him, sir, in such a case. Serve him so, sir!”
“Hear! hear!” said Bob Sawyer.
“Nothing can be fairer,” observed Mr. Ben Allen.
“Serve him so, sir!” reiterated Slurk, in a loud voice.
Mr. Pott darted a look of contempt, which might have withered an anchor.
“Serve him so, sir!” reiterated Slurk, in a louder voice than before.
“I will not, sir,” rejoined Pott.
“Oh, you won’t, won’t you, sir?” said Mr. Slurk, in a taunting manner; “you hear this, gentlemen! He won’t; not that he’s afraid—, oh, no! he won’t. Ha! ha!”
“I consider you, sir,” said Mr. Pott, moved by this sarcasm, “I consider you a viper. I look upon you, sir, as a man who has placed himself beyond the pale of society, by his most audacious, disgraceful, and abominable public conduct. I view you, sir, personally and politically, in no other light than as a most unparalleled and unmitigated viper.”
The indignant Independent did not wait to hear the end of this personal denunciation; for, catching up his carpetbag, which was well stuffed with movables, he swung it in the air as Pott turned away, and, letting it fall with a circular sweep on his head, just at that particular angle of the bag where a good thick hairbrush happened to be packed, caused a sharp crash to be heard throughout the kitchen, and brought him at once to the ground.
“Gentlemen,” cried Mr. Pickwick, as Pott started up and seized the fire-shovel—“gentlemen! Consider, for Heaven’s sake—help—Sam—here—pray, gentlemen—interfere, somebody.”
Uttering these incoherent exclamations, Mr. Pickwick rushed between the infuriated combatants just in time to receive the carpetbag on one side of his body, and the fire-shovel on the other. Whether the representatives of the public feeling of Eatanswill were blinded by animosity, or (being both acute reasoners) saw the advantage of having a third party between them to bear all the blows, certain it is that they paid not the slightest attention to Mr. Pickwick, but defying each other with great spirit, plied the carpetbag and the fire-shovel most fearlessly. Mr. Pickwick would unquestionably have suffered severely for his humane interference, if Mr. Weller, attracted by his master’s cries, had not rushed in at the moment, and, snatching up a meal-sack, effectually stopped the conflict by drawing it over the head and shoulders of the mighty Pott, and clasping him tight round the shoulders.
“Take away that ’ere bag from the t’other madman,” said Sam to Ben Allen and
