“Fought a cross!” growled the other. “I’ve won nineteen battles, and no man ever so much as dared to say the word ‘cross’ in my hearin’. How the deuce was I to get out of it when the cove wanted the very clothes off my back?”
“Tut, man, you knew that the beak and the guards were within a mile of you. You could have set them on to him as well then as now. You’d have got your clothes back again all right.”
“Well, strike me!” said the Bustler. “I don’t often break my trainin’, but when it comes to givin’ up my clothes to a Frenchy who couldn’t hit a dint in a pat o’ butter, why, it’s more than I can swaller.”
“Pooh, man, what are the clothes worth? D’you know that Lord Rufton alone has five thousand pounds on you? When you jump the ropes on Wednesday, you’ll carry every penny of fifty thousand into the ring. A pretty thing to turn up with a swollen knee and a story about a Frenchman!”
“I never thought he’d ha’ kicked,” said the Bustler.
“I suppose you expected he’d fight Broughton’s rules, and strict P.R.? Why, you silly, they don’t know what fighting is in France.”
“My friends,” said I, sitting up on my bed, “I do not understand very much of what you say, but when you speak like that it is foolishness. We know so much about fighting in France, that we have paid our little visit to nearly every capital in Europe, and very soon we are coming to London. But we fight like soldiers, you understand, and not like gamins in the gutter. You strike me on the head. I kick you on the knee. It is child’s play. But if you will give me a sword, and take another one, I will show you how we fight over the water.”
They both stared at me in their solid, English way.
“Well, I’m glad you’re not dead, mounseer,” said the elder one at last. “There wasn’t much sign of life in you when the Bustler and me carried you down. That head of yours ain’t thick enough to stop the crook of the hardest hitter in Bristol.”
“He’s a game cove, too, and he came for me like a bantam,” said the other, still rubbing his knee. “I got my old left-right in, and he went over as if he had been poleaxed. It wasn’t my fault, mounseer. I told you you’d get pepper if you went on.”
“Well, it’s something to say all your life, that you’ve been handled by the finest lightweight in England,” said the older man, looking at me with an expression of congratulation upon his face. “You’ve had him at his best, too—in the pink of condition, and trained by Jim Hunter.”
“I am used to hard knocks,” said I, unbuttoning my tunic, and showing my two musket wounds. Then I bared my ankle also, and showed the place in my eye where the guerilla had stabbed me.
“He can take his gruel,” said the Bustler.
“What a glutton he’d have made for the middleweights,” remarked the trainer; “with six months’ coaching he’d astonish the fancy. It’s a pity he’s got to go back to prison.”
I did not like that last remark at all. I buttoned up my coat and rose from the bed.
“I must ask you to let me continue my journey,” said I.
“There’s no help for it, mounseer,” the trainer answered. “It’s a hard thing to send such a man as you back to such a place, but business is business, and there’s a twenty pound reward. They were here this morning, looking for you, and I expect they’ll be round again.”
His words turned my heart to lead.
“Surely, you would not betray me,” I cried. “I will send you twice twenty pounds on the day that I set foot upon France. I swear it upon the honour of a French gentleman.”
But I only got head-shakes for a reply. I pleaded, I argued, I spoke of the English hospitality and the fellowship of brave men, but I might as well have been addressing the two great wooden clubs which stood balanced upon the floor in front of me. There was no sign of sympathy upon their bull-faces.
“Business is business, mounseer,” the old trainer repeated. “Besides, how am I to put the Bustler into the ring on Wednesday if he’s jugged by the beak for aidin’ and abettin’ a prisoner of war? I’ve got to look after the Bustler, and I take no risks.”
This, then, was the end of all my struggles and strivings. I was to be led back again like a poor silly sheep who has broken through the hurdles. They little knew me who could fancy that I should submit to such a fate. I had heard enough to tell me where the weak point of these two men was, and I showed, as I have often showed before, that Etienne Gerard is never so terrible as when all hope seems to have deserted him. With a single spring I seized one of the clubs and swung it over the head of the Bustler.
“Come what may,” I cried, “you shall be spoiled for Wednesday.”
The fellow growled out an oath, and would have sprung at me, but the other flung his arms round him and pinned him to the chair.
“Not if I know it, Bustler,” he screamed. “None of your games while I am by. Get away out of this, Frenchy. We only want to see your back. Run away, run away, or he’ll get loose!”
It was good advice, I thought, and I ran to the door, but as I came out into the open air my head swam round and I had to lean against the porch to save myself from falling. Consider
