Let us form here on the slope
of the bank, and if they attempt to cross, fall on them as they come
out of the water."
Officers and servants fell into line--a badly armed troop, with
infantry swords, and some without pistols. Meanwhile, L'Isle sent
Hatton's down to the edge of the river to challenge the opposite
party.
Now, Hatton's knowledge of foreign tongues was pretty much limited to
those vituperative epithets which are first and oftenest heard in
every language. He rode down to the edge of the water, and proceeded
loudly to anathamatize his opponents in Portuguese, Spanish and French
successively. Having exhausted his foreign vocabulary, he hurled at
them some well shotted English phrases--but the heretics did not heed
the damnatory clauses, even in plain English. Not a word could he get
in reply from them. L'Isle literally and figuratively in the dark,
grew impatient, and announced his intention to commence a pistol
practice on them that would draw out some demonstration. He rode down
to the water's edge, and was leveling a long pistol at the middle of
the dark mass, when some epithet of Hatton's more stinging than any he
had yet invented, proved too much for Goring's gravity.
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