Then suddenly the storm broke in wrath. Something
had happened in the street. The jabbering crowd at
the door had turned and were hurrying upon some
central tumult. The dragoman screamed to Coleman.
Coleman jumped and grabbed the dragoman. " Tell
this man to take them somewhere up stairs," he cried,
indicating the Wainwrights with a sweep of his arm.
The innkeeper seemed to understand sooner than the
dragoman, and he nodded eagerly. The professor was
crying: "What is it, Mr. Coleman? What is it ? "
An instant later, the correspondent was out in the
street, buffeting toward a scuffle. Of course it was
the students. It appeared, afterward, that those
seven young men, with their feelings much ruffled,
had been making the best of their way toward the
door of the inn, when a large man in the crowd, during
a speech which was surely most offensive, had laid
an arresting hand on the shoulder of Peter Tounley.
Whereupon the excellent Peter Tounley had hit the
large man on the jaw in such a swift and skilful manner
that the large man had gone spinning through a
group of his countrymen to the hard earth, where he
lay holding his face together and howling. Instantly,
of course, there had been a riot. It might well be
said that even then the affair could have ended in a lot
of talking, but in the first place the students did not
talk modern Greek, and in the second place they were
now past all thought of talking. They regarded this
affair seriously as a fight, and now that they at last
were in it, they were in it for every pint of blood in
their bodies. Such a pack of famished wolves had
never before been let loose upon men armed with
Gras rifles.
They all had been expecting the row, and when
Peter Tounley had found it expedient to knock over
the man, they had counted it a signal: their arms
immediately begun to swing out as if they had been
wound up. It was at this time that Coleman swam
brutally through the Greeks and joined his countrymen.
He was more frightened than any of those novices.
When he saw Peter Tounley overthrow a dreadful
looking brigand whose belt was full of knives, and who
-crashed to the ground amid a clang of cartridges, he
was appalled by the utter simplicity with which the
lads were treating the crisis. It was to them no com-
mon scrimmage at Washurst, of course, but it flashed
through Coleman's mind that they had not the
slightegt sense of the size of the thing. He expected
every instant to see the flash of knives or to hear the
deafening intonation of a rifle fired against hst ear. It
seemed to him miraculous that the tragedy was so long
delayed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account