"Damn my boots, what a precious lot of ragamuffins!" Andrew could hear him saying to himself as they approached. "You can't talk their lingo, can you sergeant? I thought not--a pretty affair, damn my boots, to send a gentleman with his Majesty's commission to shepherd a pack of mutinous blackguards into town. If the governor were of my mind, he'd shoot down every last man jack of them in the ditch of the fort, by pox and thunder--don't you think so, sergeant? Hey, you there, the man with the dirty shirt--" he called suddenly as Andrew came nearer, "can you talk English? Damn my boots he's staring at me like a codfish--why don't you salute an officer, man? Stap me, the creature stinks in the wind like Billingsgate fish-market! Talk English, fellow! Parlay English, Anglish--yes--no?" he howled abruptly at Andrew from a distance of five paces, as if Andrew, being a foreigner, must be stone-deaf. It did not surprise Andrew to be taken for one of the Minorcans. With a ten day's beard on his face and his skin burned by the sun, he could have passed for a scavenger. He was only surprised when the captain, after a few interchanges, grew fairly civil on the whole. He was like other English officers Andrew had known, apparently in a continual sweat of puzzled exasperation whenever he had a task to accomplish, and yet somehow getting the task done with a certain slack efficiency that seemed to surprise himself. His bloodthirstiness was entirely a matter of conversation. Andrew saw him later in the day with a fat Minorcan two-year-old on the saddle before him and an expression of weary fury on his face, muttering savagely, "Damn my boots, you think you're a fine whelp, don't you--a fine little piece of mutiny to boil for officers' soup--how he claws at me, damme sergeant! I think I'd better drop him in the road and break his head." But his arm was tightly clutched around the child, and the child was squeaking delightedly as it pulled at the horse's mane. Andrew made himself as inconspicuous as possible during the rest of the march and did not attempt to interview the captain till it was ended. A year ago he would have done so at once, without thinking how strange his important talk of the house of Alexander Beard and Son would sound on the lips of a dirty, unshaven boy. Now he knew his cue was self-effacement till he could get to the Governor. From the talk of the patrol he gathered that His Excellency was at least not ill-disposed toward the Minorcans and intended to give them a chance to state their case. But he and Sebastian stood in a different position from the rest of the host.