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He felt something knock against his shoulder, and he looked up to have his hat struck from his head by a horse's nose. He saw the horse put his foot on the hat, and he reflected, "Now it will always look like an accordion," and he heard the horse's driver address him some sarcasms before he could fully awaken to the situation.
Returning home they quarreled with their wives, and often beat them, unsparing of their fists. The young people sat in the taverns, or enjoyed evening parties at one another's houses, played the accordion, sang vulgar songs devoid of beauty, danced, talked ribaldry, and drank. Exhausted with toil, men drank swiftly, and in every heart there awoke and grew an incomprehensible, sickly irritation.
Disko pretended that he wished to accomodate folk who had not sent in their mail, and so worked her gracefully in and out among the schooners. In reality, that was his little triumphant procession, and for the fifth year running it showed what kind of mariner he was. Dan's accordion and Tom Platt's fiddle supplied the music of the magic verse you must not sing till all the salt is wet: "Hih! Yih!
He was accomplished too; played the accordion first-rate; and give him a piece of string or a cork or a pack of cards, and he could show you tricks equal to any professional. He could speak, when he chose, fit for a drawing-room; and when he chose he could blaspheme worse than a Yankee boatswain, and talk smart to sicken a Kanaka.
"This is the Draeger pulmotor," he explained as he worked, "devised to resuscitate persons who have died of electric shock, but actually found to be of more value in cases of asphyxiation. Start the motor." The pulmotor began to pump. One could see the dead man's chest rise as it was inflated with oxygen forced by the accordion bellows from the tank through one of the tubes into the lungs.
The boys and girls sorted themselves into couples, Miss Inches took the head of the procession with an accordion, Willy Parker clashed the castanets as well as he could, and they all marched into the house. The table was beautifully spread with flowers and grapes and pretty china. Johnnie took the head, Willy the foot, and Dinah the housemaid helped them all round to sliced peaches and cream.
And this was the manner of the song: Oh, I bet my money on a bob-tailed hoss, An' a hoo-dah, an' a hoo-dah; I bet my money on a bob-tailed hoss, An' a hoo-dah bet on the bay. The singer was a man, his voice an aggravated tenor with a shake to it like an accordion, and he sang that stanza over and over as Lambert leaned on his bicycle and listened. Lambert went down the hill.
There followed an infinitesimal fraction of time when his spirit deserted him as completely as if he were dead. When he recovered himself he had a sense that he was staring at the reflection of a stranger. He moved away, puzzled. Was he going mad? Then, suddenly, everything grew quite clear. He remembered the Italian, the accordion, the hunchback.
We shall be undisturbed there!" De Loubersac acquiesced. So the smart young officer and the old beggar in his ragged coat, with the accordion hanging over his shoulder, who might have been mistaken for Quasimodo himself, descended the steps in company. Vagualame's eyes gleamed with joy.
They strolled up and down upon the sidewalk, eating, one thought between them, and soon she had learned to play the accordion almost as well as he. So passed a happy hour, which the Good King Rene of Anjou would have envied them, while Mitchy-Mitch made friends with Duke, romped about his sister and her swain, and clung to the hand of the latter, at intervals, with fondest affection and trust.
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