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The unambitious Hickie at once applied himself to his duty. He went out, and in due time returned with two sufficient iron pokers. The weapons were examined, approved of, and carefully laid aside. Doolan, Redding, and Hickie ate their suppers, and retired to their several couches to sleep, peacefully enough no doubt.
Then followed a tale or two of cattle Iying quiet as mice one minute, and up on their feet crashing over camps the next, then tales of men being "treed" or "skied," and tales of scrub-bulls, maddened cow-mothers, and "pokers." "Pokers," it appears, have a habit of poking out of mobs, grazing quietly as they edge off until "they're gone before you miss 'em."
A few of those of the highest rank were armed with swords, which they boldly drew; those of the subordinate orders immediately flew to such weapons as the room, kitchen, and scullery afforded such as tongs, pokers, spits, racks, and shovels; and breathing vengeance on the prelatic party, the children of Antichrist and the heirs of d n t n! the barterers of the liberties of their country, and betrayers of the most sacred trust thus elevated, and thus armed, in the cause of right, justice, and liberty, our heroes rushed to the street, and attacked the mob with such violence that they broke the mass in a moment, and dispersed their thousands like chaff before the wind.
General assemblies of the witches were held at least once a year, at which they appeared entirely naked, besmeared with an ointment made from the bodies of unbaptized infants. "To these meetings they rode from great distances on broomsticks, pokers, goats, hogs, and dogs.
Sumfit confided the termination of her story to Rhoda; or suggested rather, at what distant point it might end; and then, giving Master Gammon's box to her custody, with directions for Dahlia to take the boxes to a carpenter's shop not attempting the power of pokers upon them and count and make a mental note of the amount of the rival hoards, she sent Dahlia all her messages of smirking reproof, and delighted love, and hoped that they would soon meet and know happiness.
They came up with easy and somewhat swaggering bearing, a good many roughs, with here and there a ruffian. Several, as they approached, swung and tossed, for mere overplus of strength, the sledges with which they had been tapping at the bald shiny pates of their anvils. Several wielded their long pokers like lances. Grimy chaps, all with their faces streaked, like Blackfeet in their warpaint.
I then ordered half a pig of pewter to be brought, which weighed about sixty pounds, and flung it into the middle of the cake inside the furnace. By this means, and by piling on wood and stirring now with pokers and now with iron rods, the curdling mass rapidly began to liquefy.
But she met with a difficulty, there were no pokers and tongs, as they did not use them. They had no open fires; Mrs. Peterkin had been afraid of them. So Elizabeth Eliza took all the pots and kettles up to the upper windows, ready to be thrown out. But where was Mrs. Peterkin? Solomon John found she had fled to the attic in terror.
I was myself living in Paris during the struggle of the Three Days, and can bear witness to the humanity and moderation of the people during the contest, and of their forbearance after their victory; they came to the house at which I was living and asked for wine; but they brought with them pails of water into which they threw what was given them, thereby proving their extreme temperance and forbearance, but certainly a band of a more ruffianlike looking set of fellows, it would be difficult to imagine, and the manner in which they were at first armed, had something in it of the horrible, and at the same time of the ludicrous; iron bars, pokers, pitchforks, and in fact anything that could be converted into a weapon was taken possession of by the unwashed horde, who swarmed towards the centre of Paris from the manufacturing suburbs; soon, however, the public armouries, and the gunsmiths' shops, the musquetry, and other arms taken from the soldiers during the battle, contributed to arm them more formidably.
"How?" I said, laughing, as I thought of Bob's low estimate of his fighting powers. "Lot of ways, my lad. Cook's got a good many advantages, you see. Red-hot pokers is one; pots and kettles o' boiling water's another, without counting the long sharp knives; but he won't do nothing, and I must. Don't walk too near the wild beasts' cage, my lad, I'm going aft."
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