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Hardly was he out of sight when Peter saw Drummer heading that way, and Drummer looked very much put out about something. He just nodded to Peter and flew straight to Unc' Billy's tree. Then he began to drum. How he did drum! His red-capped head flew back and forth as Peter never had seen it fly before. Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat!
In our own country the conductor's hand touches the signal-cord and the train moves. At Ronda, a bell in the station rang, then a red-capped employee trotted along the length of the train ringing a hand dinner bell.
He had counseled delay, confident that these men would counsel it in their turn, and take to themselves the credit for so excellent an idea. He had other business as he passed along the corridor of the prison, a jest with the red-capped turnkey concerning the pretty birds he tended so lovingly. "Some of them sing even, citizen," answered the man, with a great, coarse laugh.
Here lay the union-jack of old England, floating beside the lilies of France we speak of times when lilies were and barricades were not the tall and taper spars of a Yankee frigate towering above the low timbers and heavy hull of a Dutch schooner the gilded poop and curved galleries of a Turkish three-decker, anchored beside the raking mast and curved deck of a suspicious looking craft, whose red-capped and dark-visaged crew needed not the naked creese at their sides to bespeak them Malays.
So I passed for the last time over the threshold of the Cafe Procope, where Voltaire had matured his plays and Piron sharpened his epigrams; where Jouffroy had battled with his doubts and fears; where, since their time, since my days of Parisian life, the terrible storming youth, afterwards renowned as Leon Michel Gambetta, had startled the quiet guests with his noisy eloquence, till the old habitues spilled their coffee, and the red-capped students said to each other, "Il ira loin, ce gaillard-la!"
With a word to my comrades to be alert and ready for anything that might happen, I led the way at a quick pace into the town. I had grave misgivings when I noticed that the streets were en fete, flags flying at the windows, and people gossiping in knots at the corners. But we had certainly come too far to retreat, so I boldly accosted a red-capped fisherman and demanded to be led to the mairie.
A bugle sounded and a drum beat from the great fosse under the wall, and a company of piou-pious, red-capped, red-trousered, shambled through their evolutions in a manner to break the heart of a British or a German drill-sergeant. Then out past level fields to little Vanves, with its steep streets and its old gray church, and past the splendid grounds of the Lycée beyond.
Who would have thought when we were together at dear old Eagle House, that they would, ere many years had gone over their heads, have actually crossed swords with real red-capped or turbaned Mahomedans, fought with true Greek romantic pirates, hunted down slavers, and explored African rivers with voracious sharks watching their mouths, hungry crocodiles basking in their slimy shallows, and veritable negroes inhabiting their banks; yet here were all the three, Alick Murray, Jack Rogers, and Terence Adair, collected on board Her Majesty's brig of war Archer, commanded by Captain Grant.
But all these symptoms had to be increased many fold in their intensity before we could hope to get under way; and a single glance at the listless countenances of the bare-legged, bare-armed, red-capped crowd who adhered like polypi to the rough foundation-stones of the mole sufficed to show that the performance they had come to witness would not soon commence.
When there were any new curiosities in Fleet street, wild men with rings in their noses, wondrous fishes, puppet-shows, or red-capped baboons whirling on a pole, Carew would have Nick see them as well as Cicely; and often took them both to Bartholomew's Fair, where there was a giant eating raw beef and a man dancing upon a rope high over the heads of the people.
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