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He went home, threw off his sword-belt, and seated himself in a big easy-chair before his fireplace, deep in thought. Once or twice he arose and paced restlessly up and down the room, as he had done in his excited talk with Rollins some few hours before. Then he was simply angry and argumentative, or declamatory. Now he had settled down into a very different frame of mind.
And that's witness to me that you may count on him for what the great Napoleon called two-o'clock-in-the-morning courage; not too common even in his immortal army: when it's pitch black and frosty cold, and you're buried within in a dream of home, and the trumpet springs you to your legs in a trice, boots and trowsers, coat and sword-belt and shako, and one twirl to the whiskers, and away before a second snap of the fingers to where the great big bursting end of all things for you lies crouching like a Java-Tiger a ferocious beast painted undertaker's colour for a leap at you in particular out of the dark; never waiting an instant to ask what's the matter and pretend you don't know.
"I will do it," he said, when afternoon had come; and, giving his sword-belt a hitch, and thrusting his morion a little on one side, he began striding forward, planting his boots down heavily on the soft heather, in which his great spurs kept catching till he at last nearly fell headlong.
So for a couple of hours he went ahead over rolling fallow land to the meadow-flats and a pale shining of freshets; then hit on a lane skirting the water, and reached an amphibious village; five miles from Storling, he was informed, and a clear traverse of lanes, not to be mistaken, 'if he kept a sharp eye open. The sharpness of his eyes was divided between the sword-belt of the starry Hunter and the shifting lanes that zig-tagged his course below.
"I want one with life in him, and they are scarce in the open. So I must to covert after him." And, twitching his sword-belt a little nearer to his hand, he passed across the court to the gate, and to his horses. The Marshal went back laughing, and, slapping his thigh as he entered the hall, jostled by accident a gentleman who was passing out.
"Admiral, look at this," cried Villalobos, pointing to the scar on his face. The admiral looked and knew his old servants, and gave his scarf to the one and the hanger of his sword-belt to the other, as tokens that he was their prisoner. Thus his life was saved for heavy ransom, of which those who had actually captured him would receive a very trifling portion.
"Well, yes, I might a sword-belt ain't much for a man to wear, and his legs would be very thin to get 'em hid behind a scabbard. But we shall see, my lad, we shall see." "What's a wonder to me, sir," said Tom Fillot, respectfully, "is as no one seems to have been killed." "But we don't know that," said Mark, sharply.
I should follow the route he had laid down for me as long as Violette could move a hoof or I a finger upon her bridle. All the way from Sermoise to Soissons, where the road dips up and down, curving among fir woods, I kept my pistol ready and my sword-belt braced, pushing on swiftly where the path was straight, and then coming slowly round the corners in the way we learned in Spain.
Upon their taking close order, the Bombardier, who personated the dead Sergeant, and who actually wore the blood-stained sword-belt of a man who was killed in the action commemorated, advanced and delivered an address to the Commander of the Quebec Garrison, of which the concluding words were: 'We ask of you to pay us now one tribute, By firing from these heights one last salute.
Hamilcar, while listening to him, kept turning round on his finger a big gold ring, the same which had stamped the seal of Carthage upon the sword-belt. He let it fall to the ground; Spendius immediately picked it up; his servile habits came back to him in the presence of his master. The others quivered with indignation at such baseness.
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