United States or Sudan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Half an hour from the time we had entered the fort, keys, arms, and ammunition were in M. de Radisson's hands without the firing of a shot, and the unarmed New Englanders assigned to the main building, where we could lock them if they mutinied. To sound of trumpet and drum, with Godefroy bobbing his tipstaff, M. Radisson must needs run up the French flag in place of the pirate ensign.
"Answer my question!" he exclaimed. "Did you beat this boy for not bringing back money to you when you had sent him out to beg?" "Yes, I did," replied Craft, now thoroughly aroused, "and I'd do it again, too, under the same circumstances." Then he was seized with a fit of coughing that racked his feeble body from head to foot. A tipstaff brought him a glass of water, and he finally recovered.
I was handed over to a tipstaff, who very civilly conducted me and my friends in a coach to the King's Bench, which place I had the evening before been to reconnoitre with my friend Mr. Wm. Butcher, who had come to town with me, and had voluntarily become one of my bail.
I had forgotten all about it, when, in a few days, a piece of paper was brought to me, by which I found that the Court adjudged me to pay 1 pound, 2 shillings, 6 pence, for damages and costs. I asked who brought it, and was told it was the son of the potato-merchant, accompanied by a tipstaff. I requested the pleasure of their company, and asked the legal gentleman what it was for.
"A world of odd meetings this, Saint-Eustache," I smiled disdainfully. "A world of strange comings and goings, and of strange transformations. The last time we were here we stood mutually as guests of Monsieur le Vicomte; at present you appear to be officiating as a a tipstaff." "Monsieur!" He coloured, and he uttered the word in accents of awakening resentment.
And M. de Radisson was as great a stickler for fine points as any of the new-fledged colonials. When he called a conference, he must needs muster to the quarter-deck by beat of drum, with a tipstaff, having a silver bauble of a stick, leading the way. This office fell to Godefroy, the trader, a fellow with the figure of a slat and a scalp tonsured bare as a billiard-ball by Indian hunting-knife.
Whereupon being not a little discomfited, we were advising with ourselves what we should do. During which time there made forth to us a small boat, with about eight persons in it, whereof one of them had in his hand a tipstaff of a yellow cane, tipped at both ends with blue, who made aboard our ship, without any show of distrust at all.
The tipstaff waited cheerfully enough, until he heard the crack of a revolver-shot echo through the passages of the big boarding-house. Then he rushed upstairs to find that Gavan Blake had gone before another Court than the one that was waiting for him so anxiously. After the great case was over life at Kuryong went on its old round.
Word Of The Day