To these toasts Colonel Blood and Pierre
Radisson and I sat with inverted glasses.
While the inn was ringing to the shouts of the revellers, the
freebooter leaned across to Pierre Radisson.
"Gad's name if they like you," he mumbled drunkenly.
"Who?" asked Radisson.
"Fur Company," explained Blood. "They hate you! So they do me! But
if the king favours you, they've got to have you," and he laughed to
himself.
"That's the way with me," he whispered in drunken confidence to M.
Radisson. "What a deuce?" he asked, turning drowsily to the table.
"What's my boy doing?"
Young Lieutenant Blood was to his feet holding a reaming glass high as
his head.
"Gentlemen, I give you the sweet savage!" he cried, "the Diana of the
snows--a thistle like a rose--ice that burns--a pauper that spurns--"
"Curse me if he doesn't mean that saucy wench late come from your north
fort," interrupted the father.
My hands were itching to throw a glass in the face of father or son,
but Pierre Radisson restrained me.
"More to be done sometimes by doing nothing," he whispered.
The young fellows were on their knees draining bumpers; but Colonel
Blood was rambling again.
"He gives 'em that saucy brat, does he? Gad's me, I'd give her to
perdition for twopenny-worth o' rat poison! Look you, Radisson, 'tis
what I did once; but she's come back! Curse me, I could 'a' done it
neater and cheaper myself--twopenny-worth o' poison would do it, Picot
said; but gad's me, I paid him a hundred guineas, and here she's come
back again!"
"Blood .
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