Page:Dumas - Tales of Strange adventure (Methuen, 1907).djvu/91

Rh "'Oh, ho!' cried she. 'You threaten me, do you? Just you wait a moment.'

"Her eyes shot two flashes of green lightning: she sprang upon my bamboo, tore it from my hands as easily as I might have done with a child, and setting her teeth, gave me a thrashing—Oh, Lord, a thrashing that would have made the devil wince.

"I had forgotten the business in the boat when she had come near trouncing all six of us, you know; but at the first blows she gave me, I remembered it, never fear. I tried to resist, but it was a perfect hail-storm! I began with threatening and cursing and swearing, and I finished by crying for mercy. I had my bellyful, as they say, and more I than my bellyful. I

"When she saw I was on my knees, she stopped striking.

"'There,' she said, 'that is all right! that will do for this time, but don't let me catch you at it again, or next time you won't get off so cheaply.'

"'Tarnation!' I muttered, 'unless you kill me outright. . .'

"'Silence! let's get to bed,' she said, 'indeed you must be tired!'

"I was worse than tired, I was utterly done up. I went to bed without a word; I turned my nose to the wall; I shut my eyes; I pretended to go to sleep, but 1 took good care to keep one eye open.

CHAPTER VII

FLIGHT

OU understand I was not wasting my time. The life I was leading was past bearing; and I was pondering over some way of escaping the Buchold's clutches and paying her back into the bargain. I did not know why, but I had a shrewd idea it was my wife who had set the trap at Edam and broken th3 ice on the lake of Stavoren.

"Nor was that all. You will remember I had felt something dragging me by the leg to the bottom of the water, and that I had only got rid of this something by kicking out with all my might. Now it struck me forcibly that it was not something but somebody, that had caught me by the leg, and I strongly suspected that somebody was the Buchold.

"Some day or other, I thought to myself, I shall surely find out if it was really she.

"'But how?' said I, interrupting Père Olifus in his narrative.

"Lord! sir, yon must remember I h^d my skates on my feet. I had not troubled, before I kicked out, to take them off. Now a kick with a skate is not a nice thing, least of all when you kick straight downwards. Well, my kick had been straight downwards, and if it was the Buchold who had received it she was bound to bear the marks of it somewhere.

"Very true!"

"So I said to myself we must lie low and pretend to have forgotten all about the stickat Edam, the ducking at Stavoren and the thrashing at Monnikendam; if she it was, she shall pay for everything at one blow. This resolve taken, I turned round and went to sleep.

"Next morning, while she was still asleep, I lifted the sheets and peeped underneath; she had not the smallest mark of a skate on any part of her body. Only I noticed that, instead of putting on her nightcap, as usual, she was wearing her Frisian cap of copper.

"'Good!' said I, 'if you still keep it on to-morrow it means that there is something underneath.' But I never let on, you know; I began dressing, and meantime the Buchold awoke. Her first movement was to put her hand to her head.

"'Good!' said I again, 'we shall find out, never fear.' But I said it under my breath, pretending to smile all the time. On her part, I am bound to say, directly the first moment of anger was over, she seemed to think no more about it; but then the first moment was a caution! The day passed without either of us mentioning the little incident of the night before, arui we might have been a pair of turtle-doves.

"When night came we went to bed. As before, the Buchold retained her Frisian cap. All night long I longed like the devil to get up, light the lamp, and open the little catch fastening that confounded cap. But it was as if she did it on purpose to thwart me; you would have thought the woman had a fever—she never once left off turning and