Page:George Gibbs--Love of Monsieur.djvu/172

 were become so short that they threatened to come no more at all, Monsieur Mornay threw his weapon down upon the deck and, breathing deeply, folded his arms and stood at rest.

“Mynheer,” he said, “it was a mistake to have begun. I am the best half-pikeman in France.”

The Dutchman blinked at him with his small pig-eyes, out of which the bitterness of his humiliation flashed and sparkled in a wild and vengeful light. The Frenchman turned his back to pass beyond the circle of grinning men who had not scrupled to hide their delight and admiration at his prowess in vanquishing their bully. But Gratz, whose exhaustion even could not avail to curb his fury, put all the small store of his remaining energy into a savage rush, which he directed full at the back of the retiring Frenchman. A cry arose, and Mornay would have been transfixed had not Cornbury intercepted the cowardly thrust by a nimble foot, over which the Dutchman stumbled and fell sprawling into the scuppers. The point of his 160