Page:Georges Eekhoud - Escal Vigor, a novel.djvu/60

36 trumpets, and hammered away conscientiously at the asses' skin of their drums.

All wore, with some differences, the picturesque costume of the youth of the country. With many, their toggery over-worn and even patched, contracted more verdigris and stew than the over-new clothes of the guests. There were some whose dress was in frank disorder; they were without vest, in shirt sleeves, and, with their blouse wide-open, displayed their huge necks as low down as the origin of the pectoral muscles.

They were, almost all of them, tall, sturdy boys, fine strapping dark fellows, recruited from all the castes of the island, from the farms of Zoudbertinge as well as the kennels of Klaarvatsch. The guild, being of a very democratic nature, mingled the sons of the most respectable citizens with the male offspring of plunderers of wrecks and shore vagabonds.

The youngest of these grandsons of wreckers, urchins with rough-tossed hair, wild but brilliant eyes, faces brown as those of Guido's angels, and stout-limbed already,