And now he heard the door open! The sound chilled
him to the marrow —already he seemed to
feel the knife at his throat. Horror made him
close his eyes; horror made him open them again—and
before him stood John Canty and Hugo!
He would have said “Thank God!” if his
jaws had been free.
A moment or two later his limbs were at liberty, and
his captors, each gripping him by an arm, were hurrying
him with all speed through the forest.
Once more ‘King Foo-foo the First’ was
roving with the tramps and outlaws, a butt for their
coarse jests and dull-witted railleries, and sometimes
the victim of small spitefulness at the hands of Canty
and Hugo when the Ruffler’s back was turned.
None but Canty and Hugo really disliked him.
Some of the others liked him, and all admired his
pluck and spirit. During two or three days,
Hugo, in whose ward and charge the King was, did what
he covertly could to make the boy uncomfortable; and
at night, during the customary orgies, he amused the
company by putting small indignities upon him—always
as if by accident. Twice he stepped upon the
King’s toes—accidentally—and
the King, as became his royalty, was contemptuously
unconscious of it and indifferent to it; but the third
time Hugo entertained himself in that way, the King
felled him to the ground with a cudgel, to the prodigious
delight of the tribe. Hugo, consumed with anger
and shame, sprang up, seized a cudgel, and came at
his small adversary in a fury. Instantly a ring
was formed around the gladiators, and the betting
and cheering began. But poor Hugo stood no chance
whatever. His frantic and lubberly ’prentice-work
found but a poor market for itself when pitted against
an arm which had been trained by the first masters
of Europe in single-stick, quarter-staff, and every
art and trick of swordsmanship. The little King
stood, alert but at graceful ease, and caught and
turned aside the thick rain of blows with a facility
and precision which set the motley on-lookers wild
with admiration; and every now and then, when his
practised eye detected an opening, and a lightning-swift
rap upon Hugo’s head followed as a result, the
storm of cheers and laughter that swept the place was
something wonderful to hear. At the end of fifteen
minutes, Hugo, all battered, bruised, and the target
for a pitiless bombardment of ridicule, slunk from
the field; and the unscathed hero of the fight was
seized and borne aloft upon the shoulders of the joyous
rabble to the place of honour beside the Ruffler,
where with vast ceremony he was crowned King of the
Game-Cocks; his meaner title being at the same time
solemnly cancelled and annulled, and a decree of banishment
from the gang pronounced against any who should thenceforth
utter it.
