“Well, Mister Jeremiah Desborough,” said, Middlemore, first breaking the silence, and, in the taunting mode of address he usually adopted towards the settler, “I reckon as how you’ll shoot no wild ducks this season, on the Sandusky river—­not likely to be much troubled with your small bores now.”

The Yankee gazed at him a moment in silence, evidently ransacking his brain for something sufficiently insolent to offer in return.  At length, he drew his hat slouchingly over one side of his head, folded his arms across his chest, and squirting a torrent of tobacco juice from his capacious jaws, exclaimed in his drawling voice: 

“I guess, Mister Officer, as how you’re mighty cute upon a fallen man—­but tarnation seize me, if I don’t expect you’ll find some one cuter still afore long.  The sogers all say,” he continued with a low, cunning laugh, “as how you’re a bit of a wit, and fond of a play upon words like.  If so, I’ll jist try you a little at your own game, and tell you that I had a thousand to one rather be troubled with my small bores than with such a confounded great bore as you are; and now, you may pit that down as something good, in your pun book when you please, and ax me no more questions.”

Long and fitful was the laughter which burst from Villiers and Molineux, at this bitter retort upon their companion, which they vowed should be repeated at the mess table of either garrison, whenever he again attempted one of his execrables.

Desborough took courage at the license conveyed by this pleasantry, and pursued, winking familiarly to Captain Molineux, while he, at the same time, nodded to Middlemore,

“Mighty little time, I calculate, had he to think of aggravatin’, when I gripped him down at Hartley’s pint, that day.  If it hadn’t been for that old heathen scoundrel Gattrie, my poor boy Phil, as the Injuns killed, and me, I reckon, would have sent him and young Grantham to crack their puns upon the fishes of the lake.  How scared they were, sure-Ly.”

“Silence, fellow!” thundered Gerald Grantham, who now came up from the hold, whither he had been to examine the fastenings prepared for his prisoner.  “How dare you open your lips here?”—­then pointing towards the steps he had just quitted—­“descend, sir!”

Never did human countenance exhibit marks of greater rage than Desborough’s at that moment.  His eyes seemed about to start from their sockets—­the large veins of his neck and brow swelled almost to bursting, and while his lips were compressed with violence, his nervous fingers played, as with convulsive anxiety to clutch themselves around the throat of the officer; every thing, in short, marked the effort it cost him to restrain himself within such bounds as his natural cunning and prudence dictated.  Still, he neither spoke nor moved.

“Descend, sir, instantly!” repeated Gerald, “or, by Heaven, I will have you thrown in without further ceremony —­descend this moment!”