And since it took them some
moments to come to their senses and appreciate that all this was not an
evil dream, Duchemin's hands were clutching for the back of the
carriage when the horses broke suddenly into an awkward, lumbering
gallop and whisked it out of reach.
But not for long. Extending himself, Duchemin caught the folded top,
jumped, and began to clamber in.
The man on the box was tugging fretfully at something wedged in the
hip-pocket of his breeches; proof enough that he was not the original
tenant of the uniform, since it fitted too snugly to permit ready
extraction of a pistol in an emergency.
But he got no chance whatever to use the weapon; for the moment
Duchemin found his own feet in the swaying vehicle he leaped on the
shoulders of the other and dragged him backwards from the box.
What followed was not very clear to him, a melange of impressions. The
mock-American fought like a devil unchained, cursing Duchemin fluently
in the purest and foulest argot of Belleville--which is not in the
French vocabulary of the doughboy. The animals at the pole caught fire
of this madness and ran away in good earnest, that wretched barouche
rolled and pitched like a rudderless shell in a crazy sea, the two men
floundered in its well like fish in a pail.
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