"Chiff! frightened and gone to stay with Madame Godere, I suppose--
and I so thirsty! Bah! hum, hum, apres le vin la bataille, ziff!"
He kicked in the door and groped his way to the liquors. While he
hastily swigged and smacked he heard the firing begin with a
crackling, desultory volley. He laughed jovially, there in the
dark, between draughts and deep sighs of enjoyment.
"Et moi aussi," he murmured, like the vast murmur of the sea, "I
want to be in that dance! Pardonnez, messieurs. Moi, je veux
danser, s'il vous plait."
And when he had filled himself he plunged out and rushed away,
wrought up to the extreme fighting pitch of temper. Diable! if he
could but come across that Lieutenant Barlow, how he would smash
him and mangle him! In magnifying his prowess with the lens of
imagination he swelled and puffed as he lumbered along.
The firing sounded as if it were between the fort and the river;
but presently when one of Hamilton's cannon spoke, M. Roussillon
saw the yellow spike of flame from its muzzle leap directly toward
the church, and he thought it best to make a wide detour to avoid
going between the firing lines. Once or twice he heard the whine
of a stray bullet high overhead. Before he had gone very far he
met a man hurrying toward the fort. It was Captain Francis
Maisonville, one of Hamilton's chief scouts, who had been out on a
reconnoissance and, cut off from his party by some of Clark's
forces, was trying to make his way to the main gate of the
stockade.
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