Читать книгу List, Ye Landsmen!. A Romance of Incident онлайн

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The man who had been thrown into the boat sat up. He passed his wrist and the back of his hand over his brow, turned his knuckles to the moon to look at them, and broke out:

“You murdering blackguards! I’ll punish ye for this. If I handle your blasted powder it’ll be to blow you and your——”

“Silence that villain!” cried the lieutenant.

“A villain yourself, you drunken ruffian! You are just the figure of the baste I’ve been draming all my life I was swung for. Oh, you rogue, how sorry I am for you! Better had ye given yourself up long ago for the crimes you’ve committed than have impressed me. The hangman’s work would have been over, but my knife——”

“Gag him!” cried the lieutenant.

The fellow sprang to his feet, and in another instant would have been overboard. He was caught by his jacket, felled inward by a swinging, cruel blow, and lay kicking, fighting, biting, and blaspheming at the bottom of the boat. In consequence of the struggle four of the oarsmen could not row, and the other two lay upon their oars. The lieutenant, in a voice fiery with rage and liquor, roared out to his men to pinion the scoundrel, to gag the villain, to knock the blasphemous ruffian over the head. All sorts of wild, drunken, savage orders he continued to roar out; and I was almost deafened by his cries of rage, by the howling and shouting of the man in the bottom of the boat, by the curses and growlings of the fellows who were man-handling him.