One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
ferior in numbers to the patriotic levies, but sharp at the
edge and knowing how to strike. Measure the axe, measure
the tree; and which goes down first?
‘Invasion, is it?—and you mean, we’re not to hit back?’ the
pork-butcher bellowed, and presently secured a murmured
approbation from an audience of three, that had begun to
comprehend the dialogue, and strengthened him in a manner
to teach Skepsey the foolishness of ever urging analogies
of too extended a circle to close sharply on the mark. He had
no longer a chance, he was overborne, identified with the
fated invader, rolled away into the chops of the Channel, to
be swallowed up entire, and not a rag left of him, but John
Bull tucking up his shirtsleeves on the shingle beach, ready
for a second or a third; crying to them to come on.
Warmed by his Bullish victory, and friendly to the vanquished,
the pork-butcher told Skepsey he should like to see
more of him, and introduced himself on a card Benjamin
Shaplow, not far from the Bank.
They parted at the Terminus, where three shrieks of an
engine, sounding like merry messages of the damned to their
congeners in the anticipatory stench of the cab-droppings
above, disconnected sane hearing; perverted it, no doubt.
Or else it was the stamp of a particular name on his mind,
which impressed Skepsey, as he bored down the street and
across the bridge, to fancy in recollection, that Mr. Shaplow,
when reiterating the wish for self and friend to witness a
display of his cunning with the fists, had spoken the name of
Jarniman. An unusual name yet more than one Jarniman
might well exist. And unlikely that a friend of the porkbutcher
would be the person whom Mr. Radnor first prohibited
and then desired to receive. It hardly mattered:—
considering that the Dutch Navy did really, incredible as it
seems now, come sailing a good way up the River Thames,
into the very main artery of Old England. And what thought
the Tower of it? Skepsey looked at the Tower in sympathy,
wondering whether the Tower had seen those impudent
Dutch a nice people at home, he had heard. Mr. Shaplow’s
Jarniman might actually be Mr. Radnor’s, he inclined to
think. At any rate he was now sure of the name.
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