hearing that recruit reply to Malvin's order to join the line, with a recommendation that Malvin should go to the devil.
"I am not," replied Rupert.
"Wal, I guess we'll back yew up, sonny," said the American with an approving smile.
"I shall be glad if you will in no way interfere," returned the Englishman.
"Gee-whillikins!" commented the Bucking Bronco.
John Bull looked anxious. "He's the strongest man I have ever seen," he remarked, "besides being a professional wrestler and acrobat."
Malvin again approached, grinning maliciously.
"Il Signor Luigi Rivoli would be sorry to have to come and fetch you, English pig," said he. "Sorry for you, that is. Do you wish to find yourself au grabat,[1] you scurvy, mangy, lousy cur of a recruit? … What reply shall I take Il Signor Luigi Rivoli?"
"That!" replied the Englishman, and therewith smote the fat Austrian a most tremendous smack across his heavy blue jowl with the open hand, sending him staggering several yards. Without paying further attention to the great man's ambassador, he strode in the direction of the great man himself, with blazing eyes and clenched jaw.
"You want me, do you?" he shouted at the astonished Luigi, who was rising open-mouthed from his bed; and, putting the whole weight of his body behind the blow, drove most skilfully and scientifically straight at the point of his jaw.
It must be confessed that the Italian was taken unawares, and in the very act of getting up, so that
- ↑ On a sick bed.
