Acadia, page 139 by Frederic S. Cozzens
<< Return to Title Details & Download140
of pistols. The latter hailed the coach.
"What d'ye want?" quoth Jeangros, drawing up by the roadside.
"Government prisoner," said the man with the pistols.
"What the ---- is government prisoner to me?" quoth Jeangros.
"I want to take him to Dartmouth," said the tall policeman.
"Then take him there," said our jolly driver, shaking up the leaders.
"Hold up," shouted out the tall policeman, "I will pay his fare."
"Why didn't you say so, then?" replied Jeangros, full of the dignity of his position as driver of H. B. M. Mail-coach, before whose tin horn everything must get out of the way.
There was a doubt which was the drunkenest, the officer or the prisoner. We found out afterwards that the officer had conciliated his captive with drink, partly to keep him friendly in case of an attempted rescue, and partly to get him in such a state that running away would be impracticable. And, indeed, there would have been a great race if the prisoner had attempted to escape. The prisoner too drunk to run--the officer too drunk to pursue.
The pair had scarcely crawled up among the luggage upon the stage-top, before there was an outcry from the passengers on the box in front--"Uncock your pistols! uncock your pistols!" for the officer had dropped his fire-arms, cocked and capped, upon the top of our coach, with the muzzles pointed towards us. And indeed I may affirm here, that I never saw metallic cylinders with more menacing aspect, than those which lay quietly behind us, ready to explode--unconscious instruments as they were--and carry any of the party into the next world upon the slightest lurch of the stage-coach.
"Uncock your pistols," said the passengers.
But the officer, in the mellifluous dialect of his mother country, replied that "He'd be ---- if he would. Me prishner," said he, "me prishner might escape; or, the divil knows but there might be a rescue come to him, for there's a good many of the same hereabouts."
It struck me that no per