I have
said already that he was a papist only when it suited him.
The dispute was being conducted by Hagthorpe, Wolverstone, and Pitt
on the one side, and Cahusac, out of whose uneasiness it all arose,
on the other. Behind them in the sun-scorched, dusty square,
sparsely fringed by palms, whose fronds drooped listlessly in the
quivering heat, surged a couple of hundred wild fellows belonging to
both parties, their own excitement momentarily quelled so that they
might listen to what passed among their leaders.
Cahusac appeared to be having it all his own way, and he raised
his harsh, querulous voice so that all might hear his truculent
denunciation. He spoke, Pitt tells us, a dreadful kind of English,
which the shipmaster, however, makes little attempt to reproduce.
His dress was as discordant as his speech. It was of a kind to
advertise his trade, and ludicrously in contrast with the sober
garb of Hagthorpe and the almost foppish daintiness of Jeremy Pitt.
His soiled and blood-stained shirt of blue cotton was open in front,
to cool his hairy breast, and the girdle about the waist of his
leather breeches carried an arsenal of pistols and a knife, whilst
a cutlass hung from a leather baldrick loosely slung about his body;
above his countenance, broad and flat as a Mongolian's, a red scarf
was swathed, turban-wise, about his head.
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