Part 10 (2/2)

Also I know the jar with which a foot stops suddenly in mid-air, as the Scourge pursues and kicks the fleeing Smoutchy--kicks him ”for keeps” too.

Yet for all this Smoutchy Boy is a man and a brother. His smoutchiness generally pa.s.ses off with the callowness of hobble-de-hoyhood. The condition is indeed rather one for the doctor than for the Police Court. It is pathological rather than criminal; for when the Smoutchy is thrown for some time into the society of men of the world--drilled for instance in barrack yards, licked and clouted into shape by the regiment or the s.h.i.+p's crew, he sheds his smoutchiness from him like a garment. It is on record that Smoutchies ere now have led forlorn hopes, pierced Africa to its centre, navigated strange seas, and trodden trackless Polar snows. The worst Smoutchy of my time, the bully who, till the biceps and _tendo Achilles_ muscles hardened to their office, made life at a certain school a terror and an agony, afterwards sprang from a steamer in order to save the life of a man who had fallen overboard in a high-running sea.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ”THE HEAD SMOUTCHY.”]

But of all Smoutchies the worst variety is that reared in the vicinity of the small manufacturing town. He thrives on wages too early and too easily earned. Foul language, a tobacco pipe with the bowl turned down, and the rotten f.a.gends of a.s.sociation football, are the signs by which you may know him. In such a society there is always one Smoutchy who sets the fas.h.i.+on, and a crowd who imitate.

In Edam the head Smoutchy of the time was Nipper Donnan. He was the son of a fighting butcher, who in his day, and before marrying the widow of the deceased publican of the ”Black Bull,” had been a yet more riotous drover, and had almost met the running expenses of the Sheriff Court by his promptly paid fines.

The only things Nipper Donnan feared were the small, round, deep-set eyes of his father. The police were a sport to him. The well-brought-up children of the Grammar School trembled at his name.

The rough lads at work in the mills on the Edam Water almost wors.h.i.+pped him; for it was known that his father gave him lessons in pugilism. He sported a meerschaum pipe; a spotted handkerchief was always knotted knowingly round his throat, and a white bull-dog, with red sidelong eyes and lips drawn up at the corners, followed close at his heel.

Great in Edam and on all the banks of the Edam Water was Nipper Donnan, the King of the Smoutchies.

And it was into his hard, rough, unclean hands that our brave General Napoleon had fallen. Now Nipper had been reared in special hatred of the Smiths of Windy Standard. Mr. Picton Smith it was who, long ago at Edam Fair, as a young man, had interfered with Drover Donnan, when he was just settling to ”polish off” a soft, good-natured shepherd of the hills, whom he had failed to cheat out of the price of his ”blackfaces.” Mr. Picton Smith it was who on the same occasion had sentenced the riotous drover to ”thirty days without the option of a fine.” He it was in times more recent who had been the means of getting the Black Bull shut up, upon the oft-repeated complaint of the Chief Constable.

And so all this heritage of hatred was now to be worked off on the son of the gentleman by the son of the bully. Of course it might just as well have been the other way about, for there is no absolute heredity in Smoutchydom. The butcher might easily have been the gentleman, and the landlord's son the Smoutchy bully; only to Hugh John's cost, on this occasion it happened to be the other way about.

The lads who followed Nipper Donnan were mostly humble admirers--some more cruel, some less, but sworn Smoutchies to a man, and all afraid to interfere with the fierce pleasures of their chief. Indeed, so absolute was Captain Nipper Donnan, that there never was a time when some of his band did not bear the marks of his attentions.

CHAPTER XVII.

BEFORE THE INQUISITION.

With this excursion into the natural history of the Smoutchy Boy, which perhaps ought to have come somewhat earlier in the history, we continue the tale of the adventures of General Napoleon Smith.

Beaten down by numbers, the hero lay on the ground at the corner of the butcher's parks. Nipper Donnan stood over him and held him down with his foot. They were just the right ages for bully and bullied.

Hugh John Smith was twelve, slim, and straight as an arrow; Nipper Donnan sixteen, short, hard, and thick set, with large solid hands and prominent knuckles.

”Got you at last, young prig! Now I'll do you to rights!” remarked Nipper, genially kicking Hugh John in the ribs with his hobnailed boots.

Hugh John said not a word, for he had fought till there was no more breath left in him anywhere.

”Sulky, hey?” said Nipper, with another kick in a more tender spot.

Hugh John winced. ”Ah, lads, I thought that would wake the young swell up. Oh, our father is the owner of this property, is he? So nice! He owns the town, does he? Nasty pauper he is! Too poor to keep a proper carriage, but thinks us all dirt under his feet. Yaw, yaw, we aw-w so fine, we aw-w, we a-aw!”

And Nipper Donnan imitated, amid the mean obsequious laughter of his fighting tail, the erect carriage of his father's enemy, Mr. Picton Smith, as he was accustomed to stride somewhat haughtily down the High Street of Edam.

Then he came back and kicked Hugh John again.

”You wouldn't dare to do this if my father were here!” said General Napoleon, now sitting up on his elbow.

”_Your_ father, I'll show you!” shouted furiously Nipper the Tyrant.

”Who asked you to come here anyway to meddle with us? Who invited you into our parks? What business have you in our castle? Fetch him along, boys; we'll show him something that neither he nor his father know anything about. They and the likes of them used to shut up people in the castle dungeons, so they say. We are just the boys to give 'em a taste of what it is like theirselves.”

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