perk ’em up again! They stitch up the main business and off you go!.. Hop to it, Humpty-Dumpty! Three cheers!.. You’ll be in the next whirl!. In the nick of time, straight as a bullet! On the spot for the big offensive! You can have the joys of the Charred Woods! You won’t be cold this winter, my merry hero!.. There’ll be sport around there!.. I guarantee it!. Not a minute wasted!. Try to be quick soldier-boys!
.. You won’t look much at the pieces! It’s not a nice thing for a man to do!..
I was thinking about all that. I didn’t say anything! Cascade was still talking. He was glad someone was listening to him… He was producing his effect.
"The sergeant, the one with the ribbons, comes up to me! He stops me, he hands me a line! Boy, what a sour grouch!”
The thing that happened to him.
"Me! I’m telling you, boys!.. Can you imagine that! What did he take me for? He wanted me to follow his parade! to go with him to the Recruiting Station! Just get that!. 'French!’ I said to him. 'French are you?’ he’d pulled a boner! What a face he made! Nose to nose! Started sucking his stick! Did he look dumb! Boy, everyone was splitting! You should’ve seen the crowd! Smack! A sock! Shot right in! Ah! angry! Trench rascal! rascal!’ he calls me. The crowd’s against me.. I wasn’t sticking around! Just think! A thousand against one!
.. Good-by!.. Off like a shot! I wish you’d seen the Recruiting Sergeant’s mug! What a slick getup on the guy! Boy, some swanky tunic! What a nifty can to go to war with! The Jerries’ll have a good laugh! Boy, you see everything! Twirling his stick and woo-woo!”
Cascade was having a great time!.. So were the customers all around him. What a brilliant talker!.. and even the boss of La Vaillance was forgetting his troubles..
"That’s a sergeant for you! you realize? All right, I’ll shut up, Prosper! I’m driving myself crazy! Just thinking about it!
… Hand me the poison! Their bedbug juice! ”
He poured himself a big whisky-fizz… He treated everybody, generous, absolutely..
"It’s for everyone! You hear me? I didn’t come for nothing! They talk to me about sickness! About God knows what!.. about croaking! God damn it! I want to laugh! That reminds me of Little-Mouth Jeanne!.. I picked her up, you know, in Santos!.. I took her for a ride! I put on a real show! I was out with her all afternoon in a high-class landau! I wanted her to enjoy herself, have a good time. What heat, pals! like that!.. A plaster furnace, boys!.. I wanted to go one better. I made the driver stop at a bar, the finest saloon in the town! It was called L’Origone, a swell club! I wanted to put the finishing touches on!. Along came a torero, with his guitar, you know! Whango! He cops my gal! Just like that! Bango! Just time enough to look at her! He sized her up! She fell all over him! That’s what it cost me to be a sucker! He just blotted me out! He took her off on his arm! I blew up! Boy, I’m telling you! I jumped on the grease-ball! I smothered him!
I broke two of his molars for him! He runs to the cops!
My first breadwinner!. Santos is all railings! The prison’s right in the open air! Both of them came to see me! On Sundays, just to get a laugh! to make a damned fool of me! arm in arm!.. You get what lousy punks they were?.. Me on the other side of the bars!. I put in six months! Ah! youth!.. I was twenty, that explains everything! That cured me of taking rides, I’m telling you!.. The only thing to do is break their ribs. You’re nice? You get it in the neck!. Down the drain!.. I love you!.. I didn’t want to show my strength! She was the boss! She sent me back to the kitchen! Get that, my boy!..You with the fruit salad! You toy-soldier! You listening? You don’t know everything! You don’t read that kind of thing in the papers!”
Prospero was in full agreement.
The customers around, those with tattoos, the men from the pier, the fellows with big arms, they nodded, they didn’t understand a thing. Prospero translated some of these practical remarks into English… It made them guffaw with liquor.. Their glasses, their lips, their mustaches were full of it.. They were clinking and cackling.. shaking all the glassware with noisy jokes to the health of their crony, so generous, such a philosopher!.. They were so dazed with the malt gin and the stout and the thick clouds of tobacco and the cut-plug besides and the fatigue of loading that it was a waste of effort explaining to them what it was all about. They didn’t understand anything.. But they wanted, after all, to toast the gay dog who did things so handsomely! who treated the whole crowd.. who gave you a shot in the arm with a one-two-three and whisky-fizz! and "sailor’s vitriol” which was one of Prospero’s secrets that turned your mouth inside out as soon as you were hit by the first drop that would have melted all the fogs from Barbeley Docks to Greenwich just breathing at them, with that horrible breath! across thirty-six Thameses. But you had to hold on to the bar! It knocked you clean off your feet.
“For he's a jolly good fellow"… the whole crowd took up the famous chorus, sent it booming against the windowpanes! the menagerie was roaring! The smoke was getting so thick you could have cut it with a knife.. made everyone teary, close his eyes, stinging and blinking, red, burning with sooty pepper.. and lots of other smokes besides, more pungent ones, filtering in from all over the river, sulphur, coal, saltpeter, getting everything sticky, blotting everything out, even the gas, the lamps, giving you queer looks, funny faces, molasses heads, pasty-looking through the blur. The pubful of bellowers all dim-looking.. the whole mob of howling phantoms..
For he's a jolly good fellow!..
It was starting again… the whole bacchanal.. and then a big pull for the war, the popular refrain, the song of the day that was all the rage at the Empire..
Hide your trouble! Hide your bag!
And sing! sing! sing!..
Even Cascade barked out “Sing! Sing! Sing!" to beat the band! At just that moment along came Boro who’d been in the back, playing cards. He came up to us.
"Where are you coming from, Fatso, eh?” Cascade shoots at him.
"I’m coming from bed, boss! Here’s to your health! At your service! I’m not coming from jail like a lot of other guys,” he adds.. discreet allusion.
"But you’ve been there, let’s be honest, Monsieur Boro!” "And no less than fourteen times for my honor! Monsieur Cascade!.. Forrr my ideas!.. I’d like you to know! And I'm prrroud of it! I expect to again if necessary!”
A terrible accent and thundering rrr!
"Go on! Go on! Don’t boast!”
"Never do, Monsieur Cascade! I never do! You hear me! for peempping!”
Telling him off!
"No one’s asking for your opinions, Monsieur Borokrrrom! Since you’re so distinguished, it's your papers we’d like to see! ” "Why here they are, Monsieur Cascade!”
He rummages around deep down in his pockets, he digs out a whole litter, booklets, wallets, bits of passports, all patched up, full of grease-spots..
Cascade examines them, returns them.
"Oh! Oh! you’re not difficult, my fine bandit! All that record’s yours? Pretty bad, Boro! Pretty bad!.. And what about yours, Monsieur Jinx?”