gathering -- circumspect, calm, accustomed to disturbance,
acquainted with blows! Peste! I have been lucky."

All at once his attention was called to a particular part of
the room. The two men who had pushed the strugglers with
their feet were assailed with abuse by the sailors, who had
become reconciled. One of them, half drunk with passion, and
quite drunk with beer, came, in a menacing manner, to demand
of the shorter of these two sages by what right he had
touched with his foot creatures of the good God, who were
not dogs. And whilst putting this question, in order to make
it more direct, he applied his great fist to the nose of
D'Artagnan's recruit.

This man became pale, without its being to be discerned
whether his pallor arose from anger or from fear; seeing
which, the sailor concluded it was from fear, and raised his
fist with the manifest intention of letting it fall upon the
head of the stranger. But though the threatened man did not
appear to move, he dealt the sailor such a severe blow in
the stomach that he sent him rolling and howling to the
other side of the room. At the same instant, rallied by the
esprit de corps, all the comrades of the conquered man fell
upon the conqueror.

The latter, with the same coolness of which he had given
proof, without committing the imprudence of touching his
weapons, took up a beer-pot with a pewter-lid, and knocked
down two or three of his assailants; then, as he was about
to yield to numbers, the seven other silent men at the