It was not long
coming. "Yield, dog!" said the water-bailiff. The tinklerman could
not answer--for his throat was grasped too tight in the iron clench
of the city champion; but drawing his snickersnee, he plunged it
seven times in the bailiff's chest: still the latter fell not. The
death-rattle gurgled in the throat of his opponent; his arms fell
heavily to his side. Foot to foot, each standing at the side of his
boat, stood the brave men--THEY WERE BOTH DEAD! "In the name of St.
Clement Danes," said the master, "give way, my men!" and, thrusting
forward his halberd (seven feet long, richly decorated with velvet
and brass nails, and having the city arms, argent, a cross gules,
and in the first quarter a dagger displayed of the second), he
thrust the tinklerman's boat away from his own; and at once the
bodies of the captains plunged down, down, down, down in the
unfathomable waters.
After this follows another episode. Two masked ladies quarrel at
the door of a tavern overlooking the Thames: they turn out to be
Stella and Vanessa, who have followed Swift thither; who is in the
act of reading "Gulliver's Travels" to Gay, Arbuthnot, Bolingbroke,
and Pope. Two fellows are sitting shuddering under a doorway; to
one of them Tom Billings flung a sixpence.
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