," said Blister.
"Hand over the pistols."

It was an awful business. Gude save us, such goings on in a Christian
land! While Mr Bloatsheet, the young writer, was in the act of cocking
the bloody weapon, I again, but to no purpose, endeavoured to slip in a
word edgeways. Magneezhy was in an awful case; if he had been already
shot, he could not have looked more clay and corpse-like; so I took up a
douce earnest confabulation, while the stramash was drawing to a bloody
conclusion, with Mr Harry Molasses, the fourth in the spree, who was
standing behind Bloatsheet with a large mahogany box under his arm,
something in shape like that of a licensed packman, ganging about from
house to house, through the country-side, selling toys and trinkets; or
niffering plaited ear-rings, and suchlike, with young lasses, for old
silver coins or cracked teaspoons.

"Oh!" answered he, very composedly, as if it had been a canister full of
black-rapee or black-guard, that he had just lifted down from his
top-shelf, "it's just Doctor Blister's saws, whittles, and big knives, in
case any of their legs or arms be blown away, that he may cut them off."
Little would have prevented me sinking down through the ground, had I not
remembered at the preceese moment, that I myself was a soldier, and
liable, when the hour of danger threatened, to be called out, in
marching-order, to the field of battle. But by this time the pistols
were in the hands of the two infatuated young men, Mr Bloatsheet, as
fierce as a hussar dragoon, and Magneezhy as supple in the knees as if he
was all on oiled hinges; so the next consideration was to get well out of
the way, the lookers-on running nearly as great a chance of being shot as
the principals, they not being accustomed, like me for instance, to the
use of arms; on which account, I scougged myself behind a big pear-tree;
both being to fire when Blister gave the word "Off!"

I had scarcely jouked into my hidy-hole, when "crack--crack" played the
pistols like lightning; and as soon as I got my cowl taken from my eyes,
and looked about, woes me! I saw Magneezhy clap his hand to his brow,
wheel round like a peerie, or a sheep seized with the sturdie, and then
play flap down on his broadside, breaking the necks of half-a-dozen
cabbage-stocks--three of which were afterwards clean lost, as we could
not put them all into the pot at one time. The whole of us ran forward,
but foremost was Bloatsheet, who seizing Magneez