Impossible to describe the scene which followed, or the expression upon
the faces of those men who stood beside Santander. The Texan, strong as
he was big, still kept hold of him, though now at arm's length; in his
grasp retaining the grown man with as much apparent ease as though it
were but a child. And there, sure enough, under the torn flannel shirt,
all could see a doublet of chain armour, impenetrable to sword's point
as plate of solid steel.
Explanation this of why Carlos Santander was so ready to take the field
in a duel, and had twice left his antagonist lifeless upon it. It
explained also why, when leaping across the water-ditch, he had dropped
so heavily upon the farther bank. Weighted as he was, no wonder.
By this time the two doctors, with the pair of hackney-drivers, seeing
that something had turned up out of the common course, parting from the
carriages, had also come upon the ground; the jarveys, in sympathy with
Cris Rock, crying, "Shame!" In the Crescent City even a cabman has
something of chivalry in his nature--the surroundings teach and invite
it--and now the detected scoundrel seemed without a single friend. For
he--hitherto acting as such, seeing the imposture, which had been alike
practised on himself, stepped up to his principal, and looking him
scornfully in the face, hissed out the word "_Lache_!"