I see that one of the Man 's rhetorical appeals worked for you. He also claimed,while being thought of as a ballad-singer, that the escapee had previously murdered other sergeants with " a lump of stone". Is he bluffing or did he really kill other sergeants? Yes, they 'd be dead if they were assaulted with a lump of stone unless,for whatever weird reason, the Man was giving body shots with a lump of stone. That is highly improbable considering how the Man, while describing the attacks, states "nothing was known for certain." Someone who survived such an attack would be able to provide some sort of witness testimony. When the Sergeant doesn 't seem to be frightened by these details and remains on watch, the Man tries another rhetorical route. …show more content…
After the Man 's failed appeal to the Sergeant(that he could have ended up as a criminal,too), he responds to the Sergeant 's continued dedication to duty with a thinly-veiled threat: "I thought to do it with my tongue." He then reaches for something, possibly a weapon (logically, it 's probably a bluff), but he hides when backup arrives. The Man is just using whatever rhetoric he can muster to escape, and if that doesn 't work, he resorts to threats of