'Come down, peeping Tom, and don't be afeared,' they called out.
'I'm not afeared,' said Philip; 'I'm no sailor for yo' t' impress
me: nor have yo' any right to take that fellow; he's a Greenland
specksioneer, under protection, as I know and can testify.' 'Yo' and yo'r testify go hang. Make haste, man and hear what this
gem'man, as was in a dirty blubbery whale-ship, and is now in his
Majesty's service, has got to say. I dare say, Jack,' went on the
speaker, 'it's some message to his sweetheart, asking her to come
for to serve on board ship along with he, like Billy Taylor's young
woman.' Philip was coming towards them slowly, not from want of activity,
but because he was undecided what he should be called upon to do or
to say by the man whom he hated and dreaded, yet whom just now he
could not help admiring.
Kinraid groaned with impatience at seeing one, free to move with
quick decision, so slow and dilatory.
'Come on then,' cried the sailors, 'or we'll take you too on board,
and run you up and down the main-mast a few times. Nothing like life
aboard ship for quickening a land-lubber.' 'Yo'd better take him and leave me,' said Kinraid, grimly. 'I've
been taught my lesson; and seemingly he has his yet to learn.' 'His Majesty isn't a schoolmaster to need scholars; but a jolly good
captain to need men,' replied the leader of the gang, eyeing Philip
nevertheless, and questioning within himself how far, with only two
other available men, they durst venture on his capture as well as
the specksioneer's. It might be done, he thought, even though there
was this powerful captive aboard, and the boat to manage too; but,
running his eye over Philip's figure, he decided that the tall
stooping fellow was never cut out for a sailor, and that he should
get small thanks if he captured him, to pay him for the possible
risk of losing the other. Or else the mere fact of being a landsman
was of as little consequence to the press-gang, as the protecting
papers which Kinraid had vainly showed.
'Yon fellow wouldn't have been worth his grog this many a day, and
be d--d to you,' said he, catching Hepburn by the shoulder, and
giving him a push. Philip stumbled over something in this, his
forced run. He looked down; his foot had caught in Kinraid's hat,
which had dropped off in the previous struggle. In the band that
went round the low crown, a ribbon was knotted; a piece of that same
ribbon which Philip had chosen out, with such tender hope, to give
to Sylvia for the Corneys' party on new year's eve. He knew every
delicate thread that made up the briar-rose pattern; and a spasm of
hatred towards Kinraid contracted his heart. He had been almost
relenting into pity for the man captured before his eyes; now he
abhorred him.