Roger the Bold: A Tale of the Conquest of Mexico

BLACKIE AND SON LIMITED LONDON GLASGOW AND BOMBAY

Hi! Hi! Hi! Your attention, if it please you. Gentles and people, I pray you lend your assistance to one who is in need of help, but who seeks not for alms. But little is asked of you, and that can be done in the space of a minute or more. 'Tis but to decipher a letter attached to this plaque. 'Tis written in some foreign tongue—in Spanish, I should venture. A silver groat is offered to the one who will translate.
The speaker, a short, large-nosed man of middle age, had taken his stand upon an upturned barrel, for otherwise he would have been hidden amongst the people who thronged that part of the city of London, and would have found it impossible to attract their attention. But as it was, his head and shoulders reared themselves above the crowd, and he stood there the observed of all observers. He was dressed in a manner which suggested a calling partly attached to the sea and partly to do with the profession of arms, and if there had been any doubt in the minds of those who watched him, and listened to his harangue, his language, which was plentifully mingled with coarse nautical expressions of that day, and his weather-beaten and rugged features, would have assured them at once that he at least looked to ships and to the sea for his living. Peter Tamworth was indeed a sailor, every inch of him, but he had been schooled to other things, and had learned to use arms at times and in places where failure to protect himself would have led to dire consequences.
He was a merry fellow, too, for he laughed and joked with the crowd, his eyes rolling in a peculiar manner all his own. His nose was large, huge in fact, and of a colour which seemed to betoken a fondness for carousal when opportunity occurred. A stubbly beard grew at his chin, while the upper lip was clean shaven, or had been on the previous Sunday, it being Peter's custom to indulge in a visit to the barber on that day if it happened that he was in port. A pair of massive shoulders, into which the neck seemed to be far sunk, completed an appearance, so far as it could be seen, which seemed to denote a stout fellow, fond of the good things to be found in this world, and not lacking in courage and determination when the time for blows arrived. A little later, when he leaped from the barrel and appeared in the open, it was seen that a ragged pair of hose covered massive legs, which were unusually bowed, and should have belonged to a horseman rather than to one who followed the calling of the sea.