"You want to color a popular outbreak, do you not?"
"Yes."
"Then you should introduce a tempest howling, the waves roaring, the lightning flashing, and discord raging in the air as well as on the earth."
"Well, to continue my story. Although it was midnight, the disturbance began to wake up the villagers, and a crowd was collecting, so we hurried off our prisoners to the boats as speedily as we could. Some five and twenty able bodied men were thus added to his Majesty's fleet. The object of our visit to the Irish coast was accomplished, and the Norfolk continued her voyage to the West Indies. Now you know what is meant by the word pressed, and likewise the nautical signification of the word press-gang."
"And you say that Bill Stubbs has been trapped on board this ship by such means?"
"Yes, at New Orleans."
"According to your story, then, that does not say very much in his favor?"
"No, not a great deal; still, that proves nothing—the fact of his calling himself Bob is a worse feature. A man does not generally change his name without having good, or rather bad, reasons for it."
"What appears to me," remarked Fritz, "as the most singular feature of your press-gang adventure is, that you are alive to tell it."
"Why so?"