"Pah! Ten pound for such a scrub! He's not worth six! Look at the marks on his arms, Ramsay"—catching the sailor roughly by the wrist. "He can say what he likes. He knows chains."
Little Jack jerked free and ran along the sands as hard as his bare feet could carry him. Then I turned to Ben, who had always bullied us both. Dropping the solemn "thou's" which our elders still used, I let him have plain "you's."
"You—you—mean coward! I've a mind to knock you into the sea!"
"Grow bigger first, little billycock," taunts Ben.
By the next day I was big enough.
Mistress Hortense Hillary was down on the beach with M. Picot's blackamoor, who dogged her heels wherever she went; and presently comes Rebecca Stocking to shovel sand too. Then Ben must show what a big fellow he is by kicking over the little maid's cart-load.
"Stop that!" commands Jack Battle, springing of a sudden from the beach.
For an instant, Ben was taken aback.
Then the insolence that provokes its own punishment broke forth.
"Go play with your equals, jack-pudding! Jailbirds who ape their betters are strangled up in Quebec," and he kicked down Rebecca's pile too.