“It was a very fine summer’s morning, and being Saturday, the market-place was occupied by numbers of country people setting out their standings of butter, eggs, poultry, and vegetables. Directly through the midst of these market people lay my way, and I stepped it with seeming equanimity, and as much of real indifference as I could muster, for, after all, as I reflected, if the very worst happened, I should only be disappointed in present hope, and be sent on board a ship of war as many hundreds had been before me. So I walked forward, the people almost lifting their eyes in wonder at seeing a tall, gaunt, weather-browned sailor traversing that perilous ground.
THE PRESS-GANG
“I had got clear of the market-place, and was proceeding down a flagged footpath leading to the outskirts of the town, and already breathing more freely, when the sound of a light slip-shod step approached behind me. I thought it was some servant girl going out for her morning’s milk or hot roll, and never turned my head. A slap on the shoulder, however, and the salutation, ‘Hollo, shipmate,’ caused me to face about, when what should stand before me but a marine, in his blue overcoat and girdled hat without feather.
“At that moment I felt as little ruffled as if we had been old acquaintance, determined, however, not be taken if either presence of mind or resistance could prevent it.
“‘Hollo, shipmate,’ said I.
“‘What are you?’ asked the man.
“‘What am I? I’m a servant,’ I replied. A term not used in the Royal Navy, but by which persons under contract are distinguished in the trade of our Eastern Coast.
“‘A servant?—what’s that?’
“‘Why, a servant—that’s all,’ I replied.