These men were swaggering along arm in arm, exchanging ribald jests with each other, and insulting the inoffensive passers by with coarse remarks interlarded with oaths, and, whenever occasion offered, tripping them up with their swords or canes and landing them in the gutter.
Some of these worthies wore cockades or badges, and later on Tom learned to know them as Darby captains, Tash captains, or Cock-and-bottle captains, according to the special sort of marauding which they favoured. He met one party of the dreaded Mohocks, or Mohawks, reeling along half intoxicated already, and ripe for any offensive mischief, which later in the day they were certain to perpetrate. They eyed the young rustic askance as it was, and Tom heard a whisper go through their ranks:
"Pity 'tis so early i' the day, or we'd sweat him rarely."
But he held his head high, and swaggered along as though he felt himself a match for all and any who might attack him. Yet inwardly he felt that he would never go abroad in town without a sword at his girdle. What the "sweating" might be, he knew not; but he was assured that it was some sort of assault upon his person.
At length he reached his destination, which was a shop of fine appearance in Drury Lane, just off the main thoroughfare of Holborn. It was then a street of some pretensions, albeit a narrow one, and Tom's eyes soon espied the name he was in search of over the door of a shop round which a score or more of gallants were lounging. In the doorway itself stood a very fine youth, at least he was fine as to his raiment, although he wore no wig and was but an apprentice of better figure and deportment than most. He was displaying to the admiring crowd a mighty fine waistcoat of embroidered satin, worked in gold and colours very cunningly, and trimmed with a frosted-gold cord of new design and workmanship. It was this waistcoat, which the young man called the Blenheim vest, that had attracted the crowd, and Tom could not at first get near the door, so much chaffering and laughing and rough play was going on round it.
So he filled up the time by seeking to understand the extraordinary jargon which was spoken by the young dandies, in which he was not particularly successful (for in addition to a marvellous assortment of oaths, they talked a mixture of bad English, worse French, and vilest Latin), and in examining the signboard which hung out over the doorway of Master Cale's abode.
This sign had been painted to the perruquier's own design, at a time when there threatened to be a reaction in favour of natural hair in place of the monstrous perukes so long worn. The picture represented a young man clad in all the finery of a fop of Charles the Second's court, save only the peruke, hanging by his hair from the limb of a giant oak, with three javelins in his heart, whilst below sat weeping a man in royal crown and robes; and below this picture there ran the following legend:
"O Absalom! O Absalom!
O Absalom! my son,
If thou hadst worn a periwig
Thou hadst not been undone."
In the window of the shop was set out an array of the most wonderfully curled wigs, perfect marvels of the perruquier's art; and, indeed, the size of the young dandies' heads was a study in extravagance quite as wonderful in its way as the towers upon the heads of the ladies.
When presently the group had moved away, and the apprentice in the fine vest had a moment's leisure, Tom came forward and asked if Master Cale were within.