Barnabas Thorpe's voice rang through the heavy air, and all these faces were upturned towards him, as if under a spell. To his left stood a group of swarthy-complexioned foreign sailors; black-haired, with earrings in their ears. One of them wore a saffron-coloured handkerchief round his throat, and had a green parrot on his wrist; he made a spot of brightness in the prevailing dun colour of the crowd.
Probably these strangers understood hardly one word in ten of that vehement discourse, delivered with a strong L——shire drawl; but they also listened, as if something in the man's personality, the something stronger than words, held their attention.
With those closely packed squalid houses on the one side of him; with the slowly flowing river, whose waters had given the quietus to so many a miserable body (as for the desperate souls, God only knew what had become of them), on the other, he painted that second coming, when the glory of the Lord shall flash from East to West, and His judgment shall tarry no longer.
There was a mark on the preacher's left shoulder where some one had playfully thrown a rotten egg at him, and a cut across his forehead, to which he put his handkerchief once or twice; both were visible signs that, in spite of the present breathless lull, Barnabas was not likely to suffer from too much adulation. Indeed, he was a fighter born, and it was, perhaps, the impress of strenuous effort that made his rugged face a striking and rather refreshing sight in the midst of men who looked, for the most part, as if the beast had decidedly got the better of the angel in them.
He stood bare-headed, his hand stretched out, his gaunt figure silhouetted against the leaden sky, pleading with passionate force. He felt the misery of London too strong for him at times; the atmosphere oppressed him both mentally and physically; but the very sense of oppression made preaching a relief. Better wear himself out striving against this horror, than acquiesce, letting it stifle and choke him.
There was a stir, a movement; the preacher lost hold of his audience. Suddenly, as the snapping of the thread of a necklace which has been strained tight sends each bead a different way, so attention was snapt, the spell broken.
The preacher, looking over the heads of the people, saw, first, a confused mass of jeering, struggling lads, coming towards him, shouting hoarsely; then, that they had in their midst some poor creature whom they were baiting mercilessly, some one either drunk or mad; then, that they scattered a little to the right and left, and the man (he could see it was a man now) had broken loose and made a dash forward, panting and stumbling.
Instinctively, Barnabas shouted encouragingly, and jumping off his barrel, held out his hands. He could never, for the life of him, keep clear of a fray—especially if it were a case of overwhelming odds.
The victim, when he heard the shout, looked up; his face ghastly, his eyes wide open, with the strained, agonised look of a hunted hare. His persecutors were closing on him again; when, with an inarticulate cry, he shook himself free once more, and, running desperately forward, fell at the preacher's feet, clinging to his knees. "Doan't let them!" he cried; and Barnabas recognised him as Timothy.
For one moment the preacher hesitated; he had a horror of the man.