“Ay,” growled the sailor. “I don’t want to say anything unneighbourly, but it seems a pity that some on ’em don’t get swep’ up by the next press-gang as lands. A few years aboard a man-o’-war’d be the best physic for some o’ them. Look at all this here rubbidge about! I see ’em. Got it ready to fling at the young gent. I know their games.”
“Nay, nay,” said the big fisherman, as a low, angry murmur arose, and ignoring the allusion to the fish débris lying about, “we don’t want no press-gangs meddling here.”
“Yes, you do,” said the sailor, angrily, as he applied a blue cotton neckerchief he had snatched off and shaken out alternately to a cut on Aleck’s forehead and to his swollen nose, which was bleeding freely. “Nice game this, arn’t it? I know what I’m saying. I was pressed myself when I was twenty, and sarved seven year afore I come home with a pension. It made a man o’ me, and never did me no harm.”
There was a hoarse roar of laughter at this, several of the fishermen stamping about in their mirth, making the sailor cease his ministrations and stand staring and beginning to mop his hot forehead with the neckerchief.
“What are yer grinning at?” he said, angrily, with the result that the laughter grew louder.
“Have I smudged my face with this here hankychy, Master Aleck?” said the sailor, turning to the boy, who could not now refrain from smiling in turn.
But Aleck was saved the necessity of replying to the question by the big fisherman, who spoke out in a grimly good-humoured way, as he cast his eyes up and down the dwarfed man-o’-war’s man:
“Lookye here, Tom, mate,” he said, good-humouredly, “I don’t know so much about never doing you no harm, old chap.”
“What d’yer mean?” growled the sailor.
“What about yer legs, mate?” cried another of the men.