Once when a noted bully came to Viking, and, out of sheer bravado and meanness, insulted Roscoe in the streets, two or three river-drivers came forward to avenge the insult. It was quite needless, for the clergyman had promptly taken the case in his own hands. Waving them back, he said to the bully: “I have no weapon, and if I had, I could not take your life, nor try to take it; and you know that very well. But I propose to meet your insolence—the first shown me in this town.”
Here murmurs of approbation went round.
“You will, of course, take the revolver from your pocket, and throw it on the ground.”
A couple of other revolvers were looking the bully in the face, and he sullenly did as he was asked.
“You have a knife: throw that down.”
This also was done under the most earnest emphasis of the revolvers. Roscoe calmly took off his coat. “I have met such scoundrels as you on the quarter-deck,” he said, “and I know what stuff is in you. They call you beachcombers in the South Seas. You never fight fair. You bully women, knife natives, and never meet any one in fair fight. You have mistaken your man this time.”
He walked close up to the bully, his face like steel, his thumbs caught lightly in his waistcoat pockets; but it was noticeable that his hands were shut.
“Now,” he said, “we are even as to opportunity. Repeat, if you please, what you said a moment ago.”
The bully’s eye quailed, and he answered nothing. “Then, as I said, you are a coward and a cur, who insults peaceable men and weak women. If I know Viking right, it has no room for you.” Then he picked up his coat, and put it on.
“Now,” he added, “I think you had better go; but I leave that to the citizens of Viking.”