GUY expected to see something startling, but was disappointed. The public room was as quiet and orderly as it had been at any time since he entered it. The sailors had resumed their game, and the landlord was standing behind the bar with a row of glasses ranged on a shelf before him, into each of which he was putting a small portion of a white powder that he took from a paper he held in his hand. Then he filled all the glasses with some kind of liquor, stirred them with a spoon, and placing them upon a tray started toward the table at which the sailors were sitting. “It is my treat now, lads,” said he, “and here is something to make your suppers set easy.”
“Don’t touch it,” shouted Flint, suddenly starting forward. “Knock him down, some of you. That stuff is doctored.”
Guy did not understand just what Flint meant by this, but it was plain that the sailors did. They all jumped to their feet in an instant, while the landlord put down the tray and looked at Guy’s companion with an expression on his face that was perfectly fiendish. A moment afterward a glass propelled by his hand came sailing through the air, and was shivered into fragments against the wall close beside Flint’s head.
“I’ll be at you in a second,” said the latter, as he coolly made his way behind the bar. “There’s the stuff that’s in your glasses, mates,” he added, throwing upon the counter the paper that contained the remainder of the drug. “If there is a ’pothecary among you, may be he can tell you what it is—I can’t.”
The sailors had, while at the supper table, given abundant evidence that they were in just the right humor for a row, and this was all that was needed to start one going. As Flint came out from behind the counter to pay his respects to the landlord in return for the glass the latter had thrown at his head, that worthy retreated toward the dining-room shouting lustily for help. It came almost immediately in the shape of three or four villainous-looking fellows who were armed with bludgeons. Their sudden appearance astonished Guy. He had seen no men about the house, and he could not imagine where they sprung from so quickly.
“There’s a man who wants to raise a fight,” cried the landlord, pointing to Flint. “Down with him.”
“Stand by me, mates,” said Flint, throwing off his hat, and pushing back his sleeves, “and we will clean the shanty.”
The opposing parties came together without a moment’s delay, and the noise and confusion that followed almost made Guy believe that pandemonium had broken loose. Having never witnessed such a scene before he was overcome with fear and bewilderment. Deprived of speech and the power of action, he stood watching the struggling men, all unconscious of the fact that he was every moment in danger of being stricken down by the glasses which whistled past his ears like bullets. At last the lights were extinguished, and this seemed to arouse Guy from his trance of terror. As quick as a flash he darted into the dining-room, and jerking open a door that led into the street, soon put a safe distance between himself and the combatants.
“Great Scott!” panted Guy, seating himself under a gas-lamp to rest after his rapid run. “I didn’t bargain for such things as this. I’d rather be at home a great sight. Why, a man’s life isn’t safe among such people. I am tired of the sea, and homesick besides; and I think the best thing I can do is to start for Norwall while I have money in my pocket.”
Had Guy acted upon this sensible conclusion, he might have saved himself from a great deal of misery that was yet in store for him. While he was thinking about it—trying to picture to himself the commotion his unexpected return would create in his father’s house, and wondering what sort of a reception would be extended to him—he heard some one coming rapidly down the sidewalk; and fearing that it might be the landlord, or some of his assistants, who were searching for him, he sprung up and darted down a cross street that led to the dock. He was running directly into more trouble, if he had only known, it—trouble that he was not to see the end of for months; and he brought it all on himself by so simple a thing as going to the dock.