We both turned after jostling each other. The impulse seized me to take him by the neck and drub him for his rascally dealing with Mistress Lucy--and to settle at the same time some little private scores of my own. But he was in truth so pitiful a creature, and looked so scared, that I let him alone; besides I felt that I might one day have a greater account to pay off, to which settlement Dick Cludde must be a party.
He on his side, to judge by his pale cheeks, expected a rude handling, and when he found that I made no movement towards him, a look of relief crossed his countenance, followed by an expression which at the moment I was unable to fathom. Then, as by mutual consent, and without having exchanged a word, we turned our backs on each other and went our several ways.
As I expected, the joint of beef was done to shreds, and Widow Perry rated me soundly for being so late, asking me whether I expected her dog to keep turning the jack till doomsday. ('Twas a strange custom of the Bristowe housewives to employ dogs for turning their roasting jacks). With all humility I expressed contrition, and vowed amendment, and I kept my word. While I ate my dinner my thoughts were busy with my late encounter with Vetch, and I wondered what he was about in Bristowe, and whether Dick Cludde was still with him. I did not doubt they were in a desperate rage with me, and if they should be here together I was pretty sure they would take some means of avenging themselves; but confident of my strength and my skill of fence the prospect gave me rather a pleasant expectancy than any alarm.
So three days passed--days which I spent for the most part with Woodrow the old mariner, plying him with questions innumerable about shipping and life at sea, and learning many things by my own observation. I saw no more of Vetch, nor did anything give me cause of uneasiness. On the second day Mistress Perry, indeed, threatened a slight discomfort by wishing me to share my room with a new lodger she had just taken; but she gave in when I flatly refused to bed with a stranger, and grumblingly accommodated the man--a rough-looking sea dog--in a little closet off the stairs.
On the third afternoon, when I returned to the quay after my dinner, Woodrow told me he had found a skipper who would sail for Southampton at the end of the week, and was willing to take me as ship's boy. He assured me that I could hope for nothing better to begin with, and the voyage would be long enough for me to try my sea legs, and, as he believed, to cure me of my fancy for a sea life. I was to visit the skipper at the Angel tavern that evening, and if he liked my figurehead, as Woodrow put it, the matter could be settled there and then.
Accordingly, about seven o'clock, I met Woodrow at the corner of the Bridge, by the Leather Hall, and accompanied him to the Angel in Redcliffe Street, where he presented me to his friend, Captain Reddaway. After the usual jocose allusions to my height, to which I was now fairly inured, the skipper asked me a great many questions about navigation, feigned a vast surprise at my ignorance, and supplied the answers himself, to impress me, I suppose, with his own stores of knowledge.
Then the two mariners settled down over their pipes and beer to a conversation in which I was not expected to take a part; indeed, it consisted chiefly of reminiscences of voyages they had made together, and, though entertaining enough at first, by and by became insufferably tedious. For politeness' sake they included me in the conversation from time to time by waving their pipes at me, and I did not like to risk hurting the feelings of my new employer by showing how wearied I was, or by leaving them; so that it was not till near ten o'clock that I managed to escape, and then only because they had both fallen asleep.
The night was warm, and my lungs being filled with the reek of their strong tobacco I determined to walk down by the river before returning to my lodging, in the hope of getting a breath of fresh air blowing in from the sea. The river side was deserted and silent; the lights of the vessels at anchor increased the darkness around; and I was walking slowly along, wondering which of the lamps hung on Captain Reddaway's vessel, when suddenly I found myself surrounded by a group of men who seemed to have sprung from nowhere. Before I knew what was happening, much less make any movement of defence, I was being dragged by rough hands to the edge of the quay. I shouted lustily for help, only to receive a crack on the head from one of the men, while another clapped his hand across my mouth. I wriggled desperately, tripped up one fellow, and used my feet to some purpose on the shins of another; but there were so many of them that I was soon overpowered, and was quite helpless in their hands when they lugged me down the steps into a boat that lay moored below.
Throwing me into the bottom they pulled off; in a few minutes they came under the quarter of a large vessel in midstream; I was hauled up the side, and, more or less dazed with my rough handling, heard without understanding a loud voice giving orders. In two minutes I was lying bound hand and foot in the fore part of the vessel, and there I remained, exposed to the open sky, until morning dawned.