Thanking him, Desmond walked on. He had not gone many yards farther before there fell upon his ear, from some point ahead, the sound of several rough voices raised in chorus, trolling a tune that seemed familiar to him. As he came nearer to the singers, he distinguished the words of the song, and remembered the occasion on which he had heard them before: the evening of Clive's banquet at Market Drayton--the open window of the Four Alls, the voice of Marmaduke Diggle.
"Sir William Norris, Masulipatam"--these were the first words he caught; and immediately afterwards the voices broke into the second verse:
"Says Governor Pitt, Fort George, Madras,
'I know what you are: an ass, an ass,
An ass, an ass, an ASS, an ASS,'
Signed 'Governor Pitt, Fort George, Madras.'"
And at the conclusion there was a clatter of metal upon wood, and then one voice, loud and rotund, struck up the first verse once more--"Says Billy Norris, Masulipatam"--The singer was in the middle of the stave when Desmond, rounding a privet hedge, came upon the scene. A patch of greensward, sloping up from a slipway on the riverside; a low, cozy-looking inn of red brick covered with a crimson creeper; in front of it a long deal table, and seated at the table a group of some eight or ten seamen, each with a pewter tankard before him. To the left, and somewhat in the rear of the long table, was a smaller one, at which two seamen, by their garb a cut above the others, sat opposite each other, intent on some game.
Desmond's attention was drawn towards the larger table. Rough as was the common seaman of George the Second's time, the group here collected would have been hard to match for villainous looks. One had half his teeth knocked out, another a broken nose; all bore scars and other marks of battery.
Among them, however, there was one man marked out by his general appearance and facial expression as superior to the rest. In dress he was no different from his mates; he wore the loose blouse, the pantaloons, the turned-up cloth hat of the period. But he towered above them in height; he had a very large head, with a very small squab nose, merry eyes, and a fringe of jet-black hair round cheeks and chin.
When he removed his hat presently he revealed a shiny pink skull, rising from short, wiry hair as black as his whiskers. Alone of the group, he wore no love locks or greased pigtail. In his right hand, when Desmond first caught sight of him, he held a tankard, waving it to and fro in time with his song. He had lost his left hand and forearm, which were replaced by an iron hook projecting from a wooden socket, just visible in his loose sleeve.
He was halfway through the second stanza when he noticed Desmond standing at the angle of the hedge a few yards away. He fixed his merry eyes on the boy, and, beating time with his hook, went on with the song in stentorian tones:
"An ass, an ass, an Ass, an ASS,
Signed 'Governor Pitt, Fort George, Madras.'"
The others took up the chorus, and finally brought their tankards down upon the deal with a resounding whack.