I was choking with mingled emotions!
Pride and just indignation struggled with grief, at the prospect of a long separation from my mother and sister, and a terror of and repugnance for the fate upon which I seemed to be hurried so rapidly.
CHAPTER XV
THE PRESSING TENDER.
As the coach passed out of the city, three or four persons on horseback rode in. Among them was a lady in a light-blue riding-habit, with a feather in her hat. She was Amy Lee!
I dashed my fettered hands through the glass windows, and called aloud to her, in the desperate hope that her friends, who were Colonel Rose and some officers of the 43rd, might rescue me; but the corporal, a stern and merciless old fellow, thrust his bayonet into my left arm, inflicting a wound which gave me considerable pain for weeks after, and the mark of which I shall bear to my grave. Finding there was no remedy for present evil but resignation, I sat still after this; but my cup of bitterness seemed to be filling fast.
Near the entrance of the Kirkgate, Corporal Dhu dismissed the coach, and showed us the priming in the pan of his musket, swearing that he would shoot the first who attempted to escape as dead as Julius Cæsar; a threat which, I believe, he was quite capable of fulfilling. He then marched us straight towards the harbour.
We attracted little or no notice as we proceeded; poor boys, pressed or sent to sea, by order of some tyrant bailie or sheriff, being then a matter of daily occurrence. The old harbour was full of bustle and confusion. Men-of-war boats, manned by smart seamen or smarter marines, each with a standard waving, and a little middy seated in the stern, were shooting to and fro, while the scene was a wondrous medley of nautical uproar. Ships of all kinds, loading or unloading; while piles of goods, waggons, carts, rigging, anchors, boats, casks, and government stores, guarded by seamen with cutlasses, and marines with fixed bayonets, met the eye on every hand; for the North-Sea fleet were moored in the roads. A small corvette, of sixteen guns, was undergoing repairs, and her artillery were placed upon the quay. Near her lay a few small Dutch and French ships, each with the broom, the sign of being for sale, at the foretopmast head. These were prizes, taken at sea. They seemed sad, silent, and deserted, amid the bustle of the harbour.
As we marched past the old Tolbooth of Leith, three fellows, of uncouth aspect, who had been concerned in a robbery, and were chained to the "jouging anchor," were unlocked, and added to our party, as pressed men for his Majesty's navy, for of such material did they make food for gunpowder in those old days "when George the Third was king." This jouging anchor was a ponderous affair; an appendage of some old frigate, it was a mass of rust, and lay before the town prison. Culprits were chained to it by the ankles, until they were accommodated in the cells, or until the Baron Bailie had time to hear and decide upon their cases.
In 1792, Leith was still destitute of wet docks, and where these are now formed, the sea flowed over an open beach, and dashed its waves against the sloping bastions of an old citadel, built in the time of the great civil war. The London smacks had only been established in the preceding year, and smart craft they were, with enormous fore and aft mainsails, all letters-of-marque; being furnished by government with six carronades. They carried the old Scottish flag at their foremast head, and fought their way at sea, without guard or convoy.