"I was very kind to you in that ere beacon, I was," said the fellow, in a whining voice; "Bill wanted to shy you into the water one night, to save your grog and biscuits; but I thought it better——"
"To sell me——"
"To whom?"
"The press-gang, through Mother Snatchblock's respectable agency, eh?—sell me like the emerald ring and jewels of the unfortunate man, who was wrecked near the beacon, whom you foully murdered, and whose body you sunk with an old kedge-anchor, eh?—Knuckleduster, the wrecker, thief, and murderer!"
He uttered a growl like a bulldog, and literally writhed with fear and baffled rage as I said this.
"You have no proof for what you say, and I defy you," replied he; "but this I know, that I shall seize you as a deserter—a boy run from His Majesty's ship Tartar, and all your denials, or jawing fore and aft, won't be worth a soldier's button. Besides, how do I know that you didn't burn that ere beacon, as well as steal Mother Snatchblock's boat, and so become guilty of murder as well as robbery? Oh! I see jolly well you'll think better of it than let me be taken to-night. A fine joke it would be, indeed, for Dick Knuckleduster to be beaten at this time o' day by a sucking-turkey like you!"
"Silence, dog, or I shall certainly bayonet you. I am no longer the friendless boy you thought me, but one of the Royal Fusiliers, and I defy alike your falsehoods and your malevolence."
The fellow again resorted to the most abject entreaties that I would permit him to escape; but I stood resolutely then, pinning him against the wall, until Mr. Stanley, a midshipman of the Adder frigate, approached with a party of seamen, and pressed him into his Majesty's sea service. Then, as they dragged him away, he poured forth a torrent of imprecations upon me, mingled with threats of future vengeance, which I heeded less than the chafing of the slimy water upon the green and barnacled sides of the quay. At all this the midshipman and the sailors only laughed, saying they had "a boatswain, who would teach him better manners, on board the Adder."
However, this was not the last I was fated to see of Master Richard Knuckleduster.