"A Scots one, though. Well, and what want ye with the captain, eh?"
"How can the Scot answer thee, Dick," interfered another, "when thou'st twisted his mouth all to starboard; why, 'tis all on one side, like the ballast-port of a timber-ship."
"Teach thy grannum to make sackwhey! I warrant thee I'll make the Scot find his tongue. Speak!" roared the gunner, giving Borthwick a furious shake.
"I have an urgent message for your captain, which none must know but he," gasped Borthwick, in a half-strangled voice; "look at me, sirs—some of you must have seen me on board before now?"
"Tarry a minute, gunner Dick," said a soldier who was in half mail, and had but one eye; "I have seen this man before, methinks."
"Off Taymouth—at night," said Borthwick.
"I remember me now," said the soldier, who was Anthony Arblaster; "unhand him, Dick, ere worse come of it, for the captain's temper hath been truly devilish of late."
"We have had a long spell on this here shore," growled the gunner, as he released the throat of Borthwick, whose lace doublet was no way improved by the application of such a hard and tarry hand as Dick's; "we have turned our best barge into a bumboat, as ye may see, so come aboard and let us shove off, before some of your furious Scots come after their flour-sacks. I would to St. George they were all, for the trouble they give us, steering in the latitude of purgatory!"
"Or a warmer latitude still," added Anthony Arblaster, rubbing his blind eye.
"Avast," said an old sailor, "and remember there is a Scot here, and that he be but one among many."