For a moment he seemed astonished at my reply as did his men, but then he said: "Young man, insolence will avail you nothing. I am lieutenant of His Majesty's ship Namur, on shore for the purpose of impressment, and you must go with me unless either you have a protection ticket, are under eighteen, or are a Thames waterman belonging to an insurance company."
"I am neither of these things and have no ticket," I replied; "yet I warn you touch me not. I am the Viscount St. Amande and future Marquis of Amesbury, and if you assault me it shall go hard with you."
"Shall it?" he replied, though he seemed staggered for a moment. "We will see. And for your viscounts and marquises, well! this is not the part of the town for such goods. However, lord or no lord, you must come with me, and, if you are one, doubtless you can explain all to the Admiral. I must do my duty." Then, turning to his followers, he cried, "Seize upon him."
This they at once proceeded to do, or attempt to do, though I resisted manfully. I whipped out my hanger and stood on the defence while I shouted lustily for Oliver, hoping he might hear me; and I found some able auxiliaries in the screaming rabble of women who had been watching the scene. For no sooner did they see me attacked than they swooped down upon the press-gang; they belaboured the members of it with their fists and did much execution on them with their nails, while all the while they shouted and bawled at them and berated them for taking honest men and fathers of families away from their homes. But 'twas all of no avail. The lieutenant knocked my sword out of my hand with his cutlass, a sailor felled me with a blow of his fist, and two or three of them drove off the women, so that, in five minutes, I was secured. And never a sign of Oliver appeared while this was going on, so that I pictured the dismay of that loyal friend when he should come forth from the house he was visiting at, and learn the news of what had befallen me from the viragoes who had taken my part.
They carried, or rather dragged, me to a boat lying off the stairs near the Tower and flung me into it, fastening me to a thwart by one hand and by the other to a miserable-looking wretch who, with some more, had been impressed as I had. And so the sailors bent to their oars while the lieutenant took the rudder lines, and rowed swiftly down the river on a quick ebbing tide. In this way it was not long ere we reached the neighbourhood of Woolwich, and I saw before me a stately man-o'-war with an Admiral's flag flying from her foretopmast head.
That ship was the Namur under orders for the West Indies and North America, and was to be my home for many a day. Yet I knew it not then, nor, indeed, could I think aught of my future. My heart was sad and sorry within me, and, when I thought at all, it was of a far different home; the home in which my poor sick mother was sitting even now awaiting my return.