'Nay, my dry-livered lubbers, that he will,' cried a clear jolly voice, and I turned to see Frank Drake and another gentleman break through the throng to my side. 'What is it, Jasper? Stand back, ye lubberly porpoises, and give a seaman sea-room.'
'Stand back, I pray you, gentlemen,' cried my bully very condescending; 'I knew not that I spoke with a friend of Captain Drake's.'
'Or maybe you would not have spoken so loud, my pot-valiant Hercules,' said Frank's friend.
'What is all the coil about, Jasper?' said Frank again, while my bully tried to outstare the gentleman.
''Tis nothing,' said I. 'He wanted two friends for me, to help give him satisfaction for having been at the pain of jostling me.'
'Give him a tester, sir,' said Frank's friend, 'to buy sack withal. That is the best satisfaction for his most barrel-bellied worship.'
'No, gentlemen,' said my bully with great pomp, finding he could not outstare his new adversary, 'it is satisfaction enough to know the gentleman is a friend of the most valiant Captain Drake. I know of no quarrel here that a skin of muscadine will not assuage. I pray you, let me conduct you to a very honest tavern hard by where I am known, and where I will see you served with the best.'
'Most courtly offered!' said the gentleman. 'And peradventure your most sweet honesty will see us served also with very honest dice and very honest cards. 'Tis a pity we are promised elsewhere, but so it is, and we must perforce pray your valourship to bestow on us instead a full measure of your most delectable absence.'
'By the soul of Bacchus,' said the bully, swelling with contempt, 'were it not for the proclamation, blood should flow for this;' but we all laughed at him, and he strode away with his nose in the air, as proud as Alexander after Granicus. So we were rid of him and his fellows, who followed on his heels all growling, 'Were it not for the proclamation,' and swearing like drovers between their teeth.
'A happy meeting, Jasper,' said Frank. 'Yonder go as arrant a lot of thieves as any in all London. Be better acquainted with my friend, Mr. John Oxenham. A fellow-adventurer, Oxenham, Mr. Festing, but not, to my grief, a shipmate.'