“All right, my lad,” muttered Ben, as he followed the soldiers who specially guarded himself.
Ben did not suppose that Bill intended then and there to make a sudden struggle for freedom, because he knew that, with fettered wrists, in a strange port, the very name of which they did not know, and surrounded by armed enemies, such an attempt would be utterly hopeless; he therefore concluded, correctly, that his companion wished him to take the bearings (as he expressed it) of the port, and of the streets through which they should pass. Accordingly he kept his “weather-eye open.”
The French soldiers who conducted the seamen to prison, although stout athletic fellows, and, doubtless, capable of fighting like heroes, were short of stature, so that the British tars looked down on them with a patronising expression of countenance, and one or two even ventured on a few facetious remarks. Bill Bowls and Ben Bolter, who both measured above six feet in their stockings, towered above the crowd like two giants.
“It’s a purty place intirely,” said an Irish sailor, with a smiling countenance, looking round upon the houses, and nodding to a group of pretty girls who were regarding the prisoners with looks of pity. “What may be the name of it, av I may make bowld to inquire?”
The question was addressed to the soldier on his right, but the man paid no attention. So the Irishman repeated it, but without drawing forth a reply.
“Sure, yer a paltry thing that can’t give a civil answer to a civil question.”
“He don’t understand Irish, Pat, try him with English,” said Ben Bolter.
“Ah, then,” said Pat, “ye’d better try that yersilf, only yer so high up there he won’t be able to hear ye.”
Before Ben had an opportunity of trying the experiment, however, they had arrived at the jail. After they had passed in, the heavy door was shut with a clang, and bolted and barred behind them.
It is probable that not one of the poor fellows who heard the sound, escaped a sensation of sinking at the heart, but certain it is that not one condescended to show his feelings in his looks.