In this manner they ascended the narrow street and reached the Council-house, where the Magistrates were actually sitting, as the citizen had informed Cleveland. Here the inhabitants began to press forward, with the purpose of mingling with the pirates, and availing themselves of the crowd in the narrow entrance, to secure as many as they could, without allowing them room for the free use of their weapons. But this also had Cleveland foreseen, and, ere entering the council-room, he caused the entrance to be cleared and secured, commanding four of his men to face down the street, and as many to confront the crowd who were thrusting each other from above. The burghers recoiled back from the ferocious, swarthy, and sunburnt countenances, as well as the levelled arms of these desperadoes, and Cleveland, with the rest of his party, entered the council-room, where the Magistrates were sitting in council, with very little attendance. These gentlemen were thus separated effectually from the citizens, who looked to them for orders, and were perhaps more completely at the mercy of Cleveland, than he, with his little handful of men, could be said to be at that of the multitude by whom they were surrounded.
The Magistrates seemed sensible of their danger; for they looked upon each other in some confusion, when Cleveland thus addressed them:—
“Good morrow, gentlemen,—I hope there is no unkindness betwixt us. I am come to talk with you about getting supplies for my ship yonder in the roadstead—we cannot sail without them.”
“Your ship, sir?” said the Provost, who was a man of sense and spirit,—“how do we know that you are her Captain?”
“Look at me,” said Cleveland, “and you will, I think, scarce ask the question again.”
The Magistrate looked at Kim, and accordingly did not think proper to pursue that part of the enquiry, but proceeded to say—“And if you are her Captain, whence comes she, and where is she bound for? You look too much like a man-of-war’s man to be master of a trader, and we know that you do not belong to the British navy.”
“There are more men-of-war on the sea than sail under the British flag,” replied Cleveland; “but say that I were commander of a free-trader here, willing to exchange tobacco, brandy, gin, and such like, for cured fish and hides, why, I do not think I deserve so very bad usage from the merchants of Kirkwall as to deny me provisions for my money?”
“Look you, Captain,” said the Town-clerk, “it is not that we are so very strait-laced neither—for, when gentlemen of your cloth come this way, it is as weel, as I tauld the Provost, just to do as the collier did when he met the devil,—and that is, to have naething to say to them, if they have naething to say to us;—and there is the gentleman,” pointing to Goffe, “that was Captain before you, and may be Captain after you,”—(“The cuckold speaks truth in that,” muttered Goffe,)—“he knows well how handsomely we entertained him, till he and his men took upon them to run through the town like hellicat devils.—I see one of them there!—that was the very fellow that stopped my servant-wench on the street, as she carried the lantern home before me, and insulted her before my face!”
“If it please your noble Mayorship’s honour and glory,” said Derrick, the fellow at whom the Town-clerk pointed, “it was not I that brought to the bit of a tender that carried the lantern in the poop—it was quite a different sort of a person.”
“Who was it, then, sir?” said the Provost.