'They cannot tak' 'em aboard till morning; t' tide won't serve,'
said the last speaker but one.
Daniel Robson spoke out the thought that was surging up into the
brain of every one there.
'There's a chance for us a'. How many be we?' By dint of touching
each other the numbers were counted. Seven. 'Seven. But if us seven
turns out and rouses t' town, there'll be many a score ready to gang
t' Mariners' Arms, and it'll be easy work reskyin' them chaps as is
pressed. Us seven, each man jack on us, go and seek up his friends,
and get him as well as he can to t' church steps; then, mebbe,
there'll be some theere as'll not be so soft as we was, lettin' them
poor chaps be carried off from under our noses, just becase our ears
was busy listenin' to yon confounded bell, whose clip-clappin'
tongue a'll tear out afore this week is out.' Before Daniel had finished speaking, those nearest to the entrance
muttered their assent to his project, and had stolen off, keeping to
the darkest side of the streets and lanes, which they threaded in
different directions; most of them going straight as sleuth-hounds
to the haunts of the wildest and most desperate portion of the
seafaring population of Monkshaven. For, in the breasts of many,
revenge for the misery and alarm of the past winter took a deeper
and more ferocious form than Daniel had thought of when he made his
proposal of a rescue. To him it was an adventure like many he had
been engaged in in his younger days; indeed, the liquor he had drunk
had given him a fictitious youth for the time; and it was more in
the light of a rough frolic of which he was to be the leader, that
he limped along ( always lame from old attacks of rheumatism),
chuckling to himself at the apparent stillness of the town, which
gave no warning to the press-gang at the Rendezvous of anything in
the wind. Daniel, too, had his friends to summon; old hands like
himself, but 'deep uns', also, like himself, as he imagined.
It was nine o'clock when all who were summoned met at the church
steps; and by nine o'clock, Monkshaven, in those days, was more
quiet and asleep than many a town at present is at midnight. The
church and churchyard above them were flooded with silver light, for
the moon was high in the heavens: the irregular steps were here and
there in pure white clearness, here and there in blackest shadow.
But more than half way up to the top, men clustered like bees; all
pressing so as to be near enough to question those who stood nearest
to the planning of the attack. Here and there, a woman, with wild
gestures and shrill voice, that no entreaty would hush down to the
whispered pitch of the men, pushed her way through the crowd--this
one imploring immediate action, that adjuring those around her to
smite and spare not those who had carried off her 'man',--the
father, the breadwinner. Low down in the darkened silent town were
many whose hearts went with the angry and excited crowd, and who
would bless them and caress them for that night's deeds. Daniel soon
found himself a laggard in planning, compared to some of those
around him. But when, with the rushing sound of many steps and but
few words, they had arrived at the blank, dark, shut-up Mariners'
Arms, they paused in surprise at the uninhabited look of the whole
house: it was Daniel once more who took the lead.