The Buccaneer - A Tale

When the door of the room in which they were assembled was opened,

instead of the Skipper, the long, lanky figure of the Reverend Jonas

Fleetword presented itself in the opening; his coat and hose unbrushed,

his pinnacle hat standing at its highest, and his basket-hilted sword

dangling from the belt carelessly and rudely fastened.

Those of the men who had been sitting, stood up, while others rushed

forward. Some laid their hands upon his shoulders, and all demanded

whence he came, and what he wanted.

Poor Fleetword had long since arrived at the conclusion that he had

unconsciously committed some crime, for which he was doomed to much

suffering in the flesh: first imprisoned, and destined to endure

starvation at the hands of Sir Willmott Burrell; then fed, but caged

like an animal, by one whom he denominated "a man of fearful aspect,

yea, of an angry countenance and fierce deportment, yet having

consideration for the wants of the flesh;" then, when he had been

liberated as he thought, for the express purpose of affording

consolation to, and praying with a dying woman, and bound by his sacred

word not to leave Gull's Nest, he found himself in the midst of the most

unamiable-looking persons he had ever seen assembled; and his pale eye

grew still more pale within its orbit from the effects of terror.

"Cut him down!" exclaimed one ruffian, drawing a cutlass, long and

strong enough to destroy three at a blow.

"Fill his pinnacle hat with gunpowder, and blow him to the devil!" said

another.

"He is a spy and a Roundhead," vociferated a third, "and, wherever

there's one, there's sure to be more o' the breed."

"Search his pockets," shouted a fourth; "I'll lay my hand there's

villany in them."

"I'm the best at that work," exclaimed Jack Roupall, spinning the

long-legged preacher round and into the midst of the men before he had

time to utter a syllable of explanation. The change produced on them by

this display of Roupall's dexterity was like magic, for, in an instant,

they were to a man convulsed with laughter: the poor preacher retained

most motley marks of the bruised oranges upon his hinder garments, which

were, moreover, rent by various falls, or, as he would designate them,

"perilous overthrows;" and there was something so ludicrous in his whole

appearance, spinning on one leg, (for he was obliged to keep up the

other to maintain his balance,) and looking more like an overgrown

insect, called by children "daddy long-legs," than any other creature

dwelling upon earth, that the mirthfulness of the sailors might well

have been pardoned.