Jews and water-side men and sellers of old copper and iron and cordage kept the shops adjacent to the “Mermaid” and “Anchor,” and such among them as had no dread of the press were gathered with three or four women about the closed door of the “Mermaid.” Half a dozen unkempt sailors, with cudgels and stretchers, thrust them back, keeping the door; and the shrill cries of the women and the gruff voices of the men filled the narrow alley. From an upper window opposite the inn a ship’s chandler shook his fist; and a score of yards away a few men peered round corners, ready to take to their heels. A bony virago, who had been cast half drunk from the tavern, screamed at the men-o’-war’s men in the fishwives’ tongue; and a coxswain with a tarred hat pushed her back continually as she ever advanced.
“See you’re not taken, you scald trull!” he menaced her; “you lack little but a beard o’ being a man, and we have two bonnie Lord-Mayor’s men you could berth between!”
“Ay, ye damned tarrybreeks, ye women i’ petticoats; what th’ jails turns out th’ gun-deck doesn’t mak’ dainty wi’, ye----!”
“Dainty, ho, ho!” another bawled; “chuck, chuck, come wi’ me, dainty----!”
“Yah, ye rascals!” the chandler shouted from his window, “ye rotten mast-greasing rogues--ye captain’s chicken-crammers--wi’ a red-checked shirt at th’ gratings once a month----”
He cursed them, and they taunted him for his stolen tallow and canvas, and bade him stop hammering the King’s arrow out of copper bolts and untwisting the coloured strand that marked his cordage as filched from the King’s dockyards. The rakish woman broke a window with a stone, and cried through the opening, “Ned! Ned!” and the coxswain thrust her back with his hand on her flat breast, and took her a rap over the knuckles. The men handled their stretchers as if they would as lief have broken a head or two as not.
Suddenly the inn door opened, and there was a press forward. A lieutenant appeared in the entrance, his cocked hat athwart like a half-moon and his hooked nose sticking out scarcely less prominently as he turned his profile. Other men could be seen behind him, and the woman darted forward with a cry of “Ned!”
“Turn that slut off!” the lieutenant ordered curtly; and he grumbled to himself: “A pretty lot o’ cattle to pink! I want men with bodies!--We’ll try the Wood, then.... Here, you long rascal: in case you’re deceiving me, do you know what they keep on a ship in a red-baize bag?”