“A think so, indeed,” said another voice.
“We was two hunder, if we was a man; an t’ gang has niver numbered above twelve.”
“But they was armed. A seen t’ glitter on their cutlasses,” spoke out a fresh voice.
“What then!” replied he who had latest come, and who stood at the mouth of the entry. “A had my whaling-knife wi’ me i’ my pea-jacket as my missus threw at me, and a’d ha’ ripped ’em up as soon as winking, if a could ha’ thought what was best to do wi’ that ⸺ bell making such a din right above us. A man can but die onest, and we was ready to go int’ t’ fire for t’ save folks’ lives, and yet we’d none on us t’ wit to see as we might ha’ saved yon poor chaps as screeched out for help.”
“They’ll ha’ getten ’em to t’ Randyvow by now,” said someone.
“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 everyone 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’ t’ Mariners’ Arms, and it’ll be easy work reskying 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 there as’ll not be so soft as we was, letting them poor chaps be carried off from under our noses, just because our ears was busy listening to yon confounded bell, whose clip-clapping 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.