might have had the village
about our ears, and, instead of flakes of snow and screeching
weathercocks, we might have had a shower of dead cats and rotten eggs.
Probably a rescue might have been attempted; at all events, we might
have calculated on a volley of brickbats on our way to the boats.
There would have been no end of commotion, uproar, confusion, and
hubbub, possibly smashed noses, blackened eyes, broken beads--"

"Holloa, Willis!"

"You said just now that a little colouring was necessary."

"Certainly; but the privilege ought not to be abused. Besides, broken
heads and smashed faces are the realities, and not the accessories of
the picture."

"Oh, I see. If it is night, the moon should be introduced; and if it
is day, the sun--and so on?"

"Of course; and, if the circumstances are of a pleasing nature, you
must leave horrors and terrors on your pallette; change gusts into
zephyrs, snow into roses and violets, and the weathercocks into golden
vanes glittering in the sunshine."

"I understand."

"You want to color a popular outbreak, do you not?"

"Yes."

"Then you should introduce a tempest howling, the waves roaring, the
lightning flashing, and discord raging in the air as well as on the
earth."

"Well, to continue my story. Although it was midnight, the disturbance
began to wake up the villagers, and a crowd was collecting, so we
hurried off our prisoners to the boats as speedily as we could. Some
five and twenty able bodied men were thus added to his Majesty's
fleet. The object of our visit to the Irish coast was accomplished,
and the _Norfolk_ continued her voyage to the West Indies. Now you
know what is meant by the word _pressed_, and likewise the nautical
signification of the word _press-gang_."

"And you say that Bill Stubbs has been trapped on board this ship by
such means?"

"Yes, at New Orleans."

"According to your story, then, that does not say very much in his
favor?"

"No, not a great deal; still, that proves nothing--the fact of his
calling himself Bob is a worse feature. A man does not generally
change his name without having good, or rather bad, reasons for it."

"What appears to me," remarked Fritz, "as the most singular feature of
your press-gang adventure is, that you are alive to tell it."

"Why so?"

"Because I think it ought to end thus: 'The victims of the press-gang
strangled Willis a few days after,'"

"Aye, aye, but you do not know what a sailor is; our recru