re is Mistress Marian? I have not seen her these two
days."

"And you're not like to see her again, I take it," he returned
disagreeably. "At least, not in my house; I've had enough of the
impudent baggage."

"What are you saying, man?" I demanded, much dismayed. "You need not
miscall your own niece, I should think. But what of her? Do you mean
she has left you?"

"Aye, what else should I mean? And right glad I am to be rid of such a
trollop, drawing all the rapscallions of the port in here, and
bringing my tavern into disrepute."

He spoke so bitterly that I believe he was trying to talk himself into
thinking he had profited by her departure. For in reality she had
brought him the chief part of his custom, and there was at that
moment, as I could perceive, not a soul in the tavern beside
ourselves. But I did not stop to reflect on this.

"Where has she gone? What has happened?" I questioned breathlessly,
with a terrible fear in my heart.

"Nay, whither she has gone is more than I can tell you, for as likely
as not the jade has lied to me. But she left this place two days ago,
in the afternoon, and all the account she gave me was that she had
taken her passage in the _Fair Maid_ for her father's house in
Calcutta."

I fell down on a bench, like a man stunned, and groaned aloud. Then I
sprang to my feet again and made for the door.

"I will follow her!" I cried out madly. "If she has gone to the end of
the world I will go after her, and all the devils in hell shall not
hold me back!"

And leaving the man there, staring at me as if he thought I was
crazed, I ran out of the house, and so stumbled right into the arms of
a pressgang come ashore off a king's ship which had that morning
dropped anchor in Yarmouth Roads.

CHAPTER V

_ON BOARD THE KING'S SHIP_

The license of these pressgangs was so well known, and had been made
familiar to me by so many tales, that I had little hope from the first
of escaping their clutches. It is true they were only authorised to
impress seamen and fishermen, and that after proving their commission
before justices of the peace. But if report did not belie them, they
looked not too closely into a man's seamanship; but, if they found a
likely fellow, regarded all as fish which came into their net.

There was a lieutenant set above the fellows into whose hands I had
fallen, a tall, lantern-jawed, middle-aged man, with a most abominable
squint, and to him I addressed mys