, and of running off after new ideas, a trick very uncommon among
these natives, who are born public speakers. I flattered myself that
this orator was in favour of leniency towards me, but nobody was paying
much attention to him, when a shout was heard from the bottom of the hill
on which the square is built. Everybody turned round, the elders jumped
up with some alacrity for the sake of a better view on the polished
stones where they had been sitting, and so much was the business before
the meeting forgotten in the new excitement, that I might have run away
unnoticed, had there been anywhere to run to. But flight was out of the
question, unless I could get a boat and some provisions, and I had
neither. I was pleased, however, to see that I was so lightly and laxly
guarded.

The cause of the disturbance was soon apparent. A number of brown, half-
naked, sturdy sailors, with red caps, not unlike fezzes, on their heads,
appeared, bawling and making for the centre of the square. They were
apparently carrying or dragging some person with them, some person who
offered a good deal of resistance. Among the foreign and unintelligible
cries and howls which rang through the market-place, my heart leaped up,
in natural though unsanctified pleasure, as I heard the too well-known
but unexpected accents of British profanity.

"Where the (somewhere) are you blooming sons of beach-combers dragging a
Bri'sh shailor? Shtand off, you ragged set of whitewashed Christy
Minstrels, you! Where's the Bri'sh Conshul's? Take me, you longshore
sons of sharks, to the Bri'sh Conshul's! If there's one white man among
you let him stand out and hit a chap his own weight."

"Hullo!" suddenly cried the speaker, whom I had recognized as William
Bludger, one of the most depraved and regardless of the whole wicked crew
of the Blackbird,--"hullo, if here isn't old Captain Hymn-book!"--a
foolish nickname the sailors had given me.

He was obviously more than half-drunk, and carried in his hand a black
rum-bottle, probably (from all I knew of him) not nearly full. His shirt
and trousers were torn and dripping; apparently he had been washed
ashore, like myself, after the storm, and had been found and brought into
the town by some of the fishing population.

What a blow to all my hopes was the wholly unlooked-for arrival of this
tipsy, irreclaimable seaman, this unawakened Bill Bludger! I had framed
an ideal of what my own behaviour, in my trying