When the door of the room in which they were assembled was opened,
instead of the Skipper, the long, lanky figure of the Reverend Jonas
Fleetword presented itself in the opening; his coat and hose unbrushed,
his pinnacle hat standing at its highest, and his basket-hilted sword
dangling from the belt carelessly and rudely fastened.
Those of the men who had been sitting, stood up, while others rushed
forward. Some laid their hands upon his shoulders, and all demanded
whence he came, and what he wanted.
Poor Fleetword had long since arrived at the conclusion that he had
unconsciously committed some crime, for which he was doomed to much
suffering in the flesh: first imprisoned, and destined to endure
starvation at the hands of Sir Willmott Burrell; then fed, but caged
like an animal, by one whom he denominated "a man of fearful aspect,
yea, of an angry countenance and fierce deportment, yet having
consideration for the wants of the flesh;" then, when he had been
liberated as he thought, for the express purpose of affording
consolation to, and praying with a dying woman, and bound by his sacred
word not to leave Gull's Nest, he found himself in the midst of the most
unamiable-looking persons he had ever seen assembled; and his pale eye
grew still more pale within its orbit from the effects of terror.
"Cut him down!" exclaimed one ruffian, drawing a cutlass, long and
strong enough to destroy three at a blow.
"Fill his pinnacle hat with gunpowder, and blow him to the devil!" said
another.
"He is a spy and a Roundhead," vociferated a third, "and, wherever
there's one, there's sure to be more o' the breed."
"Search his pockets," shouted a fourth; "I'll lay my hand there's
villany in them."
"I'm the best at that work," exclaimed Jack Roupall, spinning the
long-legged preacher round and into the midst of the men before he had
time to utter a syllable of explanation. The change produced on them by
this display of Roupall's dexterity was like magic, for, in an instant,
they were to a man convulsed with laughter: the poor preacher retained
most motley marks of the bruised oranges upon his hinder garments, which
were, moreover, rent by various falls, or, as he would designate them,
"perilous overthrows;" and there was something so ludicrous in his whole
appearance, spinning on one leg, (for he was obliged to keep up the
other to maintain his balance,) and looking more like an overgrown
insect, called by children "daddy long-legs," than any other creature
dwelling upon earth, that the mirthfulness of the sailors might well
have been pardoned.