With Wellington in Spain: A Story of the Peninsula. Brereton Frederick Sadleir
to his side. But still he could fight, and, seized with desperation and with anger, Tom lurched this way and that, kicking out in all directions, hustling his captors from side to side till what appeared to them at first a game began to annoy them. The bigger man clenched a huge fist and drove hard at the centre of the sack with it.
"That's silenced him and made him quit foolin'," he grunted brutally, for Tom dropped instantly and lay inert on the ground. "Jest get a lift on to his toes, Bob; I'll take his head. We'll have him in chokey afore he's shook the stars out of his eyes."
Without the smallest show of haste the two ruffians picked up their burden and went off down the narrow alley leading from the street. There was no need for them to fear interference, for police hardly existed in those days, while respectable individuals did not patronize the neighbourhood of the docks once night had fallen. Business men, living as they did in the early years of the nineteenth century above their premises, sat in the candlelight behind their shutters once evening had come, and if they ventured forth at all, took some sort of guard with them. It followed, therefore, that no one even observed the two men strolling away with their burden. Even had they been seen, the observer would in all likelihood have hurried away in the opposite direction, for drunken sailors were inclined to be more than rough. Robbery was not by any means unknown, while even murder was now and again committed in the slums adjacent to the river.
In less than ten minutes from the moment when Tom had been so hardly treated the two men came to a halt at a low doorway, the bigger of the two beating upon it heavily.
"Open!" he shouted, as if there were no need for concealment, and he had no reason to fear being overheard. "Open quick, or Sam here'll want to know the reason why there's delay."
"Comin'," ejaculated his small companion in that same strangely deep and wheezing voice, a voice which by rights should have belonged to a man of double his proportions. "I can hear the lass a-comin', Sam. Here she is. This is one more to add to the boys we're collecting."
At that moment, while the little man was in the act of stuffing some hard black cuttings of tobacco into a short pipe, the door of the house they had come to was opened noiselessly, and there appeared a frowsy-headed woman bearing a smoking oil lamp. She stood aside without a word and waited for the two men to carry in their burden. The door closed, and the procession passed through a passage into a large room, just within the doorway of which sat a man as big as he who had been called Sam, armed with pistol and cutlass. Half a dozen other men were in the place, breathing an atmosphere that was almost stifling. A dangling lamp shed a feeble light on every hand, while in one corner stood a bottle, in the neck of which was secured a lighted candle, with the aid of which another armed individual was laboriously spelling out the print on a piece of torn newspaper.
"What ho!" he cried, looking up, and disclosing a countenance which was distinctly brutal. A towsled head of hair, which would appear to have been innocent of receiving any attention for a long while, covered forehead and ears and neck, and was inseparably joined to a pair of side whiskers that might have been combed a year before. One cheek was deeply seamed by a long, straggling scar, while the eye above was covered by a patch of black material.
"What ho!" he cried again, leering at the newcomers, and drawing his clay from between his teeth. "You've had luck to-night. I can see as you've nobbled the one as you was after."
"And gets double pay," growled the man who sat at the door with cutlass and pistol in his lap. "Pay from them as has need for lads aboard, and pay from t'others as wants to get rid of a friend. You've bagged the sum from the covey, Sam?"
Sam made no answer for the moment, but got rid of his burden by the simple and easy method of dropping Tom's person heavily on the floor. Standing over him, he proceeded to fill his pipe, and, having completed the task to his liking, stretched across, snatched the bottle in which the candle was fixed, and sucked the flame into the bowl of his pipe. Then his eyes went slowly round the room, and, passing the wretch at the door and the one against the far wall, he let them fall upon the six individuals who also tenanted the room. He counted them carefully, and then jerked his head in the direction of our hero.
"Pull the sack off, Bob," he said, "and jest you two keep yer tongues close in between yer teeth – hear that, Jem, and you too, Sandy? Tight in between yer teeth. This here business has to be conducted with caution and discretion; and if we does trade with others besides the folks that pays for the men, why there ain't no need to cry it out for everyone to hear – eh?"
The last exclamation was almost in the nature of a threat. Evidently the individual with the patch over one eye, who boasted of the towsled head of hair and the unkempt whiskers, was known as Sandy, and Sam's words, and the scowl he directed at the man, had the instant effect of causing him once more to busy himself with his reading. The other, the man who sat fully armed at the door, and was known as Jem, coloured under his tan, looked as fierce as Sam for a moment, and then laughed uproariously.
"You do work yourself up, Sam," he laughed. "Who's there here to let on what business we do? These?" pointing at the six other inmates of the room. "Not much, me hearty. They'll be aboard come midnight, and to-morrow they'll be that sick they'll have forgotten you and me and everything almost. But you've drawn the stuff; been paid by that young spark as hired you to work it?"
Sam answered him with a snort and with a violent shake of his head.
"Presently," he said, meanwhile watching as the rascal Bob removed the sack from Tom's head. "All in good time. The young nobleman's coming here to make sure as there's no mistake, and once the lad there's aboard, the rest of it'll be paid. But it won't end there."
"Eh?" asked Jem quickly, while Sandy and Bob looked up keenly, avarice and rascality written on their faces. "Don't end there," said Jem; "how's that?"
"Blood money ain't all we gets," lisped Sam, allowing a cruel smile to cross his face. "I'll tell you why. I know the young spark as got us to work this business. Well, when this lad's gone aboard, and is away, I'll be axing for more of his gold. Supposing he can't pay, then – "
A hideous grin wrinkled Sandy's face, throwing into greater prominence the scar that seamed it. Bob dragged the sack from Tom's head and then turned to smile at his leader. Jem brought a massive fist down with a bang on the table, and once more burst into uproarious laughter. It was obvious, in fact, to each one of these rascals that Sam had at hand a ready means with which to force more money from the man who had bribed him to capture our hero. Let us put the matter clearly. José had met the ruffian Sam some time before, and had discovered him to be one of those infamous crimps who earned a rich living by snatching men from their employment ashore and passing them over to ships' captains. The impressment of men in those days was not illegal, and since crews were often enough hard to come by, and these rascally crimps were more or less a necessary evil, they flourished unmolested, and many a poor lad was suddenly torn from his home to be smuggled aboard ship, and never heard of again by his own people. Also many a private grudge was wiped out in this manner. Tom was not the first youth by a great many who had been suddenly spirited away at the bidding of, and with the aid of gold paid by, a relative.
As for the others in the room, they were prisoners like Tom. Four were young men of twenty-two or three, while the others were almost middle-aged, and undoubtedly sailors. These two sat at the table, smoking heavily and helping themselves to spirits contained in a square jar set upon it. The other men sat despondently upon a form, eyeing their captors resentfully, and yet in a manner which showed clearly that all the fight was knocked out of them. Like the two at the table they were becoming resigned to the position, and no doubt would settle down in time and become good seamen.
"Just throw a pail of water over his head," Sam ordered, pointing the stem of his pipe at Tom, who lay senseless where they had dropped him, his face pale in the feeble light of the lamp, his hair dishevelled, while a thin trickle of blood oozed from the corner of his mouth. "Then pull his duds off and let him have a suit that'll do for him aboard. Ah! He's coming round. Trust Sam to strike a blow that won't do no harm and spoil trade for him. Sit him up, Bob, and when he's feeling more hisself, give him a go of spirits and a smoke."
The whole affair was a horrible exhibition of the brutality and the lawlessness of those times – times even now designated by some as the good ones. The ruffians who plied this human traffic were