I felt quite at home, as if I had been at some vestry-meeting, or some committee in the old country, when Elatreus got up.  He was stout, very bald, and had a way of thrusting his arm behind him, and of humming and hawing, which vividly brought back to mind the oratory of my native land.  He had also, plainly enough, the trick of forgetting what he intended to say, 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.