He might have said yet more insolent things; the kicks might have hit harder; Kinraid did not hear or heed.  His soul was beating itself against the bars of inflexible circumstance; reviewing in one terrible instant of time what had been, what might have been, what was.  Yet while these thoughts thus stabbed him, he was still mechanically looking out for chances.  He moved his head a little, so as to turn towards Haytersbank, where Sylvia must be quickly, if sadly, going about her simple daily work; and then his quick eye caught Hepburn’s face, blanched with excitement rather than fear, watching eagerly from behind the rock, where he had sat breathless during the affray and the impressment of his rival.

‘Come here, lad!’ shouted the specksioneer as soon as he saw Philip, heaving and writhing his body the while with so much vigour that the sailors started away from the work they were engaged in about the boat, and held him down once more, as if afraid he should break the strong rope that held him like withes of green flax.  But the bound man had no such notion in his head.  His mighty wish was to call Hepburn near that he might send some message by him to Sylvia.  ’Come here, Hepburn,’ he cried again, falling back this time so weak and exhausted that the man-of-war’s men became sympathetic.

‘Come down, peeping Tom, and don’t be afeared,’ they called out.

‘I’m not afeared,’ said Philip; ‘I’m no sailor for yo’ t’ impress me:  nor have yo’ any right to take that fellow; he’s a Greenland specksioneer, under protection, as I know and can testify.’

‘Yo’ and yo’r testify go hang.  Make haste, man and hear what this gem’man, as was in a dirty blubbery whale-ship, and is now in his Majesty’s service, has got to say.  I dare say, Jack,’ went on the speaker, ’it’s some message to his sweetheart, asking her to come for to serve on board ship along with he, like Billy Taylor’s young woman.’

Philip was coming towards them slowly, not from want of activity, but because he was undecided what he should be called upon to do or to say by the man whom he hated and dreaded, yet whom just now he could not help admiring.

Kinraid groaned with impatience at seeing one, free to move with quick decision, so slow and dilatory.

‘Come on then,’ cried the sailors, ’or we’ll take you too on board, and run you up and down the main-mast a few times.  Nothing like life aboard ship for quickening a land-lubber.’

‘Yo’d better take him and leave me,’ said Kinraid, grimly.  ’I’ve been taught my lesson; and seemingly he has his yet to learn.’

’His Majesty isn’t a schoolmaster to need scholars; but a jolly good captain to need men,’ replied the leader of the gang, eyeing Philip nevertheless, and questioning within himself how far, with only two other available men, they durst venture on his capture as well as the specksioneer’s.  It might be done, he thought, even though there was this powerful captive aboard, and the boat to manage too; but, running his eye over Philip’s figure, he decided that the tall stooping fellow was never cut out for a sailor, and that he should get small thanks if he captured him, to pay him for the possible risk of losing the other.  Or else the mere fact of being a landsman was of as little consequence to the press-gang, as the protecting papers which Kinraid had vainly showed.