‘They’ll ha’ getten ’em to t’ Randyvowse by now,’ said some one.

‘They cannot tak’ ’em aboard till morning; t’ tide won’t serve,’ said the last speaker but one.

Daniel Robson spoke out the thought that was surging up into the brain of every one there.

‘There’s a chance for us a’.  How many be we?’ By dint of touching each other the numbers were counted.  Seven.  ’Seven.  But if us seven turns out and rouses t’ town, there’ll be many a score ready to gang t’ Mariners’ Arms, and it’ll be easy work reskyin’ them chaps as is pressed.  Us seven, each man jack on us, go and seek up his friends, and get him as well as he can to t’ church steps; then, mebbe, there’ll be some theere as’ll not be so soft as we was, lettin’ them poor chaps be carried off from under our noses, just becase our ears was busy listenin’ to yon confounded bell, whose clip-clappin’ tongue a’ll tear out afore this week is out.’

Before Daniel had finished speaking, those nearest to the entrance muttered their assent to his project, and had stolen off, keeping to the darkest side of the streets and lanes, which they threaded in different directions; most of them going straight as sleuth-hounds to the haunts of the wildest and most desperate portion of the seafaring population of Monkshaven.  For, in the breasts of many, revenge for the misery and alarm of the past winter took a deeper and more ferocious form than Daniel had thought of when he made his proposal of a rescue.  To him it was an adventure like many he had been engaged in in his younger days; indeed, the liquor he had drunk had given him a fictitious youth for the time; and it was more in the light of a rough frolic of which he was to be the leader, that he limped along ( always lame from old attacks of rheumatism), chuckling to himself at the apparent stillness of the town, which gave no warning to the press-gang at the Rendezvous of anything in the wind.  Daniel, too, had his friends to summon; old hands like himself, but ‘deep uns’, also, like himself, as he imagined.

It was nine o’clock when all who were summoned met at the church steps; and by nine o’clock, Monkshaven, in those days, was more quiet and asleep than many a town at present is at midnight.  The church and churchyard above them were flooded with silver light, for the moon was high in the heavens:  the irregular steps were here and there in pure white clearness, here and there in blackest shadow.  But more than half way up to the top, men clustered like bees; all pressing so as to be near enough to question those who stood nearest to the planning of the attack.  Here and there, a woman, with wild gestures and shrill voice, that no entreaty would hush down to the whispered pitch of the men, pushed her way through the crowd—­this one imploring immediate action, that adjuring those around her to smite and spare not those who had carried off her ’man’,—­the father, the breadwinner.  Low down in the darkened