“Good enough, Mr. Carvel,” said Claude, who seemed to be the spokesman.  “But how if we are stamped against law and his Lordship’s government?  How then, sir?  Your honour well knows we have naught against either, and are as peaceful a mob as ever assembled.”

This brought on a great laugh, and they shouted from all sides, “How then, Mr. Carvel?” And my grandfather, perceiving that he would lose dignity by argument, and having done his duty by a protest, was wisely content with that.  They opened wider the lane for him to pass through, and he made his way, erect and somewhat defiant, to Mr. Pryse’s, the coachmaker opposite, holding me by the hand.  The second storey of Pryse’s shop had a little balcony standing out in front, and here we established ourselves, that we might watch what was going forward.

The crowd below grew strangely silent as the bark came nearer and nearer, until Mr. Hood showed himself on the poop, when there rose a storm of hisses, mingled with shouts of derision.  “How goes it at St. James, Mr. Hood?” and “Have you tasted his Majesty’s barley?” And some asked him if he was come as their member of Parliament.  Mr. Hood dropped a bow, though what he said was drowned.  The bark came in prettily enough, men in the crowd even catching her lines and making them fast to the piles.  A gang-plank was thrown over.  “Come out, Mr. Hood,” they cried; “we are here to do you honour, and to welcome you home again.”  There were leather breeches with staves a-plenty around that plank, and faces that meant no trifling.  “McNeir, the rogue,” exclaimed Mr. Carvel, “and that hulk of a tanner, Brown.  And I would know those smith’s shoulders in a thousand.”  “Right, sir,” says Pryse, “and ’twill serve them proper. when the King’s troops come among them for quartering.”  Pryse being the gentry’s patron, shaped his politics according to the company he was in:  he could ill be expected to seize one of his own ash spokes and join the resistance.  Just then I caught a glimpse of Captain Clapsaddle on the skirts of the crowd, and with him Mr. Swain and some of the dissenting gentry.  And my boyish wrath burst forth against that man smirking and smiling on the decks of the bark, so that I shouted shrilly:  “Mr. Hood will be cudgelled and tarred as he deserves,” and shook my little fist at him, so that many under us laughed and cheered me.  Mr. Carvel pushed me back into the window and out of their sight.

The crew of the bark had assembled on the quarterdeck, stout English tars every man of them, armed with pikes and belaying-pins; and at a word from the mate they rushed in a body over the plank.  Some were thrust off into the water, but so fierce was their onset that others gained the wharf, laying sharply about them in all directions, but getting full as many knocks as they gave.  For a space there was a very bedlam of cries and broken heads, those behind in the mob surging forward to reach the scrimmage, forcing their