Chapter XIII: The Press-Gang

After a time, all seemed quiet and still. The mob had entirely disappeared, and I heard the sound of drums and fifes alternately rising and dying away in distance as the troops were marched through the windings of the city back to the castle. I then began to think of returning home. I burned with anxiety to tell my mother and little Lotty, and to pour into the ears of Amy Lee the strange adventures of the last day and night. I almost forgot my fracas with Macfarisee, it seemed quite a secondary affair to a lad who had actually _stood fire_; and for a second time leaving my hiding-place, I prepared to depart.

I had scarcely dropped from my perch and touched the ground, when a loud "hallo" fell on my ear, and turning, I beheld, about forty yards distant, a party of seamen armed with pistols and cutlasses, and headed by an officer who had his sword drawn, and whom, by the black patch on his left eye, I knew to be Lieutenant Cranky, of His Majesty's tender _Tartar_. He had three or four other persons with him; but whether they were prisoners or not, I never lingered to inquire, but at once took to flight, my hair bristling with terror. I knew his party in a moment to be the press-gang, a name so fraught with fear in those days of ill-defined freedom, that I know not in what language to pourtray it now.

"Hollo, you sir,--stop--bring to, or it will be the worse for you!" cried Mr. Cranky, with an oath; but I turned and ran, my heart panting wildly, almost to suffocation. A seaman villanously fired a pistol after me, and the ball stripped the bark from a tree close by. I knew that I should have a better chance of escape amid the intricacies of the city than in the open country, as any person would readily afford me a refuge from a fate so odious as the hands of the press-gang; so, after a _détour_ and doubling like a hare, I scrambled over two or three walls, regardless of iron spikes and broken bottles, crossed a flower garden, and scarcely knowing whither I went, found my pursuers rapidly distanced as I dashed down a steep old alley, named the Vennel, one side of which is formed by the crenelated rampart, and an old tower or loopholed bastel-house of the city wall. At the foot of this street I saw a ladder, placed under the door of a hayloft; I cast a hasty glance behind,--no one was near,--I rushed up, drew the ladder in to secure my retreat, and buried myself among the hay, panting, breathless, and bathed in hot perspiration, while my heart leaped almost in agony.

I had just made my quarters good in time, for in less than a minute, three seamen ran hurriedly down the street, and after looking about them, returned, swearing at their fruitless chase, and at Lieutenant Cranky, who had sent them in pursuit.

As they ascended the street, one paused and gave a glance at the hayloft; but he seemed to dismiss suspicion, if he had one, and passed on. Had I left the ladder, they had doubtless discovered me.

The lagging day passed slowly,--oh, how slowly--on! Parched with thirst, weary and unrefreshed, I gladly saw the shadows fall to the eastward, and hailed the approach of night.

When all seemed still and sufficiently dark, I prepared to quit my nest, and was just in the act of lowering the ladder, when a man came out of the stable beneath, and uttered such a shout of angry surprise, that I instinctively drew up my means of descent again. He surlily demanded my reason for being about his premises.

I told him frankly that I had been hidden there for some hours to escape the press-gang, and that I was perishing of thirst. On hearing this, his manner at once changed; he invited me into his house, and offered me food; but, though totally unable to eat, I drank a jug of stout ale, and feeling invigorated and encouraged anew, I thanked him, and penetrated into the city, which I had to traverse on my way home.

In every direction I saw groups of men in close conversation. Their tones were sullen, and their denunciations of the Lord Provost and Baillies were loud and incessant, for the blood which had been so wantonly shed that day had set the hearts of all on fire with a longing for revenge.

In the cities of Aberdeen and Perth, in the busy town of Dundee and elsewhere, the effigy of the unpopular member had been whipped, burned, blown up or hanged by the populace, whom the magistrates allowed to do so, unmolested, and the mobs dispersed in good-humour, and quite content with their own performances; but the wise men of Gotham, who ruled in the high places of the capital, being possessed of a nicer sense of honour, or a greater amount of servility--a higher degree of wisdom, or what is much more likely, a profound depth of folly--had resolved to prevent such exhibitions at the bayonet's point, and with what success I have shown.

As I descended the High Street, the groups became more frequent, and more vehement in their language; and the same phrases used by the "Friends of the People" on the preceding evening were of frequent occurrence. The escapes I had so lately made, caused me to be careful. I shunned every group, and more especially did I shun the red-coated veterans of the city guard.

"Home--home," thought I; "let me only get home, that I may relate to the dear ones there all I have endured for the last six-and-thirty hours."

Vain wish! Little did I then foresee all that was before me, ere again I crossed my mother's threshold, or how much I resembled "the leaf which is torn from the tree, and which the wind of heaven blows about."

I observed that the oil-lamps, by which the streets were usually lighted, were all extinguished. Something was evidently on the _tapis_.

I had reached the Tron church, when the appearance of a great and silent mob, marching steadily and compactly, and having aloft a man upon a ladder, made me pause, for there was something in their silence and good order that seemed very portentous of evil. They poured out of the narrow closes and steep wynds on both sides of the dark Canongate, and, as these living streams united, they rolled in one huge mass along the North Bridge towards Prince's Street.

This sight was sufficiently alarming to excite even my curiosity. Escaping the notice of the city guard by their silence and promptitude, they marched on, no sound being heard but the tramp of their feet and the subdued murmur of their voices. All at once, when half-way across that lofty bridge which spans the deep (and then grassy) ravine between the old city and the new, a red and lurid light shone over them, revealing a thousand excited and upturned faces. The man seated on the ladder had kindled a torch, and, while waving it, proceeded to harangue his followers as they bore him on. He was the same sallow-visaged and haggard-eyed orator who I had heard on the proceeding evening--the unfortunate Robert Watt--and while being carried forward by the human tide that rolled along the bridge, I again heard the same sentiments and phrases uttered by him, the staple topics of the Friends of the People, which, however meaningless now, had a terrible signification in those days when pikes were made by thousands in secret, when the guillotine stood in the Place de la Grève, and the blood of Louis XVI. was yet crusted on its platform.

"There was a time when the Scots possessed a spirit that brooked no wrong," I heard Watt exclaim; "when they were not so cold in blood that the dastard law froze them, and when people took the part of the oppressed against the foul oppressor. A respect for the law is all very well, but in the end it makes men cowards. Respect for law and social order in the face of injustice and tyranny is like an old organ-tune--a piece of twaddle. I say the people have been wronged, yea, outraged and murdered, and we must have blood for blood! The law takes care of you--but it grinds, robs, and crushes you to the dust. Will the law save a man whose throat is under the murderer's knife--or the poor tradesman who starves under the tyranny of the purseproud monopolist? I respect the law, but I say, curses blight the edict by which our fellow-citizens were this day slain. In our fathers' days, there was a law in Scotland that he who was taken _redhand_ after a slaughter might be put to death in twenty-four hours. The provost is redhand, and but twelve hours have elapsed--the blood of our citizens is on his soul! Drag him forth, drag him forth, I say, and to the nearest lampost with him!"

A yell of applause followed this terrible suggestion.

Again and again he referred to "the God of reason--the social compact between the king and people; to the Draconian laws, which drenched in blood the idol misnamed justice; to the downfall of hereditary monarchs, hereditary orders, tyrants, and lawgivers; equality of rights, the conspiracy of kings against God and man, and the majesty of the sovereign people!"

Then he wound up by quoting some forgotten Jacobin poet, who wrote of monarchs thus:--

"Think not, ye knaves, whom meanness styles the great,
Drones of the church and harpies of the state,--
Whose sires accurst, for blood and plunder famed,
Sultans, or kings, or czars, or emperors named;
Who taught deluded worlds their claims to own,
And raised them--hell-doomed reptiles!--to a throne;
Think not I come to croak with omen'd yell,
The dire damnations of your _future Hell_!"

Inspired by this choice piece of poetry, the rabble he led murmured, growled, and applauded; but whenever he spoke of the events of the past day--the blood that had been shed and the lives lost at the behest of a ministerial place-man, they uttered a yell. Then rushing along Prince Street, they turned into the ample space of St. Andrew Square, which was then a silent and sequestered place, as its mansions were occupied by the wealthy alone. Now a dozen of torches, shaking like tufts of fire, shed their glow upon the excited faces of the mob, and I could perceive a few sword-blades and pikeheads glittering among them. Amid wild hurrahs, the house of the Provost Stirling was assailed; the windows were dashed to pieces, and the shutters, which had been closed and barricaded, were broken in. Two sentinels of the city guard, who were posted before the door, fled into the fields which lay north of the city; their boxes were demolished, and the iron rails would soon have been torn up to force the front entrance, which already resounded like a huge drum beneath the blows that were rained upon it by the foremost of the rabble--when, hark!

There was a flash through the darkened sky, as if a meteor had passed over it; another followed instantly, with the double report of two heavy cannon from the Argyle battery, the signal for the seamen and marines of the _Hythe_ and _Tartar_, and for the cavalry again to enter the city.

The first made "the sovereign people" pause in silence!

The second made them waver and commence a retreat from the square; the retreat soon became a flight, and in three minutes I found myself alone, seated near the railings on a fragment of a sentrybox, the mob having entirely disappeared.

The provost of the city, whom the republican party had marked as the object of their special vengeance, was at that moment safe within the strong ramparts of the castle; and in due time he received the reward of his intense respect for the powers that be, and for preventing a straw mannikin being burned. He was made a baronet of Great Britain.

When about to retire, I was suddenly seized by the collar on one side, and found a drawn bayonet opposed to my throat on the other. I was the prisoner of the two fugitive sentinels, who had returned; and finding the coast clear, resolved to make me a trophy of the night. I struggled for liberty, but in vain, and was forced to accompany them into the old town, where, in ten minutes more, I found myself a prisoner in the Tolbooth--the only one the guard had, as yet, been able to capture on this eventful night.