The Honour of the Flag | Page 7

sudden the man's reason for letting off
his cannons. Tuck took the helm, and old Joe with a solemn
countenance and slow gait rolled forward to where the apparatus was
stationed.
"Now, you see your fate," he exclaimed, lifting up his eyes as though
he beheld a rope with a noose dangling from the masthead, "and since
no good can come of cautioning a corpse, why then, sorry I am that
there are n't a company of people arter your kind assembled aboard this
craft to witness the hexecution of my sentence upon ye. Last night I
heard that the reason of your firing off your guns were to celebrate the

hanniversary of your wife's death. I dunno, I'm sure, whether such a
practice wouldn't be considered as more criminal and worthy of a
fearfuller punishment than even the shooting at a man's flag and
degrading the honour of it. But to say more 'ud only be a-wasting of
breath. My lads, do your duty."
Robins, with powerful arms, grasped the tailor, who shrieked murder
and struggled hard. His struggles were as the throes and convulsions of
a mouse in the teeth of a cat. He was dumped down on the three-legged
stool. In an instant Plum lathered his jaws with the tar-brush, and
picking up the piece of broken iron hoop scraped little Sloper's cheeks
till the lather was as much blood as tar. Then, lifting his leg, he tilted
the stool and Mr. Sloper fell backwards on to the tarpaulin, which,
yielding to his weight, soused him into the water They left him to kick
and splash awhile, then pulled him out and ran him forward into the
head, where they secured him to the windlass till the sun should have
somewhat dried him.
But long before the sun had had time to comfort the shivering little
creature Herne Bay had hove into sight. The helm was shifted, and the
cutter ran close into the land, where they hove her to whilst Plum and
Robins got the boat over.
Mr. Sloper was then dropped over the side into the boat, which pulled
ashore, landed him, and returned; and a few minutes later the cutter was
standing for the mouth of the river, leaving the tailor on the Herne Bay
beach, forty miles from home without a farthing in his pocket.
This is the historic incident of the Thames which I desire to rescue
from the oblivion that has overtaken many greater matters. Mr. Sloper,
on his return to Labour's Retreat, and when he was somewhat recovered
in nerves and health, sued Joe Westlake in the Whitechapel County
Court, in action of tort, laying his damages at the moderate sum of fifty
pounds. Mr. G.E. Williams, for the defendant, contended that the
plaintiff deserved the treatment which he had brought on himself, and
the Judge, after hearing the evidence, said that although the plaintiff,
Sloper, had acted most improperly in loading his guns, the defendant,
Westlake, had retaliated too severely, but, under the circumstances, he

should award only five pounds' damages, without costs.

Cornered!
"I don't see no signs of the tug, do you, Tom?" said the old skipper,
John Bunk, rolling up to me from the companion hatchway. He was
fresh from the cabin, and was rather tipsy, with a fixed stare and a
stately manner, though his legs would have framed the lower part of an
egg. His hat was tall, and brushed the wrong way. He wore a thick
shawl round his neck and was wrapped up in a long monkey-jacket,
albeit we were in the dog-days. In a word, Bunk was a skipper of a type
that is fast perishing off our home waters.
"No," said I, "there's no sign of the tug."
"Then bloomed," said he, "if I don't work her up myself. Who's afraid?
I know the ropes. Get amidships in the fair-way and keep all on, and
there y' are. And mubbe the tug'll pick us up as we go."
"It's all one to Tom," said I.
Our brig was the Venus, of Rye, a stump topgallantmast coaster, eighty
years old. We were in a big bight of the coast, heading for a river which
flows past a well known town, whither we were bound. The bed of that
river went in a vein through about three miles of mud, till it sheared
into the land, and flowed into a proper-looking river with banks of its
own. At flood the water covered the mud, but the river was buoyed, and
when once you had the land on either hand and the bay of mud astern,
the pilotage to the town was no more than a matter of bracing the yards
about till you floated into one long reach whose extremity was painted
by