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.