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Believing it to be an attempt at rescue, the gang closed in about their prisoners, but when one of these was the first to fall, his arm shattered and an ear shot off, the gangsmen, perceiving their mistake, broke and fled in all directions. Not far, however.
Had the Admiralty reasoned in similar terms with those who beat its gangsmen, converted its rendezvous into match-wood and carried off its pressed men, it would have quickly made itself as heartily feared as it was already hated; but in seeking to shore up an odious cause by pacific methods it laid its motives open to the gravest misconstruction.
The three merry maids of Taunton, who as gangsmen put the Denny Bowl quarrymen to rout, were of course impostors. But if the ganger's life was not for woman, there was ample compensation for its loss in the wider activities the gang opened up for her. The gangsman was nothing if not practical.
In the literature of the eighteenth century the warrant is inseparably associated with the short, incurvated service sword commonly known as the cutlass or hanger; but in the press-gang prints of the period the gangsmen are generally armed with stout clubs answering to Smollett's "good oak plant."
No householder would admit the gangsmen beneath his roof; and when at length they succeeded in gaining a foothold within the city, all who were liable to the press immediately deserted it "as they do every town where there is a gang" and went "to reside at Parkgate." The seamen fled, no "business" could be done, and officer and gang were soon withdrawn.
The sailors were perhaps more road-weary than the gangsmen, and provided none of them succeeded in slipping away in the darkness, or made a successful resistance, in half-an-hour's time or less the whole party would be safe under lock and key, cursing luck for a scurvy trickster in delivering them over to the gang.
The rondy was hardly a spot to which one would have resorted for a rest-cure. When not engaged in pressing, the gangsmen were a roistering, drinking crew, under lax control and never averse from a row, either amongst themselves or with outsiders. Sometimes the commanding officer made the place his residence, and when this was the case some sort of order prevailed.
Birchall, who had taken a circuitous route, arrived late, whilst the band of sailors arrived early. They numbered, moreover, forty-six as against eleven gangsmen and two officers. Four to one was a temptation the sailors could not resist. They attacked the gangs with such ferocity that out of the thirteen only one man returned to the rendezvous with a whole skin.
In the light of the lantern, held conveniently near by one of the gangsmen, who have by this time turned out in various stages of undress, his features are seen to be strongly convulsed. His breathing is laboured and noisy, his head rolls incessantly from side to side.
Near Shepton Mallet, on the return tramp, his gangsmen fell in with a party armed with sticks and knives, who "beat and cut them in a very cruel manner." The main considerations entering into the dispatch of pressed men to the fleet, when at length their period of detention at headquarters came to an end, were economy, speed and safety.
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