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That he was a girl he freely admitted, and he accounted for his appearing in sailor rig by asserting that a brutal father had apprenticed him to the sea in his thirteenth year. While woman was thus invading man's province at sea, that universal feeder of the Navy, the pressgang, made little or no appeal to her as a sphere of activity. On Portland Island, it is true, Lieut.
Growing bolder as their numbers increased, and seeing that the pressgang was about to escape from their own especial domain, they made a furious attack on the rearguard, who could only keep them at bay by a free use of their cutlasses, with which several of the assailants were wounded.
He had not his papers with him, and he had been caught trying to escape from the pressgang. The Captain of the brig was on shore, and was to be taken on board at Plymouth, where she was to call in for him. "Where are we bound for?" asked True Blue of one of his new shipmates. "Don't you know, lad?" answered the man with a laugh which sounded harsh and cruel in his ears.
Poor Gregory would gladly have followed some more pacific calling, but his poverty, and not his will, compelled him to be a sailor. Besides, he was now a big, stout, well-fed fellow, and could pull and haul as well as many seamen; and in those days the pressgang took care that once a sailor, a man should remain always a sailor.
A pressgang; beaten off by one woman Dangers at Spithead and Point A treat for both parties, of pulled chicken, at my expense Also gin for twenty I am made a prisoner: escape and rejoin my ship.
The night being clear, he was able to see the road, and he knew by the position of the Great Bear, which he always kept on his left hand, that he was going in the right direction. The dread he felt of being overtaken by a pressgang, or by the seamen of his own ship, whom he thought might be sent in pursuit, made him walk all the faster.
And slavery; bah! slaves enough in Britain while the pressgang can carry off any man it likes. But there what's the good of such talk? I'm not going to be a Viking in a bad way, so you need not be afraid. It will all be for adventure, and glory and daring, and jolly good fun, I tell you." "All right; we're game for whatever you please," answered the Harrisons.
Mr Foley and Gerald, with two of the men who had no prisoners to guard, brought up the rear, and had enough to do to keep the rapidly increasing mob at bay. It was mostly composed, however, of women and boys, who shrieked and shouted, and hurled abuse on the heads of the pressgang.
Mrs Milligan, finding that she was known, and as it would be useless to deny that she had guests in the house, shrieked out at the top of her voice, "Run, bhoys, run the pressgang are on ye!" at the same time attempting, with her formidable weapon, to prevent the seamen from opening the door before which she stood.
Now the news that we had him on board with us, and that he was on his way out, no doubt to drive the last remains of the French power from that quarter of the world, came on my ears like the summons of a trumpet, and went far to make me content with the accident that had thrown me in the way of the pressgang. Mr.
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