id="id00056">"Now, then," roared old Joe, "over with our boat, lads, and board 'em!
Tommy, stay you here and let go the anchor"; and in a very few minutes
Plum and Robins were pulling Joe Westlake ashore.

Sloper and his party saw them coming and manfully stood their ground. The three seamen, securing their boat, forced their way on to the lawn and marched up to the tailor and his friends.

"What do you mean by firing at my cutter?" roared old Joe.

"What do you mean by knocking down my chimneys?" cried the tailor, who was exceedingly pale.

"Who began it?" bawled Joe. "Who fired first? Who's bin and made holes in that there flag of mine? Why, that's the flag of a British sailor, you little withered thimble you; and durn ye, if you don't make me instantly an humble apology and stump up with the cost of what ye've injured, I'll skin ye!" and he threw himself into a very menacing posture.

At this point one of the tailor's friends slunk off.

"My chimney-stack is worth more than your twopenny flag," shrieked Sloper, maddened even into some temporary emotion of courage by the insults of the old man-of-warsman.

"Say that again, will 'ee," said Joe. "Just sneer at that there flag again, will 'ee."

The tailor was idiotic enough to repeat the affront, on which, and as though a perfect understanding as to what was to be done subsisted among the three sailors, old Joe, Plum, and Robins fell upon Sloper, and, lifting him up in their arms, ran with him to the boat, into which they flung him, paying not the least heed whatever to his cries for help and for mercy, and instantly headed for the cutter, leaving the tailor's friends white as milk and speechless with alarm near the cannon upon the lawn.

When the boat reached the cutter, Plum jumped aboard and received little Sloper from the hands of old Joe, making no more of the burthen than had the tailor been a parcel, say, of a coat and waistcoat, or a pair of trousers. Old Joe then actively got over the rail. He lifted the little main-hatch, and Mr. Sloper was dropped into the space below, where the darkness was so great that he could not see, and where there was nothing to sit upon but Thames ballast.

"In boat, up anchor, and away with us!" said Joe Westlake.

The breeze was fresh, the cutter was always an excellent sailer, and in a very short space of time she was running down Long Reach with Erith and its adjacent shores out of sight, past the round of land where Dartford creek is to be found. Joe Westlake then called a council. Robins was at the tiller; Plum and Tuck came aft, and the four debated at the helm.

"I've heerd," said old Joe, "of this tailor afore. His name's Sloper. I've never larnt why he mounted them guns, or where the little rooting hog got his pluck from to fire 'em. But there can be no shadder of a doubt, mates, that his object in firing to-day was to insult that there flag."

He pointed with an immensely square forefinger to the masthead.

"Ne'er a shadder," said Plum.

"For why," continued old Joe, "did the smothered rag of a chap wait for us to come right abreast afore firing?"

"Ah! that's it, ye see," exclaimed Bob Robins. "There ye've hit it,
Mr. Westlake."

"The little faggot's game," old Joe went on, "is as clear as mud in a wineglass. He fires with blank cartridge; like as he'd say 'What'll you do?' What did he want? That we should retarn his civility with grape? Of course; that if it should come to a difficulty he'd have the law on his side. Not being able to aggravate us into shotting our guns, what must he turn to and do but load with stone—and look at that flag! Riddled, mates. I'll not speak of it as spiled, though a prettier and a better bit of bunting was never mastheaded. Spiled ain't the word: disgraced it is."

"Degraded," said Plum, in a deep voice.

"Ay, and degraded," cried old Joe, with a surly, dangerous nod. "That there little tailor has degraded the honour of our flag. What's to be done to him?"

After a pause, Plum said: "Bring him up and sit in examination on him.
Try him fairly, and convict him."

They opened the hatch and pulled little Sloper off the Thames ballast into daylight. He was exceedingly white, and trembled violently, and cut, indeed, a very pitiful figure as he stood on the quarter-deck of the Tom Bowling, surveyed by her owner and crew. He was a short man and spare, and Tom Tuck grinned as he looked at him.

"I suppose you're aweer," said old Joe, "that in shooting at my flag and wounding her you've degraded the honour of it? Are you aweer of that?"

"You came in my way; I was shooting for my hentertainment," answered
Mr. Sloper.

"You're a retired tailor, ain't ye?" said Joe.

Sloper sulkily answered "Yes."

"Have ye any acquaintance with the laws which are made and purwided for British seamen when it happens that their flag's degraded by the haction of a retired tailor?" said old Joe.

Mr. Sloper, instead of answering, cast a languishing eye at the river banks, which were fast sliding past, and requested to be set ashore.

"It don't answer his purpose to speak to the pint," said Plum.

"Listen, now," said old Joe, shaking his forefinger close into the face of little Sloper. "When a retired tailor degrades the honour of a seaman's flag by a shooting at it and a riddling of it, the law 'as made and purwided sets forth this: that the insulted sailor shall collect his crew and in the presence of all hands pass sentence after giving an impartial hearing to what the culprit may have to say in his defence. Now, you durned little powder-burner, speak up, and own what made you do it, and then I'll pass judgment."

"What's your game? What d' yer mean to do with me? Where are you carryin' me to?" cried the owner of Labour's Retreat. "None of yer nonsense, you know. This is what's called kidnappin'. It's hindictable. You may find yourself in a very unpleasant predicament over this business, I can tell yer. You profess to know who I am. D'yer want to know what I'm worth? Yer'd better put me ashore, I say, and stop this nonsense. I don't mind a joke, but this is carrying a lark too far. Why," he shrieked, "here we are a-drawing on to Northfleet! Yer 'd better let me go." And so he went on.

Old Joe and the others listened to him with stern faces; in fact, they received his protests and threats as his defence. When he had made an end Joe Westlake spoke thus:

"Sloper—I dunno your Christian name and I won't demean myself by asking of it,—four of your countrymen—and sorry they are that you should be a countrymen of their'n—have patiently listened to what ye've had to say. And all that ye've said amounts to nothen at all. The haccusation made against ye is one of the very gravest as can be brought agin a retired tailor. You're charged with degrading the honour of my flag, and ye 've been found guilty, and my sentence is that after a sufficient time's been granted you for prayer and meditation, ye be brought up to the place of hexecution, aboard this here cutter the Tom Bowling, and hanged by the neck till you're dead."

"Murder!" screamed Sloper, and here (so he afterwards swore in court) the unhappy little tailor fell down upon his knees and begged Joe Westlake to grant him his life.

"Clap him under hatches," exclaimed the old man-of-warsman, and Plum and another, lifting the hatch cover, popped Mr. Sloper down among the ballast again.

By this time the afternoon had very