Max Pemberton

“ But it was the talk of the song which impelled me chiefly; and although I would not have confessed all my thoughts to Nick Venning for a thousand guineas, they were wild thoughts none the less.
Well, we stood a little while upon the platform at the stairs' head, and, sure enough, the strangers, who had come to the cove, seemed in no mind to leave it. I heard a shout of laughter from the inn; then a great crash of glass or china, as though all host Benson's mugs had come tumbling down together ”

“ Billy, however, was not so unready as he seemed. He had closed with the big man and tripped him up before you could count two—and then we heard a thud as the fellow's head struck the flags, and for some minutes he lay insensible.
"There," says Billy, who had not turned a hair, "sail that into Chesapeake Bay—by thunder," and he hitched up his breeches and was about to leave the place without more ado, when the little Frenchman, hitherto a silent spectator of the scene, suddenly intervened with a ferocity quite unnatural. No wild cat could have fought with tooth and claw more horribly. ”

“ You are a gentleman, and will know what to make of it better than we poor folk who see so little company. Why, sir, you can hear them singing for yourself if you will come to the stairs' head with me. Did mortal man ever hear a song which spoke so surely of the devil as that? ”

“ I tell you the ship put out from Savannah with a crew of forty-five, and she fired off Cape Lookout ten days afterward. I was bos'un and Dave Starlight second officer. Him and me stood by when all the boys went over, and sailed her into Chesapeake Bay, by thunder. There aren't a man, livin' or dead, of you lousy lot of Britishers as could do the same, not nohows, so help me. Show me the man as could do it, and I'll knock his — head off. ”