Page:Monthly scrap book, for October.pdf/12

 sleep, and nothing was heard but the clicking the town-clock in the steeple over our heads. By and bye, however, a sough and pattering feet was heard approaching; and shortly after,  looking out, we saw the press-gang, beaded by their officers, with cutlasses by their side, and great club-sticks in their hands. They said nothing, but the sound of their feet on the silent stones of the causey was as the noise of a dreadful engine. They passed, and went on; and all that were with me in the council stood at the windows and listened. In the course of a minute or twa after, two lassies, with a callan, that had been out came flying and wailing, giving the alarm to the town. Then we heard the driving of the bludgeons on the doors, and the outcries of terrified women; and, presently after, we saw the poor chased sailors running, in their shirts, with their clothes in their hands, as if they had been felons and blackguards caught in guilt, and flying from the hands of justice.

The town was awakened with the din, as with the cry of fire; and lights came starting forward as it were, teto [sic] the windows. The women were out with lamentations and vows of vengeance. I was in a state of horror unspeakable. Then came some three or four of the press-gang, with a struggling sailor in their clutches, with nothing but his trowsers on, his shirt riven from his back in the fury. Syne came the rest of the gang, and their officers, scattered, as it were, with a tempest of mud and stones, pursued and battered by a troop of desperate women and weans, whose fathers and