The people dispersed, grumbling but cowed, their leader, the cadaverous shoemaker, muttering that Stauncy would repent of his work yet.
'I'll dog him,' said Ortop, 'till he dangle from the yard-arm of a jury-mast rigged up in Execution Dock.'
His presence was missed that night by the roystering tipplers in Ship Street; for, on returning to Appledore, he revealed his mind to another votary of Crispin, who was able to wield the quill, an accomplishment not very common in those days; and, having dictated an epistle giving information against Stauncy, he started off to Bideford, and sent it on its way to London. 'There,' said he, as he dropped the document into the letter-box, 'if that don't stretch him, I'm no fortune-teller.'
It was deemed expedient by the captain that he should immediately confer with the merchant; and when the shades of evening gathered in, he paid him a visit.
'The cat's out of the bag, Mr. Phillipson,' he said; 'Jim Ortop has told all he knows, and more, I daresay. A crowd of folks besieged my house just now as if they were mazed. Old Ortop, who was there, let out a bit of his mind, confirming what I feared from young Jim Ortop; but I warned him to mind what he is about.'
'Stauncy,' said Mr. Phillipson in a serious tone, 'you might have been born yesterday. You're very courageous, but you haven't got half the sagacity of my dog. Instead of applying a plaster to the sore place in Ortop's mind, you apply a blister. You should have taken the bull by the tail, and not by the horns, cap'n; it's a bad job of it! Why, here in Appledore there have been worse doings than in Northam, I'll warrant you. The people came round my door like a pack of wolves, and, just to show that they meant something, sent a volley of stones through the windows. The groom went out to ask "What's up?" and a hundred voices replied, in menacing words and tones, "Tell the old wizard," I heard them say, "that we'll burn 'un. Tell the old junk we'll scuttle 'un. Tell the old rogue we'll send 'un to sea in a hencoop." The women, who looked like harpies, screeched defiance. The men and boys threw stones and cob, upbraiding me all the while, and threatening I don't know what. I knew they could prove nothing, and that it was all a surface thing--a tide that could be made to ebb as easily as it was made to flow; so I went to the door with my handkerchief to my eyes, and looking as if I had lost a baby, or something worse. Didn't they yell! but when they saw my pale face, and how I kept mopping up, they soon got as quiet as lambs. "My good people," said I, as well as I could for choking grief, you know, "what is it? Is this the way you treat an old employer, who is paying half the town, and will soon pay the other half? Can _I_ still the winds and waves? Can _I_ control the stormy winds, or keep men back from death when their time has come? I never thought"--and then I fairly blubbered--"to come to this, or that my grey hairs, and family name, which is a household word, would be treated with such a want of consideration." You should have seen, Stauncy, how they all veered round in a minute. Some of the women began a-crying too, and called out shame on the ringleaders, who slunk away; and there I stood, sniffing, and speaking to their feelings, until they all went home, declaring they wouldn't see a hair of my head hurt. That's the way, Stauncy: nothing like _oil_ for troubled waters. Only make yourself _felt_ somehow--_anyhow_--and you'll be pronounced right.