Under the Jolly Roger: Being an Account of the Further Nautical Adventures of Jacky Faber by L. A. Meyer Read Free Book Online

gonna be nobody's miss!
    But then I'm through the door and out into the street and then I cut right and head down a side street so he can't find me and catch me.
I'm gonna leave this town I'm gonna go back to Boston and I'm gonna let that Randall—
    But I ain't gonna do anything like that at all, 'cause when I run around the corner of Duke Street, I run smack into the midst of a gang of men armed with clubs and ropes and sacks, who are pounding some poor bloke down to his knees, and one of them takes one look at me and yells, "A jockey, by God! Take him!"
    Through my tear-bleared eyes I see a cart all loaded with bound men with hoods over their heads, some sittin' up, some lying down with their feet sticking out the back, and everybody's hollerin' and cryin' and all of a sudden I ain't so worried about my broken heart.
A press-gang!
    Two of the gang rush at me standin' there all open-mouthed and stupid and one grabs my arm and twists it way up behind me and I gasp in the shock and pain of it.

    "Oh, won't this little fellow skip merrily through the rig-gin'!" says one of the brutes, while his pal brings up the rope to bind me.
    "Wait!" I shout, "I'm a—" but my shout turns into a scream of pain as my arm is twisted ever higher.
    "What you is, Jock, is a loyal servant of good King George, and yer gonna get a chance to prove it!"
    "But I'm a girlummmmphh!" I tries to say, as the other cove grabs my head and puts his hand across my mouth.
    "This one's a talker, he is," he growls, as he lifts his one hand off my mouth and with the other shoves in a dirty rag. "That'll shut 'im up proper!"
    With that, my arms are brought down and my wrists are tied behind my back and the sack is put over my head and I'm lifted and thrown in the cart with the rest of the poor sods. I keen and struggle and twist, but then a club or rod or something hard and cruel comes down twice on my rump and I don't do that anymore, no, I don't.
    After a while, the cart starts up and we rumble off to God-knows-where.
    I am pressed.

    I'm lyin' here fuming, looking at the inside of the hood. It's a rough open weave so us pressed ones can breathe through it, but we can't see out and nobody can see who we are, which is why I figure they got the hoods on us—a bloke's friends or family might see him bein' hauled off and cause some trouble for the press-gang. Since I don't hear nothin' but moans from my fellow prisoners, I guess they've got gags, too.

    I figure they'll take us down to some ship in the harbor and we'll all be stood up and then they'll have to let me go when I inform them of my female nature.
And I'm gonna give you thugs a real piece of my mind then, too, by God, just you wait.
    I got lots of time to think on things as we rattle along, and what I'm tryin' not to think about is Jaimy, as I'm done with him and all that.
Lies, all lies, is all it was, and now you've got to put it out of your mind, girl, and put it out right now.
    I had told Judy that if I didn't come back to our room, she was to go to Jaimy's address 'cause that would have meant that Jaimy had joyously swept me off my feet and carried me back to his home for us to live happily ever after. Thinking of that stupid girl dream, my tears start up again, rolling across the bridge of my nose and down my cheek and into the rough cloth of the hood. I've been down before, but never have I felt so worthless and so unloved.
    I will now harden my heart against Mr. James Fletcher and I will neither speak of him nor think of him ever again, as of this moment.
    I have learned and I have decided that I will live single all of my life.

Chapter 4
    If I thought this was gonna be over quick, I was wrong. We rode in that damned cart for over an hour, and I felt every rock or cobblestone it bounced over. If I didn't have that slimy rag stuffed in my mouth, I swear my teeth would've been shaken loose long before now. I've about put a cramp in my tongue tryin' to work out the damned gag, but it just