There was a crowded courthouse next day when Ralph Mytton and Cyrus
Vetch were brought before the Mayor and charged with breach of the
peace and malicious damage to the property of lieges. It was the
first time that the Mohocks had been caught in the act, and their
being well connected added a spice to the event.

The two prisoners bore themselves very differently. Mytton, a
nephew of the member of Parliament, assumed an air of bravado,
smiled and winked at his friends in court, evidently trusting to
his high connections to get him off lightly. Vetch, on the other
hand, was sullen and morose, never lifting his eyes from the floor
except when I was giving my evidence, and then he threw me a glance
in which I read, as clearly as in a book, the threat of venomous
hate. Both he and Mytton were very heavily fined, and the Mayor was
good enough to compliment me on the part I had played.

As we were leaving the court, a tipstaff came up to Joe Punchard,
and formally arrested him as a runaway 'prentice; at the instance,
I doubt not, of Vetch himself. But the matter ended in a triumph
for Joe, for Captain Benbow accompanied him before the Mayor and
declared that as a mariner in the King's navy he was immune from
civil action. Whether the plea was good in law I know not. The
Mayor did not know either, and the clerk, to judge by his
countenance, was in an equal state of puzzlement. But Benbow was
clearly not a man to be trifled with, and Joe had certainly had a
part in bringing the Mohocks to book, and for one reason or another
he was given the benefit of the doubt. When he left the court he
was mightily cheered by a mob of 'prentices among the crowd, and
would have accepted the invitations to drink pressed upon him but
for the peremptory orders of his captain, who was no wine bibber