Away I went, therefore, leaving the two men sitting down to a bottle
and a great mass of papers; and crossing the road in front of the inn,
walked down upon the beach. With the wind in that quarter, only little
wavelets, not much bigger than I had seen upon a lake, beat upon the
shore. But the weeds were new to me--some green, some brown and long,
and some with little bladders that crackled between my fingers. Even so
far up the firth, the smell of the sea-water was exceedingly salt and
stirring; the Covenant, besides, was beginning to shake out her sails,
which hung upon the yards in clusters; and the spirit of all that I
beheld put me in thoughts of far voyages and foreign places.

I looked, too, at the seamen with the skiff--big brown fellows, some in
shirts, some with jackets, some with coloured handkerchiefs about their
throats, one with a brace of pistols stuck into his pockets, two or
three with knotty bludgeons, and all with their case-knives. I passed
the time of day with one that looked less desperate than his fellows,
and asked him of the sailing of the brig. He said they would get under
way as soon as the ebb set, and expressed his gladness to be out of
a port where there were no taverns and fiddlers; but all with such
horrifying oaths, that I made haste to get away from him.

This threw me back on Ransome, who seemed the least wicked of that gang,
and who soon came out of the inn and ran to me, crying for a bowl of
punch. I told him I would give him no such thing, for neither he nor I
was of an age for such indulgences. "But a glass of ale you may have,
and welcome," said I. He mopped and mowed at me, and called me names;
but he was glad to get the ale, for all that; and presently we were
set down at a table in the front room of the inn, and both eating and
drinking with a good appetite.