laws for a red-haired, flea-bitten Sawney to diddle true-born
Englishmen? What'll the King's Bench say to that, think ye?"

He was very abusive, but very uncertain on his legs. I said
good-humouredly that I welcomed process of law, and would defend my
action. He shook his head, and said something about law not being
everything, and England being a long road off. He had clearly some
great threat to be delivered of, but just then he sat down so heavily
that he had no breath for anything but curses.

But the drunkard had given me a notion. I hurried home and gave
instructions to my men to keep a special guard on the store. Then I set
off in a pinnace to find my three ships, which were now lading up and
down among the creeks.

That was the beginning of a fortnight's struggle, when every man's hand
was against me, and I enjoyed myself surprisingly. I was never at rest
by land or water. The ships were the least of the business, for the
dour Scots seamen were a match for all comers. I made them anchor at
twilight in mid-stream for safety's sake, for in that drouthy clime a
firebrand might play havoc with them. The worst that happened was that
one moonless night a band of rascals, rigged out as Indian braves, came
yelling down to the quay where some tobacco was waiting to be shipped,
and before my men were warned had tipped a couple of hogsheads into the
water. They got no further, for we fell upon them with marling-spikes
and hatchets, stripped them of their feathers, and sent them to cool
their heads in the muddy river. The ring-leader I haled to James Town,
and had the pleasure of seeing him grinning through a collar in the
common stocks.

Then I hied me back to my store, which was my worst anxiety, I was
followed by ill names as I went down the street, and one day in a
tavern, a young fool drew his shabble on me. But I would quarrel with
no man, for that was a luxury beyond a trader. There had been an attack
on my tobacco shed by some of the English seamen, and in the mellay one
of my blacks got an ugly wound from a cutlass. It was only a foretaste,
and I set my house in order.

One afternoon John Faulkner brought me word that mischief would be
afoot at the darkening. I put each man to his station, and I had the
sense to picket them a little distance from the house. The Englishmen
were clumsy conspirators. We watched them arrive, let them pass, and
followed silently on their heels. Their business was wreckage, and they