But the traveller was prevented from executing his friendly purpose by a sort of crowd which came rushing down the alley, the centre of which was occupied by Captain MacTurk, in the very act of bullying two pseudo Highlanders, for having presumed to lay aside their breeches before they had acquired the Gaelic language. The sounds of contempt and insult with which the genuine Celt was overwhelming the unfortunate impostors, were not, indeed, intelligible otherwise than from the tone and manner of the speaker; but these intimated so much displeasure, that the plaided forms whose unadvised choice of a disguise had provoked it--two raw lads from a certain great manufacturing town--heartily repented their temerity, and were in the act of seeking for the speediest exit from the gardens; rather choosing to resign their share of the dinner, than to abide the farther consequences that might follow from the displeasure of this highland Termagant. Touchwood had scarcely extricated himself from this impediment, and again commenced his researches after the clergyman, when his course was once more interrupted by a sort of pressgang, headed by Sir Bingo Binks, who, in order to play his character of a drunken boatswain to the life, seemed certainly drunk enough, however little of a seaman. His cheer sounded more like a view-hollo than a hail, when, with a volley of such oaths as would have blown a whole fleet of the Bethel Union out of the water, he ordered Touchwood "to come under his lee, and be d----d; for, smash his old timbers, he must go to sea again, for as weather-beaten a hulk as he was." Touchwood answered instantly, "To sea with all my heart, but not with a land-lubber for commander.--Harkye, brother, do you know how much of a horse's furniture belongs to a ship?" "Come, none of your quizzing, my old buck," said Sir Bingo--"What the devil has a ship to do with horse's furniture?--Do you think we belong to the horse-marines?--ha! ha! I think you're matched, brother." "Why, you son of a fresh-water gudgeon," replied the traveller, "that never in your life sailed farther than the Isle of Dogs, do you pretend to play a sailor, and not know the bridle of the bow-line, and the saddle of the boltsprit, and the bit for the cable, and the girth to hoist the rigging, and the whip to serve for small tackle?--There is a trick for you to find out an Abram-man, and save sixpence when he begs of you as a disbanded seaman.--Get along with you! or the constable shall be charged with the whole pressgang to man the workhouse." A general laugh arose at the detection of the swaggering boatswain; and all that the Baronet had for it was to sneak off, saying, "D--n the old quiz, who the devil thought to have heard so much slang from an old muslin nightcap!"