This they at once proceeded to do, or attempt to do, though I resisted manfully. I whipped out my hanger and stood on the defence while I shouted lustily for Oliver, hoping he might hear me; and I found some able auxiliaries in the screaming rabble of women who had been watching the scene. For no sooner did they see me attacked than they swooped down upon the press-gang; they belaboured the members of it with their fists and did much execution on them with their nails, while all the while they shouted and bawled at them and berated them for taking honest men and fathers of families away from their homes. But 'twas all of no avail. The lieutenant knocked my sword out of my hand with his cutlass, a sailor felled me with a blow of his fist, and two or three of them drove off the women, so that, in five minutes, I was secured. And never a sign of Oliver appeared while this was going on, so that I pictured the dismay of that loyal friend when he should come forth from the house he was visiting at, and learn the news of what had befallen me from the viragoes who had taken my part. They carried, or rather dragged, me to a boat lying off the stairs near the Tower and flung me into it, fastening me to a thwart by one hand and by the other to a miserable-looking wretch who, with some more, had been impressed as I had. And so the sailors bent to their oars while the lieutenant took the rudder lines, and rowed swiftly down the river on a quick ebbing tide. In this way it was not long ere we reached the neighbourhood of Woolwich, and I saw before me a stately man-o'-war with an Admiral's flag flying from her foretopmast head. That ship was the _Namur_ under orders for the West Indies and North America, and was to be my home for many a day. Yet I knew it not then, nor, indeed, could I think aught of my future. My heart was sad and sorry within me, and, when I thought at all, it was of a far different home; the home in which my poor sick mother was sitting even now awaiting my return. PART II THE NARRATIVE OF JOICE BAMPFYLD OF VIRGINIA CHAPTER XII A COLONIAL PLANTATION 'Tis with no very willing heart that I sit down to write, as best I may, the account of the vastly strange and remarkable occurrences that took place in and about my home when I was but a girl of eighteen years of age, it being then the year of our Lord 1728. Yet, since it has to be done, let me address myself to the task as ably as I can, and pray that strength and lucidity may be accorded to me, so that those who, in days to come, shall read that which I set down, may be easily led to understand what I now attempt.