waving arms and threatening faces which thronged the beach. As they creeped onwards, a few stones flung from slings by some of the boys went whizzing over their heads, “Now pull hard, and at once!” shouted out Simpson; “we have to deal with but women and children, and shall disperse them before they have fired half a broadside.” The rowers bent them to their oars, the boats started shorewards like arrows from the string, there arose a shout from the assembled multitude, which the distant hills echoed back to them in low thunder, and a shower of stones from the boys, the apprentices, the women, the men--from the shore, the lanes, the cottage roofs, the chimney tops, came hailing down upon them thick and ceaseless, rattling, pattering, crashing, like the _débris_ of a mountain rolled over its precipices by an earthquake. The water was beaten into foam as if lashed by a hurricane. Every individual of the four crews disappeared in an instant; the oars swung loose on the gunwales, or slipped overboard. At length, however, the boats, propelled partly by the wind, partly by the force of the missiles, drifted from the shore; and melancholy was the appearance of the people within, when, after the stones began to fall short, they gathered themselves up, and looked cautiously over the sides. There were broken and contused heads among them beyond all reach of reckoning; and one poor man of Easter-Ross, who had been marked out by a young fellow named Junor, the best slinger in town, had carried two good eyes with him into the conflict, and only one out of it. They rowed slowly to the other side, and the victors could see them, until they landed, unfolding neckcloths and handkerchiefs, and binding up heads and limbs.