This distinction could more justly be claimed by some
mariners--a part of the crew of the vessel from the Spanish
Main--who had come ashore to see the humours of Election Day.
They were rough-looking desperadoes, with sun-blackened faces,
and an immensity of beard; their wide short trousers were
confined about the waist by belts, often clasped with a rough
plate of gold, and sustaining always a long knife, and in some
instances, a sword. From beneath their broad-brimmed hats of
palm-leaf, gleamed eyes which, even in good-nature and
merriment, had a kind of animal ferocity. They transgressed
without fear or scruple, the rules of behaviour that were
binding on all others: smoking tobacco under the beadle's very
nose, although each whiff would have cost a townsman a shilling;
and quaffing at their pleasure, draughts of wine or aqua-vitae
from pocket flasks, which they freely tendered to the gaping
crowd around them. It remarkably characterised the incomplete
morality of the age, rigid as we call it, that a licence was
allowed the seafaring class, not merely for their freaks on
shore, but for far more desperate deeds on their proper element.
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