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“What’s wrong with Deal town?” said I. “Is it the neighborhood of the gibbet that damps the spirits of the place?”

“What d’ye mean, Bill?”

“Why, there’s nothing stirring along the beach. There are some two hundred craft off the town and the bench is as though it were in mourning; your luggers lie grim as a row of coffins, nothing moving amongst them but some shadow of old age—like old Jimmy Files, for example.”

“It’ll be the press,” said my aunt.

“Ho!” said I. “Is the king short-handed once more?”

“There’s not only what’s called deficiency, but what’s termed disaffection,” said my uncle. “The vote this year was for a hundred and forty thousand Johnnys and Joeys. They vote, and Jack says be d—d to ye.”

“Any men nabbed out of Deal?” said I.

“Five boatmen last month,” answered Uncle Joe. “I should think they’d be glad to set them ashore wherever they be. Put a pressed Deal man into your forecastle and then fire your magazine.”

“I’m a mate; they’ll not take me,” said I.

“There’s been no press for some days that I’ve heard of,” said my uncle, “but you’d better get to the beach by way of the sand hills. The Johnnys don’t hunt rabbits. They beat the alleys out of Beach Street, and you hear of them Walmer way and down by the Dockyard.”