Person or Persons Unknown

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A tale was told me not long ago by a sailor with whom I passed an afternoon hour in a coffee house. No common seaman he, but second officer on an East Indiaman. I, Jeremy Proctor, had that very day represented him in my professional capacity as barrister before the King’s Bench. In short, I had provided a successful defense for him against a charge of criminal assault. He had been involved in a fracas in a low dram house with three men of dubious repute who claimed he had insulted them. He had left forthwith, and they had followed, demanding an apology, and they supported their demand with drawn knives and a cudgel. They advanced upon him. He had no choice but to reply upon the only weapon we had on his person — a sword. It was not a cutlas — that is, not a proper fighting sword — but rather one of the ceremonial sort, something on the order of a rapier. Yet he knew how to use it, as as evidenced by the bloody scene when a red-waistcoated constable happened by. My client had murdered none but sliced the three up so severely that each of them urgently required the ministrations of a surgeon.

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