So saying, he began to strip the arm of the captain, who perceiving his aim, "Avast, brother," cried he, "you go the wrong way to work; you may as well rummage the afterhold when the damage is in the forecastle; I shall right again when my jaws are unhooped." With these words he drew a clasp-knife from his pocket, and, advancing to a glass, applied it so vigorously to the leathern straps of his headpiece, that the gordian knot was cut, without any other damage to his face than a moderate scarification, which, added to the tumefaction of features naturally strong, and a whole week's growth of a very bushy beard, produced on the whole a most hideous caricatura.

After all, there was a necessity for the administration of the surgeon, who found divers contusions on different parts of the skull, which even the tin cap had not been able to protect from the weapons of the rustics.
These being shaved and dressed secundum artem, and the operator dismissed with a proper acknowledgment, our knight detached one of the post-boys to the field of action for intelligence concerning Mr.Clarke and squire Timothy, and, in the interim, desired to know the particulars of Crowe's adventures since he parted from him at the White Hart.
A connected relation, in plain English, was what he had little reason to expect from the novice, who, nevertheless, exerted his faculties to the uttermost for his satisfaction.

He give him to understand, that in steering his course to Birmingham, where he thought of fitting himself with tackle, he had fallen in, by accident, at a public-house, with an itinerant tinker, in the very act of mending a kettle; that, seeing him do his business like an able workman, he had applied to him for advice, and the tinker, after having considered the subject, had undertaken to make him such a suit of armour as neither sword nor lance should penetrate; that they adjourned to the next town, where the leather coat, the plates of tinned iron, the lance, and the broadsword, were purchased, together with a copper saucepan, which the artist was now at work upon in converting it to a shield; but in the meantime, the captain, being impatient to begin his career of chivalry, had accommodated himself with a pot-lid, and taken to the highway, notwithstanding all the entreaties, tears, and remonstrances of his nephew, Tom Clarke, who could not however be prevailed upon to leave him in the dangerous voyage he had undertaken.
That this being but the second day of his journey, he descried five or six men on horseback bearing up full in his teeth, upon which he threw his sails aback, and prepared for action; that he hailed them at a considerable distance, and bade them bring to; when they came alongside, notwithstanding his hail, he ordered them to clew up their courses, and furl their topsails, otherwise he would be foul of their quarters; that, hearing this salute, they luffed all at once, till their cloth shook in the wind; then he hallooed in a loud voice, that his sweetheart, Besselia Mizzen, were the broad pendant of beauty, to which they must strike their topsails on pain of being sent to the bottom; that, after having eyed him for some time with astonishment, they clapped on all their sails, some of them running under his stern, and others athwart his forefoot, and got clear off; that, not satisfied with running ahead, they all of a sudden tacked about, and one of them boarding him on the lee-quarter, gave him such a drubbing about his upper works, that the lights danced in his lanterns; that he returned the salute with his hop-pole so effectually that his aggressor broached to in the twinkling of a handspike, and then he was engaged with all the rest of the enemy, except one, who sheered off, and soon returned with a mosquito fleet of small craft, who had done him considerable damage, and, in all probability, would have made prize of him, had n't he been brought off by the knight's gallantry.

He said, that in the beginning of the conflict Tom Clarke rode up to the foremost of the enemy, as he did suppose in order to prevent hostilities, but before he got up to him near enough to hold discourse, he was pooped with a sea that almost sent him to the bottom, and then towed off he knew not whither.
Crowe had scarce finished his narration, which consisted of broken hints and unconnected explosions of sea terms, when a gentleman of the neighbourhood, who acted in the commission of the peace, arrived at the gate, attended by a constable, who had in custody the bodies of Thomas Clarke and Timothy Crabshaw, surrounded by five men on horseback, and an innumerable posse of men, women, and children, on foot.

The captain, who always kept a good look-out, no sooner descried this cavalcade and procession, than he gave notice to Sir Launcelot, and advised that they should crowd away with all the cloth they could carry.