Jack Paterson was a very tall, muscular man, with a long red beard
and soft brown eyes. His hands were the largest I have ever seen;
but the right one wanted a finger. This, I believe, was the only
exception that one could make in saying that Jack was absolutely
perfect in his great manhood. He would have made a splendid
man-o'-war's man, and the press gang had more than once tried to
secure him.
Not till long afterwards, when, as pilots, we were out at sea
together one clear starlight night, did he tell me how his finger
was lost. It happened at a time when the press gang were more than
usually busy in Orkney pressing men for a frigate that lay in
Stromness harbour. The blue jackets had had their eyes upon Jack
Paterson, but Jack, who was just about to be married to Jean Nicol,
did not intend being caught; and he said to Jean one day that
rather than enter the navy, he would cut one of his fingers off,
and so make himself unfit for service.
One dark night he was walking along one of the country lanes with
his sweetheart when a body of tars fell upon him, and, after a
sharp fight, carried him off to an old stable in the town that
served as a temporary lockup. Very early the next morning Jean
Nicol knocked gently at the stable door.
"Are ye there, Jack?" said she.
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