A half hour before, a row of little legs had been hanging over the side of the wharf, while their owners were intent upon certain corks and lines that danced or quivered amid the waves below.

Now the lines were made fast to stone and log, while the small fishermen stood agape to listen to the fluent orator.
This was but the nucleus of the gathering crowd.

Every boy who came near the eager circle must of course stop to find out what was going on; and it was with no little pride that Blair beheld the dozens of faces soon upturned to his.
Blair might have remembered that if there had been but a dead dog in the centre of the group, there would have been an equal gathering and pushing to know the cause of the meeting; but he, like many an older speaker, was willing to attribute to his eloquence what might have had even a humbler cause.
"Our rights invaded; a man's ship no longer his castle; the free American forced to forsake his stars and stripes! The foot of the Briton pollutes our decks.

His tyrannical arm takes captive our fathers, and dooms them to a servitude of which the world knows no equal.

Shall we submit?
We will not submit.