“And such a devilish fine bit of woman flesh,” put in another. “What an ankle she has! If the captain hadn’t began the affair, I’d say we ought to toss up for her; and maybe we ought as it is.”
“Hold your tongue,” said Arrison, with a frown that knit his forbidding brows into dark, red knots. “She’s mine, and there’s an end of it. But I’ll come down handsomely, lads” he added, seeing signs of discontent. “I was a fool ever to think of carrying her off for Aylesford. In my country, many’s the rich heiress that’s married in this way by gentlemen; and gad! as I too was born a gentleman, I mean to do the same.”
“The captain’s a broth of a boy,” interrupted the Milesian. “I’ll help to do the thing nately, and play praist if he says it.”
“You’ll find her a restive filly, though,” laughed the lieutenant, brutally, “if she is often like she was in the boat.”
“I know a way to tame her,” was Arrison’s reply. “I’m used to breaking in her sex; and have bitted and spurred worse fillies than she is. She’ll be glad enough to marry me, before I’ve done with her.” And he burst into a roar of drunken derision, in which his hearers joined.
The reader can but faintly imagine the feelings of our heroine as she listened to this conversation. More than once she started to her feet in wild alarm, as the uproar occasionally deepened, thinking for the moment, that the imbruted wretch was about to force his way into her chamber.
“Oh, God!” she cried, clasping her hands and raising her eyes above, “is there no help?”
CHAPTER XXXII.
THE ATTACK
“It was a dread, yet spirit-stirring sight!
The billows foamed beneath a thousand oars.” —Scott.
“Though few the numbers—there’s the strife,
That neither spares, nor speaks for life.” —Byron.