"What are you laughing at, young Repton?"
"I was only wondering, Captain O'Moore, how your ancestors got through the flood. Unless, indeed, Noah was an O'Moore."
"There is reason to believe that he was," the captain said, seriously. "It must have been that, if he hadn't a boat of his own, or found a mountain that the water didn't cover. I have got the tree of the family at home; and an old gentleman who was learned in these things came to the house, when I was a boy; and I remember right well that he said to my father, after reckoning them up, that the first of the house must have had a place there in Ireland well-nigh a thousand years before Adam.
"I don't think my father quite liked it but, for the life of me, I couldn't see why. It was just what I should expect from the O'Moores. Didn't they give kings to Ireland, for generations? And what should they want to be doing, out among those rivers in the East, when there was Ireland, ready to receive them?"
Captain O'Moore spoke so seriously that Bob did not venture to laugh, but listened with an air of gravity equal to that of the officer.
"You will kill me altogether, Phelim!" Captain O'Halloran exclaimed; amid a great shout of laughter, in which all the others joined.
The O'Moore looked round, speechless with indignation.
"Gentlemen," he said, "I shall expect satisfaction for this insult. The word of an O'Moore has never been doubted.
"Captain O'Halloran, my friend will call upon you, first."
"He may call as often as he likes, O'Moore, and I shall be happy to converse with any friend of yours but, at present, that is all the satisfaction you will get out of me. Duelling is strictly forbidden on the Rock, and there is no getting across the Spanish lines to fight--unless, indeed, you can persuade the governor to send out a flag of truce with us. So we must let the matter rest, till the siege is over; and then, if both of us are alive, and you have the same mind, we will talk about it."