“Don’t you resist, my pretty one, but go as he tells you; there’s help a coming.”
Lauré turned sharply back, stooped down, and caught the trembling woman by the wrist.
“Enough of this,” he exclaimed sharply, for one peculiarity of the man was that every time he was about to proceed to some act of violence he worked himself into a rage. “You come to me now.”
Hester hung back from him and tried to cling to her prostrate husband, but, remembering the words of old Rasp, she suffered Lauré to lead her forward.
“That’s more sensible,” he said, with a look that made her shrink. “To-morrow we will change cabins with those aft.”
He led her to the hatch, down which Bessy had been thrust, and ordered her to descend, which she did after a trembling glance at her husband, who still lay insensible, but with Rasp and Oakum bending over him, and the next moment, finding that she was evidently in the part that the Cuban had had furnished for his own use, and beyond which was his little sleeping cabin, she was clasped in Bessy Studwick’s arms.
“Why have you not thrown that dog overboard or below?” cried the Cuban, returning to where Dutch lay.
“Don’t you be in such a ’nation hurry,” growled Rasp. “I’m not going to have my helmets and diving tackle misused by nobody. These things may be worth fifty thousands pounds yet, and if they’re bruised or have holes broke in ’em, how are we to get ’em mended?”
As he spoke, Rasp, with Oakum’s help, dragged off the india-rubber suit and removed the helmet very carefully.
“There,” he said, “now you can have him; and none of your pitching him down like you did the others. He’s valuable, he is.”