so uncouthly ridiculous an exhibition did he make of himself that presently I detected a tremor of repressed laughter in the pressure of my companion’s hand upon my arm, and a second or two later the young lady’s risibility so far mastered her that she felt constrained to bury her face in her pocket-handkerchief under pretence of being troubled with a sudden fit of coughing.
O’Gorman, however, was not to be so easily deceived; he at once observed the convulsion and recognised it for what it was, and the circumstance that he had excited the mirth of a girl seemed to sting him into action, for he suddenly straightened himself up and, with a vindictive glare at Miss Onslow, exclaimed:
“Ah! so ye’re laughin’ at me, eh? All right, my beauty; laugh away! Yell laugh the other side ov y’r purty face afore long!”
“O’Gorman!” I exclaimed fiercely, advancing a step or two toward him and dragging Miss Onslow after me as she tenaciously clung to my arm. “What do you mean, sir? How dare you address yourself to this lady in such an insolent fashion? Take care what you are about, sir, or I may find it very necessary to teach you a lesson in good manners. What do you want? Why do you stand there staring at me like an idiot? If you have anything to say, please say it at once, and get about your duty.”
“Oho, bedad, just listen to him!” exclaimed the fellow, now thoroughly aroused. “Get about me juty, is it? By the powers! but there’s others as’ll soon find that they’ll have to get about their juty, as well as me!”
I was by this time brought to the end of my patience; I was in a boiling passion, and would have sprung upon the man there and then, had not Miss Onslow so strenuously resisted my efforts to release myself from her hold that I found it impossible to do so without the exercise of actual violence. At this moment one of the men behind O’Gorman interposed by muttering:—loud enough, however, for me to hear:
“Don’t be a fool, Pete, man! Keep a civil tongue in your head, can’t you; you’ll make a mess of the whole business if you don’t mind your weather eye! What’s the good of bein’ oncivil to the gent, eh? That ain’t the way to work the traverse! Tell him what we wants, and let’s get the job over.”
Thus adjured, O’Gorman pulled himself together and remarked, half—as it seemed—in response to the seaman, and half to me:
“We wants a manny things. And the first ov thim is: How fur are we from Table Bay?”
“Well,” answered I, “if it will afford you any satisfaction to know it, I have no objection to inform you that we are just one hundred and eighty miles from it.”