“What can they do?” repeated Ralli. “Ha, ha! I will tell you, my very dear sair, what they can do, and what they shall do. There are three of them and the shild. One shall do the cooking for the men; one shall clean out the sleeping-room, repair the men’s clothes, and make their hammocks; and one—the prettiest one—shall cook for me and keep my cabin in order, make and mend my clothes, and attend to me generally. As for the shild, she shall gather firewood and—ah! there she is. Come and kees me, you little girl.”
May had, in fact, at that moment entered the room with a happy laugh; but catching sight of Ralli, the laugh was broken off short, and she sought shelter and safety by her mother’s side, from which she manifested a very decided disinclination to move at Ralli’s invitation.
“Come here and kees me, little girl,” repeated the Greek, his anger rapidly rising as he saw how unmistakably the child shrank from him.
“You must please excuse her,” said Mrs Staunton, with difficulty restraining the expression of her resentment; “the child has not been accustomed to kiss strangers.”
“Come and kees me, little girl,” repeated Ralli for the third time, holding out his arms to May, and entirely ignoring Mrs Staunton’s remark. But his sardonic smile and his glittering eyes were the reverse of attractive to the child. Besides, she knew him.
“No,” said she resolutely, “I will not kiss you. I don’t love you. You are the naughty wicked cruel man that locked up my dear papa and Mr Evelin, and won’t let them come home to me.”
“Hush, May, darling!” began Mrs Staunton. But her warning came too late; the unlucky words had been spoken; and Ralli, smarting under a sense of humiliation from the scorn and loathing of him so freely displayed by this pretty child—scarcely more than a baby yet—sprang to his feet, and, seizing May roughly by the arm, dragged her with brutal force away from her mother’s side, and before anyone could interfere, drew out his colt and struck her savagely with it twice across her poor little lightly-clad shoulders.
The little creature shrieked aloud with the cruel pain as she writhed in the ruffianly grasp of the pirate; yet the fiendish heart of her tormenter felt no mercy, his lust of cruelty was aroused, and the colt was raised a third time to strike.
But the blow never fell Bob was the nearest to the pirate when he made his unexpected attack upon May, and though the occurrence was too sudden to admit of his interfering in time to prevent the first two blows, he was on hand by the time that the third was ready to fall. With a yell of rage more like that of a wild beast than of a man he sprang upon Ralli, dealing him with his clenched left hand so terrific a blow under the chin that the pirate’s lower jaw was shattered, and his tongue cut almost in two. Then, quick as a flash of light he released poor May from the villain’s grasp, wrenched the colt out of his hand, and, whilst the wretch still writhed in agony upon the ground where he had fallen under the force of Bob’s first fearful blow, thrashed him with it until the clothes were cut from his back, and his shoulders barred with a close network of livid and bloody weals. The miserable cowardly wretch screamed at first more piercingly even than poor May had done; but Bob commanded silence so imperatively and with such frightful threats that Ralli was fairly cowed into submitting to the rest of his fearful punishment in silence, save for such low moans as he was utterly unable to suppress.
As may well be supposed, this startlingly sudden scene of violence was productive of the utmost confusion in the room where it originated. The ladies, hastily seizing poor little moaning May in their arms, beat a precipitate retreat, while the men sprang to their feet and tried—for some time in vain—to drag Bob away from his victim. But the lad was now a tall, stalwart, broad-shouldered fellow; his anger was thoroughly roused by the Greek’s cruel and cowardly conduct; and it was not until he had pretty well exhausted himself in the infliction of a well-deserved punishment that he suffered himself to be dragged away. And it was now too, in the desperate emergency with which our friends found themselves in a moment brought face to face, that Bob showed the sterling stuff of which he was made. Cutting short the horrified remonstrances of his friends he took the reins of affairs in his own hands, issuing his instructions as coolly as though he had been a leader all the days of his life.