Perceiving this action, Pedro roughly thrust his daring hand into her bosom, and tore out a packet which had lately been carried there for concealment. While holding her with one hand, he held up the packet with the other, and tore it open with his teeth.
Then he cast it from him with a malediction, on finding that it contained but a few withered leaves—the daisies she had gathered on her mother's grave.
Oh, that she were beside it now in peaceful Acton-Rennel!
"Try some o' this, my gal," said Badger, presenting a little gallipot full of rum-and-water; "it's right Jamaiky; I takes to it unkimmin, marm, like a babby to its mother's milk. Do have a drop—'alf a totful, my gal."
Ethel shrunk back in silent misery, and Pedro kept his left hand resolutely round her waist, while holding her right hand in his.
"Don't yew be so darned proud, my sarcy Britisher," resumed the bantering ruffian, with an offended air. "We'll take the pride out o' yew afore we're done with yew. I'm a true-blooded Yankee, marm, though tall enough for a Paddygonian. The Paddygonians come from South 'Merriker, Pedro's country, while I was raised about Cape Cod. 'Guess yew never heerd o' sich a cape in the stupid old country, though yew ought to rayther, for we licked the Britishers there, as we dew everywhere else on airth, and why shouldn't we, when their hearts are like wooden nutmegs?"
Ethel looked round despairingly, but saw no aid, nor hope, nor mercy.
Bad, wild, and cruel though he was, there came something of pity into the eye and heart of Zuares Barradas, when he saw this lovely girl, one so fair, and so delicately nurtured, in this frightful situation—her dress torn and disordered, and blood trickling from her nostrils—in such a place, and in such hands, for he knew what was about to ensue, and he knew his elder brother to be an incarnate fiend.
There was another, half-concealed amid the smoke of this murky den, who regarded her with more than pity, and this was Cramply Hawkshaw; but he felt that to protect her was to die, and to die he had not yet the courage.
At last her eyes met his.