Rex, who, by the virtue of his dandyism, yet possessed some abhorrence of useless crime, imagined that the cry was one of pain, and that Barker's bullet had taken deadly effect. “You've killed the child, you villain!” he cried.
“What's the odds?” asked Barker sulkily. “She must die any way, sooner or later.”
Rex put his head down the skylight, and called on Bates to surrender, but Bates only drew his other pistol. “Would you commit murder?” he asked, looking round with desperation in his glance.
“No, no,” cried some of the men, willing to blink the death of poor Jones. “It's no use making things worse than they are. Bid him come up, and we'll do him no harm.” “Come up, Mr. Bates,” says Rex, “and I give you my word you sha'n't be injured.”
“Will you set the major's lady and child ashore, then?” asked Bates, sturdily facing the scowling brows above him.
“Yes.”
“Without injury?” continued the other, bargaining, as it were, at the very muzzles of the muskets.
“Ay, ay! It's all right!” returned Russen. “It's our liberty we want, that's all.”
Bates, hoping against hope for the return of the boat, endeavoured to gain time. “Shut down the skylight, then,” said he, with the ghost of an authority in his voice, “until I ask the lady.”
This, however, John Rex refused to do. “You can ask well enough where you are,” he said.