“Shame on yez,” exclaimed the Irish woman, clenching her huge fist. “If it wasn’t that I’m a poor widdy woman, I’d—I’d—”
“Howld yer tongue, Mother Lynch,” whispered a lively youth of about nineteen by her side, who obviously hailed from the same country. “It’s not aggravatin’ him that’ll do him good. Let him be, darlin’, and he’ll soon blow the steam off.”
“An’ what does it matter to me, Teddy Malone, whether he blows the steam off, or keeps it down till he bursts his biler? Is it a descendant o’ the royal family o’ Munster as’ll howld her tongue whin she sees cruelty and injustice?”
Without paying the slightest regard to this royal personage, Malines returned to the group of men, and repeated his order to go below; but they did not go, and he seized a handspike with a view to enforce his commands. He hesitated, however, on observing that the man named Joe, after quietly buttoning his coat, was turning up his wristbands as if in preparation for a pugilistic encounter.
“Lookee here now, Mister Malines,” said Joe, with a mild, even kindly, expression, which was the very reverse of belligerent; “I was allers a law-abidin’ man myself, and don’t have no love for fightin’; but when I’m ordered to go into a dark hole, and have the lid shut down on me an’ locked, I feels a sort of objection, d’ee see. If you lets us be, us’ll let you be. If otherwise—”
Joe stopped abruptly, grinned, and clenched his enormous fists.
Mr Malines was one of those wise men who know when they have met their match. His knockings down and overbearing ways always stopped short at that line where he met courage and strength equal or superior to his own. He possessed about the average of bull-dog courage and more than the average of physical strength, but observing that Joe was gifted with still more of both these qualities, he lowered the handspike, and with a sneer replied—
“Oh, well—please yourselves. It matters nothing to me if you get washed overboard. Make all fast, lads,” he added, turning to his crew, who stood prepared for what one of them styled a scrimmage. Malines returned to the quarter-deck, followed by a half-suppressed laugh from some of the mutinous emigrants.
“You see, David,” remarked Joe, in a quiet tone, to a man beside him, as he turned down his cuffs, “I think, from the look of him, that if we was to strike on rocks, or run on shore, or take to sinking, or anything o’ that sort, the mate is mean enough to look arter hisself and leave the poor things below to be choked in a hole. So you an’ me must keep on deck, so as to let ’em all out if need be.”
“Right, Joe, right you are.”