He sprang forward, Edward Stafford sprang back, and the passengers sprang between them.
“Hands off, gentlemen, if you please!” said the skipper; “remember I am master o’ this vessel. I wud wish to be civil to everybody, but it is not in the power o’ nature to put up wi’ the impudence o’ a creature like that; and though I’ll no hurt him—smash me! he shall either haud his tongue, or he shall never speak more. Did ye hear such names as I put up wi’?”
“Unhand the ruffian, gentlemen!” cried Mr Stafford, who had retreated amid-ships, and felt his courage revive under the protection of half-a-dozen ladies. “Unhand the mountain of moving mud! I’ll teach such fellows how to interfere with a gentleman! Unhand him, and I’ll send him below with a piece of cold lead through his fin!” And heroically taking from his pocket a handsome silver-mounted ivory case, he placed it with a determined air upon the top of a beef cask, again exclaiming—“Don’t hold him, gentlemen—these will do for him!”
“I tell ye again, sirs,” shouted the skipper, “don’t hold me! Do you think a thing like that shall threaten to shoot me on board o’ my own ship?” And he struggled to approach him.
“See to yourselves, gentlemen!” cried Mr Stafford, laying his hand fiercely upon the pistol-case.
“O sir!—pray sir!—dear sir!—” screamed the ladies, grasping him in their arms.
“Oh, don’t be alarmed,” said the little Honourable; “’pon honour, I shall only wing him—I have had some experience in these matters.”
The skipper made a desperate rush forward—the ladies screamed louder—Mr Stafford seized the pistol-case furiously, crying—“Then die, fellow!——”
His exclamation was cut short—a lady grasped the terrible pistol-case; it opened in the struggle, and the hateful weapons fell upon the deck, though not in the shape of pistols, but the honourable gentleman’s sea-stock of cigars! The gentlemen laughed—the ladies tittered.
“It has ended in smoke, sir,” said a fair punster.