‘I am sure they will obey any order your ladyship may give them,’ said I.
‘They have no right to denude this part of the deck since it is my intention to remain here,’ she exclaimed, drawing her fine figure haughtily erect and surveying me with dislike and temper.
‘Henrietta dear,’ broke in the soft voice of Laura, ‘Mr. Monson instructs them in the interests of all. See how bright the lightning is. You will not be able to remain here. How frightful was the rain when the “Bride” was wrecked!’
‘The strongest man had to turn his back to the wind,’ said I.
Lady Monson, whose eyes had glanced aft at that moment, jumped from the chest on which she was seated and went in a headlong way to the bulwark as though she meant to leap overboard. I could not understand this sudden wild disorder in her till I saw Cutbill, Dowling, and Head, with Finn superintending the business, bearing the pair of embracing skeletons to the main hatch. Laura started and looked away; but there was no absurd demonstration of horror in her. A ghastly sight, indeed, the skeleton twain made, dreadfuller objects to behold in the wild, flushed, stormy light of the moment than they had appeared in their twilighted corner of the cabin. The long bones of arms clung like magnets to the skeleton necks, fossilised, I suppose, by the action of the sea into that posture; and thus grimly embracing, whilst they looked with death’s dreadful grin over each other’s shoulder, they were lowered by the sailors down the main hatch.
‘Mr. Monson, sir,’ suddenly bawled Finn, ‘will you and the ladies step this way and see the beautifullest sight mortal eyes ever beheld?’
‘Where is it, Finn?’ I called back to him.
‘In the hold, sir,’ he answered.
‘He cannot mean the skeletons,’ exclaimed Laura.
‘Will you come, Lady Monson?’ I exclaimed.