“Madam,” said I, looking at her eyes, which were all on fire, and her cheeks, which were colored, hot with the devilish fancies which worked in her, “your spirit is fine, but somewhat too deadly for one of my cautious character.”
“I wish for release,” she cried, with a great sigh, and her eyes suddenly clouded; “I wish for my mother and for home. I thought the English were brave, vaya! Your men will kill you if you do not kill them. Are you afraid to kill them? Ave Maria! Good men die in thousands every day.”
She began to tremble, and rose as if to pace the cabin; the motion of the brig was too heavy to permit that. I took her hand to steady her—it had turned from the heat of fever to the coldness of marble. “Just so!” thought I; “aren’t you one of those delicate assassins who prog and faint? Who’d stick friend Yan, then swoon, and leave me to deal with what would follow his roars?”
“We’ll burn no powder just yet,” said I, “and we’ll keep our poniards in our breasts. Amsterdam Island is a long way off; many things may happen.”
“Pu! Quita, allá!” she exclaimed, with pale lips and dull eyes, and trembling, and then rising with a murmur of anger and a manner of haughty contempt she went to her berth.
When she was gone there ran in my head a strange fancy of Defoe concerning a beautiful demon lady. You may read of it in that author’s “History of the Devil,” which is, I think, the best biography of the landlord of the Black Divan that ever was written. I could not but vastly admire the spirit of the woman in offering to shoot down the ten men; but I thought there was something damnable and fiendish in her proposing to make a shambles of the cabin by sticking Bol and the others she had named, while I talked to them. A demon spoke through her Spanish blood there! And yet her fine eyes and fine figure were in my memory of her counsel, and found a sort of fascination for what should have affected me as quite abominable.
I sat a bit, coldly considering her ideas. True it was that I could have killed Bol cheerfully; but to slaughter the whole ten of them, even if their assassination was to be contrived! Bol, to be sure, had threatened to send me adrift: he may have meant no more than a threat; my life was not immediately in danger; my knowledge as a navigator warranted me the good usage of the scoundrels till the coast of New Holland arose, and ’twixt this and that there lay some months: the men had dealt respectfully with the girl—left her indeed to me, as though they counted her a part of my share. No! I could not consent to shoot them down; I could not consent to let her ladyship knife the ringleaders while I conversed with them—one at a time.
I went to the stand and took out a musket to judge the quality and age of the lot: it was a Dutch musket, long, clumsy, and murderous. I took down a cutlass and tried the blade—all this mechanically: my mind was rambling. I scarce knew what I was about; I bent the blade and the steel snapped and the point of it sprang with the twang of a Jew’s harp through the air. Some of Tulp’s purchases! thought I, then replaced the broken half of the blade in its scabbard, and hung up the cutlass in its place.
This trifle begot a new scorn of Tulp in me. The rogue would even cheat himself, thought I. He would ship cannons that burst and blades that shiver to save a guilder or two, and risk the lives of us men and his dollars by the ton for some lean-paring of saving that would scarce put an onion to a man’s bread and cheese. What do I care for Tulp, thought I? What is his brig to me now that poor Greaves is gone? Had Greaves owned relations among whom he wished his money distributed the thing would wear a different face; but as it stands, Tulp and the brig being nothing to me, why should I not throw in my chance with the crew, elbow Bol out of his leadership by sheer enthusiasm, sincerity, knowledge of the ocean roads? The fellows groped in their black ignorance after some scheme, and brought up this muddy project of Amsterdam Island with Sydney beyond. Could not I devise something much better than that for them, something safe and quick—compared at least with their programme: something they should hearken to and eagerly adopt when they saw me and knew me and felt me to be in earnest?
Yan Bol came up when I put my head out of the hatch.