'Ain't there no firearms knocking about?' said Abraham.
'I hope not,' said Helga; 'we shall be able to manage without firearms!'
'What is in your mind?'
'An idea not yet formed,' she answered. 'Give me time to think. I believe that not only are our lives to be saved, but the vessel too!'
'Ha!' cried Abraham, with a thirsty look. 'It needs a sailor's lass to get such a fancy as that into her head! I'm a Cockney if I don't seem to see a salwage job here!'
But Jacob was staring at us gloomily.
'What I says is this,' he exclaimed, addressing us with his fists clenched: 'Here be three Englishmen and a gal with the heart of two men in her'—'Softly,' I interposed—'with the heart of two men in her,' he continued, with a shake of his fist; 'and what's forward? He-leven wisps of coloured yarn! He-leven heffigies with backbones separately to be broke like this!' He crooked his knee, and made as if he were breaking a stick across it. 'Are we,' he cried, with the blood mounting to his face and an expression of wrath sparkling in his eyes, 'are we fower—three men and a young lady—to quietly sit down and wait to be murdered? or are we to handle 'em as if they was a pack of apes, to be swept below and smothered under hatches as a breeze o' wind 'ud blow a coil of smoke along?'
'Lower your voice, man!' I whispered. 'What do you want?—to court the death that you bolted aloft to escape?'
'What's to prevent us,' he continued, muffling his tone, though the fierceness of his temper hissed in every breath he expelled—'what's to prevent us a-doing this? More than the watch are below; three or fower may be on deck. Ain't the scuttle forrards to be clapped down over the forecastle, where they lie safe as if they was at the bottom of a well a hundred foot deep? Ain't that to be done? And if the three or fower that's knocking about on deck aren't to be handled by us three men—good-noight!'
He rounded his back upon us in sheer contempt of passion.