‘Everything is possible at sea,’ said I, laughing; ‘but there is a deal in our favour, Mrs. Radcliffe: first the weather, that as good as disables that fellow at present anyway; then the coming on of the night, with every prospect of losing the brig in the darkness.’
‘Would you advocate our running away from him?’ exclaimed Miss Temple, looking at me with a fulness and firmness that was as embarrassing and vexing in its way as an impertinent stare.
‘Oh, yes,’ said I; ‘certainly. We are a peaceful trader. It is our business to arrive in India sound in body’——
‘I should consider,’ said she, gazing at me as if she would subdue me into acquiescence in anything she chose to say by merely eyeing me strenuously, ‘that Captain Keeling would be acting the part of a coward if he ran away from that little vessel.’
‘Oh, Louise, how can you talk so!’ cried Mrs. Radcliffe, with a sort of despairful toss of her hands.
‘I should like to see a fight between two ships,’ said the girl, removing her overbearing eyes from my face to send them over the deck amongst the groups of men. ‘Of course, if that vessel attacks us, we ladies will be sent below to rend the cabin with our screams at every broadside; but I, for one, am perfectly willing, if the captain consents, to shoot at those people through a porthole.’
‘Oh, Louise, the whims which possess you are really dreadful!’ cried Mrs. Radcliffe: ‘imagine, if you should even wound a man! it would make you miserable for life; perhaps end in your becoming a Roman Catholic and going into a convent. Think of that.’
Miss Temple looked at her aunt with a little curl of her lip.
‘I do not know,’ she exclaimed, ‘why it should be more dreadful in a woman to defend her life than in a man. Nobody, I suppose, wishes to hurt those people; but if they attempt to hurt us, why should we women feel shocked at the notion of our helping the sailors to protect the ship by any means in our power? I am like Mr. Fairthorne,’ she continued, with a sarcastic glance at me; ‘I could not fight with a sword, but I can certainly pull the trigger of a musket.’
‘It is really hardly lady-like, my dear,’ began Mrs. Radcliffe.