‘Nonsense, aunt! Lady-like! Is it more genteel to fall into hysterics and swoon away, than to take aim at a wicked wretch who will have your life if you don’t take his?’ and as she said this, she whipped a cotton umbrella out of her aunt’s hand, and putting it to her shoulder, as though it were a gun, levelled it at the brig.
Colledge, who was standing at a little distance away, talking to two or three of the passengers, clapped his hands and laughed out. For my part, I could not take my eyes off her, so fascinating were the beauties of her fine form in that posture, her head drooped in the attitude of the marksman, and her marble-like profile showing out clear as a cutting in ivory against the soft shadowy mass of gloom of the sky astern.
Mrs. Radcliffe again tossed her arms in a despairful gesture, with a pecking, so to speak, of her face at the gangs of men on the quarter-deck and waist; and then making a little flurried snatch at her umbrella, she passed her arm through her niece’s, exclaiming: ‘Help me to reach the cuddy, my dear. There’s a thunderstorm brewing, I’m sure, and I’m afraid of lightning.’ She made me a little staggering curtsey, and walked with Miss Temple to the companion, down which the pair of them went, followed by Mr. Colledge, who I could hear complimenting Miss Temple on her resolution to fight the enemy, if the stranger should prove one.
A few minutes later Mr. Emmett and Mr. Johnson approached me, bumping against each other like a brace of lighters in a seaway as they struck out on the swaying deck with their staggering legs.
‘I say, Dugdale,’ cried the journalist, ‘shall you fight?’
‘Why, yes,’ I answered. ‘We shall all be expected to help the crew certainly.’
‘I don’t see that!’ exclaimed Mr. Emmett, drawing his wide-awake down to his nose and folding his arms with a tragic gesture upon his breast, whilst he swung his figure from side to side on wide-stretched legs. ‘It’s all very fine to expect; but I agree with Johnson, whose argument is, that we have paid our money to be transported in safety to Bombay; and I cannot for the life of me see that the captain has any right to look for cooperation at our hands, unless, indeed, he so contrives it as to enable us to help him without imperilling our lives.’
‘But that fellow yonder may be full of ruffians, Emmett,’ said I; ‘and if you do not help our sailors to defend the Countess Ida, they may board us; and then they will cut your throat,’ I added, with a look at his long neck, ‘which is no very agreeable sensation, I believe, and an experience quite worth a pinch of heroism to evade.’
‘It’s a beastly business altogether,’ said he, wrinkling his nose as he stared at the brig.
‘But why should they board us?’ exclaimed Mr. Johnson. ‘If they do, it will be the captain’s fault. Why does he want to go on sticking here for, as if, by George! we were a man-of-war with three decks bristling with guns and crammed to suffocation with men?’