‘Oh, Mr. Dugdale,’ she cried, in a voice that trembled with disgust and fear, ‘what am I to do? I dare not be here, and I dare not be above, alone. What is more shocking and terrifying than a rat?’
I told her that rats were much more afraid of us than we could possibly be of them; but, commiserating her alarm, I offered to escort her to the deck-house.
‘But you will not leave me there,’ she exclaimed.
‘It is very necessary,’ said I, ‘that I should examine the state of the hull.’
‘Then I will stay with you,’ said she. ‘I cannot endure to be alone.’
She gathered up her dress, holding the folds of it with one hand, whilst she passed the other through my arm. I could feel her shuddering as she clung to me. Her eyes were large with fright and aversion, and they sparkled to the candle-flame as she rolled them over the deck. At the extremity of the passage that separated the foremost berths from the pantry stood what I believed a bulkhead; but on bringing the candle to it I discovered that it was a door of very heavy scantling that slided in grooves with a stout iron handle for pulling it by. It travelled very easily, as something that had been repeatedly used. The moment it was open there was plenty of daylight, for the open square of the main hatch yawned close by overhead, of dimensions considerable enough to illuminate every part of this interior. I stood viewing with wonder a scene of extraordinary confusion. There were no hammocks, but all about the decks, in higgledly-piggledly heaps and clusters, were mats of some sort of West Indian reeds, rugs and blankets, bolster-shaped bags, a few sea-chests, most of them capsized, with their lids open, and a surprising intermixture of hook-pots, tin-dishes, sea-boots, oilskins, empty broken cases, staves of casks, tackles, and a raffle of gear and other things of which my mind does not preserve the recollection. Several large rats, on my swinging the door along its grooves, darted from out of the various heaps and shot with incredible velocity down through the large hatch that conducted into the hold, and that lay on a line with the hatch above.
‘By all that’s—— Well, well! here’s been excitement, surely,’ said I. ‘Was ever panical terror more incomparably suggested? But this brig was full of men, and there was manifestly a tremendous scramble at the last. Would not anyone think that there had been a fierce fight down here?’
‘Do you think there are any dead bodies under those things?’ exclaimed Miss Temple in a hollow whisper.
‘See!’ cried I; ‘lest there should be more rats about, suppose I contrive some advantage for you over the beasts;’ and so saying I dragged one of the largest of the sea-chests to the bulkhead and helped her to get upon it.
This seemed to make her easier. Filled as my mind was with conflicting emotions excited by the extraordinary scene of hurry and disorder which I surveyed, I could yet find leisure to glance at and deeply admire her fine, commanding figure, as she stood with inimitable, unconscious grace, swaying upon the chest to the regular rolling of the hull. It was a picture of a sort to live as long as the memory lasted. There she stood, draped in the elegancies of her white apparel, her full, dark eyes large and vital again in the shadow of her rich hat, under which her face showed colourless and faultless in lineament as some incomparable achievement of the sculptor’s art: her beauty and dignity heightened in a manner not to be expressed or explained by the character of the scene round about—the uncovered square of hatch through which the rain was falling, the wild disorder of the deck, the rude beams and coarse sides of the interior.