‘It’s a good job,’ said he, ‘that you’ve got no hair to dress. But how jolly bright your eyes are! Perhaps I may have you out of this sooner than you expect. Pray for a fresh north-easter, Marian.’
‘Take your light away and count your buckets. Somebody may come below.’
‘I’m not going to count any buckets,’ said he. ‘I invented that yarn as an excuse to see you.’
He carried the lantern to where my provisions lay, and was looking at them and softly speaking, when a man fell right through the hatch. He fell with a mighty thud, and I screamed out. You would have supposed him killed or stunned, but he had not lain quiet one or two minutes, not long enough indeed for Will to get to him, when he began to laugh and mutter drunkenly. He then sat up, and, looking about him, exclaimed: ‘Rum casks, be gob! Whist, ye drunken teef, and they’ll lock ye up down here!’ So saying, he got upon all-fours and crawled toward the casks stowed in the left wing of this store-room.
‘What are you doing here?’ cried Will, stepping up to him.
‘Is it you, honey? Bedad, then, that makes two. Quick, sweetheart, with your gimlet and pannikin, for supposin’ it should be threacle!’ said the man, sinking into a sitting posture.
My terror was extreme. I feared that others of the drunken crew would follow this fellow and come tumbling down after him to rummage for drink, and discover me before enough sober men could be got together to turn them out.
‘Now, up you go!’ cried Will. ‘Out you get!’ And he put his lantern down to lay hold of the man.
‘Why, what divvle are you?’ answered the brute, in a voice suddenly savage and dangerous as the growl of a fierce dog. ‘What’s this?’ he roared. ‘A stowaway? Hooroo! A stowaway, bullies! Hooroo!’ and, staggering on to his legs, he lurched towards the lad, with his fist raised.
Will was as stout a young fellow as ever buttoned a pea-jacket over his chest. He struck, and the man dropped like a shot from the hand. Excitement and fright had carried me out of the sail. I grasped the broom-handle and was in the very act of rushing to help Will, when the fellow was dropped by my cousin’s fist.