wretches. As the captain says, the danger is only in the first attack.'

'I will protect you, Madame, with my life,' declared Arthur, drawing his
sword, as his cheeks and eyes lighted.

'Ah, put that away. What could you do but lose your own?' cried the
lady. 'Remember, you have a mother--'

The Genoese captain here turned to insist that Madame and all the women
should shut themselves instantly into the cabin. Estelle dragged hard at
Arthur's hand, with entreaties that he would come, but he lifted her down
the ladder, and then closed the door on her, Lanty and he being both left
outside.

'To be shut into a hole like a rat in a trap when there's blows to the
fore, is more than flesh could stand,' said Lanty, who had seized on a
hand-spike and was waving it about his head, true shillelagh fashion, by
hereditary instinct in one who had never behold a faction fight, in what
ought to have been his native land.

The Genoese captain looked at him as a madman, and shouted in a confused
mixture of French and Italian to lay down his weapon.

'_Quei cattivi--ces scelerats_ were armed to the teeth--would fire. All
lie flat on the deck.'

The gesture spoke for itself. With a fearful howl all the Italians
dropped flat; but neither Scotch nor Irish blood brooked to follow their
example, or perhaps fully perceived the urgency of the need, till a
volley of bullets were whistling about their ears, though happily without
injury, the mast and the rigging having protected them, for the sail was
riddled with holes, and the smoke dimmed their vision as the report
sounded in their ears. In another second the turbaned, scimitared
figures were leaping on board. The Genoese still lay flat offering no
resistance, but Lanty and Arthur stood on either side of the ladder, and
hurled back the two who first approached; but four or five more rushed
upon them, and they would have been instantly cut down, had it not been
for a shout from the Genoese, '_Franchi_! _Franchi_!' At that magic
word, which was evidently understood, the pirates only held the two
youths tightly, vituperating them no doubt in bad Arabic,--Lanty grinding
his teeth with rage, though scarcely feeling the pain of the two sabre
cuts he had received, and pouring forth a volley of exclamations,
chiefly, however, directed against the white-livered spalpeens of
sailors, who had not lifted so much as a hand to help him. Fortunately
no one understood a word he said but Art