shall do nothing of the kind, you
cowardly wretches; where Mr Conyers goes, I go also, even if it should
be overboard, with _no_ raft to float us."

"Oh no, my purty," answered O'Gorman, with the leer of a satyr, "we'd
take moighty good care you didn't do that. If Misther Conyers won't be
obligin', why, we'll _have_ to spare _him_, I s'pose; but we couldn't do
widout you, my dear; what'd we do--"

I could bear no more. "Silence, you blackguard!" I shouted, while
vainly striving to shake off Miss Onslow's tenacious hold upon my arm,
that I might get within striking reach of him--"silence! How dare you
address a helpless, defenceless woman in that insulting manner? What do
you expect to gain by it? Address yourself exclusively to me, if you
please."

"Wid all me heart," answered O'Gorman, in nowise offended by my abuse of
him. "I simply spoke to the lady because she spoke first. And bedad,
it's glad I am she did, because it's give me the opporchunity to show ye
how we mane to convart ye to our views. Navigate the brig for us, and
ye'll nayther of ye have any cause to complain of bad tratement from
anny of us: refuse, and away ye goes adhrift on a raft, while the lady
'll stay and kape us company."

To say that I was mad with indignation at this ruffian's gross behaviour
but feebly expresses my mental condition; to such a state of fury was I
stirred that but for the restraining hold of the fair girl upon my arm--
from which she by no means suffered me to breakaway--I should most
assuredly have "run amok" among the mutineers, and in all probability
have been killed by them in self-defence; as it was, my anger and the
bitterly humiliating conviction of my utter helplessness so nearly
overcame me that I was seized with an attack of giddiness that caused
everything upon which my eyes rested to become blurred and indistinct,
and to whirl hither and thither in a most distracting fashion, while I
seemed to lose the control of my tongue, so that when I essayed to speak
I found it impossible to utter a single intelligible word; moreover, I
must have been on the very verge of becoming unconscious, from the
violence of my agitation, for I had precisely the same feeling that one
experiences when dreaming--a sensation of vagueness and unreality as to
what was transpiring, so that, when Miss Onslow spoke, her voice sounded
faint and far away, and her words, although I heard them distinctly,
conveyed no special significance