He walked aft and beat with a fist as hard as the stock of a musket, raising a small thunder. ‘Sorry to interfere, lady;’ he exclaimed, talking at the door with his nose within an inch of it; ‘this here’s no job for the likes of me to be messing about with.’ A dead pause. ‘There’s folks who are awaiting for you to come out.’ Here he grasped the handle of the door and boisterously shook it. ‘And as there’s no call now for you to remain, and as loitering in this here heat with the hatches flush with gewhany isn’t to none of our liking, I must beg, mum,’ he shouted, ‘that you’ll slip the bolt inside and open the door.’ Another dead pause. Miss Jennings looked aghast, and indeed the stillness within the cabin now caused me to forebode the worst. It was clear, however, that no fear of the sort had visited Wilfrid. He gazed at the door with a kind of terrier-like expression in his fixed eyes. Captain Crimp once more beat heavily and again wrestled with the handle, trying the door at the same time with his shoulder. ‘Well, mum,’ he bawled, ‘you will do as you like, I suppose, and so must I. I’m not partial to knocking my ship about, but by thunder! lady, if this here door ain’t opened at once I’ll send for the carpenter to force it.’ Another pause. He added in his hoarsest voice, addressing us generally, ‘Do she know that the gent that’s been keeping her company has gone aboard the yacht?’ ‘She’ll know it now,’ I answered, ‘if she has ears to hear with.’ I noticed Wilfrid violently start on my saying this. ‘Gentlemen,’ said Captain Crimp, ‘I’ll go and fetch the carpenter,’ and he had taken a stride when the bolt within was shot, the handle turned and the door opened. Had we come fresh from the splendour of the morning on deck we must have had great difficulty in distinguishing objects in the gloom of the little, hot, evil-smelling interior that had been suddenly revealed to us; but the twilight of the narrow passage in which we stood had accustomed our sight to the dim atmosphere. Lady Monson stood before us in the middle of the cabin reared to her fullest stature, her hands clasped in front of her in a posture of passionate resolution. I must confess that she had the noblest figure of any woman I had ever seen, and no queen of tragedy could have surpassed the unconsciously heroic attitude of scorn, indignation, hate, unsoftened by the least air of remorse or shame, that she had assumed. ‘Captain Crimp,’ she cried in a clear, rich, contralto voice that thrilled through and through one with what I must call the intensity of the emotions it conveyed, ‘how _dare_ you threaten me with breaking open my door? I am your passenger--you will be paid for the services you have rendered. I demand your protection. Who are these people? Order them to leave your ship, sir.’ She spoke with her eyes glowing and riveted upon Captain Crimp’s awkward, agitated countenance, never so much as glancing at her husband, at her sister, or at me.