At this the emotional Mrs. Painter rushed on deck to embrace her humble sire and weep in his gray whiskers, a scene which the fastidious passengers found too painful to witness. Henceforth, through varied scenes of shipwreck and suffering, the dominant figures were to be the youthful, upstanding Mrs. Painter and the dusky and corpulent Mrs. Lock, heroines of two rash marriages, and foreordained to hate each other with a ferocity which not even the daily fear of death could diminish. In the presence of such protagonists as these, the ship’s company was like a Greek chorus. There was something almost superb in such a feminine feud. It was no peevish quarrel over the tea-cups. Moreover, it could have no dull moments, because both women had vocabularies of singular force and emphasis. The forecastle of the _Blenden Hall_ could do no better in its most lurid moments. It began with an affectionate intimacy, then squalls and reconciliations, while the stately East Indiaman jogged to the southward and the band played on deck for dancing after dinner. How far these two stormy women were responsible must be left to conjecture, but there seems to have been a vast deal of squabbling and bad blood among the passengers, as indicated by the following entry in the journal of young Alexander Greig, the captain’s son: Although I endeavored to detach myself, as much as possible, from any particular party (by giving two entertainments a week in my private cabin and sending around a general invitation) I received one or two polite requests to meet the writers at the first port we might touch at and to grant them the satisfaction due from one gentleman to another, &c., &c., for alleged affronts that I had unconsciously committed. For the life of me I could not have defined what the affronts were, but I wrote each party an answer that I should be happy to accept, and then deposited their beautiful gilt-edged little notes in my desk. There was an occasional diversion which patched up a truce, such as meeting with an armed brig which was suspected to be a pirate. The chief officer, in the mizzen-rigging with a telescope, shouted down that the brig was cleared for action. The second mate rushed forward and yelled to the boatswain to pipe all hands on deck. The gunner served out pistols and cutlasses to the seamen and the passengers, boarding-pikes were stacked along the heavy bulwarks, and the battery of six eighteen-pounders was loaded with grape and canister. Things looked even more serious when the brig hauled down a British ensign and tacked to get the weather gage of the East Indiaman.