"It was very hot work," Mr. Atherton said with a laugh, "and I did not get cool again for two or three days afterwards. The idea of using a man as a club was not my own. Belzoni put down a riot among his Arab labourers, when he was excavating ruins somewhere out in Syria, I think it was, by knocking the ringleader down and using him as a club. I had been reading the book not long before, and it flashed across my mind as the seraing went down that he might be utilized. Fists are all very well, but when you have got fellows to deal with armed with knives and other cutting instruments it is better to keep them at a distance if you can." "That was splendid!" Wilfrid exclaimed. "How I should like to have seen it!" "It was good for the eyes," the mate said; "and bate Donnybrook entirely. Such a yelling and shouting as the yellow reptiles made you never heard." By this time the meal was finished, and the passengers repaired on deck to find that the ship was just passing Sheerness. "Who would have thought," Wilfrid said to his sister as he looked at Mr. Atherton, who had taken his seat in a great Indian reclining chair he had brought for his own use, and was placidly smoking a cigar, "that that easy, placid, pleasant-looking man could be capable of such a thing as that! Shouldn't I like to have been there!" "So should I," Marion agreed; "though it must have been terrible to look at. He doesn't look as if anything would put him out. I expect Samson was something like him, only not so stout. He seems to have been very good-tempered except when people wanted to capture him; and was always ready to forgive that horrid woman who tried to betray him to his enemies. Well, everything is very nice--much nicer than I expected--and I feel sure that we shall enjoy the voyage very much." CHAPTER III THE VOYAGE. In addition to those already named, the _Flying Scud_ carried some twenty other cabin passengers. She took no emigrants forward, as she was full of cargo, and was not, moreover, going direct to New Zealand. There were therefore only three or four young men in addition to the Grimstones forward. The fine weather that had favoured the start accompanied them down the channel and across the bay. Life went on quietly on board. It was early in May when they started; and the evenings were still too chilly to permit of any sojourn on deck after sunset. Each day, however, the weather grew warmer, and by the time the vessel was off the coast of Portugal the evenings were warm and balmy. "This is not at all what I expected," Marion Renshaw said, as she sat in a deck-chair, to Mr. Atherton, who was leaning against the bulwark smoking a cigar. "I thought we were going to have storms, and that every one was going to be sea-sick. That is what it is like in all the books I have read; and I am sure that I have not felt the least bit ill from the time we started."