A few minutes later Mr. Emmett and Mr. Johnson approached me, bumping against each other like a brace of lighters in a seaway as they struck out on the swaying deck with their staggering legs. ‘I say, Dugdale,’ cried the journalist, ‘shall you fight?’ ‘Why, yes,’ I answered. ‘We shall all be expected to help the crew certainly.’ ‘I don’t see that!’ exclaimed Mr. Emmett, drawing his wide-awake down to his nose and folding his arms with a tragic gesture upon his breast, whilst he swung his figure from side to side on wide-stretched legs. ‘It’s all very fine to expect; but I agree with Johnson, whose argument is, that we have paid our money to be transported in safety to Bombay; and I cannot for the life of me see that the captain has any right to look for cooperation at our hands, unless, indeed, he so contrives it as to enable us to help him without imperilling our lives.’ ‘But that fellow yonder may be full of ruffians, Emmett,’ said I; ‘and if you do not help our sailors to defend the _Countess Ida_, they may board us; and then they will cut your throat,’ I added, with a look at his long neck, ‘which is no very agreeable sensation, I believe, and an experience quite worth a pinch of heroism to evade.’ ‘It’s a beastly business altogether,’ said he, wrinkling his nose as he stared at the brig. ‘But why should they board us?’ exclaimed Mr. Johnson. ‘If they do, it will be the captain’s fault. Why does he want to go on sticking _here_ for, as if, by George! we were a man-of-war with three decks bristling with guns and crammed to suffocation with men?’ ‘There is no wind,’ said I; ‘and without wind, Johnson, ships cannot sail.’ ‘Then why the confounded dickens don’t he lower all the boats,’ he cried, ‘and fill them with sailors, and tug the ship out of sight of that beast there?’ I laughed outright. ‘Well, I’m not in the habit of using strong language,’ said Mr. Emmett, scowling at the brig; ‘but curse me if I’m going to fight. My simple contention is, I’ve paid my money to be transported peacefully to India; and,’ added he, with a glance aft at old Keeling, who was staring up at the sky, as though to observe if there were any drift in the vapour up there, ‘if he don’t fulfil his undertaking, I’ll sue him or his owners for breach of contract.’ ‘I’m no sailor,’ exclaimed Mr. Johnson, ‘but I may claim to have some intelligence as a landsman, and my argument is,’ he cried, talking in a loud voice, ‘that it is quite in Captain Keeling’s power to launch the boats and drag the ship away from this spot. In an hour the brig would be out of sight.’ At that instant there was a flash of lightning that made a crimson dazzle of the dark heavens beyond the brig, where the sky sloped in a horrible yellowish slate colour into the sooty thickness which circled the horizon. ‘Ha!’ cried Mr. Emmett, ‘I don’t like lightning;’ and he abruptly trundled down the poop ladder to the quarter-deck and disappeared.