‘The weather will put an end to her, I expect,’ said I. ‘Very lucky for us, Mr. Cocker. A large crew of ruffians and six guns of a side, not to mention a twenty-four pounder in the bows, and cutlasses and small arms in galore, hardly form a joke. It is easy to figure the beauty, that sails, I daresay, three feet to our one, quietly sheering alongside and throwing seventy or eighty of her children aboard, dark-skinned assassins, armed to the teeth, reeking of garlic. Well, hang me, Mr. Cocker, if I didn’t believe that the times of those gentry had passed some years ago.’ His lips were moving to answer me, but there was a wide and blinding flash of lightning at that instant that set the heavens on fire, immediately followed by a crash of thunder as deafening as though a first-rate had blown up close aboard us. Yet again the scowl of the clouds deepened in darkness, and the brig grew vague on a sudden in the gloom of the storm. ‘There comes the rain!’ cried Mr. Cocker, pointing to a line of greyish shadow with a look of steam boiling up as it were from the base of it. It drew creeping slowly on to the brig, and its perpendicular fall made one think of it as of a vast sheet of water up above overflowing and cataracting sheer down over the edge of a cloud. ‘There is no wind there,’ said I; ‘it is a regular Irishman’s hurricane, right up and down. But here goes for a waterproof.’ I trundled below for a suit of rubber clothes, being too anxious to observe what was to happen to choose to leave the deck. All the passengers were congregated in the cuddy, and the lightning, as it glittered in the port-holes and skylights, flashed up their faces in the gloomy atmosphere, making them look a pale and trembling crowd. The colonel was pacing the deck near the piano. Miss Hudson leaned against her mother with her hands over her eyes. If ever there came a brighter flash than usual, one lady or another would scream. Colledge and Miss Temple sat over a draught-board; but I could not gather, from the hurried glance I threw over the people as I passed through them, that they were playing. I equipped myself from head to foot in waterproofs and came again into the saloon on my way to the poop. ‘Are you going on deck, Dugdale?’ cried Mr. Johnson, shouting aloud, to render his voice audible above the continuous cannonading of the thunder. ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘You will be struck dead, sir,’ called out Mrs. Hudson. ‘I have half a mind to join you,’ said Mr. Emmett, jumping up with a wild look at the skylight: ‘it’s simply beastly down here.’ ‘Hark to that!’ bawled the colonel; ‘there’s a shower for you!’