‘I should consider,’ said she, gazing at me as if she would subdue me into acquiescence in anything she chose to say by merely eyeing me strenuously, ‘that Captain Keeling would be acting the part of a coward if he ran away from that little vessel.’ ‘Oh, Louise, how can you talk so!’ cried Mrs. Radcliffe, with a sort of despairful toss of her hands. ‘I should like to see a fight between two ships,’ said the girl, removing her overbearing eyes from my face to send them over the deck amongst the groups of men. ‘Of course, if that vessel attacks us, we ladies will be sent below to rend the cabin with our screams at every broadside; but I, for one, am perfectly willing, if the captain consents, to shoot at those people through a porthole.’ ‘Oh, Louise, the whims which possess you are really dreadful!’ cried Mrs. Radcliffe: ‘imagine, if you should even wound a man! it would make you miserable for life; perhaps end in your becoming a Roman Catholic and going into a convent. Think of that.’ Miss Temple looked at her aunt with a little curl of her lip. ‘I do not know,’ she exclaimed, ‘why it should be more dreadful in a woman to defend her life than in a man. Nobody, I suppose, wishes to hurt those people; but if they attempt to hurt us, why should we women feel shocked at the notion of our helping the sailors to protect the ship by any means in our power? I am like Mr. Fairthorne,’ she continued, with a sarcastic glance at me; ‘I could not fight with a sword, but I can certainly pull the trigger of a musket.’ ‘It is really hardly lady-like, my dear,’ began Mrs. Radcliffe. ‘Nonsense, aunt! Lady-like! Is it more genteel to fall into hysterics and swoon away, than to take aim at a wicked wretch who will have your life if you don’t take his?’ and as she said this, she whipped a cotton umbrella out of her aunt’s hand, and putting it to her shoulder, as though it were a gun, levelled it at the brig. Colledge, who was standing at a little distance away, talking to two or three of the passengers, clapped his hands and laughed out. For my part, I could not take my eyes off her, so fascinating were the beauties of her fine form in that posture, her head drooped in the attitude of the marksman, and her marble-like profile showing out clear as a cutting in ivory against the soft shadowy mass of gloom of the sky astern. Mrs. Radcliffe again tossed her arms in a despairful gesture, with a pecking, so to speak, of her face at the gangs of men on the quarter-deck and waist; and then making a little flurried snatch at her umbrella, she passed her arm through her niece’s, exclaiming: ‘Help me to reach the cuddy, my dear. There’s a thunderstorm brewing, I’m sure, and I’m afraid of lightning.’ She made me a little staggering curtsey, and walked with Miss Temple to the companion, down which the pair of them went, followed by Mr. Colledge, who I could hear complimenting Miss Temple on her resolution to fight the enemy, if the stranger should prove one.