“Unhand the ruffian, gentlemen!” cried Mr Stafford, who had retreated amid-ships, and felt his courage revive under the protection of half-a-dozen ladies. “Unhand the mountain of moving mud! I’ll teach such fellows how to interfere with a gentleman! Unhand him, and I’ll send him below with a piece of cold lead through his fin!” And heroically taking from his pocket a handsome silver-mounted ivory case, he placed it with a determined air upon the top of a beef cask, again exclaiming—“Don’t hold him, gentlemen—these will do for him!” “I tell ye again, sirs,” shouted the skipper, “don’t hold me! Do you think a thing like that shall threaten to shoot me on board o’ my own ship?” And he struggled to approach him. “See to yourselves, gentlemen!” cried Mr Stafford, laying his hand fiercely upon the pistol-case. “O sir!—pray sir!—dear sir!—” screamed the ladies, grasping him in their arms. “Oh, don’t be alarmed,” said the little Honourable; “’pon honour, I shall only wing him—I have had some experience in these matters.” The skipper made a desperate rush forward—the ladies screamed louder—Mr Stafford seized the pistol-case furiously, crying—“Then die, fellow!——” His exclamation was cut short—a lady grasped the terrible pistol-case; it opened in the struggle, and the hateful weapons fell upon the deck, though not in the shape of pistols, but the honourable gentleman’s sea-stock of cigars! The gentlemen laughed—the ladies tittered. “It has ended in _smoke_, sir,” said a fair punster. “You can still _fire_ them!” added another. And the skipper, laughing like the mirth of a hoarse wave, taking him firmly by the ear with his finger and thumb, said—“Gather them up, sir—gather up your _firearms_!” And, as Mr Stafford persisted in disobeying, another twitch was given to his ear, and another and another, while he screamed and wept through passion and pain, danced and twisted to be free, to the amusement of the spectators, who enjoyed his punishment and humiliation. “Sir,” said Isabella, addressing his tormentor, the frantic cries of Mr Stafford having brought her from the cabin, where she retired at the beginning of their altercation; “if a fly sting us, we may drive it away, without taking pleasure in its tortures; and it is but a cowardly revenge to torment an insect.”